Feral Jundi

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Building Snowmobiles: Man Vs. Machine–Steam Engine, Deep Blue, Ziggy, Watson…..Boyd?

Filed under: Building Snowmobiles,Kaizen,Strategy,Technology — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Matt @ 3:13 PM

     In The Art of War, Sun Tzu advised that one of the most important rules of warfare is to “know thine enemy.” At the chess table, the more you know about your opponent — how he has played in the past, his favorite moves, his strengths and weaknesses — the more likely you are to defeat him. Knowing these things requires sorting through a wealth of information — and that’s where computers come in…. 

     Kris says today’s chess players have absolutely benefited from the technology: “They are better players because of it, and they’re achieving more at a younger age. Bobby Fischer was considered an anomaly when he earned the grandmaster title at 15. Today, if you aren’t a GM by the age of 14 or 15, you probably won’t go far in chess. Talent will always matter, but technology is helping talented players learn faster and better.”

     What would a war game look like between a Boyd Machine(or just Boyd) and General Petraeus?  Or better yet, a general or political strategist with a Boyd Machine assisting in strategy and planning? These are some interesting concepts to ponder as militaries, companies, and politicians continue to seek that edge that will help them to defeat their opponents.

    If you look at the progression of machine development for Chess playing, Deep Blue was the end result of continuous improvements (kaizen) to the software.  Deep Blue ended up beating the human race’s top chess player and that is significant. It is a key point to remember when conceptualizing the Boyd Machine.

    Furthermore, I believe that Watson will at one point dominate Jeopardy.  It is doing very well now, and the four years of work on the machine is telling. Even if it doesn’t do it now, it will certainly do it in the near future because of Kaizen and because of Moore’s Law.

    So with these two examples of a machine evolution, is it a stretch to envision a computer defeating a top general or a team of generals in a war game? After all, war is the ultimate game of chess.

     I will take this a step further.  If not man versus machine in the endeavor of war, how about cyborg versus cyborg?  The way the human race is interfacing with machines in the present could easily classify us as ‘cyborgs’.  We carry around smart phones or cellphones, we check our computers daily and highly depend on both of these devices. Most humans have a hard time being away from their computer or phone, because they are so important to their lives.  This is reality.

    So with that said, imagine a general with a Boyd machine, versus another general with his machine?  Or a CEO hybrid versus a CEO hybrid.  You get the idea, and this is exactly the point of the various articles below.

     In the world of Chess, this reality has already presented itself. Will we see a similar future where strategists in political campaigns or military campaigns will be assisted by a machine for planning? I think so, because that is the natural progression, and the computing power is there thanks to Moore’s Law and Kaizen.

     Remember the rule of mimicry strategy?  Folks will copy the most successful strategies for winning, and add one little thing to it to give them the edge.  If everyone knows all the strategies and thought processes of all of mankind’s strategists and their opponent’s history, then what would give an edge to one side over the other?  Could a Boyd machine be that edge? Something that can analyze and synthesize faster than an opponent. Or help it’s human counterpart’s decision making cycle and come up with the winning strategies necessary to win that war, campaign, or competition in a market place? Interesting stuff.

    It would also be cool to see how such a Boyd machine would be constructed.  Take all of his theories and papers, as well as all of the material ever created in regards to strategy, and construct a machine that would think like Boyd?  There are plenty of individuals out there that could contribute as advisors to such a project. Best of all, it would be really cool to build a Sun Tzu machine or a Clausewitz  machine, and have cyborg teams war game against one another.  Al Qaeda or Taliban machines could be constructed as well, and I think war gaming in the future will greatly benefit from such efforts.  –Matt

Edit: 02/17/2011- Watson wins in Jeopardy, which to me is incredible because this was it’s first attempt! Watson won $77,147 to Mr. Jennings’s $24,000 and Mr. Rutter’s $21,600. Good job to the crew at IBM for building such an amazing machine.

Watson, the ‘Jeopardy!’ computer, has grander plans

IBM’s Watson Just Latest Edition of Man Vs. Machine Battle

The role of computers in planning chess strategy

The website for IBM’s Watson here.

TED: We Are All Cyborgs Now, Amber Case 

Watson, the ‘Jeopardy!’ computer, has grander plans

02/16/2011

By Hayley Tsukayama

Watson, the computer that’s winning hearts and cash on “Jeopardy!” this week, is more than just a pretty interface.

