What I'm Reading: Essence of Decision

In my foreign policy course this semester, we spent a great deal of time discussing the Cuban Missile Crisis. One of our assigned books was Graham Allison's classic Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was eager to learn more about the crisis, but the book proved to be about much more than that. Allison asks, "How should citizens understand the way their government behaves?" He presents three alternative lenses, based on very different theoretical underpinnings. He then uses all three lenses to analyze the Cuban Missile Crisis. Each lens, of course, yields in a different understanding of the conflict.

The three lenses are:

THE RATIONAL ACTOR MODEL: The government examines a set of goals, evaluates them according to their utility, then picks the one that has the highest "payoff."

THE ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESS MODEL: Policy is not a rational choice by a government, but the output of a complex organization programmed to behave a certain way. When faced with a crisis, government leaders don't look at it as a whole, but break it down and assign it according to pre-established organizational lines. They generally rely on existing plans, limit uncertainty, and focus on the short-term because of organizational constraints.

THE GOVERNMENT POLITICS MODEL: A nation's actions are best understood as the result of politicking and negotiation by its top leaders.

I love frameworks like this, because they clarify thinking. They give me a structure for organizing and understanding complex debates.

Here's an example: why did the United States recently decide to escalate in Afghanistan? Is it (1) because President Obama and his expert advisers all agree that a fully-resourced, long-term counterinsurgency strategy is the best strategy to pursue American national interests? Or is it (2) that the US military is now "programmed" for counteinsurgency because of the rise of COIN leaders like General Petraeus, influential think tanks like CNAS, and the success of the Surge/COIN strategy in Iraq? Or (3) did President Obama escalate despite his better judgment, because he didn't want to suffer the political consequences of rejecting the advice of his generals, and then preside over a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan? I've read articles alleging all three, but Allison's lenses give me a structure to hang these different ideas on. These three interpretations of the Afghanistan escalation, of course, coincide with Allison's three models of decision.

Which lens is right? That's the wrong question to ask. All three are right. All three are simplifying models that each focus on certain aspects of the policymaking process. The lenses should be used together, because multiple lenses lead to a more complex, nuanced understanding of how policy actually gets made.

My thoughts on the failed terror attack

I am usually not a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, but for once I find his crotchety sarcasm deeply refreshing. His recent Slate column asks, "Why are we so bad at detecting the guilty and so good at collective punishment of the innocent?"

In my boyhood, there were signs on English buses that declared, in bold letters, "No Spitting." At a tender age, I was able to work out that most people don't need to be told this, while those who do feel a desire to expectorate on public transport will require more discouragement than a mere sign. But I'd be wasting my time pointing this out to our majestic and sleepless protectors, who now boldly propose to prevent airline passengers from getting out of their seats for the last hour of any flight. Abdulmutallab made his bid in the last hour of his flight, after all. Yes, that ought to do it. It's also incredibly, nay, almost diabolically clever of our guardians to let it be known what the precise time limit will be. Oh, and by the way, any passenger courageous or resourceful enough to stand up and fight back will also have broken the brave new law.

I'm endlessly frustrated by security measures that punish the innocent and are useless against the guilty. The "last hour" takes the trophy for the dumbest airline rule I've ever seen, so I was happy to see Hitchens point out the obvious. For more on the subject, read Little Brother by the technological reverend Cory Doctorow, in which high school hackers use off-the-shelf-technology and a lot of creativity to consistently outwit the expensive and ultimately useless surveillance efforts of a draconian Department of Homeland Security.

This leads me to John Robb's fantastic response at Global Guerrillas. He points out that even when attacks fail, they can result in strategic gains for terrorists. Even failed attacks shake up organizations, prompt expensive and time-consuming policy reviews, and result in costly knee-jerk reactions. If the long-term strategy is to bleed America out, failed attacks can be just as useful as successful attacks. This is, of course, consistent with Robb's overall theory of network disruption. It's an interesting thought experiment to consider how various types of attack--even if unsuccessful--would the same system "ping" and overreact.

So what we do? First, I'm with zenpundit: we have to get past political correctness and actually focus our security on probable terrorists. That doesn't mean we target Muslims in general, but it means we target radical activists with ties to extremist organizations or mosques. Second, we have to avoid the costly knee-jerk reactions that will bleed us out and ultimately do nothing to prevent terrorism.

How should we market aid?

This article by NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof caught my eye, based on his experiences trying to bring Darfur into the public consciousness. How could he get people past the "collective shrug?"

In this article, Kristof looks at social psychology findings and asks how we can improve the way we market aid. He focuses on two key findings:

1. "We intervene not because of stories of desperate circumstances but when we can be cheered up with positive stories of success and transformation."

2. People are not moved by the stories of millions; they are moved by the stories of individuals. "As we all vaguely know, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

I won't elaborate, as the article isn't long and can speak for itself. Kristof argues that if we market aid with the same savvy that corporations do, we could make it far more effective.

