Global Guerrillas

What I've Been Doing: Working for the CJCS on the future of Warfare

I spent 2015 thinking and writing about the future of warfare while working for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Specifically, I was tasked with figuring out how autonomous robotics could/would change warfare over the next twenty years, and how the US military could exploit that change.  

Up until this effort, the US military didn't have a cohesive vision for how it would use autonomous robotics.  Now, it does (at least the first iteration of one).  The cool part, for me, is that I now have a very strong grasp for how this tech is going to roll out and how to exploit it to achieve decisive results both tactically and strategically.  

Needless to say, the change on the way due to autonomous robotics is going to be very, very disruptive.  So, absent another contract that would pay me to think/write for them, I'm going to write some of my thinking up for GG and put the rest into a book so the world can put it to use.

PS:  I'm interviewed on Episode 236 of the Robot Overlordz radio/podcast.   A general talk.

 

Germany Just Screwed Europe

Germany needs young people.  Its population is dwindling.  It doesn't have enough of them to support a rapidly aging German population.

• A smart solution to this shortfall would have been to actively recruit millions of young people from around the world -- from India to Tanzania to Argentina to Malaysia to the US.  
• Instead, for some reason, the people running Germany thought it would be a good idea to use the Syrian crisis as a way to bring millions of young people to their country. 
• It worked.  Germany imported 1.1 m migrants last year.  

However, if you dive into the details, it's clear this policy is very dangerous.

• Almost all (~800,000) of these migrants were young, single men (Canada, in contrast, refuses entry to young single men) from Syria.  Insurgencies and terrorism run on a fuel of young men.
• These young men are culturally incompatible with EU/US standards re: women, homesexuality, free speech, etc.  With a group this large and cohesive, cultural integration will be nearly impossible over any meaningful time period.
• Most of these young men (~500,000-700,000) have recent combat experience earned on the killing fields of a fractured Syria, fighting for a variety of bad causes.  This makes them potentially dangerous.

Here's how I believe this will play out:

• Social disruption will rise.  We are already seeing this with recent attacks by roving gangs of immigrants in Cologne.  Further, Schengen will disintegrate as transborder attacks by radicals ramp up.  We saw this with an attack by a "German" migrant on a police station in Paris and the flow of weapons/attackers from Brussels during the Paris attacks last year.  
• Over the medium term?  Terrorist violence.  This population, and those that soon follow, will soon become the main conduit for extremism in Europe.  Its large size, antagonism and cohesiveness will make it impossible to police.
• Over the long term?   As the demographics of these countries rapidly shift in favor of the new arrivals: open source insurgency.  An insurgency that will spread far from the borders of Germany.  An insurgency I'm not sure Germany, nor the EU, can win.

PS:  What a missed opportunity for Germany and the EU.  Instead of recruiting millions of economically and socially beneficial migrants from countries across the world...

Culture is Everything

What is culture? In the broad sense, it's a way of life.  More specifically, it's a basket of shared behaviors that determine how we solve problems, define success, and treat each other.

Culture is important. It has been proven critical to socioeconomic success, at every level, from the extremely large group to the individual (although at the individual scale, we call it character). For example, in the corporate world, most successful CEOs will tell you the same thing: culture is everything.

So, if it's so important, why don't we talk about culture more?

It isn't easy to quantify. It's not easy for bureaucrats to dictate or markets to measure.

Fortunately, there is a way to understand it a bit better. Culture is important because it plays a critical role in personal and group decision making. More specifically, it drives the "orientation" step of John Boyd's decision making model, the OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop.

Orientation is different than the other steps in decision making.  It's a gut check.  A check of core values.  It is a synthesis of everything you've learned as it applies to the problem you face.  This makes it squishy and holistic.  It's the step that Einstein so elegantly referred to in this quote:

If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.

Unlike orientation, the other steps (observe, decide, act) used in decision making are largely mechanistic, analytic and quantitative. To improve these other steps, you speed them up (i.e. computers), increase their fidelity (accuracy without error), and widen their scope (more data).

In contrast, culture is how human beings have learned to speed up orientation in a dependable way.

Culture can provide any individual, organization, or country with the outlook needed to successfully orient problems repeatedly and without hesitation.

Here's an example:

Some business cultures place a high value on treating the counterparty in a transaction with respect and dignity.  In those cultures, it's important that every business transaction is a win-win, where both sides are better off for doing business together, regardless of the contractual details.  

In other business cultures, business transactions are highly competitive.  In those cultures, it's important to win every business transaction and contractual details are used as a weapon to bludgeon the counterparty into submission.

See the difference in approach due to culture?

What should also be obvious from this example is that cultures differ.  They can be wildly different.

They aren't equally effective, the usually don't mix well, and some can be toxic.

Sincerely

John Robb

PS: John Boyd developed the OODA loop to figure out how to win conflicts.  He postulated, correctly, that successful decision making is the most important factor in survival -- from simple organisms surviving evolutionary pressures in primordial pools to winning wars on modern battlefields.   Therefore, success in any conflict was largely due to faster, better decision making.  The faster you can make good decisions, the faster you can iterate to success.