Swarms: You Can Run, but You Can't Hide

One of the most fascinating sights in nature is to see a massive school of fish maneuver en masse. Hundreds of minimally intelligent beings coordinating their actions in the blink of an eye (clicking that link on 18 Jan will lead to the wikipedia blackout site protesting SOPA, fyi), surrounding an object or projecting strength against an otherwise superior foe.  The Genius of Swarms by National Geographic is a marvelous look at this phenomenon.

This is not a skill humans have yet mastered while in close proximity -- 9 out of 10 times during a four-plane flyover at a football game, its pretty easy to see which dude(tte) is out of position (especially if you're in the Air Force...). 

As warfare has evolved, we've gone from the strategy of massed fighters to a more distributed and decentralized model.  This allows for greater freedom of action, and more adaptable responses available to subordinate commanders.  The evolution in warfare has also gone hand-in-hand with greater technological advancement, and the primacy of the individual unit.

Something Seems Wrong with this Picture

The downside to this is cost -- namely that each fighting unit we purchase is better than the last, one v. one, but costs significantly more.  So we buy fewer of them.  For instance, during World War II, the US bought 16,500 P-51 Mustangs at an average unit cost of about $600,000 in today's dollars.  We have recently purchased 187 F-22 Raptors at a cost of over $350 million per.  Hypothetically, that money could have bought six F-16's.  Is one F-22 worth more than six F-16's?  Read on...

Ironically, the technology that allows for distributed tactics also necessarily implies a degree of consolidation as well -- we do more with less.  Take an aircraft carrier.  $6 billion to develop, it can carry an air wing of over 50 strike/fighter aircraft.  Problem is, our adversaries know this as well, so they've endeavored to develop systems to overwhelm our defenses: anti-carrier ballistic missiles and more interestingly, swarms.  Why take on the 50 when you can focus on the One?

Similarly, in the air, an F-22 is at least a generation in capabilities ahead of the venerable F-16.  Yet, there being very few of them, they necessarily cover less ground than would a force that could blanket a battlespace.  Sure, a Raptor could defeat a division of 4 top of the line Chinese fighters (assuming it had enough missiles...), but what if a foe sent 250 1960's era MiG-21's across the line at once from all different directions, impervious to losses? Could all of them be stopped?  All it takes is one missile to get through, and there goes your carrier...

Warfare has a funny way of repeating itself.  Perhaps Fifth Generation warfare will resemble First Generation massing more than Third Generation maneuver or Fourth Generation insurgencies.  Or maybe it'll be a hybrid of swarming insurgencies maneuvering around nimble, but quantitatively inferior technologists.    

This is not just a fantasy -- its been played out time and again in wargames.  We just have a tendency to sweep it under the table when the results don't confirm our belief in the military-industrial technological marvels.  I've written about this before -- see Millennium Challenge 2002 and Gladwell's How Underdogs Can Win (midpage).  You've been given command of the bad guys in a training exercise?  Throw as many cheap and independent units at the good guys as possible, and see how quickly they are overwhelmed. 

As drone technology has grown, and as their numbers have as well, most of our strategists still use them as if they were manned fighters.  Same tactics, same formations, same uses.  We should be thinking completely outside the box with this new technology. 

John Robb, one of the most brilliant military minds of our age, has talked extensively about this.  Drone tactics go hand in hand with the growth in artificial intelligence.  Computers inside small drones have the brain power of an insect -- and while this doesnt seem significant, when massed as insects do, this can cause real havoc.  Would you rather be one human with a machine gun or a thousand angry bees?  

This is Unexpected...

But Robb goes farther and looks to one human controlling many drones.  One of my favorite books, Ender's Game, has exactly that as its premise (with some other spectacular leadership and societal lessons thrown in as well).  We're even "training" civilians to manage this -- video games like Starcraft are the perfect simulation for how the battles of the future may be fought.

So how do we counter this?  Focus on decentralized, distributed solutions.  Create our own swarms.  Study and understand the phenomena.  Build a couple hundred, few million dollar assets instead of only a few, billion dollar ones.  Utilize technology, but don't limit it to existing orthodoxies.  Create ad hoc innovation cells to determine unique solutions. 

