Defense and the National Interest

From the presentation on Sun Tzu by Jim Gimian and Barry Boyce.  They go into detail on these, and many others, in their new book, The Rules of Victory, How to Transform Chaos and Conflict (Boston: Shambhala, 2008).

[my comments are in square brackets.]

The Five:

1. The Tao — the path to be followed
2. Heaven (the largest possible vision) — View
3. Earth — terrain, the practical realities that any person has to deal with
4. The general — the person who has to take Action
5. The method — Practices

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Jim Gimian, publisher of Shambhala Sun magazine, and Barry Boyce, editor of that magazine, are presenting on Sun Tzu.  They are also two members of the Denma Translation Group that produced one of the most important translations of Sun Tzu.

I’ve been anticipating this presentation ever since James and Barry agreed to come.

Now that I’ve survived my presentation on the future of military conflict (including privatization), I’m going to sign off and listen.

More later.

Well, nearly live.

Here’s an excellent summary of John Robb’s presentation plus an mp3 of mine on the Global Dashboard blog.

http://www.globaldashboard.org/resilience/the-boyd-conference-2008/

Amy Shaw, VP of marketing for public TV station KETC in St. Louis, is talking about how public resources, such as NPR and public television, can make an immediate impact on resilience.  In her case, the effort was to unite the community — to harmonize orientations — around understanding a problem and its potential solutions.

In particular, public broadcasting was able to act as a neutral resource to provide information from a variety of sources (many of them local financial institutions) to members of the community facing foreclosure.  As a result, residents were rapidly made aware of why the problems arose and what their options were.

KETC’s experience is serving as a model for other public media around the country.

The way to design stability into the system in an environment of “black swans” is to make the lowest level component as autonomous as possible.  This isn’t survivalism (you can only store so much food, for example).  A better strategy is to structure communities with a set of the skills needed to function and then to facilitate communication between the communities.

John is talking about Prigogine’s dissipative structures as a model for a resilient community (Google for a description).  Boyd was enamoured of dissipative structures and they form a big part of his later conception of orientation.  In addition to stability in an era such as we’re entering now, if done well, it will be more efficient.

Dissipative structures can self-organize, which accounts for the applicability of the concept to resiliency.

The process can be spread by small teams of “vanguards” and can be assisted by social software that encourages interation (e.g., weblogs like this one).

In several senses of the word.  He’s outlining the properties of the “global supersystem”:  Too big, too complex, too fast.  As a result, we’ve entered an era for which we have no experience base and for which we have no effective tools.

Things like the global financial meltdown, peak oil, etc., are not black swans any more but the new norm.

Stay tuned.

Flash — we’re on to “stigmergy” — how individuals and small groups communicate / self-organize to act as if they were a larger organization.  Think bee hives or terrorist cells.

At the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada.  We’ve got about 25 people — a dedicated core, to say the least.  There will be video later, probably next week.  As most of you know, the theme is local resilience.  The host, Rob Paterson, is now doing the intro, followed by my 30 min Boyd refresher.

More later.

PS — beautiful morning.  About 20 degrees F.  Unfortunately, snow or rain on the ticket for tomorrow.

by William S. Lind
3 December 2008

Applying operational art in Fourth Generation war is so difficult it is hard to point to many successful examples of it. The recent assaults in Bombay are among the few and also among the best, bordering on brilliant. We may regret brilliance on the part of our opponents, but that should not prevent us from acknowledging it.

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J.B. Longley
2 December 2008
Republished with permission

[Jim Longley is Executive Director of the Advanced Technical Intelligence Association, formerly the MASINT Association.]

From time to time, events occur that compel us to pause and seriously reflect on their potential significance to the technical intelligence community. The Mumbai attack may present one of those rare moments.

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A Certeza de Vencer — Estratégia Militar e Competitividade Empresarial

25.11.2008 — “Não quero receber nenhuma mensagem dizendo, «Estou a segurar a minha posição». Não estamos a segurar coi­síssima nenhuma. Os alemães que o façam.Nós estamos a avançar constantemente e não estamos interessados em segurar nada, a não ser o inimigo.” General George S. Patton, Jr.

As ideias que este livro nos oferece são fundamentais para os que pretendam alcançar a vitória em qualquer ambiente conflitual ou competitivo. Desde logo, porque os princípios estratégicos que o autor desenvolve - com rigor e clareza - têm de facto revelado a sua enorme eficácia em contextos de aplicação aparentemente díspares, como o militar e o empresarial.

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