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Adam Elkus was kind enough to cite one of my old posts on superempowered individuals as a foil to develop the concept further in his DNI article “Night of the Lone Wolves“:

“Who is the “super-empowered individual?” He is talented, alienated from society, and willing to kill large numbers of people. The technological revolution has given him destructive tools unimaginable to the anarchists and terrorists of old. He is an innovator-he creates new doctrines, tactics, and operations. A “brittle” infrastructure that lacks redundancy and resiliency gives him a perfect target. Living off the grid, he is invisible to authorities. The unprecedented nature of his attack ensures that no counter-measures are in place to prevent it. And when he strikes, his attack will not only kill massive amounts of people, but also profoundly change the financial, political, and social systems that govern modern life.

This is a frighteningly plausible vision. As blogger and futurist Mark Safranski gloomily noted, “the world is but one self-sacrificing genetic microbiologist away from a super-empowered suicide bomber riding international air routes to a new black plague”. That being said, many scientists and security experts note the immense difficulty involved in acquiring, maintaining, and deploying weapons of mass destruction. One expert, Bruce Schneier, is especially vehement in deriding what he calls “movie-plot” threats.

Who is right? Both sides. For now, the probability that a super-empowered individual will trigger a extreme mass casualty event is extremely low. But the high odds against such a catastrophe occurring will ensure that when it happens we will be taken totally by surprise. If a mass-murdering microbiologist is indeed preparing to make engineered smallpox complimentary to the in-flight meal, there is little we can do to stop him. Confused? With apologies to The Matrix, it’s time to take the red pill. “

Read the whole thing here.

Elkus is correct, as he goes on to develop his thesis,  in assessing the mass psychology aspect of superempowerment as as aspect that will often be more significant than any kinetics in future SEI events. look at the societal shock delivered to the Netherlands by the murder of Dutch film maker, Theo van Gogh, a perturbation of Dutch society made possible not by the death of a single man but the reportage amplified through a modern mass media.  Often but not always. Aside from the microbiological example, the disruption or destruction of certain complex systems, such as financial markets, by an SEI, will have ripple effects of a significant magnitude.

Elkus closes with a positive prescription, one rooted in the strategic ideas of John Boyd, to which I can add my hearty assent:

“In any event, we have always lived with danger and always will. And the threat posed by murderous, alienated individuals, with or without weapons of mass destruction, will also always be with us. But the good news is that the key to overcoming these threats lies in two bedrock American values-hope and pragmatism: hope for a better world and the determination to create such a world; and the pragmatism that has helped us continuously innovate to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges.

What is needed is leadership at the top level that encourages and channels those values within the American people, instead of leadership that burdens them with fear. True leadership will recognize that strategy is not just wanton destruction-it is also, as John Boyd stated, “a pattern for vitality and growth“. If we recognize this, we can all be “super-empowered individuals” instead of victims huddling in fear of the sound of anything beyond the campfire.”

HOPPING ON THE BLOGOSPHERIC BOYD BOOK BANDWAGON

Colonel Frans Osinga, PhD, who gave a tour de force lecture at Boyd 2007, managed to prevail upon his publisher to sell a paperback version of Science, Strategy and War:The Strategic Theory of John Boyd at a price non-billionaires could afford.

I will be reviewing Science, Strategy and War in December and – tentatively – organizing a roundtable discussion at Chicago Boyz, most likely after Christmas. If you are a blogger, academic or a current or former member of the armed services and are interested in participating, send me an email at zenpundit@hotmail.com.

THE 4GW FESTIVAL OF FABIUS MAXIMUS

” To summarize, we seek to radically change the cultures and political systems for much of the world, to halt foreign revolts and civil wars of which we do not approve, to bring global peace and prosperity, to make friends (even with those states whose rise we seek to restrain), and to “transform” our so far unreformable national security apparatus. Those who thought President Bush was kidding about these learned better in the months following our invasion of Iraq.”