The CPA still has a website

Did you know that the Coalition Provisional Authority still has a website? I stumbled across it while doing research for a paper. It's creepy. I felt like I was sneaking around a decrepit, boarded-up mansion where somebody had died. I was tip-toeing around a tomb, listening for ghosts, jumping every time a rotten floorboard squeaked. Every room was filled with reminders of the deceased--a half-full wineglass, a grimy bar of soap next to the sink, family photographs tacked to the fridge.

Here's one example: a December 1, 2003 press release:

SADDAM'S HEADS ROLL

Baghdad, Iraq -- With a crowd of Iraqis cheering in the background, the first of four bronze-plated Saddam Hussein heads came down today from its perch atop the Republican Palace.

"The time has come for these heads to roll," said L. Paul Bremer III, Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority. He added, "These statues stood as a reminder of the megalomania of the former dictator. We're sick of them.

The story is complete with vital stats like size and weight, in case you want to write a news report. Half the links on the site are broken, but you can still read about the opening of the "Liberation" school or the arrival of the Iraqi Boy Scout and Girl Scout program. You can read transcripts of Paul Wolfowitz explaining why fear is the greatest factor in Iraqi military performance, or some rousing speeches by Paul Bremer, like his December 24th, 2004 announcement of "one hundred days to a sovereign Iraqi government." He says, "In just one hundred days a sovereign Iraqi government will come into being. It will be a happy event for all Iraq and a happy day for my family." You can be inspired all over again by plucky optimism, like this March 3rd, 2004 speech in response to terror attacks: "The war against terrorism is not over, but I am certain that democracy and harmony will triumph over the evil-doers."

If you just want the cliff notes, you can read the final document in the archive: a June 28th, 2004 document titled, An Historic Review of CPA Accomplishments.

What I'm Reading: Kill Khalid

One of my professors asked me to write a paper on the foreign policy of Hamas, which is a little unconventional because Hamas is not a state (even if it does control Gaza), and pretty exciting because non-state actors are some of the most important players in the region. I promptly ordered a book I'd seen recommended elsewhere in the blogosphere: Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas by Paul McGeough.

Let's say that you're Benjamin Netanyahu, and your country has just signed a major peace treaty with one of your historical enemies--Jordan. Leaders on both sides have both taken tremendous political risks to pull this off, but you've succeeded. Your eastern border is secure, you have an important ally in the peace process, and you're looking at a bright future of cooperative, trust-building projects in the coming years. Your Mossad chief is friends with King Hussein and dines in his palace. Now, how do you take all that and screw up everything? While the ink is still wet on the treaty, you send Mossad agents across the border on Canadian passports to assassinate a Hamas agent the King has granted asylum to. And you fail, badly. You violate Jordanian sovereignty, humiliate the king, and create a political crisis that jeopardizes his rule. You create such a mess that you're forced to release your most valued Hamas prisoner (Sheikh Ahmed Yassin) in order to get your agents back.

That's the tone of the book. You can tell McGeough thought the 1997 assassination attempt was really, really dumb. This is a book that makes you cringe, as you watch bad decisions and incompetence create an international crisis. But the book is about much more than that single event; it's about the entire history of Hamas, from the childhoods of its leaders up to the present. It's also a fascinating account of Israel's cold peace with Jordan. I enjoyed McGeough's very readable depiction of what actually goes on behind the scenes in the Israeli-Jordanian relationship. The book also covers US efforts to breakup Hamas funding, including the famous trial against the Holy Land Foundation.

Like any book about Israeli-Palestinian issues, it has generated a polarized response. Half the Amazon.com reviews are 5 stars and half are 1 or 2 stars. The negative reviewers accuse the author of being biased towards the Arab/Palestinian perspective and of minimizing Hamas' murderous ideology. McGeough does seem biased--this was particularly evident to me in his brief treatment of the 1948 and 1967 wars--but that should not stop readers from enjoying the many strengths of the book. As Aaron David Miller argues, nobody comes to this conflict without bias; we should not pretend otherwise. After I finished the book I wondered if the Israelis interpret this event differently than the author does, but yesterday I read an interview with Israel's first ambassador to Jordan, Shimon Shamir. He called the assassination attempt "ill-conceived and poorly executed", which suggests McGeough's interpretation is at least broadly accepted by both sides. The key to understanding the Israeli perspective is their total frustration that Jordan was harboring Hamas in the first place. Shamir emphasizes this in his interview.

One Amazon.com review caught my eye. The reviewer is frustrated that the book humanizes a man who is murderous, hateful, and anti-Semitic. I disagree with him that humanizing such a notorious character is a bad thing. All too often, we paint our enemies in crude strokes using a giant, sloppy paintbrush. They are terrorists. They are barbarians. They are animals. When we engage in this kind of reductionism, we don't learn anything. The reality is that our enemies are human beings, with complex and subtle human motivations. We can never understand our enemies or achieve our political objectives until we understand that. The US made a mess of things in Iraq when it spoke only of "terrorists" undermining the peace. Gradually we learned to map the human terrain with increasing resolution. We spoke of disaffected Ba'athists and Muqtada al Sadr and al-Qa'ida in Iraq. We developed different strategies for dealing with different actors. We learned that insurgents fought for a variety of reasons, and that some of them could be won over.

