General Mark Matthews (Ret.)
Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Government, The College of William & Mary
Senior Research Advisor, Rapid Prototyping Research Center, George Mason University
From Warfighter to Educator: Bridging Strategy and Innovation in the Classroom
In 2018, after a distinguished military career, General Mark Matthews (Ret.) was looking for a new kind of mission, one rooted in ideas rather than operations. An invitation to mentor students in a national security seminar rekindled his academic instincts. By 2021, he was at the helm of the Hacking for Defense (H4D) course at William & Mary, bringing decades of experience in military strategy and interagency coordination to a new generation of builders.
“I love working with students,” Matthews says. “It keeps me current. It’s intellectually stimulating. And it connects strategic defense thinking with what’s happening now in AI, autonomy, even space as a warfighting domain.”
Where Policy Meets Prototype
At William & Mary, Matthews teaches a very specific kind of student: policy-minded, globally aware, and mission-driven, but not necessarily technical. That’s the point.
“We don’t need 20 coders in a room,” he explains. “We need tiger teams: eclectic groups who can break down a mission set, interview operators, and reimagine how the Department of Defense approaches everything from homeland air defense to resource allocation in INDOPACOM.”
His students dive into “acronym soup” and emerge fluent. They move fast, iterate hypotheses, and deliver minimum viable products that could, in the right environment, reshape how our military fights and sustains. One class used commercial models to rethink dispersed resupply for Air Combat Command. The insight? That access to foreign bases—often treated as a given—isn’t guaranteed. Their work didn’t just suggest new technologies. It expanded the strategic dilemma for our adversaries, like the People’s Republic of China (PRC), by introducing ambiguity and unpredictability—key tenets of deterrence.
“That one still gives me chills,” Matthews says. “They weren’t just building for a grade. They were thinking like strategists.”
Not Just Innovation for Innovation’s Sake
Matthews is clear-eyed about the structural challenges students face after the semester ends. “Policy problems don’t monetize the way startup ideas do. Some of our best projects don’t move forward, not because they lack value, but because they lack a commercial champion.”
But even when the ideas don’t deploy, the talent does.
“Of the approximately 120 students I’ve taught, about 98% say it was one of the best experiences they had in college,” he notes. “They leave with a new way of thinking. A new way of working in teams. And a real sense of what mission accomplishment feels like.”
Teaching as Strategic Deterrence
For Matthews, teaching H4D isn’t just an academic appointment, it’s a continuation of service. It reinforces his belief in the next generation and challenges him to stay sharp. “Students today are sponges. Present them with facts, with multiple perspectives, and they’ll surprise you.”
He’s quick to push back against the narrative that universities are broken. “Yes, there’s peer pressure. But there’s also enormous potential. Gen Z is hungry for purpose. We just need to give them the right problems and trust them to build.”
H4D, he says, is more than a class. It’s a strategy.
“Mission focus. Rapid iteration. Respect for your teammates, even when you don’t choose them. That’s not just education. That’s deterrence. That’s the future of defense.”