zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — a quick, deep (or high altitude) look into various ways to play ]
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I learned quite a bit on a topic of huge interest to me — playing games — in short order over the last couple of hours.

To wit, from Pine Gap, the Aussie espionage series on Netflix, which is how I take my naps — Pine Gap (Netflix) s 1 e 4:

There are three ways to play any game:

A: Plan your moves so far in advance your opponent can’t predict them,

B: Make your opponent watch what you’re doing with one hand while your other is busy with your real game plan., or

C: Play your cards very, very close to your chest..

Sometimes all you can do is wait.. until your opponent makes the next move.

Another game rule, this one from MTP Daily (MSNBC) 12/18/2018, which obviously obviated the nap:

Whatever comes of this, both sides have got to save face.

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And back to Pine Gap s1 e 5:

Good game ..
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A loss is always a bad game.

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That covers quite a decent bit of ground: strategies in competitive games; games of negotiation, quasi-competitive, quasi-collaborative; games as play, pretend-competitive, non-competitive, playful — “For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writes – not that you won or lost – but how you played the Game” — and game as victory or defeat, period.

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Now, get this, with an associative geopol link below, from Pine Gap s1 e6:

We’re on the same side really, aren’t we? I mean, we all just want to be safe and happy, and our leaders want to be rich and powerful.

Sure, but there are differences, too. See, uh, Americans play Chess, right? Where the object of the game is to kill the other king. A fest attack, a total victory. But we play Go, where the object of the game is to gradually own the most territory, slowly acquire a .. a winning position, which is a completely different approach — to, uh, life, business — even relationships ..

Read that, which ties up many strands in the plot of Pine Gap, and also applies interestingly to events in the South China Sea: “to gradually own the most territory, slowly acquire a .. a winning position”.

It’s been a good afternoon for picking up game quotes.

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And holy moly, there’s more:

It’s not about winning, Kath, it’s about maintaining dominance. [..]

We keep everybody in check. [..]

You played a good long game, Paul..

We both played a pretty good long game, mate. I’ll be watching to see how yours plays out.

And the coup de grace, quietly yet quite viciously delivered, wrt a divorce & who gets to keep the cat — with high irony:

Shake hands, well played. Moving on, that’s me. No thoughts of revenge whatsoever.

[ by Charles Cameron — this caught my eye, not an area i often think about, but important, important ]
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Commander Robert Brodie, U.S. Navy, Winning the Joint Fight

The most likely high-end fight in the near future would be the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) attempting to annex the South China Sea, coerce the nations in and around it into a dependent relationship, and push the boundary with the free world into the Pacific. This is in addition to the perpetual problem of North Korea invading South Korea. These scenarios present many opportunities for the Marine Corps to help the joint fight. It is time for the Corps to reestablish its expeditionary and amphibious assault capabilities. Expeditionary long-range artillery, antisurface and antiair teams could turn the tables on PRC antiaccess/area denial efforts by holding their man-made bases, ships, and aircraft at risk and imposing significant cost in a wartime scenario. The threat of an amphibious assault that would trap North Korean leaders and bring about regime collapse if the North invaded the South is as good a deterrent as any. While these skill sets have been traditional Marine Corps strong points, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the hope that prosperity would cure the PRC of communism, and the Global War on Terror have distracted the Corps from staying ahead of the requirements to fight and win high-end battles against forces that may locally outnumber us.

All is not lost. As a free people, the United States is better able to innovate, communicate, and fight jointly for the common good. In the case of the Marine Corps, everything it needs to threaten PRC land, sea, and air assets has been fielded and only needs to be organized, transported, supported, and integrated into the joint fight. The Marine Corps needs to take charge of the expeditionary fight, even if that means co-opting capabilities or units from other services and working with other countries. If it fails to take the lead, the Army’s Multi-Domain Task Force experiment[1] that envisions deployable long-range artillery, antiship, antiair, and space and cyber units as the building blocks of its capabilities will compete against the Marine Corps expeditionary role instead of complementing it.