As much as we loathe Hamas, it is a permanent part of the landscape in the Middle East now. Any progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will probably require its participation. We can't ignore Hamas. It's imperative we understand it. That's why this book is such a valuable contribution to the literature on the conflict.

Our king is surrounded by divine light from heaven when he rides his bike

More royal window art of everybody's favorite king! I wish I had a better picture of this one, because it's so freaking awesome. Here we get two kings for the price of one: King Hussein puffing on a pipe looking supremely wise, and that renegade King Abdullah II riding his motorcycle and surrounded by divine light.





Previous:
1. Our king is a badass
2. Our king hunts bald eagles

Delivering a baby, Jordan style!

My wife and I can check off another box on our list of potential cross-cultural experiences: having a baby in the Middle East. The Reach 364 clan is one daughter larger, and mom and baby are doing just fine.

It was a really good experience. Because we're attached to the embassy and have good health care, we were able to deliver at Jordan's top birth hospital. The queen herself delivered there. Friends who had babies here raved about it; one friend, now living in the US, told us she would consider flying back to Jordan to deliver her next baby. The health care was that much better than the US. My wife and I laughed when a British TriCare representative told us over the phone that Jordan was not a "center of excellence", so he wanted to airevac us to a military hospital in Germany. We both felt much safer with our Jordanian doctor than a military one.

When the big day came, we were proud of ourselves because we checked into the hospital and filled out all the paperwork entirely in Arabic--despite the fact the hospital employees speak English. That's an accomplishment, because most people don't have the patience for our Arabic and just switch to English as a courtesy. After that we headed up to our room to drop our bags. For months, I'd been hearing from friends about how extravagant the rooms are. They compared the hospital to a five-star hotel. The rooms were really suites, with kitchens, living rooms, and extra beds for dad. So we were both a little shocked when we got to our very standard hospital room, which was painted entirely in that nauseating shade of blue hospitals seem so fond of and furnished only with a hospital bed for mom. I replayed the Arabic conversation in my mind and realized immediately what happened: during one ambiguous moment, I had accidentally turned down the first-class room we were entitled to. Oops! Oh well. We decided to stay. We're always complaining about the extravagant entitlements that separate American government employees from the population, so we took this as our chance to live a little closer to the people.

The delivery itself was fantastic. The doctors were charming and friendly and put us at ease. We felt more comfortable than we did with the birth of our first child in the US. The team of doctors included Muslims, an Orthodox Christian, and an evangelical Christian, and somehow they all got into a friendly discussion (in Arabic) about different worship practices. It was a pretty funny sight... my wife and I squinting with concentration as we tried to follow the theological conversation, while the doctors chatted and delivered the baby. I wish every bigoted pundit who warns about how evil and intolerant Muslims are could have seen this very ordinary, cheerful display of religious tolerance and camaraderie.

We faced some pretty funny culture differences between our deliveries in Jordan and in Monterey, CA--which is about as green-hippie as hospitals come. In Monterey, dads were equal partners with moms. I was the first to hold my son. I cut the umbilical cord. Immediately after the delivery, I accompanied the nurses to the nursery, where I helped bathe my son for the first time and put on his first diaper. In Jordan, I got one quick glimpse of my daughter over the nurses' shoulders before they whisked her off to the nursery. I spent a couple hours moping around outside the glass, looking in, before they let me take her. Later, I dropped by the nursery to fetch some diapers. The nurse looked shocked; dads don't change diapers. She wheeled my daughter off to the nursery and changed her herself.

In Monterey, the nurses were big on this thing they call "skin to skin" to help the baby bond with his parents. They stripped our new son down to a diaper and a blanket, and he spent most of his first few days of life affixed to my wife's or my bare skin. Here, it was the opposite. Before the nursery would release my daughter to us, I had to bring some clothes by. It took three trips before the nurse was satisfied. First trip was a onesie. Second trip was a hat and boots. Third trip was a jacket and pants. By the time the nurses were finished with my daughter, she looked like a marshmallow. She was sweating when she reached our room, so after the nurse left, we discreetly dressed her down.

Despite the advanced, Western-quality care available in the hospital, we were always in that cloud of uncertainty that cross-cultural living entails. When my wife's anasthetic wore off and the pain started, we weren't really sure what medicine was available--if any. Meals took a couple hours to be delivered, and usually only after we followed up three or four times. We never liked releasing our daughter to the nursery, even for something as simple as a diaper change, because it might take an hour or two to get her back. We were never sure why.

But all in all, it was a great experience. The great strength of the Arab culture is its focus on my family and relationships. We enjoyed the warmth and hospitality of the doctors and nurses, and the celebratory atmosphere on our floor as dozens of visitors poured in and out of neighboring rooms.

