As a part of ADC’s 50th anniversary, ADC partners are reflecting on the past of defense communities and where the future is heading. Converge Strategies CEO and Co-founder Michael Wu spoke with the On Base team on overcoming the increasing energy demands of the future.  

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

ADC: What is the one thing driving the most change in the communities and installations you support right now? 

Wu: I think the most change within communities and installations relates to infrastructure and the changing nature of our electric grid. The grid is changing faster than in any of our lifetimes. We’re seeing unprecedented demand driven by data centers, AI infrastructure, as well as electrification across our economy. Our installations and missions and communities were really built under the assumption of plentiful and reliable access to electricity. That’s simply no longer a safe assumption, which is becoming an increasing strategic liability. Our communities are inheriting that risk, whether they realize it or not. 

ADC: What is the one thing you see looking different 10 years from now? 

Wu: What I anticipate within the next decade is that our communities and our installations aren’t just interdependent, but they’re strategically inseparable.  I think that starts with people. Two-thirds of our military families and all of our civilian personnel already live in the community, I would anticipate that only increasing. It continues with infrastructure. Infrastructure at our military’s installations and missions are dependent on electricity, water and  telecommunications infrastructure embedded in the community and an essential part of the community. We anticipate the infrastructure interdependencies only growing.  

Then finally, with some of the emerging technologies and emerging risks and threats, whether that be drone swarming, autonomous vehicles, AI targeting, any of these things I think can quickly overwhelm the possibility of any physical barrier really being a meaningful barrier.  

ADC: What is the one thing you are doing today to help get us there? 

Wu: Converge Strategies works at this intersection of infrastructure resilience and national security. And we’re supporting this specific mission in three ways.  

First, we’re working directly with military installations, with installation energy managers, with mission owners and operators, with community liaisons to strengthen the infrastructure posture inside the fence line so that it can better support mission assurance.  

Second, we’re working with defense communities and infrastructure owners within those defense communities to better position infrastructure. Whether that’s creating new partnerships, whether that is advocating for projects, whether that is identifying possible funding pathways to support infrastructure projects that can strengthen resilience, fundamentally, the defense community needs to be that partner to our military installations and missions.  

Finally, we’re working with senior leaders across the department on specific questions about the bulk power system and the future of the electric grid. We’re in this situation of rapid change, and it’s critically important that the department engage with people that it doesn’t normally engage with who are planning the future of the electric grid and who are regulating the utilities that are implementing that future today.