Technology is a great tool, but human ingenuity matters more.  "Machines don't fight wars, men do -- and they use their minds."  We're seeing that in response to pervasive technology, quantity when massed can have a quality all of its own.

"I've Been to the Mountaintop. And I Don't Mind."

There is no disputing the impact Martin Luther King, Jr. had on the direction of the United States and the world.  His biography is well known, his struggles part of American lore.  He took on entrenched interests, fought in an insurgency focused on non-violence and rallied a generation behind his words and dreams.  He disrupted the world, and our nation is the better for it.

Winning.

His words did not sit well with the incumbent powers.  Even today, some of his rhetoric is uncomfortable as we are forced to look deep within ourselves.  But his thoughts had an impact few have matched.   He was but one man in the march towards deeper freedom, but spoke for those without a voice.

Before I let his words take the stage, one note about his life.  We tend to mythologize our American heroes -- putting them on pedestals that no mortal human could ever hope to sustain.  We imagine them as perfect beings, never tiring of the fight, always shining beacons of integrity.  None of our Founding Fathers met this standard, nor have our war heroes or civil rights lions.  MLK had his own foibles, his own demons he fought.  These are sometimes ignored when talking of his legacy. 

Yet, acknowledging these failings makes his work that much more meaningful.  He was a fallen man, first and foremost.  As a preacher, he understood this, as such acknowledgement is the cornerstone of redemption.  Furthermore, in the retelling of history, it makes his accomplishments that much more meaningful.  Instead of being an unattainable role-model, we too can fight injustice amidst our own failings.  Imperfection isn't an impediment.  We are all works in progress.

I've chosen to focus on quotes most applicable to the theme of this blog.  He was a champion for the impoverished, a leader in Civil Rights.  But he also knew what it meant to think disruptively -- and used that knowledge to win the battles he fought.

------

“The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”

“On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.”

"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. ... A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.”

“Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.”

“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”

“Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Light in the Darkness

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.
Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

"A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Ghandi to come back — but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you."
-Marian Wright Edelman

-----

Inspire.  Innovate.  Change the World.

Disruptive Cycles

Being an upstart is one thing.  Translating it into success is a completely different animal.  In the former, you simply aim your sights at altering the status quo.  It's what happens after you win (IF you win) that defines your legacy.  And that legacy is directly related to transitioning from operating outside the establishment to becoming effective as the establishment.

The difficulty in this transition is evident most readily in politics and armed revolutions. When everybody is dissatisfied with the status quo, it is easy to rally support against it.  True differences don't manifest themselves, as the enemy of my enemy becomes a friend.

A Manger Upends the World

It’s the things you don’t expect that you have to watch out for.  Disruptive Thinkers usually sneak up on society from the most obscure backgrounds. 

Take the boy born in a manger over 2,000 years ago.  He had been prophesied about hundreds of years before by a people beset with ever present suffering.  Bouncing from subservience under one Empire to another, time and again, the people who called themselves Chosen sought the one who would rescue them from servitude.  They wanted a Messiah. 

Portraits, Vulgarity, and the Entrepreneurial Spirit

Near the beginning of the sixteenth century, Albrecht Durer decided he'd had enough of the guilds that defined the business model for his craft.  With the advent of the printing press a few decades before, and a wise investment in this new technology, Durer was able to maximize the distribution of his creative genius.  The Economist notes he "represented human talent and ingenuity made boundless by a machine."

Space: The Billionaires Playground

You've Really Made the Grade

Space exploration does not hold the public's imagination like it once did. There was a time when astronauts were larger than life figures, both pushing the limits of human technology and manning the front lines of the PR battles that helped win the Cold War. Everyone knew their names. Now even space buffs couldnt name more than a few of our modern Star Voyagers.

This lack of interest is especially evident now that the Space Shuttle program has ended, and fiscal realities prevent funding expensive, unproven designs. Space exploration seems a luxury these days.