The Military Mindset Behind Modern Wildfire Tactics | Robert Baird

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.