Large language models, epochal change and true strategic policy innovation

I think that we, poor old oligophrenic ‘homo sapiens’,  have been using far too little strategic creativity in many of the big picture discussions we are having about creating ‘value’. That applies especially to public value creation in fundamentally important policy areas such as education, the environment, health care, mobility, etc. But it also applies to the field I am spending most of my time on: foreign, security and defense policy. The new large language models (like GPT-4) may actually prove uniquely helpful in broadening the strategic aperture of these policy debates, but only if we prod them to move beyond their training material.

Building and sharing a knowledge base on Russian international acting and thinking

Great powers still matter disproportionately. This truism implies that the world would greatly benefit from getting a better analytical handle on what really makes these ever surprising geopolitical entities - first and foremost China, but to us Europeans still also Russia (and increasingly even the United States) - tick. Today, that analysis still remains very much in the hands of what I like to call 'prima donnas' (and I am of course as 'guilty', as many of the colleagues I'm 'charging' here). Many of us have been studying these countries intensively for decades. Many of us have come to different conclusions about what these actors have been doing, about what is really makes them 'tick'. Many of us write articles, reports and books; we advise decision-makers; we present and discuss our views at conferences; we are active on social media; we interact with more traditional media. Very few of us, however, have been trying to build a dispassionate, comprehensive, rigorous and creative knowledge base. Georgia Tech and HCSS have been engaged in such an effort for the past two years, and we would like to invite interested colleagues to reach out to us to join us in this effort.

"Le pessimisme est d'humeur; l'optimisme est de volonté" [Propos sur le bonheur (1928) d'Emile-Auguste Chartier, dit Alain]

I heard this great expression today on my favorite French weekly talk-show "On n'est pas couché". It means (loosely translated): "Pessimism is a matter of mood; optimism is a matter of will".

While this is one of those wonderful aphorisms that make you go 'hmmmm', I personally think it is not entirely accurate. Humans (at least some of us 😊) appear to have a certain innate disposition towards optimism as well. But overall, I do think this expression nicely captures one of those evolutionary characteristics of good old sapiens: that the worrywarts may historically have had certain advantages over their lucky-go-happy counterparts. The role that our amygdala, for instance, plays in our brain, may very well be the anatomical incarnation of that particular disposition. But fortunately (from my point of view) our optimistic inclinations - 'the better angels in our nature', in the expression borrowed from Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address by Steven Pinker in his wonderful 2011 book http://stevenpinker.com/publications/better-angels-our-nature ) - also survived evolution. And I think that they may increasingly be turning into an asset rather than a liability. But yes, it sometimes does require some 'guts' to activate our brains' optimistically inclined synaptic connections these days. Especially in 'my' professional environment, where gloom and doom seems to be even more en vogue than ever.

This year's HCSS contribution to the Dutch government's Strategic Monitor 2017 (http://hcss.nl/report/volatility-and-friction-age-disintermediation), which was presented last week to to the public and to various government departments, tries to provide a more balanced look at what is happening in the world, what it means, and what we can do about it.

Our monitoring effort, based on – yet again – a number of new datasets and visualization tools, shows a mixed picture. We document growing assertiveness and dangerous brinkmanship by (a few) great powers; shifting global geodynamics in which Europe is still potentially quite influential, but doesn’t manage to live up to the potential in reality; growing conflict numbers in certain categories; increasing volatility in the international system (and we even developed a – still largely experimental – indicator (the HCSS VIM-index) to measure this). But we also show what we call ‘the other side of the violence coin’, where a number of technological and economic trends are continuing to empower and connect and improve the lives of many millions of individuals in what used to be called the billion bottom.

Our main (contrarian) interpretation of what we are witnessing around us is that what we are seeing is not 'just' the return of populism, not 'just' the fragilization of the international institutional rules-based system of global governance that we had grown accustomed to since the Second World War; not 'just' the backlash against liberalism and globalization by the segments of our populations that have been (read: that 'we' have allowed to become) left behind. We argue that we may be witnessing a much more profound global transformation in which some of the 'social technologies' that dominated the industrial age (the 'company'; 'government', 'state-based international organizations', etc.) are increasingly coming under pressure. In some sense, these were just the 'middle men' that our societies invented in order to leverage the revolutionary physical technologies that became available in the industrial age. In a process of 'disintermediation', we are now increasingly starting to cut out these middle men. Think of platform companies like Airbnb or Uber competing the hell out of hotel chains and taxi companies. Think of Tesla trying to sell fully electric cars surpassing car dealerships. But also think of Putin or ISIS targeting individuals in our societies in ways that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