Now we are moving on to the next phase. In this culture, relatives and friends all come visit a week or so after a baby is born. It's a way of honoring us and saying congratulations face-to-face.

Hacking Predators

I like to write about the intersection between security and networks/open source/wikinomics/super-empowered individuals/etc., so this is one of the most interesting stories I've seen in a long time: Iraqi and Afghan insurgents are hacking and accessing Predator video feeds using a $25.95 off-the-shelf software program. Read the full article here and some analysishere.

This is what modern war is becoming. Just like in the business world (as I discussed in my review of Cory Doctorow's "Makes" this morning), the winners will be those who can innovate faster than their rivals.

How should we respond when the bad guys get inside our networks? I don't know anything about UAV data transmissions, but I think we should pay attention to the battles over hardware and Digital Rights Management (DRM) that some corporations are waging with their customers.

The WRONG answer is to spend millions of dollars and years of time creating a platform that is supposedly uncrackable, then sit back and congratulate ourselves. In a few weeks or months, some 17 year old kid in his garage will crack it... just as they've cracked iPhones, Playstations, X-Boxes, cell phones, and now Nooks. We also don't want to lock down data so tight that it hurts our "customers": the people who use the technology. The music industry just about destroyed itself by suing, alienating, and enraging its customers instead of adapting to a totally new kind of market. Electronic Arts created a DRM system for its game "Spore" that was so invasive, customers savaged the game in reviews and ran it into the ground. And oh, by the way, the pirates still cracked the DRM in a few days.

The better answer is to realize that we're in a long term competition with multiple players. Every move we make will result in a countermove. We are in a long-term competition of innovation and adaption. We should expect the cracks, adapt, and coolly play our next move.

What I'm Reading: Makers

It's hard to explain Cory Doctorow's new book Makers, but you might think of it as Wikinomics: The Novel.

Doctorow shows his readers a future where the development of 3D printers allows virtually anyone to produce anything, anywhere. Manufacturing goes down the same road as software. A thriving open-source manufacturing community springs up. Average citizens collaborate in freewheeling communities to invent, recombine, and modify new ideas. Designs are swapped and downloaded via the internet. Wikis move off the computer screen and into the real world, as communities of devoted fans create their own evolving, user-programmed theme park--and eventually go to legal war with that corporate dinosaur of a previous age, Disney.

Doctorow is a skilled author, and Makers is a good novel. I was pleased to discover that, unlike too much science fiction, it is a deeply human story. It is about friendship, loyalty, and the struggle to find our place in a turbulent, fast-changing world. We meet characters like Perry Gibbons and Lester Banks, two junkyard inventors who turn trash into technological miracles and eventually create a national phenomenon. Suzanne Church is a tech blogger who covers the rise of this "New Work" and becomes a loyal friend and supporter. The story follows these characters and their community through a topsy-turvy future that is eerily possible.

Apart from the book's literary merits, why should it concern readers of this blog? It's a window into the near future. It shows possible economic and social ramifications of technologies that are right around the corner. In Doctorow's future individuals become even more empowered, the "crowd" thrives, and traditional corporations struggle to compete with networks. Profits are there for the taking, but only for fast movers who innovate rapidly. With 3D printing technology, manufacturing moves as fast as information technology does today. The United States is in severe decline, but communities of devoted optimists pioneer a new way forward.

Doctorow is committed to the radical principles in his books. He cares about readers and community more than money. His books are all online for free under a Creative Commons license. Download Makers today.

You've got to be kidding me

I'm speechless. I really am. Thanks for the link, Danger Room.

When blogging crosses the line of professionalism

Military blogging is a sensitive issue. How do military members maintain an open, thoughtful, and critical discussion in the public sphere without crossing the line of professionalism? The military is still working this out, which is why we have such confusing and contradictory policy among the services. I've written several times on the subject.

Today Danger Room highlighted a guy who allegedly went too far: Master Sergeant C.J. Grisham, who maintains A Soldier's Perspective. He got himself into trouble for calling his Commander and Chief a liar and publicly waging a battle against his local school board on his blog.

Did Grisham go too far? Check out Danger Room's post and the linked articles so you can decide for yourselves.

Network technology: speeding up slowing down our OODA loop

Great post on Global Guerrillas today: "From an insurgents perspective (key to understanding the issue), the US military's command and control system is a gift from God."

He is responding to a distressing NYT op-ed titled The Next Surge: Counterbureaucracy. According to the author, it took his company an average of 96 hours to get the 11 approvals necessary to conduct operations when the Taliban arrived in a village. 70% of their attempts to act failed because they could not get the necessary approvals.

All of Robb's reflections on the article are good, but here is my favorite:

New communications technology isn't being used for what it is designed to do (enable decentralized operation due to better informed people on the ground). Instead it is being used to enable more complicated and hierarchical approval processes -- more sign offs/approvals, more required processes, and higher level oversight. For example: a general, and his staff, directly commanding a small strike team remotely.