David F. McQueeney, vice president of IBM Research said that Watson’s real applications are far more practical. The computer is actually intended to help users get a handle on unstructured data such as text, e-mails and in-company mail messages.

“We’ve been working for a long time about helping humans navigate a large amount of data, ” McQueeney told Post Tech in an interview. “There’s all kinds of incredibly valuable information about the way an agency runs in unstructured data, and we’ve been working for decades on extracting meaning and structure from it.”

What McQueeney hopes IBM can do by showing Watson off on television is let people know machines have evolved to the point where they can help humans struggle with problems without having to modify all the data for a computer.

“I’m so pleased that the ‘Jeopardy!’ producers agreed to work with us,” he said, “and I’m as pleased as they are that the result was good science and good entertainment.”

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Thursday, February 10, 2011

Strategy: Egyptians Share Secrets Of Uprising

Filed under: Egypt,Strategy,Tunisia — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — Matt @ 6:48 PM

      This is fascinating stuff. Like most folks, I have been following the protests and political upheaval with some interest. But what I am really interested in is the strategies and tactics behind such things.  Because really, the best way to win a war or achieve an objective, is to not fight at all. Removing a leader and it’s regime via internal uprising or coup (bloodless preferred) , is far better than expending all the resources, treasure and blood that is involved with conducting an all out war to remove such a beast.

     What I thought was most impressive is that it sounded like what won the day was really good strategy on the part of the activists, and not Twitter or Facebook or whatever gadgets that the media likes to point to as the source.  These protesters played a better game than the riot forces and the Mubarak regime did, and they did it by borrowing brilliance or what I call ‘mimicry strategy’.  They saw how the folks in Tunisia did this, and copied it.  They also used whatever communications tool they could to network the masses and get them to where they needed to be.  So they did word of mouth tactics, they used the internet, they used flyers, they used the cell phone and text messaging, they used everything they could to get the word out.

     Further more, on the technology side of things, there are more cellphones in Egypt than internet users.  And the government eventually shut down the internet, leaving protest organizers to go back to more traditional ways of organizing.  But as you can see with their strategy, they wanted to create just one successful protest that would get people off their asses and out into the streets.  Once they got the people out, the protest would fuel itself because people would be motivated by other people and their actions.  Momentum is what they were seeking, and that is what they achieved.

    Also, I really dug the ‘Site 21’ strategy mentioned.  I think Col. John Boyd would be impressed with this strategy, as would any military strategist.  The protest was well planned and executed, and it used decoy marches to fool the police.  With that planning, they were also able to create a focal point or schwerpunkt at this Site 21, and depend on the masses to collect there and overwhelm any police forces that could respond. This massive show of people would be the fuel for future protests. This would further build on the inception of the Tunisian success in Egypt idea in everyone’s brain.  Success breeds success.

     Also it should be noted that ‘know yourself, know your enemy’ was extremely important to the success of these strategists.  They had protested and failed before, so they had that to learn from.  They had years to study the Egyptian riot police and how they operated.  They also learned what it took to motivate the people through a source of constant give and take feedback gold on such places as Facebook, Twitter, and activist forums.  And lets not forget the simple act of just talking on a phone or sending text as well?  The cellphone to me was probably the most important technological tool used, just because it was the one tool that everyone in the country had access too.

     Now for the down side.  Who knows what the outcome of all of this will be?  Will the Muslim Brotherhood take over in Egypt? Are we seeing the seeds of a Islamic Revolution throughout the region, much like what happened in Iran back in 1979?  Will the military in Egypt join with the people and their desired leader, or join with Mubarak and hurt the people to break the uprising? Or will the military just dissolve? Not to mention how all of this will impact the price of oil, US regional strategies and national interests, or even Egypt’s neighbor Israel?

     I don’t know, but I do know that other political uprisings will emerge because now there is a template.  Mimicry strategy, along with adding that one little edge specific to their region is the kind of stuff we will continue to see. Most importantly, there is momentum building and oppressed peoples will be more enthused to do something. –Matt

Go to Site 21!!!! This is our Tunisia!!!!

Egyptians Share Secrets of Uprising

FEBRUARY 10, 2011

By CHARLES LEVINSON And MARGARET COKER

CAIRO—The Egyptian opposition’s takeover of the area around the parliament this week began with a trick.

