Learning From the Octopus
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
PROLOGUE:
chapter one - THE ORIGINS OF NATURAL SECURITY
FIELD CHARACTERS OF NATURAL SECURITY SYSTEMS
chapter two - TIDE-POOL SECURITY
APPLYING BIOLOGICAL IDEAS TO SOCIETAL NEEDS
chapter three - LEARNING AS A FORCE OF NATURE
HOW HUMANS LEARN
ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
FORCES OF LEARNING
chapter four - ORGANIZED TO CHANGE
THE FIRST POST-9/11 TEST OF HOMELAND SECURITY
PIONEERS OF DECENTRALIZED ORGANIZATION
FEAR OF A DECENTRALIZED PLANET
STANLEY VS. THE OSPREY: A BATTLE FOR THE ADAPTABLE SOUL OF A BUREAUCRACY
chapter five - NECESSARY REDUNDANCY
USING REDUNDANCY AS A NATURAL EXPERIMENT
chapter six - BEYOND MAD FIDDLER CRABS
BEYOND STABILITY-ESCALATION
LIVING WITH ESCALATION
chapter seven - CALLING YOUR BLUFF AND BLUFFING YOUR CALL
USING UNCERTAINTY TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
HONEST AND DISHONEST SIGNALS
YOUR FACE GIVES YOU AWAY
chapter eight - THE SACRED VALUES OF SALMON AND SUICIDE BOMBERS
THE VIRAL ROOTS OF IRRATIONAL ACTS
HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PUZZLE LIKE RELIGION?
chapter nine - HANG TOGETHER OR HANG SEPARATELY
THE UBIQUITY OF SYMBIOSIS
THE MOST UNLIKELY FORMS OF COOPERATIVE SYMBIOSIS
chapter ten - WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US!
NATURAL SECURITY AND MEDICINE
WATER IS LIFE
THE PROBLEM WITH WALLS
CONCLUSION: THE END AND THE BEGINNING
Acknowledgments
NOTES
INDEX
Copyright Page
This book is dedicated to Paula Loyd,
one of the most adaptable human beings I have ever known.
FOREWORD
BIG IDEAS RARELY come from predictable sources. This is particularly true in the realm of national security.
When the U.S. national security state was created in 1947, our government made a large standing military permanent, created an international clandestine intelligence capability that continues to grow, and established a priesthood of national security “experts.” Like all priesthoods throughout human history, the national security priesthood was open only to those who possessed vital secrets.
Secrecy has two functions: it establishes a fraternity of those on the inside, and it locks out those on the outside. Thus, if you are not a member of the fraternity or the priesthood, you are not welcomed into national security deliberations. Over time, closed systems produce fewer and fewer innovations, because closed systems, by definition, are based on certain increasingly unchallengeable fundamental principles.
The national security priesthood participates in established organizations and communicates through established publications such as Foreign Affairs. Some time ago a prominent academic reviewing stale foreign policy books in the New York Times lamented the absence of creative thinking in foreign policy circles. Predictably, she had defined those circles as Boston, New York, and Washington, in part perhaps because she taught at a leading Ivy League university.
There is not one chance in a thousand that anyone within that narrow (in every sense of the word) priesthood would have thought to apply elemental principles of biology to a fresh understanding of conflict in the new age of the twenty-first century as Rafe Sagarin has done in this innovative book. He is, praise be, not a member of the established national security priesthood, at least for the time being. But do not be surprised if, in coming months and years, you see ideas contained in Learning from the Octopus sprouting up—with or without attribution—that are premised on principles of adaptability and organic thinking.
Combining genius and common sense, Sagarin sees in the tide pools of Monterey, California, living organisms with much to teach us about twenty-first-century conflict. His timing is impeccable. For we are departing from a three-and-a-half-century period following the Peace of Westphalia in 1647 when the nation-state defined and conducted warfare. That warfare involved great uniformed national armies meeting in the field, exchanging men and materiel, until a white flag was raised by one side and victory was declared by the other. For, during this period, the nation-state possessed a monopoly on violence granted by the bargain between the state (government) and the nation (the people) that the state would guarantee the security of the nation if the people would declare their loyalty to the state.
Beginning in Vietnam, then into Afghanistan (first for the Soviets, and now for us), and into bitter days in Iraq, things began to change. Combatants didn’t wear uniforms. They carried neither banner nor flag. They attacked civilian targets, in violation of the scripted “rules of war” contained in the various Geneva Conventions. And they behaved more like eleventh-century assassins than honorable regiments so familiar to the twentieth century.
The Westphalian era of conflict ended when the most powerful nation in human history could no longer guarantee the security of its citizens. That was on September 11, 2001.