Most operators can relate to this. There's nothing like being on a run-in to a DZ in bad weather and high mountains, within a couple kilometers of known Taliban positions, minutes away from an airdrop... and having half the crew clustered around the laptop trying to obtain the text message from the Combined Air Operations Center approving the drop. I can't imagine what the approval process is like when firepower is involved.

Our king hunts bald eagles

Part 2 of my ongoing series on windshield art depicting everybody's favorite king.


Previous:
1. Our King is a Badass

SpaceShipTwo Unveiled

When I was a USAFA cadet I studied astronautical engineering, interned briefly at NASA JPL, and attended conferences about manned space travel to Mars. There was a lot of tension in the air in these contexts. My colleagues and I were the kind of people who peered through telescopes as kids, read science fiction by flashlight under our covers, and still dreamed about the possibility for man's pilgrimage to the stars. On the other hand, our national space program was in tatters. Nothing new was moving forward. Government spending on space was down. JPL had suffered a spectacular series of failures (such as the failure of the Mars Climate Observer because of a units conversion error). I was in my boss's office when he received a phone call canceling the program he'd spent the last year of his life designing. Ouch. My colleagues were demoralized and pessimistic. A lot of people seemed to believe that the space age so gloriously launched in the mid-20th century had been neglected and left to die.

I eventually came to a different conclusion: the space age hadn't yet begun. The Cold War space race was a false start, fueled by massive and unsustainable investments by the American and Soviet governments. A genuine space age would never begin until the private sector got involved and space became both profitable and sustainable. That's why I'm so excited to see so many signs that we are standing on the threshold of the real space age.

We crossed a major milestone when SpaceShipOne won the X-Prize in 2004. Now SpaceShipTwo is being rolled out--a spacecraft that, if all goes well, will soon begin ferrying paying passengers into space. Check it out.

Google Pushes Augmented Reality

Yesterday, Google announced that it is sending 100,000 window decals to local businesses around the country. These are businesses that users regularly search for on Google and Google Maps.

Each window decal has a unique bar code, known as a QR code that you can scan with any of hundreds of mobile devices--including iPhone, Android-powered phones, BlackBerry and more--to take you directly to that business's Place Page on your mobile phone. With your mobile phone and these new decals, you can easily go up to a storefront and immediately find reviews, get a coupon if the business is offering one or star a business as a place you want to remember for the future. Soon, you'll be able to leave a review on the mobile page as well, just like on your desktop.

This is a major investment that will bring the digital and real worlds ever closer together. I'm happy to see Google taking concrete steps to promote this kind of change.

In other augmented reality news, John Robb is writing about augmented reality and tribal layers. Also, researchers show brain waves can write on a computer. Subjects in the experiment were able to choose letters from a grid on a monitor with almost 100% accuracy simply by thinking. The downside? Researchers had to cut their skulls open to put electrodes directly on their brains. Oh well, it's a start.

This article about the Augmented Reality Development Camp provides a good primer on the technology, as well as some of its open questions: can we create common standards for a totally new kind of digital technology before it's too late? How do we filter an overwhelming amount of data? How do we make this technology useful and not just an annoying distraction? What does it mean when individual people are all capable of experiencing reality differently?

Our King is a Badass

Visit any government ministry, police station, supermarket or falafel stand in Jordan, and you'll find a token picture of the King and perhaps his family. According to one critic I know--an Ivy League graduate who works for a prominent pro-democracy activist--these icons are disgusting symbols of tyranny. That's one way of looking at it. But the fact is, a lot of Jordanians do deeply revere their king. Some Jordanians revere him so much that they paint their rear windshields with His Majesty.

I've started collecting photos of this uniquely Jordanian form of art. I will post them here until the local intelligence service shuts me down. Please note that I do not endorse closing within a few feet of speeding cars in crazy Middle East traffic to snap photos with a cell phone.

In this first set of photos, we discover that our king can put a bullet between the eyes of your king. Watch out!

What the crowd can do with a Reaper

A recent article at Wired caught my eye: A man and his drones: on the front line of robotic warfare.

Lt Col Curry, commander of the 62nd Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron at Kandahar, wanted to use his UAVs for "change detection" missions: shoot some photos, come back later, shoot more photos, and look for differences. These missions would be useful for identifying "buried bombs and hastily-placed rocket launchers plaguing Kandahar." Unfortunately, the infrastructure was not in place to utilize the Reaper's camera capabilities.

... the Reaper's Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can create the instantaneous, high-resolution, black-and-white still images seen in the Ground Control Station on November 5. "Nobody was really using it," Curry says of the SAR. According to Curry, Nato commanders prefer the Predator's and Reaper's "sexy" full-motion video over the visually unimpressive radar pictures. The SAR was so unpopular than the Air Force doesn't even install monitors for radar pictures in the standard UAV control station.

What did Curry do? According to this article, his squadron invented their own solution to capture and analyze the data.