First, they called for a march on the state television building a few blocks north of their encampment in Tahrir Square. Then, while the army deployed to that sensitive communications hub, they moved into the lightly defended area around the parliament to the south.

The feint gave a taste of how a dozen young activists managed to outwit Egypt’s feared security forces to launch a historic uprising now in its 17th day—and hint at how the organizers hope to keep pressure on a regime that has dug in its heels.

On Jan. 25, the first day of protests, the organizers had a trick up their sleeves in the impoverished slum of Bulaq al-Dakrour, on Cairo’s western edge.

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Friday, January 21, 2011

Cool Stuff: CSIS Debate–Doug Brooks Vs. TX Hammes On The Benefits Of Using Armed Contractors

Filed under: Afghanistan,Cool Stuff,Industry Talk,Strategy,Video — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — Matt @ 3:02 PM

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Maritime Security: Hostage Taking At Record Levels In 2010 As Pirates Use Q-ship Strategies

Filed under: India,Kidnap And Ransom,Maritime Security,Somalia,Strategy — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — Matt @ 6:28 AM

     IMB Director Pottengal Mukundan commented: “Whilst the use of hijacked vessels as mother ships is not a new phenomenon, the abduction of crew members could signal a significant new development.”

     At least five large hijacked cargo ships and three fishing vessels have acted as mother ships in the last couple of months, posing a new and significant threat to the safety of shipping. The five cargo vessels range in size from MT 5,000 to 72,000 in deadweight – or cargo carrying capacity – and include four tankers and a general cargo vessel. More than 100 crew members from these hijacked cargo vessels, are being forced to facilitate the attacks and in effect provide a human shield to any potential naval intervention. 

     This is infuriating to read, because the world is just standing by as a crime wave takes place.  It is frustrating from my point of view because here we have this vibrant and experienced wartime security contracting industry willing and able to protect every boat out there, and yet the response to this fast paced piracy scourge has been to throw money at them.  Keep paying ransoms and keep fueling the very industry that benefits from these criminal acts–insanity…..

     The other story here is the piracy strategies out there are evolving and these folks are able to scale up their operations because of these new strategies.  What they are doing is using one vessel to attack another larger vessel, and then using those larger vessels to prey on similar larger vessels. Then they use the hostages from the prior vessels taken as a kind of mobile human shield/hostage currency.

     This strategy is also great for false flag or Q-ship style attacks.  If vessels are unable to tell if another captured vessel is under pirate control, then these captured ships can do all sorts of interesting things.  They can maneuver closer to other ships, they can increase their speed to match that of other ships, they can pretend to be a ship in distress, and they can force all of their captured hostages to pretend to be active crew members on the top decks.  Today’s pirates certainly understand the value of Q-ships to their industry.

     Finally, today’s current anti-piracy strategy sucks.  We have billions of dollars of naval hardware from around the world, that cost millions of dollars to operate every day, and their strategies have not stopped today’s piracy. We have more hostages taken, more boats taken, and an expansion of piracy territories. In other words, we have yet to offer an effective challenge to this innovative and vibrant piracy industry.

     And now other entrepreneurs are watching and learning from today’s pirates.  So yes, it would be nice to square away Somalia on the mainland and that might put a little bit of a dent in the industry itself.  But I think what today’s strategists forget is that what we are looking at are the beginnings of an ‘open source piracy’ era. Pirates are emerging from all over the world, and they are learning from what the Somali’s are doing.  It is a very basic concept, and because there is no effective anti-piracy strategy to stop them this open source piracy will just spread and flourish.

     Of course putting armed security on the boats is a no-brainer, but that alone will not stop this open source piracy scourge.  You need to create an industry out of destroying these folks, and not just an industry that deals with the effects of piracy. We could also learn a thing or two from those that actually wiped out piracy. Guys like Pompey or Woodes Rogers did an excellent job of eradicating this scum, and yet here we are in modern times with the same problems they faced and we have yet to get organized and do what is necessary. –Matt

Hostage-taking at sea rises to record levels, says IMB

Latest attack changes dynamic of Somali piracy

Somali pirates closer to India; premiums up 

Hostage-taking at sea rises to record levels, says IMB

Monday, 17 January 2011

More people were taken hostage at sea in 2010 than in any year on record, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Maritime Bureau’s (IMB) global piracy report disclosed today. Pirates captured 1,181 seafarers and killed eight.  A total of 53 ships were hijacked.