Because U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and Iraq expecting to meet more traditional enemies, they were caught off guard. And even as senior officers persisted in trying to conduct traditional military operations in an unconventional, irregular conflict, our troops found themselves forced to improvise. They had been trained and equipped for one kind of conflict and quickly found themselves in another. Massive multi-ton combat vehicles could not negotiate treacherous mountain passes and were overnight sitting ducks for IEDs (improvised explosive devices). The key word here is “improvised.”
There has been, in fact, what had been called, in theory, “a revolution in military affairs.” But contrary to those in the national security priesthood who invented this phrase, the revolution was not in highly sophisticated, highly technical, computer-directed super-systems. The revolution was in a return to a gritty house-by-house, virtually hand-to-hand combat in very close quarters. The revolution was also in winning the hearts and minds of tribal members, not in the rather graphic way Lyndon Johnson described, but often with a wad of cash.
The two exceptions to this transformation are in drones and robots. The drones, magically, are controlled halfway around the world. But they still need special forces and on-the-ground intelligence collection to know what primitive dwelling to target. The robots are beginning to prove their worth also at an elementary level in bomb detection. Thus, the vaunted technology revolution in warfare is operating much more at the grassroots combat level than at the geopolitical top-down level so preferred by the national security priesthood.
As Sagarin colorfully points out, there are precedents for this kind of adaptability in the natural world, and we—particularly our military officials and policy makers—should learn and take note. Leaving the stale “debate” over evolution to backward-looking political figures, Sagarin shows that biological science demonstrates how fauna and some flora adapt to changing conditions not necessarily in a process of seeking perfection. Nature is pragmatic. It has that in common with the best militaries of the past. Creatures change not necessarily to make themselves more beautiful or more exquisite. They do so because it helps them survive in a constantly changing environment.
For those of us who have studied military history and theory for long periods, the application of biological principles to human security is fresh, challenging, and exciting. It is a big idea in a realm where they are especially scarce.
Let us leave it to the father of all strategic thought, Sun Tzu,
to make the point: “A military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: the ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.”
The frustration of the American people with the two long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is in large part because we now know that our opponents are not going to raise a white flag and sue for peace while we celebrate a great victory and sail triumphantly home. Our massive military superiority, even against the feared Soviet Union, has not brought indigenous rebels to their knees in either country. Something is wrong here.
The lesson is clear: genius, imagination, and adaptation must now replace raw power. The U.S. armed forces in the twenty-first century must adapt to the new/old low-intensity, irregular, unconventional conflict of today and tomorrow. Big army divisions, nuclear carrier task groups, and long-range bomber wings now control the battlefield and dictate the outcome of conflict very much less than in the twentieth century. So long as we borrow a trillion dollars from the Chinese and purchase their products, there is virtually no chance of an all-out nation-state war with them. Both of us are smarter than that and have much more to lose than to gain.
But conflict is a constant. And the lessons of the long wars already teach us that we will need to adapt. We will need smaller combat units, more special forces, much more sophisticated on-the-ground intelligence, drones and robots, bundles of cash for tribal chieftains, and, most of all, the ability to adapt to constantly changing circumstances.
Sagarin has precedent for his principle of natural security in none other than Niccolo Machiavelli, the sage of Florence, who thought a prince had to adopt certain attributes from nature’s creatures, most particularly the lion and the fox. “It is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves.” But Machiavelli was more perceptive than most in his understanding that a reformer, including a biologically oriented one, faces enormous institutional resistance, resistance to adaptation and against structures erected by national security establishments and priesthoods decades ago:There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain of its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents . . . and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.
Ironically, it is often the case that the “lukewarm defenders” transform themselves into red-hot advocates sometime after the principle of biological adaptation as applied to military affairs has become a well-established organizing principle. Such is human nature. Nature’s creatures, as Sagarin shows, simply get on with the business of adaptation without fear or favor.
It is well worth contemplating the implications of an “organic” military, one that senses in its very being, especially at the combat level; how the threat shifts and changes; what new, often crude adjustments the opponent makes; how a new weapon becomes quickly neutralized by a simpler counter-measure; how the combat “fish” navigate the waters of their society; and then a military that acts quickly enough to cut across the opponent’s cycle of change to take the initiative. This loop, invented by the former combat pilot John Boyd, became the centerpiece of military reform in the late twentieth century.
It will be interesting to observe the reception Dr Sagarin’s big idea receives in established national security circles. Experience suggests that the real Establishment will ignore it or dismiss it. Younger, newer thinkers will discuss and debate it. But, most importantly, it will be amazing if young military officers and Afghan and Iraq combat veterans do not read, circulate, and vigorously discuss this thesis. And that is the circle that must be reached if there is to be hope for real national security reform anytime soon.
