How do military strategy, AI, and community resilience come together in wildfire response? Robert Baird breaks it down in this essential Fire Break episode.
In this extended conversation, host Steve Wolf sits down with Robert Baird—retired U.S. Marine and former Fire Director for Region 5 of the U.S. Forest Service—to explore the intersection of wildfire leadership, military strategy, risk communication, and tech. They dig into:
AI as decision support vs. data overload
Firefighting through the lens of national security
Why visualizing risk changes behavior
Human vs. robotic firefighting
Complacency, culture, and command in high-risk operations
And why we need a World War II–scale mobilization to face the wildfire crisis
Baird draws from decades of leadership—from Iraq and Afghanistan to the Los Padres National Forest—to deliver a clear-eyed view on what needs to change, and how.