The number of pirate attacks against ships has risen every year for the last four years, IMB revealed.  Ships reported 445 attacks in 2010, up 10% from 2009. While 188 crew members were taken hostage in 2006, 1,050 were taken in 2009 and 1,181 in 2010.

“These figures for the number of hostages and vessels taken are the highest we have ever seen,” said Captain Pottengal Mukundan, Director of the IMB’s Piracy Reporting Centre, which has monitored piracy worldwide since 1991. “The continued increase in these numbers is alarming.”

“As a percentage of global incidents, piracy on the high seas has increased dramatically over armed robbery in territorial waters,” said Captain Mukundan. “On the high seas off Somalia, heavily armed pirates are overpowering ocean-going fishing or merchant vessels to use as a base for further attacks.  They capture the crew and force them to sail to within attacking distance of other unsuspecting vessels.”

(more…)

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Leadership: Lecture Series–The Art Of Critical Decision Making, By Professor Michael Roberto

Filed under: Cuba,Disaster Response,Industry Talk,Jundism,Leadership,Podcasts,Strategy — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — Matt @ 11:24 AM

     After the Bay of Pigs failure, President Kennedy and his advisors reflected on their mistakes and created a new process for group discussion and decision making to prevent future groupthink and promote diverse perspectives. Here, Professor Roberto introduces the concept of developing a decision-making process. -From the Lecture ‘Deciding How To Decide’

     This is a great lecture series that a friend of mine hooked me up with, and I highly recommend it. It was engaging and thought provoking, and there were so many cool ideas to take away from this if you are looking for leadership guidance. As I listened to it, there were many Jundism concepts that kept popping up in various forms and examples.

     The particular lecture that I will highlight in this post is the ‘deciding how to decide’ portion.  I took notice, because this method of decision making was born out of the highest levels of leadership during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs invasion failure.  The Bay of Pigs invasion was an embarrassing mistake that resulted from poor decision making at the top.  Or what the professor referred to as ‘group think’ (being surrounded by ‘yes men’ and folks unwilling to question the group or leadership out of fear of being wrong or just assuming everyone else is right)

     The Cuban Missile Crisis was an extreme test of wills, and required the best possible strategy that would prevent the US and the Soviet Union wiping each other out with nuclear weapons. President Kennedy devised a system of decision making that would produce the best product or solution possible, that was not a victim of group think.  He used a system of subgroups that would develop solutions independently, then those groups would exchange their solutions with the other groups and critique.

    A second set of devils advocates or eyes would also review the solutions, and further nitpick the possible solutions until the best idea was standing. So this solution was hammered out of truly honest debate, and any influences that would cause people to not speak up was eliminated.  I thought it was an ingenious way of problem solving, and especially during crisis. (be sure to listen to the series to get the specifics on how to set up this system) The situation with North Korea bombing South Korea, and the US and China reaction to it is a prime example of modern day critical decision making with high stakes involved.  How President Obama decides, will really be based more on deciding how to decide first, so that the solution he gets is strategically sound and not at all influenced by group think.

    Military leaders and CEO’s can learn from this as well.  Leaders should strive hard to have honest debate about strategy and it takes listening to your people, and being open to ideas to get there.  It also requires breaking down those walls that limit honest debate, and really being aware of group think and it’s dangers. Check out the series to learn more, and let me know what you think. Also check out Professor Roberto’s blog if you want to follow his ideas or contact him. –Matt

THE ART OF CRITICAL DECISION MAKING

Genre: Audio or video CourseLength: Twenty-four, thirty-minute lecturesTeacher: Prof. Michael Roberto, Bryant UniversityPublisher: The Teaching Company

By Tom Alderman

July 23, 2009

Following the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy asked former President Eisenhower to the White House to seek the old soldier’s counsel. The new president wanted to know what he could learn from the whole sorry mess. Instead of the expected military hoo-hah, Ike wanted to know how the decision was made to go ahead with the Cuban invasion? How did the president gather advice from his advisors? Not a surprising question considering the five-star general led a contentious military coalition during World War II, not because of his martial skills, but because of his extraordinary leadership abilities which included understanding the core ingredient in all critical decision making: whether you’re launching a D-Day invasion, a career, a product or service, HOW you decide is more important than WHAT you decide. The process you use determines a successful outcome and if that process is not clear and effective, you’re going down.

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