If We Can Keep It

Almost done with Chet Richards newish book on national security and grand strategy, among other things.  It’s interesting and thought provoking, but I want to focus on a few topics.  The first of these is the concept of shi.  Like most all Chinese words, this has layers of meaning, of which Richards focuses on one.  “The third aspect of shi is about developing a favorable situation with great potential to achieve the political objectives.”  It’s not nearly as much about reaching out to change things, though this can and should be done, but about building oneself up, increasing one’s “strategic solvency.”  A more tangible example would be instead of adventures in Iraq, repairing the United States’ infrastructure, repairing Social Security and Medicaid.  There are good steps, but are more physical than what I think the idea is.  It’s about Boyd’s idea of grand strategy; increasing our resolve, decreasing our opponents.  strengthening our allies, drawing in the undecided.  It is very hard to damage the enemy, while strengthening ourselves is a much easier task to approach (we know the subject much better at least) and then we can wait for our enemies to screw up and take advantage of that weakness.  This also ties into the issue of being the aggressor or the aggressee.  Attacking immediately casts a pall over everything, even if done with the best of intentions.  Responding to an attack draws sympathy and support from even supposed enemies and provides a lot of room to make more friends than enemies, to reverse the adage about Germany.

The second point is the concept of formlessness which I had conceptualized in The Dancing Wu Li Masters.  It takes quantum physics and shows that our best guess as to the ‘workings of a clock we cannot see the insides of’ is that objects at their smallest level are not objects, but instead are relationships, possibilities and interactions.  What happens to one will potentially influence the actions of another, and possibly something quite removed from the object being observed.  (I’m still hazy on it, Bell’s Theory I think, going to need to dig further)

Another part is that there is only form and structure when the objects are being observed, until then it’s all only potentials, which leads to a number of different conclusions.  I’m not sure how this links to what follows, but I feel on some level (Fingerspitzengefuehl) that this is connected to the idea of creation and destruction, of swarms and of formlessness being the epitome of strength.  Boyd’s destruction and creation is all about building an idea or model, synthesizing it out of differing parts, testing it, using it, then destroying it and building anew in order to better adapt to a changing and chaotic world.  (oversimplification I think, but not a bad explanation)  Forms are seen, and used, but they are not things to be cherished, simply the latest iteration that is hopefully most effective.  They will be discarded as soon as we’ve come up with a better way.  This sounds great in theory, unfortunately people become attached to ideas which were good but are past their time which helped take the person to where they are, even if not adapting leads to obsolescence.  It’s fighting the last war and building a Maginot line, instead of figuring out how to concur more with less (blitzkrieg).

This all ties into swarms, as represented by insurgencies, specifically in this instance in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The US military is tied to one form, overwhelming, conventional force.  The insurgents know they will lose against this force in any direct confrontation, so they take on a new form with IEDs and suicide bombers.  The US military adapts with roadblocks, checkpoints and better humvees, the insurgents get better bombs, more remote detonations, non military targets.  This is only one prism of the conflict (and not the best since it’s solely the military side, but it’s on the mind), but the insurgents are better suited to adapting.  They have a swarm approach, an individual is no threat when examined, but together they learn and adapt and overcome a stronger opponent by being as formless as possible, testing solutions and quickly spreading what works until it doesn’t, then testing some more.  It also ties into the Darwinian Ratchet where only the smart and capable survive.  The military on the other hand is tied to tradition and hierarchy and top down leadership.  It is very committed to one form, and changing is a matter of years. No matter the pressure, nothing short of catastrophe on an immense scale could get the military to adapt at the same speed as an insurgency, there’s too much institutional inertia to allow this, too many pieces and players against allowing control to slide to the lower levels.

This all raises several questions; How to become that flexible, (short of a crisis, if possible)  How to avoid being in such a position, and lastly how to not let this advantage defeat us? The first two are simple though difficult, major surgery on the DoD and our grand strategy.  The third option is a bird of a different feather; though the idea to fight the insurgency instead of the insurgents is not a bad start.  (Chet Richards touches on this in the book, and I think I’ll try explore the idea tomorrow)

Legacy of Ashes

I’m not very good at writing new posts.  Having no one else looking at it does not help the motivation. Then again having people reading my writing used to be the quickest way to get me to not write, so this may be untenable no matter how I look at it.

Anyways, I’ve been reading rather prolifically lately.  I just finished Legacy of Ashes about the CIA, and it was quite interesting.  It’s amazing that an organization with almost no major successes for the first decade of its existence kept receiving high levels of funding and support.  It also highlighted that problems tend to revolve around people, not money or technology or ideas even (though ideas can be powerful in and of themselves).  First in trying to establish contacts and build a network of intelligence and espionage agents in unfriendly places of the world (which was hit or miss, but then again the KGB was working directly against the CIA, which had just started, so somewhat understandable).  Even worse though was after the organization had had the time and funding to build a viable program, they lacked the ability to acquire and train enough quality people to be able to accomplish anything really.  It comes down to the basic question of how to motivate someone to go spend the prime of their lives mucking about with no creature comforts, no recognition, in a hostile country where screwing up would end up bad for the person and embarrassing for the country.  So instead of these sorts of people who would give the CIA a fighting chance, it ended up (mostly) with bureaucrats, which has only gotten worse with the privatization of the intelligence community.

Then there’s the antagonism between the espionage side and the intelligence side, which to me is odd since the only way to have a hope of espionage being successful (let alone having any understanding at all even of the immediate consequences, successful or not) is if a certain level of knowledge has already been obtained on the area of interest.  Without that, it’s like shooting in the dark, success might come about with enough money and brute force, but it’s not going to stay hidden, and the consequences are going to be worse than the rewards even in a successful operation.

There are other thoughts, but the last is on the antagonism shown by the military throughout the history of the CIA.  First in keeping its intelligence from the CIA (which was originally created to oversee the nation’s efforts) to then trying to subvert and destroy the CIA, (taking over the NRO, having generals and admirals run the CIA, and finally succeeding in it being relegated to second tier status with the CIA director losing his seat on the NSC).  competition is good, but this level of infighting (sometimes seen between services also) can only be counterproductive.

There’s more, but my thoughts aren’t entirely organized.  How to get good intelligence, how to not let individuals ignore analysis and stamp their opinions on reports, how to keep the president from ignoring advice or swaying the organization away from unbiased reporting, all are lessons to be drawn from the book.  I don’t know what the answer is on any of them other than finding the right people for the job, or possibly starting from scratch, which seems a waste.  Though then you have to balance the pains of learning the wheel anew and losing half a century of expertise, and the struggles of overturning the culture, history, habits and prejudices of an organization as secretive and tribal as the CIA.  There might be a third option, but I’m not sure what it is.