To use SAR over Kandahar, the 62nd had to rig makeshift displays tied to off-the-shelf servers. The improvised system wasn't certified by the Air Force, meaning the additional computers weren't allowed to touch the existing Ground Control Station. To keep the servers separate, the squadron installed a shelf in the control trailer to hold them.

Hardware is one thing. Processing SAR shots for change detection also requires software to make the actual image comparisons. For that, Curry turned to the Ministry of Defence, which has been quietly developing change-detection software for British intelligence systems.

This is a fascinating lesson in crowdsourcing. The Reaper is an extremely powerful platform with a suite of built-in capabilities, but--as so often occurs with modern technology--the front line operators had ideas of their own. They envisioned new ways of harnessing the technology. If I read this article right, Lt Col Curry and his team developed a completely new kind of mission at the squadron level by integrating their own hardware and software. That's pretty remarkable.

Can we take any broader lessons from this?

First, if we want to make the military into a dynamic and responsive learning organization, we need to expect and actively encourage this kind of innovation. We should expect our people to brainstorm new ways of using existing technology, whether that's using B-52s for close air support, using silly string to identify tripwires, or designing their own hardware/software tools for analyzing reconnaissance photos.

Second, we need to design our military technology for tinkering. Most military technology is like an iPod; it's a closed system that is tightly controlled by its creators and is not designed for experimentation. An iPod is excellent at the tasks it's designed for, but you can't make it do anything new. A lot of technology is moving in a different direction, giving users the ability and tools to add their own creative spin. Microsoft provides free tools, examples, and tutorials that let anybody in the world write and distribute their own games for the X-Box 360. They also run contests to drive innovation. Google and the Open Handset Alliance have brought the same openness to cell phones through Android. Many video games ship with the very tools that were used to design levels, characters, and storylines; any user can write their own content for these games. Can we do the same thing with military technology? We can't give users total access, but perhaps we could settle on an intermediate solution akin to the iPhone: any user can write iPhone applications, but they are carefully vetted by Apple for quality control before they can be published. At the very least, we need to make it easy for users to access and manipulate data.

Third, we need a more flexible certification and regulation framework. Innovation often requires cheating because of our stringent regulations and certification processes. According to this article, the 62nd had to keep their hardware separate from the ground station because of certification issues. When I wrote my program interfacing DOD mission planning software with Google Earth, I had to design it to run from a thumb drive--without installation--because there was no way to get the program certified and get a computer administrator to install it (this was before the thumb drive ban).

Certification and network security are obviously critically important, especially in fields like aviation with zero tolerance for error, but they can slam the door on innovation. Is there a way forward? I wonder if it's possible to design maneuvering space for innovators into our regulatory framework. If we think of a weapons system like a Reaper as a black box with inputs and outputs, it makes sense that we should prohibit uncertified hardware or software from providing inputs--they could cause real damage inside the system. But why not allow unlimited access to the outputs? We should create a nice polished software interface, where any computer savvy user can access the outputs for his or her own purposes. This is nothing new; websites do it all the time. Any programmer can write new programs built on Google Translate, Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter, or hundreds of other sites; they can access webservers that provide all the relevant data. That's why we have great Facebook interfaces for iPhone, Android, and other mobile devices. There's no reason we couldn't do the same thing with our military technology.

If we had a system like that, with a clear separation between parts, we could have different certification processes for different parts. You would subject the black box itself to the usual scrutiny, but it wouldn't make a bit of difference what custom applications are accessing the outputs. If Capt Reach 364 wants to plug his laptop into a dataport on his C-17 and download his flight plan, his engine readings, his GPS coordinates, and the air pressure at every sensor in the jet's bleed air system, more power to him. If Reach 364 invents something cool--say, a way to overlay the jet's position on a color moving map (something the C-17 lacks)--and he wants to institutionalize this tool, you could have a separate, streamlined certification process for such tools (like custom iPhone programs).

This might sound like a lot of crazy technical wizardry--how many soldiers or airmen would really write custom software for a C-17 or Stryker, one might ask?--but these trends have already transformed civil society. Programming tools are becoming more powerful, more intuitive, and more mainstream. I expect there would be tremendous payoff in institutionalizing this kind of openness in our military technology.

Things I've Learned: Don't get angry unless you mean to

This is the first in a new series of posts titled "Things I've Learned." The topic is intentionally broad. I intend to write about some life lessons I've learned during my career thus far, which have helped me become a more effective officer.

#1: Don't get angry unless you mean to.

Credit for this goes to General Stephen R. Lorenz, current commander of AETC. I heard him give a talk about leadership lessons while I was still a cadet at USAFA, and again when I was at Squadron Officer School. I don't remember most of his lessons (sorry, General), but this one stuck with me. I think about it all the time.

When you work within a large bureaucracy like the US government, there's a lot to be angry about. It starts with little things, like the fact that the most highly trained warriors in the world must wear reflective belts when they go jogging, that the Air Force spends inordinate amounts of time and money designing PT uniforms that everybody hates, or that in the midst of two wars, Squadron Officer School tasks students with writing a paper about how to keep a struggling Officer's club in business.