– Fabius Maximus

For some time now, an author whose nom de guerre is “Fabius Maximus”, after the ancient Roman general of the Punic wars, has been a regular and at times, prolific, contributor to the Boydian and 4GW school oriented Defense & the National Interest. Fabius, who comments here at Zenpundit on occasion, also set off one of the most popular, if heated and controversial, threads at The Small Wars Council, catching the attention of noted COIN strategist Col. David Kilcullen. Kilcullen’s theories later became a subject of frequent critique from Fabius in his DNI articles.

While I had hoped to meet Fabius in person at Boyd 2007, he did not attend and I am not privy to his identity or professional background. Fabius’ arguments must rise or fall entirely on their own merit and he has been content to engage his critics on this basis at the SWC and elsewhere. Clearly he is a member of the 4GW school and is an admirer of Col. John Boyd, William Lind, Dr. Martin van Creveld and Dr. Chet Richards but has not shrunk from advancing his own ideas or original criticisms.

Recently, Fabius completed his tenth article in a series on America’s Long War for DNI and, as Fabius has entertained and enraged members of the community of “reform” defense intellectuals and COIN practitioners, it is timely for us to take stock of his strategic argument:

The Long War Series – from DNI’s Fabius Maximus Archive

Part X – One step beyond Lind: what is America’s geopolitical strategy?
Part IX – 4GW at work in a community near you,
Part VIII – How to accurately forecast trends of the Iraq War,
Part VII – Kilcullen explains all you need to know about the Iraq War,
Part VI – The bad news is that Lind’s good news is wrong,
Part V – The Iraq War as a warning for America,
Part IV – Beyond Insurgency: An End to Our War in Iraq,
Part III – Stories or statistics? Read and compare to find the truth!
Part II – News from the Front: America’s military has mastered 4GW!
Part I – America takes another step towards the “Long War,”

I have read the roughly 20,000 words offered here previously and I re-read them for this post. I have also read most of the authors of the original works that Fabius Maximus cites in his series. Therefore, I feel qualified to offer a few observations in regard to the strategic paradigm that this body of work represents and the assumptions, clearly stated as well as implicit, upon which it is built.

Many of the specific analytical criticisms of American policy and performance in Iraq and Afghanistan made by Fabius are incisive, some are rather questionable and a few are brilliant. I encourage you to read his efforts for yourself rather than simply accepting my word for it. What interests me most though, given the scope of the series, are his premises. As I discern them, they are:

That 4GW is the environment in which we find ourselves conducting operations – and doing so quite poorly at that with a military predisposed toward 2GW offensives. Or irrelevantly on the strategic level where we happen to be executing COIN well on the tactical level.

We cannot significantly affect the internal dynamics of alien societies that we understand poorly or not at all, regardless of the carrots or sticks used. We are marginal factors at best.

American war policy is being constructed on the false analogy of the Cold War model.

Al Qaida is more phantom than menace.

War is the wrong conceptual metaphor and the wrong operational-bureaucratic response to the conflict in which we find ourselves.

Our response, which serves bureaucratic and factional interests at homes, undermines our global strategic position and wastes our economic strength.

A better grand strategy for America is nonintervention and reducing friction with the rest of the world. Or failing that, at least bolstering states, any states, rather than collapsing them into failure with military attack or other pressures ( Lind’s “Centers of Order vs. Centers of Disorder”)

If George Kennan argued for “Containment” of Soviet Communism in his “X” article the best descriptor of the grand strategy of Fabius Maximus might be ” Conservancy” – dialing down our kinetic response to terrorism to the surgical level and recognizing this contest as more ideological conflict than war and, in general, recognizing our limitations in attempting to become masters of the universe. Many readers would associate this paradigm with the Left but I believe that to be incorrect. Instead, reflecting a deeply paleoconservative reading of history and American traditions in foreign policy that historian Walter A. McDougal called “Promised Land” and others “city on a hill” and ” isolationism”.

