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"For 23 years, Marshall worked with the RAND Corporation but has left virtually no paper trail behind. All we know of him is what we are told by those who have known him. He is known as a man of few words, rarely ever speaking before large gatherings, meticulously avoids leaving behind a record, and has been described as "delphic" in his manner of speech sometimes. And yet his may be the single most enduring legacy of any from amongst his peers.
"There is very little to tell us about Marshall's work at RAND since hardly any of it has been declassified. In 1972, his friend and fellow RAND researcher, [[James R. Schlesinger]] who was serving as Secretary of Defense in the [[Nixon administration]], created a little office in the [[Department of Defense]] titled the [[Office of Net AssessmentsAssessment]] (ONA), and made Marshall the Director. The ONA had a murky brief. Marshall's job was to imagine every kind of threat the US military might ever face. Marshall used the ONA to assist the Team B in their efforts to access raw intelligence. He followed Soviet military thinking closely, ran war game exercises involving novel scenarios, and taught a summer seminar at the [[Naval War College]]. For 30 years Marshall has directed the ONA, and built for himself a formidable reputation and an equally formidable network of protégés in and out of government.
"In the 1970s, Marshall busied himself with concepts of ballistic missile defense and closely reading Soviet literature on nuclear war. This is where he came across the writings of the Soviet general staff on the nature of military revolutions. The Soviet officers were arguing that advances in missile, communication and sensor technologies were creating the conditions for a "military technical revolution" somewhat akin to how artillery had rendered horse mounted cavalry obsolete.