The anger often comes from mission-related factors. This was common in the C-17, where an Aircraft Commander has to coordinate and move a mission with a hundred moving pieces: stateside command and control, mission planners, passenger/cargo terminals, local command posts, maintenance, refueling support, billeting, etc. It was rare to have a mission without at least two or three things going wrong. The hardest part of an ACs job isn't flying; it's getting on the satellite phone and trying to untangle the knot when somebody drops the ball. How do you keep the mission moving when pax terminal is three hours late getting the pax out to the jet, or when command & control calls you three minutes after takeoff to tell you that you need to pick up a piece of cargo they forgot about?

It's easy to get angry about life back in the squadron as well. I was eager to make Aircraft Commander, but had to wait an extra year because of a SNAFU with ordering the right AC school slots. It's complicated to explain, but I was watching pilots junior to me make AC--and then Airdrop AC, and then IP--well ahead of me, because they were being routed through a different pipeline. Another example that every C-17 pilot can relate to is coming home exhausted from a 2 or 3 week mission to find a voicemail waiting from the scheduler: "Sorry dude, you're leaving again in three days. You were the only one available", even though you know there are plenty of pilots in Group and Wing level staff jobs who haven't flown once this quarter. The strain from this turbulence is incredible on the young lieutenants and captains who fly the line, and especially on their families.

Finally, it's easy to get angry at big-picture problems. I've written before on this blog about how disillusioned I was by around 2006.

When we work in an organization as large and as rigid as the government, we will often have experiences that make us angry. Where do we go from there? We have two choices. First, we can stew in our anger until we're so bitter and used up that we have nothing left to contribute and are toxic to our units. Second, we can commit to maintaining a positive attitude and we can dedicate ourselves to making the system better. When properly harnessed, anger can be a powerful motivator; however, we usually can't be effective until we get past the immediate rage.

When we're angry, we want someone to blame. We want to vent on somebody. Occasionally serious problems really are the consequence of one bad leader, but I've learned that in most cases there is nobody to blame. The problem is usually with the process or the bureaucracy, not with the individual (this will be the subject of my next "Things I've Learned"). I'm a pretty even-keeled person and have only taken my anger out on people a few times in my career, but I regretted it every time. In most cases I was angry at someone who had no responsibility for the mistake. I was the copilot on one mission where the AC got so angry at a young Command Post airman that the Ramstein AFB Wing Commander--who was listening on the radio--personally came out to the jet to have a conversation. Oops.

I've learned that the best way to deal with anger is to get over it, stay collected, and figure out the right levers to pull to improve the situation. When a C-17 mission got tied up in a knot, the best solution was to call our command & control with a suggested plan of how to remedy the situation. 90% of the time, C&C would sign off on it. When C-17 pilots were suffering so much volatility and stress in their schedules, I was impressed with a group of Majors and Captains who created a working group to brainstorm ideas and make proposals on how to bring more stability. Commanders up the chain were supportive. Writing can be a powerful way to address institutional problems. To cite just one of many possible examples, Maj Niel Smith was dissatisfied with the lack of COIN in Army PME. In response, he wrote a professional essay recently hosted at SWJ that is elevating the issue to the right authorities. My anger at certain deficiencies in US policy led me to totally change my career track. I competed for a scholarship program to learn Arabic and study in the Middle East, so I could hopefully bring useful experience to policy sometime in the future. I also hope this blog can play a small role in strengthening the US military as a learning organization.

I've had a few role models who really exemplified this lesson. My best squadron commander to date was remarkably cool when things went wrong. I never, ever saw him get angry. His calm manner of dealing with challenges inspired a lot of trust in our squadron and bolstered our morale. He was also a dedicated problem solver. He responded to the crushing C-17 ops tempo by proposing a radical restructuring of C-17 deployments, selling it to the right generals, and then executing it. He took on a problem well above his pay grade and, through patient and diligent work, implemented a solution.

Lorenz has one caveat on his advice to not get angry; sometimes, you mean to get angry. You want to make a point. If a subordinate does something boneheaded, you might need to appear angry to let him know you're serious. That has a place, but you still need to be in control; if you're still in a white-hot rage, it's not the time to call him into your office.

Don't get angry unless you mean to. I've learned that I can't begin to be effective until I get that right.

My Experience Learning "General Cultural Savvy"

The Combined Arms Center blog has a recent article by Lt Col Celestino Perez Jr. titled Is there such a thing as a general cultural savvy? It's a good read, which got me thinking about the "general cultural savvy" I've learned so far in Jordan. I thought I would share some of the most important general lessons.

How to listen to other people's stories and perspectives. This is the main theme in Dr. Perez's article and probably the most vital "cultural savvy" skill. Being able to shut up and listen is, unfortunately, a surprisingly rare skill. If we want to make informed policy in cross-cultural contexts, we need to humanize and understand the "other"--which includes both our allies and our enemies. We do not have to agree with each other, but we need to listen long enough to genuinely understand each other's narratives.