The virtues of “conservancy” as I interpret Fabius is that it minimizes both costs and future commitments for the United States, leaving us better able to afford to deal with strategic threats to vital national interests, when unanticipated threats arise, as they surely will. It would serve as a reality check on statesmen to pursue fewer, more coherent, simpler, more easily realizable and markedly cheaper objectives, which will have far higher probability of success ( as opposed to say, attacking Iran while engaged in Iraq. Or perhaps invading Russia in winter or fighting a land war in Asia. Some folks around PACOM with a few years ago with uber-journalist Robert Kaplan’s ear, thought an unprovoked war with China was a splendid idea). When forced to intervene, our footprint will be light; more like British frontier agents of old or the 55 advisers in El Salvador in the 1980’s than the invasion of Iraq. As a nation, our foreign policy would stay on the good side of the diminishing returns curve.

The drawbacks include, in my view: being flatly incorrect about al Qaida’s potential to initiate attacks on the operational or strategic level specifically, and about the threat of radical Islamist-Mahdist movements in general, when coupled with increasing capacities to leverage against complex systems ( see John Robb’s Brave New War); underestimating the geopolitical ripple effect of the U.S. shifting to a conservancy posture, upending the global security arrangements upon which the calculations of statesmen currently depend. The unanticipated consequences of the latter are large. Within two to three levels of unfolding decision-tree possibilities, any potential response by the U.S. is simply swamped. We benefit by the status quo. Changing our position imposes costs.

I invite Fabius Maximus to respond as he likes and I will publish his remarks here, unedited. Readers are invited to offer their own critique in the comments section.

DECLINE OF A NETWORK

La Cosa Nostra, the Italian mafia of Big Al Capone and Lucky Luciano is on the skids these days.:

“The mob’s frailties were evident in recent months in Chicago, where three senior-citizen mobsters were locked up for murders committed a generation ago; in Florida, where a 97-year-old Mafioso with a rap sheet dating to the days of Lucky Luciano was imprisoned for racketeering; and in New York, where 80-something boss Matty “The Horse” Ianniello pleaded to charges linked to the garbage industry and union corruption.

“It’s been several generations since they left Sicily,” says Dave Shafer, head of the FBI organized crime division in New York. “It’s all about money.”

At the peak of the mafia’s power, the 1950’s, it had only 5000 “made” members but it was deeply entrenched in a powerful national labor movement, was entwined in a numerous big city Democratic machines ( notably Chicago’s notorious old 1st Ward, where Sam “Momo” Giancana’s minions hustled out the ghost vote for JFK) and enjoyed the tolerance of the immensely powerful FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover, who had a taste for the track and shady associates in his off-hours. The mafia not only had mystique and physical force at their disposal, they had the political juice, having in classic Boydian fashion, strategically connected themselves to as many other centers of power as possible.

What happened to the Mob sbsequently is a lesson for all those who study the potential of networks vis-a-vis states. Despite their fluidity and adaptivity, networks are not ten feet tall. They can be disconnected and isolated. Their internal cohesion can be disrupted. Their OODA loops can be disoriented and only in the rarest of circumstances can networks stand toe-to-toe in the open with the massive power of state hierarchies. They are beatable with patience, strategic thinking, consistency and time.

ON LEADERSHIP

From Robert Coram’s biography BOYD, courtesy of DNI:

“Tiger, one day you will come to a fork in the road,” he said. “And you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.” He raised his hand and pointed. “If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.” Then Boyd raised his other hand and pointed another direction.“Or you can go that way and you can do something – something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted
and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and toyourself. And your work might make a difference.”

He paused and stared into the officer’s eyes and heart. “To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do. Which way will you go?”

Leadership is not management, though the latter is a skill that has it’s time and place. Ultimately, leadership is about service and example, pointing the way moreso than teaching and meeting challenges in the place where wisdom joins with determination. The leader is a person whose words carry far because they are wings lifted by the winds of action.

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