Results tagged “Resilience”

Lately I've been reconsidering the term offloading and finding great correspondence with other terms frequently used on Dreaming 5GW:

• cognition
• OODA
• co-optation
• freedom
• globalization
• resilience
• consilience
• open source
• static

This will be a very long post; so if you are reading this from the front page, I've put the rest below the fold......

Over at Phatic Communion, Arherring has suggested something called "5GW analysis paralysis":

In other words, what is the effect of the knowledge that you have an opponent merely capable of 5GW campaigns? Given the inherent secrecy of 5GW your opponent has only two real options, (regardless of if you choose the engage in a 5GW campaign or not) he can proceed as if no campaign is ongoing and accept your influence while trying to maintain his objectives, or he can search so obsessively for the 5GW maneuvering against him that he ceases to able to function as a legitimate threat.

I responded with the following.

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Or: He can begin to engage his own 5GW plan (if he understands the basic concepts.)

I once mentioned on tdaxp that I thought the only effective defense against 5GW would be another 5GW operation. Dan disagreed. I think that Dan might say that preemptive resilience (institutional, infrastructure, ideological perhaps) would be the first defense and that the secondary defense would be an offense which attempts to "degrade" your 5GW opponent into operating at 4GW or below. I believe the post in question was a consideration of America and federalism; don't remember, just now.

The problem with each of these defenses:

1. Preemptive resilience: The 5GW attacker works with an iterative process; he's always judging the reality of any present conditions and tweaking his operations. I view 5GW as being the most dynamic of the generations of warfare. Whatever resiliencies you have built will become part of that plan. (Moreover, I wonder if inherent in the idea of resiliency is a dependence not only on that resiliency itself but also on static conditions able to "re-bound" after attacks or changing circumstances. This reminds me of the little quibble I had with DeAngelis once, early on, since resiliency is often thought of in terms of "bouncing/jumping back" into a specific place/condition.)


2. Degradation of 5GW: While degradation can happen naturally, through the fault of the 5GW planner, forcing a degradation would require that the defender be able to surpass the 5GW. I.e., it would require some type of 6GW operation -- unless, that is, we want to reconsider the generational framework by positing that (x+1)G is not designed to overcome xG, or is not actually able to cause 20-times losses and so forth. A 5GW defense might be able to degrade a 5GW attack; but surely at least an on-par defense would be require for intentional degradation of a 5GW force.
   

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We can put these three possibilities forth, then, for the defender who suspects a 5GW attack is underfoot:

1. "He can proceed as if no campaign is ongoing and accept your influence while trying to maintain his objectives."



2. "He can search so obsessively for the 5GW maneuvering against him that he ceases to able to function as a legitimate threat."



3. He can begin 5GW operations of his own.

Each of these possibilities is interesting.

"B" is the worst operational framework, the worst defense, because, in the first place, the 5GW attacker will devise the attack(s) to be entirely unobservable in themselves (although their effects may be observable); and, secondly, because part of the 5GW plan may well be to have the target react rashly while trying to "see" those maneuvers or to run around with his head cut off, utterly distracted.  The defender's search may be a significant part of the 5GW plan.

"A" is not necessarily bad.  I have said before, and will say again, that not all prawns -- i.e., proxy-pawns -- will be targeted for destruction.  In fact, a kinder, gentler 5GW may have as its goal the improvement of the system for everyone within the system.  If the 5GW maneuvers cannot be seen, acquiescence to them may really be a good thing:  "Let those better operators have their full effect; I, in any case, am obviously outside that decision loop."  I in fact wonder if such acquiescence to being a knowing prawn might persuade the attacker to see you as a valuable asset rather than an intransigent thorn in his side.  However, if the 5GW attacker has planned far worse for the defender, this may not be the best option.

"C" leaves a little more certainty that the defender could come out of the 5GW in a better place than when the war began.  Obviously, we're down to skill-sets here, which will greatly determine which side becomes "victorious."  Ironically, "A" may be a part of "C". Quite possibly, "B" will also occur in "C", in that the defensive 5GW force will need to be able to counter the opponent's 5GW maneuvers and therefore will need to be aware of those maneuvers somewhat.  But generally, I think that much of the observation will be focused on the environmental conditions, the objective reality of the system, rather than on the enemy's OODA although that (and all other OODAs) will also be considered.

