Dr. Alex Miller
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Alex sat down with Dr. Alex Miller, Chief Technology Officer of the Army at AUSA. Before they got into tech and data, the conversation started somewhere more personal: a photo from a buddy’s wedding fifteen years ago, GoRuck, Spartan, and the moment he decided to take his own fitness seriously.
What followed was one of the more honest conversations we’ve had about what technology can and can’t actually do for human performance — from someone who has spent a career at the intersection of data collection, intelligence, and the Army.
Topics covered:
The switch moment behind a personal transformation — and the difference between being hurt and being injured
Why technology cannot fix culture by itself, and what the Intel community’s data science revolution teaches us about collecting human performance data
The quote he keeps coming back to: “Data’s a lot like garbage. You should probably have a plan for what you’re going to do with it before you start collecting it.”
What Thor 2 and Thor 3 get right — starting with the decision you’re trying to drive, not the sensor
Why “buy-in” means something literal: when you give people things for free, they attach exactly that value to it
The fear and trust problem behind wearable adoption — why even fit soldiers hesitate when they don’t control what happens to the data
Fitness as table stakes: it doesn’t matter how good you are at the end point if you can’t get to the end point
Why changing the PT test shouldn’t change your training program — if you were training for the mission in the first place
The gamification problem: social media platforms are just databases we convinced people it was fun to put data into — and we haven’t cracked that for human performance yet
The people he’s most worried about: E8s and above on a general officer’s staff
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