The conclusion the report draws from all of this for our defense and security organizations is that we may have to start rethinking the way in which we can achieve our defense and security objectives in a radically different and (hopefully) more effective and sustainable way. Our political systems, our international organizations, our government structures, but also our security forces and our armed forces may increasingly have to start rethinking who they are, what they do, and how they do it. Their private sector equivalents are increasingly morphing themselves into platform businesses with thriving ecosystems around them that manage to capture far more economic value – for themselves AND for their – often totally new and much smaller – ecosystem partners - than any of their more ‘pipeline’-like counterparts have ever been able to do. In the words of IBM’s CEO Ginni Rometty, they are becoming increasingly much more B2I (‘business to individual’) than B2B (‘business to business’) or B2G (‘business to government’) or B2C (‘business to consumer’ – in a transactional sense’). Should we start thinking along analogous lines for our defense and security organizations? Is it conceivable that they might be able to generate superior (defense and security) value for (defense and security) value by assuming more of a platform role? A platform that ‘nudges’ a far more heterogeneous set of sensors and effectors throughput the defense and security ecosystem to start generating ‘security value’ in different ways? Much earlier in the conflict cycle (prevention) and with much more of a focus on stimulating the agents of resilience – the healthy fibers of our society that abhor gratuitous radicalism. violence and conflict - than in ‘only’ combatting the agents of conflict? Using ways that are as different from the ‘old’ ways as Tesla is from the big-three in Detroit in global mobility? As ‘P4’ (Personalized, Predictive, Preventive, Participatory) medicine is from our current more traditional health care systems?

The (downside and upside) risk space in terms of defense and security is widening, deepening, and flipping. Our defense and security organizations still have to be able to contribute to the stabilization of some of Europe’s fragile neighbors from the Western Sahara to Belarus – hopefully in more sustainably successful ways than we have been able to do for the past 20 years. They still have to be able to intervene in crises where we feel that both established and emerging global standards (genocide, territorial aggression, other crimes against humanity, etc.) are being transgressed. They once again also have to be able to defend our own alliance borders against potential high-end conventional and nuclear threats. And on top of all of this, they also have to be able to keep our populations safe from terrorist, cyber, influence. AI, etc. threats. That already represents a significant deepening and widening parts of the risk space. But they - in our opinion- should also increasingly start thinking about how they might be able to bolster the 'positive' side of the security coin, which we risk ignoring by being so transfixed on the prophets of gloom and doom. There are still myriad positive developments taking place in this real - and we suggest that any defense and security organization that would be bold enough to start developing some capabilities in that area may gain some competitive advantage in both a coalitional context and vis-a-vis potential opponents. 

In our assessment, the current financial-economic and political-economic realities of European defense budgets - even in Central Europe - are unlikely to move upward as much as they may have to in order to adequately cover all of these trends within the traditional (industrial-age) paradigm. We also emphasize that the political focus on the input side of our defense value proposition (e.g. % of GDP spent on defense) is unlikely to provide the right incentives to improve the actual output (let alone the impact) of our defense and security efforts - and it may even work perversely. If our defense and security organizations have to do more, with only marginally more money, and if they seem unlikely to be able to do so within the current defense and security paradigm - then how can we possibly we square the circle? In our report, we argue that this can only be done by truly changing the paradigm. We are greatly encouraged by the strong leadership that both the Chief of Defense and the Minister of Defense in the Netherlands have displayed in catalyzing the coalescing of a defense and security ecosystem during the Future Force Conference 2017, where 1200 participants started giving real meaning to the concept. A large number of very concrete follow-on activities are already in the pipeline now to push this initiative even further - at both a whole-of-government AND an whole-of-ecosystem level. 

Europe took the lead in 'reimagining' defense and security in the industrial age. That age was jump-started in Europe, with the United Kingdom in the lead, and various parts of the continent following suit. These countries' forward leaning stakeholders, in both competition and cooperation with each other, jumped on the new both physical and social  technological innovations that were emerging in the transition to the industrial age to put themselves ahead of the pack. Europe may no longer be at the forefront of many technological developments as the world is transitioning to a post-industrial age. But it is still well positioned. And its political economy of defense may still be somewhat less beholden to various legacy lobbies than is the case in various other parts of the world. We therefore submit that Europe might still have a fighting chance to navigate the transition to a post-industrial incarnation of 'armed force' more elegantly than many other. Ironically, the current Zeitgeist may actually provide a unique impulse in that direction. Some argue that the current undeniable turbulence in the world system means that Europe has to 'wake up' from its (unreal) dream, and has to start behaving again like we did in the past 2 centuries: "standing up for ourselves";  "negotiating from strength", etc. 

The 2017 HCSS contribution to the strategic monitor of the Dutch government suggests an alternative course of action., One that does not just 'remember the future' (as our brains are wired to do), but (once again) creatively shapes the future. Daring to think that not only our security environment might change, but that also 'we' will have to change, that 'we' will have to start doing different things, with different capabilities and with different operational (and strategic) concepts.   . (Dutch) (A)rmed forces as the catalysts of a broader defense and security ecosystem that may offer us a better (fighting!) chance to generate defense and security value for those who live near and with us.

