A Reply to Major General Smith’s Keynote at the Chief of Army History Conference 2026

Clarity in language is a warfighting enabler. It shapes how risk is understood, responsibility assigned, and violence authorised. Yet there is a steady encroachment of management-speak, jargon, and euphemism into daily military communication. This essay explores the forces that may be driving this trend and identifies practical steps the Australian Defence Force (ADF) could take to restore linguistic precision.

This essay was inspired by Major General Chris Smith’s keynote address at the 2026 Chief of Army History Conference. His perspective on language ‘creep’ is well-founded and illustrated by clear examples. From a system-level perspective, however, this trend is not only evident but likely to continue.

There are clear and understandable reasons for the spread of ‘management-speak’ within the ADF. The workforce is evolving to meet the strategic targets outlined in the 2024 National Defence Strategy. Each year, the ADF becomes more blended and diverse, and consequently more ‘civilian-like’ in its day-to-day office environments. The language of this emerging workforce reflects the breadth of stakeholders now occupying the system. Army leadership, including Major General Chris Smith, has highlighted this language ‘creep’ as a potential issue.

Looking ahead, as the ADF increasingly implements enterprise-wide solutions and deepens partnerships with Australian industries, this language trend can reasonably be expected to continue through normal organisational drift. Without deliberate intervention, the ADF will, by default, adopt a system that favours jargon and euphemism over clarity.

This essay will argue that individual efforts to achieve clarity are outmatched by system-level institutional pressures that reward euphemistic language and jargon. It will examine the consequences of language ‘creep’ and mitigation strategies, including a potential artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled option to reinforce clarity across the system.

Why clarity matters

Precise language enables truth-telling, accountability, and sound judgement. When commanders think in sanitised terms, decisions can drift towards comforting narratives rather than operational reality. The profession of arms depends on calling things by their proper names so that intent, risk, and accountability are unmistakable. The overuse of weasel words, nominalisation, technobabble, and the passive voice inhibits clarity and, in turn, obscures the truth. This obfuscation may be intentional or inadvertent, but its effects are the same.

Clear writing is linked to core military values such as accountability and honesty; these are the currencies of character that enable effective military organisations. War demands that the ADF value truth and actively defend it through precise writing and speech. The reality of armed conflict ultimately asserts itself regardless; it has no interest in the narratives organisations construct to reassure themselves.

Major General Smith argues that this trend of language ‘creep’ obscures war’s reality and compromises decision-making by reframing conflict as an ‘engineering problem’, thereby sanitising its inherently violent nature. George Orwell made a related observation, noting that political language is often used to make the indefensible appear acceptable. In his keynote, Major General Smith cited contributors such as hubris and the Dunning-Kruger effect. This essay builds on that analysis by adding a systems perspective: such behaviour can also be understood as a rational response to institutional incentive structures.

Why do systems reward jargon and euphemism?

Large organisations centralise effort, integrate across industries and domains, and operate in politically sensitive environments. The individuals within these systems are primarily focused on navigating them effectively. Those who succeed learn the language that facilitates career progression and minimises friction. Within such hierarchies, jargon and euphemism possess clear functional utility.

Jargon refers to words, phrases, or terminology used by members of a particular profession. Management jargon tends to be abstract, conceptual, non-committal, and obscuring. Euphemism refers to mild or indirect terms used in place of language perceived as harsh, blunt, or potentially offensive. While both are criticised as being antithetical to military values, it is important to understand why mid-career military officers may consciously or unconsciously adopt this form of communication.

Several system-level incentives drive this behaviour.

• Coordination: A common language facilitates centralisation and integration across joint commands, interagency interactions, and industry partnerships. Contractors frequently operate under both military and civilian reporting structures, and the common language often trends in a corporate direction. This language aligns with contractual frameworks, performance management processes, and governance mechanisms.
• Risk: Military organisations operate in politically sensitive environments, where reputational risk increases with seniority. Euphemistic language reduces the likelihood of misinterpretation when information is released beyond its original context.[i]
• Social conformity: Language signals affiliation and agreement. Direct criticism that may be acceptable within a military unit can be perceived as confrontational or inappropriate in blended civilian-military workplaces. Softer, corporate-aligned language reduces interpersonal friction and is often perceived as more professional.
• Uncertainty and accountability: Ambiguous language can obscure responsibility and limit exposure to blame. In the era of digital permanence, where all data is archived indefinitely, non-committal language provides a buffer against future scrutiny. Ambiguity buys organisational breathing space, even at the cost of clarity.

Staff officers who temper traditional military directness in favour of corporate language may be better positioned to succeed in blended workforce environments. Communication styles that minimise friction also tend to align with contemporary assessment and performance frameworks, shaping perceptions of professionalism and suitability for certain roles. It is plausible that soldiers and officers who demonstrate strong ‘cultural fit’ in these environments encounter fewer informal barriers when transitioning to civilian roles, where such linguistic traits are explicitly valued.