As a veteran military reformer, I was often reminded that no major military establishment in history had reformed itself absent a major military defeat. Military structures are understandably conservative, and warfare is too hazardous to shake things up. That is, unless you are forced to. Sagarin has provided plenty of evidence from our current conflicts to show that the troops, the veterans of the kind of conflict that prevailed before Westphalia, understand the need for adaptation. Whether they have to be trained biologists to understand the natural principles for this is beside the point.
All those who care about the security of our nation, and of our children’s generation, whether in uniform or not, should study and discuss Sagarin’s argument. It offers a refreshing new way of thinking about security in a precarious and different new era and century. It shatters old modes of thinking in a constructive and challenging new way. It has profound implications for how we defend ourselves and preempt attack and aggression. And it perceptively realizes that security is no longer a purely military undertaking.
Learning from the Octopus is the way Nature would behave if she were in charge of the Pentagon and our national security.
Gary Hart
Kittredge, Colorado
U.S. Senator (Ret.); former member, Senate Armed Services committee; chair, American Security Project; co-chair, U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century
PROLOGUE:
UNNATURAL DISASTERS
ON THE MORNING OF DECEMBER 26, 2004, animals across Asia and Africa were acting strangely. Elephants elicited horrific bellows, herds of oxen bolted for higher ground, and domestic dogs refused to go on their morning walks along the beach. In some cases, bewildered humans followed the lead of their charges to higher ground, but many did not. Less than an hour later, the ocean was sucked back far from shore and a huge tsunami thundered all across India, Africa, and southern Asia, killing 225,000 people—one of the worst catastrophes in modern history.1
After the floodwaters retreated, international aid poured in, with particular attention paid to installing state-of-the-art tsunami warning systems across the region. Yet in comparison to the animal-based warning systems, these high-tech solutions are still fairly primitive. Just a few years after the tsunami, villagers in the Aceh province of Indonesia, one of the hardest hit areas, angrily stoned their tsunami alarm until it was destroyed. The villagers felt the annoyance of the system’s false alarms outweighed its purported benefits in early warning.2
Destroying alarm systems that are supposed to protect us isn’t uncommon. In the United States, residents of over 21 million households have tampered with, destroyed, or disabled their own smoke detectors because of the nuisance of false alarms.3 In fairness to the makers of smoke and tsunami alarms, such technologies have only been around for a few decades—a fleeting fraction of Earth’s long and violent experience with tsunamis, floods, and fire. By contrast, the surprisingly accurate security systems demonstrated by the animals before the tsunami have been developed and fine-tuned over billions of years, and this illustrates a major point: there is no technological solution that can prepare us for the risks of a highly variable and unpredictable world as well as the ancient natural process of adaptation.
Indeed, just a few weeks before the 2004 tsunami, the most technically sophisticated military force in the world inadvertently and quite publicly demonstrated how poorly adapted it was to its latest challenge. It happened during a pretty standard piece of military propaganda set up for the evening news. The U.S. secretary of defense was to helicopter in to the edge of a war zone to bolster the troops’ morale, listen sincerely to their concerns, and assure them that all of America was fighting right there alongside them. But it didn’t turn out that way for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait on December 8, 2004. To the cheers of several thousand soldiers assembled, Specialist Thomas Wilson, a 31-year-old Tennessee National Guardsman, pointedly asked the secretary why he and his fellow soldiers were being forced to rummage through garbage dumps to find armor to strap on to their vehicles, which provided
inadequate protection in the combat zone. Rumsfeld was initially taken aback, then tartly retorted, “You go to war with the Army you have.”4
It was a pivotal moment in how George W. Bush’s war in Iraq was going to be interpreted. The left seized on it as yet another example of the “chicken hawks” in the Bush administration cruelly sacrificing their pawns in an elective game of geopolitical chess. The right amplified reports that Wilson was “fed” his question by a Chattanooga Free Press reporter5—more evidence that the liberal media was out to sabotage an essential front in the “War on Terror.” Even fairly level-headed commentators couldn’t help but contrast the scrappy U.S. soldiers rummaging around junk piles for “hillbilly armor” to weld to their vehicles against the disinterested, out-of-touch button-down government bureaucrat. But the most important contrast the exchange belied hasn’t been well noted—it was the difference in adaptability demonstrated between soldiers like Specialist Wilson and a large security organization like the Department of Defense (DoD). This is, in fact, the same difference in adaptability between animals sensing and responding to a tsunami and tsunami alarms sensing and responding to something that may or may not be a tsunami.
For armies fighting a war, for health practitioners trying to ward off a flu pandemic, for first responders containing the damage from a natural disaster, for IT managers trying to protect a computer network, for resource managers trying to plan for a world dramatically altered by climate change, for CEOs worried about the next stock market crash, and for any citizen worried about the effects of any of these potential threats, adaptability is essential. If we want to interact with the world at all (and in a world of 7 billion people, we don’t have much choice), having the ability to change how we interact with it is the only way we can survive.