Interesting article from Steve DeAngelis on Enterprise Resilience Management Blog:

"Prevention Better than Mitigation"

Steve looks at Rent-Way, a company that ultimately had to sell its business to competitor Rent-A-Center after a transparent attempt by its CEO, William E. Morgenstern, to correct the corporate fraud being conducted by executives in the company.  Despite inviting the SEC to investigate, firing the culpable executives, and working openly to mitigate secondary and tertiary effects of the illegal activity, the CEO failed in the face of other systemic conditions and horizontal activity:  interest rates charged by banks increased as a result of the fraud, shares plummeted within hours of its announcement, and ultimately on the consumer end, high gas prices cut revenues:

In addition to contacting the SEC, Morgenstern and his board fired the culpable executives. They hoped that their openness and quick action would contain the crisis. In Duhigg's words: "Rent-Way’s own journey, which came to a head last month, offers a chilling lesson: Even the most virtuous decisions have unforeseen, often damaging, consequences, and full disclosure may create as many problems as it solves."

Adding to the static means failure to anticipate, navigate, and mitigate systemic pressures preemptively.  Adding to the static means: operating openly to solve an existing systemic problem, whether in the smaller system -- corporation -- or the larger system -- market, society.  One might say that the smaller system was already wracked by systemic forces before Morgenstern acted; but one might also say that the larger system's systemic forces had already had a hand in shaping the smaller system's operation.  Reactionary measures may work to change the smaller system, but they will prove less effective for changing the larger system: they only reinforce that systemic reality.

The real problem is this: transparency is either an angel or a bogeyman, i.e. a false ideology.  Although Mr. Morgenstern, backed by open acknowledgment by the SEC for his efforts, believed that he was being 'open' about Rent-Way's problems, other horizontal forces (investors, financial lenders) saw that this was a corporation wracked by fraud; in addition, another horizontal force (the consumers) saw only high-priced rental products and the higher gas prices that limited the availability of those products.  The first group may have seen Rent-Way's 'openness' -- following as it did a closed, fraudulent activity -- but they also saw other things with it that blurred the image, other avenues for investment.  Consumers, on the other hand, may have had absolutely no awareness of Morgenstern's open activity; or if some did, they also saw various effects on their pocketbooks in addition to that vision of 'openness.'

In a complex, highly competitive world, any open activity is sure to produce more static, as other forces acknowledge the activity and work against it whether conscientiously or with knee-jerk reactions: competitors, sensationalists, consumers, those who would capitalize on that activity or by reacting to it without concern for the welfare of the original actor.  Transparency is not transparency if it operates in only one domain or a handful, because data flows from every direction and modifies the emergence of memes for the receiver.  In Once - Upon - A - Time - World, monopolies on data creation, within domains, enabled a semblance of transparency to have the effect that transparency is intended to have; but no more.  In Once - Upon - A - Time - World, a fear of monopolies on data creation inspired the hope that a diffusion for data creation would bring on the Golden Age in human civilization; but in the Now, we are seeing that growing levels of static are crippling our ability to respond to systemic problems.

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See also: John Robb, In Other Words.

Having drawn dire images of ultimate apocalypse and the convergence of diverse demons whose only shared goal upon the Earth is destruction -- i.e. the inept 5GWarriors John Robb has called 'Global Guerrillas', who really do have other goals but, from a myopic point of view looking in at them, appear to desire nothing but destruction -- Robb now turns his attention toward what can be done about that approaching apocalypse:

Systemic Resilience

The only solution for these problems isn't something that gains much currency from the current decision makers. There isn't any built-in audience ready with money and support to make them happen (at least, not yet).

["The New Threats"]

Preface

As regular readers probably already know, debate over the characterization of John Robb's "Global Guerrillas" has been spotlighted in various places around this tiny section of the web.

PurpleSlog initiated the recent debate in "Am I Understanding the Gist of the Global Guerilla Concept?" and remains truly objective throughout the debate.  With Dan tdaxp, PurpleSlog arrived at the consideration that the GG movement might be a type of 3GW -- which seemed a good characterization from my perspective:

Is there a reason a Light Infantry variant of 3GW could not appear? [PurpleSlog]

As even Lind said in "The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation,"

Third generation warfare was also a response to the increase in battlefield firepower. However, the driving force was primarily ideas. Aware they could not prevail in a contest of [material] because of their weaker industrial base in World War I, the Germans developed radically new tactics. Based on maneuver rather than attrition, third generation tactics were the first truly nonlinear tactics. The attack relied on infiltration to bypass and collapse the enemy's combat forces rather than seeking to close with and destroy them. The defense was in depth and often invited penetration, which set the enemy up for a counterattack. [William S. Lind]

The blitzkrieg characterizes the change toward greater maneuverability; but could greater maneuverability be achieved at the infantry level, in response to the superior material force of an opponent...?