How to operate in an environment of constant uncertainty. When you arrive in a foreign culture, everything is uncertain. You feel a constant tightness in your chest because you don't know the rules for even the most trivial day-to-day tasks. Even something as simple as buying hummus and falafel or riding in a taxicab involves new processes, rituals, and dialog--especially if you want to do it like the natives. You can't be a perfectionist, because you'd never get anything done otherwise. You also have to learn to control negative emotional responses like fear, anger, or frustration. Fortunately, you do acclimate to this uncertainty. You learn to be patient, cool, and observant.

How to communicate without a solid common language. The lingua franca of the world is not English; it is broken English. Us Americans are pretty accustomed to communicating fluently with others who speak our native language--even when we travel, we can usually count on hotel receptionists and airline employees to speak good English--but most of the world does not have this luxury. If you visit a country far off the beaten path--like Jordan--you hear tourists from France, China, Denmark, or Eastern Europe talking each other and to locals in the least common denominator: broken English of varying quality. In these multicultural contexts, participants often speak a little of several languages, so it's common to hear people shifting from one language to another as they try to communicate. Many of my conversations with Jordanians work this way; between my bad Arabic and my counterpart's bad English and a lot of hand gestures, we stumble back and forth between languages until we both understand each other (we hope). Learning to communicate in this fragmented, multilingual manner is an important skill in its own right.

Not to take myself too seriously. Like most people, I don't like being made a fool of. But when you live in a foreign culture, there's no getting around it: you are the fool. You will get ripped off. You will make mistakes. You will accidentally invite your teacher out on a date when you pronounce a qaaf like a ك kaaf). After using the toilet at a rural Palestinian family's house you will stand up, turn around, push the wrong button on the toilet, and totally spray the crotch of your jeans with the turbo-powered bidet attachment. You will have to figure out how to explain that in your broken Arabic when you return, dripping, to the living room where the entire extended family is gathered. These experiences teach you to relax and to laugh at yourself. They teach humility. Anyone charged with crafting American foreign policy should have a few of these experiences under his or her belt.

The limits of cross-cultural "expertise". Imagine that a student from a distant country--let's take Turkmenistan as an example--decides to become an expert on the United States. He learns to speak bad English and majors in American Studies at his local university. He reads some books about America written in Turkmen or Russian, and maybe he works through two or three books written in English by Americans. After he graduates from his American Studies program, he has the chance of a lifetime: to visit the US for a six month study abroad program, where he mostly takes English classes and travels. After this, he returns to Turkmenistan and gets a job in the foreign ministry as an expert on the United States. How would we, as Americans, evaluate this guy's expertise? At best, he feel a little sorry for him. At worst, we lump him into the same category as Borat. Yet isn't this what we often do as Americans? I realized pretty early here in Jordan that I am that guy. I learn more about the culture, language, and political issues every day I'm here, but I've come to disdain the word "expert." There is such a thing as a cross-cultural expert, but few who claim the title really deserve it. It takes years--probably decades--of close work with another culture to really develop expertise. I still believe cross-cultural exchange is vital, even for short periods, but this should cultivate humility and thoughtfulness.

The importance of local relationships. This is the corollary of the above point. If expertise is so hard to come by, then I will never be able to successfully work among a foreign culture on my own strength. I will need to rely on trusted friends, guides, and partners. When Greg Mortensen started building schools in Pakistan, he didn't try to do everything himself. He brought the vision, but relied on the expertise of local guides and friends who understood their own needs, who knew where to get supplies, who knew how to negotiate and win support, and who knew how to get things done. He was a guest in their culture, and entirely at their mercy. Likewise, I've learned that I am largely at the mercy of my friends and associates here. I would never dream of trying to launch a major business or development initiative on my own in this country (or any country), yet this is how many Americans view our foreign policy work: we as Americans are the primary actors, and the cultures we work among (such as Iraqis or Afghans) play a supporting role. These roles must be reversed.

How to learn about a culture and language. When you live in a foreign culture, you learn how to learn. You learn what vocabulary is important, what language learning techniques work, how to make relationships, what skills are important, what details to pay attention to. This is my first experience living abroad, but I have no doubt that learning a second language and culture will be much easy because of these general skills.

Twittering

I'm a true believer in the power of new media, open sourcing, wikinomics, etc... but I've never understood Twitter. When the phenomenon started, it sounded like one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard of. I already spend enough time following blogs; I didn't see the appeal of following hundreds of text messages that were too brief to hold any real content. I created a trial account once, and after confirming that 90% of Tweets were worthless, I deleted it.

I guess I'm old school, but I prefer communicating at least at paragraph length. I've never really understood the appeal of texting or Facebook wall-to-wall conversations either.

Nonetheless... because I don't want to risk turning into a dinosaur before I hit 30, I decided to give Twitter an honest try. You can follow me at Reach 364. I'm hoping I'll learn something and be proven wrong!