Looking ahead, the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into the ADF is likely to accelerate these trends. Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained predominantly on civilian and corporate data, which shapes the tone and structure of their outputs. Microsoft Copilot, the ADF’s enterprise AI tool, already reflects these trends. Furthermore, emerging defence technology firms increasingly frame operational decision-making tools using corporate process language, recasting lethal force within workflows aligned with systems-engineering constructs. Without deliberate intervention, ADF language will likely drift further from the realities of violence and command decision-making it is intended to describe, towards more ‘corporate-friendly’ forms.

The consequences of corporate euphemism and jargon for military thinking

Non-specific, euphemistic language creates practical problems for leaders because large bureaucratic systems shape how people think, solve problems, and interpret reality. Several consequences are particularly relevant to military effectiveness.

• Degraded clarity and shared understanding: Ambiguous doctrine, policy, and orders invite variable interpretations, increasing execution friction and undermining tempo.
• Euphemism distorts reality and judgement: Terms like ‘neutralise’ can obscure moral weight and warp the mental models that commanders use to make decisions about force.
• Diffusion of accountability: As responsibility is blurred through language, compliance displaces outcomes and identifying fault or learning from failure become more difficult.
• Conformity over critical thinking: When fluency in accepted jargon is rewarded over precision, individuals are incentivised to sound correct rather than to be correct. Organisational learning loops lose their sharpness when accuracy and truth are deprioritised.[ii]
• Cognitive friction: Ambiguous language increases cognitive load, slows decision-making, and can contribute to paralysis at critical points.[iii]

Over time, this language ‘creep’ shifts the ADF from clear, reality-based action to ambiguous, perception-managed behaviour, something fundamentally unaligned with military effectiveness.

System problems require system solutions

The system creates this problem, and it must also be the locus of its solution. Organisational change requires deliberate modification of the components that shape behaviour: governance mechanisms, incentive structures, education and training, leadership practices, and accountability frameworks. System problems require multi-factorial responses.[iv] Several system-level strategies merit consideration:

- Make plain language the standard: Orders, commander’s intent, and reporting should privilege concrete nouns and action verbs over abstraction.

- Enforce a controlled doctrinal glossary: Periodic review and translation testing of doctrine and policy can identify and remove unnecessary buzzwords and euphemisms.

- Align incentives with accountability and honesty: Clear communication must be explicitly rewarded. Language should normalise accountability by naming actors, actions, timing, and effects – for example, who did what, when, and with what effect?

- Develop leaders who challenge ambiguity: Education and professional development should equip leaders to interrogate vague language across the organisation, civilian and military alike. Normalising questions like ‘what does this mean in practice?’ helps raise issues of ambiguity before they become risks.

Will these measures be sufficient? The prospects are uncertain. Individual initiatives pursued in isolation rarely translate into entrenched system incentives. Meaningful change requires a concentration of institutional effort, and the ADF may reasonably prioritise other organisational imperatives over language reform.

The case for a technological intervention

There is a unique opportunity in this situation to apply a technological solution to a system problem. This is often a systems-thinking trap; however, in this particular circumstance it may be worth a second look. A viable option would be to develop an ADF-specific language-clarity LLM. Such a system could be trained to detect jargon and euphemism and propose precise alternatives aligned with military intent. Used at scale, this capability could audit doctrine, policy, and formal communication for clarity, counteracting linguistic drift rather than amplifying it. This approach is technically feasible, as constrained-language tasks are a mature application of AI. Comparable use cases are increasingly common in civilian contexts, and some partner militaries have publicly signalled interest in exploring how LLMs might be adapted for constrained, domain-specific military applications.[v]

In simple, practical terms, such a model would be trained on examples of clear and unclear military language and iteratively refined to produce reliable results. Integrated into enterprise tools, it could provide near-real-time feedback when drafting orders, doctrine, and instructions. Consistent, system-wide reinforcement of clear language would not only improve writing – it could also shape behaviour, culture, and decision-making. The potential scale of the cultural shift it could produce may be sufficient to justify an organisation as large as the ADF pursuing this approach.

In conclusion, professional military organisations are increasingly centralising efforts and integrating with industry. As warfighting becomes more technically complex, this reliance on industry partners and blended workforces is inevitable. Yet the structural shift also reshapes organisational culture, including the common language the ADF uses to think about, describe, and conduct war.

This essay has expanded on Major General Smith’s keynote from a systems perspective, arguing that euphemism and jargon are not merely stylistic issues but predictable outputs of institutional incentives. It has outlined several pathways to mitigate these effects, including a promising application of AI. AI is often treated as a buzzword; however, in this instance, an ADF-specific language clarity LLM represents a pragmatic, achievable and comparatively low-cost enterprise intervention aligned with an identified organisational need. 

Nevertheless, no system or technology can substitute for leadership. Even within imperfect institutional structures, leaders across the ADF still retain agency over how language is used locally. Precision in language is, and will remain, a daily leadership choice aligned with core military values. 

End Notes