"Pessimism is a matter of mood; optimism is a matter of will". We are not predestined to relive the 1930s - European nationalism/populism/fascism/corporatism; the 'Bloodlands'; Stalin's repressions; 'Munich', etc. Or even the Concert of Europe of the 19th century - which did ultimately lead to three unusually bloody intra-European wars in 1867, 1914 and 1940 . Let alone the terrible fratricidal European wars that preceded the Treaties of Westphalia, The future is ours to shape, As was the case at Westphalia. As was the case in Versailles. As was the case after WWII. The fundamental vectors (Phänomenologie des Geistes) that were described in Francis Fukuyama's 'End of History' are being contested, But they do linger on. Despite appearances, liberal democracies still have certain unparalleled advantages. Deepmind is in London and the startup scene in Europe (Berlin,. Amsterdam  is vibrant like never before. Apple, Amazon, Cisco, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Intel, LinkedIn, McAfee, Netflix, Oracle, Paypal, Roku, Salesforce, Symantec, Twitter, Yahoo, etc. are in Silicon Valley. Many of these companies are disruptively transforming the spaces they operate in. The same cannot be said for defense and security. In our opinion, any open-eyed European monitoring effort should suggest that this - the ecosystem: our (uniquely powerful) own,  but also our opponents' - is the current center of gravity of our planning/design efforts. 

Going Back to the Roots: A Meta-Epochal Etymological Glossary of 'Military' Terms

The Military and the 'Kill Chain'

Many discussions about defense and 'the military' assume that 'killing' lies at the heart of the profession. I find that assumption not only strange, but wrong. The reason why we have armed forces is to sustainably achieve our defense and security objectives through some capability bundle that (hopefully) provides excellent value for money.  'Force' clearly needs to be part of that capability bundle.  But there are many ways of instantiating, actuating force.

Let us assume that we can, at times, identify 'evil incarnate'. A person or force so demonstrably vile that 'the public good' would agree it should be stopped. Even in a clearcut case like this one, why would the physical annihilation of that person or force be the optimal course of action? The person, it is true, would no longer be able to pursue his (and let's face it: this is the most dominant gender in this category) 'evil' intent. This may arguably even be a 'net gain' for the international community. But the 'kill' will also trigger strong negative reactions from relatives, friends, like-minded people. More importantly, from my point of view, this particular course of action deprives his victims as well as all of us from the salubrious (and potentially cathartic) process of 'legal discovery'. [We have a quite wonderful word in Dutch for this: 'rechtsvinding' - literally 'finding what's right'. Which precedes rechtsschepping and rechtstoepassing - the actual creation and application of law. The German corollary 'Urteilsfinding' is already too focused on the actual trial; as is 'legal discovery'].

It may therefore be more appropriate - not from a legal, not from an ethical, but from a strictly security-pragmatic point of view - to contemplate alternative courses of action. One of the most attractive ones I can identify would be to identify such potential cases, to obtain a 'warrant' to track them, find them, and bring them before a court of law. Killing the perpetrator, in this 'due process' would also kill the rechtsvinding. But incapacitating this person or force, extracting it from the conflict space and bringing it to a neutral space where 

Think of the conflict denial effect (it's more than just prevention, it's the forceful denial of conflict) effect. If the international community, pursuant to a professional, traceable, non-politicized, probabilistic analysis based on a number of clear (politically agreed upon) criteria (as, say, is the standard in modern national legal jurisdictions), would decide such a course of action would be warranted, it could then intervene before the conflict breaks lose.  

Think of the conflict escalation dominance effect - international 'adult supervision' could at any given moment call for a 'time out' in any conflict and 'force' (armed force!)/'nudge'/induce the parties to a conflict to pursue alternative ways of achieving their objectives. 

Maybe even most importantly, think of the deterrent effect of such a course of action. Any individual or group of individuals that would be a party in any conflict would at any given moment in time throughout a possible crisis escalation dynamic realize that his/her actions would be subject to global public scrutiny based on globally recognized principles of international 'law'. The likely proliferation of . 

Building new datasets for foreign and security policy analysis

I have long been very frustrated about the lack of a systematic empirical basis for our analysis of foreign and security policy. Newspapers, with their many well-known biases, essentially dictate what 'facts' are and 'analysts' and 'scholars' then cherry-pick these 'facts' to buttress whatever theory, ideology, etc. they espouse.  A number of new datasets and tools hold great promise to revolutionize this state of affairs. 

Capability-Based Planning: The Fight Continues...

Dr. Ben Taylor, Team Leader of Strategic Planning Operations Research at Canada's DRDC has authored an interesting new piece that outlines some of the main tenets of what I have called the TTCP school of capability-based planning. It builds on a 2011 TTCP meeting in Ottawa I had the pleasure to attend. The paper is called 'Analysis Support to Strategic Planning' and has now been approved for unlimited release. Since I have not been able to find a copy on the internet (yet), I am taking the liberty of making it available on my blog and of adding a few personal thoughts.