Washington DC 22 Feb 2023
This is part #2 of a 3 part introduction to the unique challenges go military innovation. Click here for Part 1 and Part 3. Or alternatively view the entire presentation in one file at the Overview.
Technology ≠ innovation
As military activities have expanded in complexity, there is a tendency to equate advances in science and technology (S&T) with innovation. It is an easy trap to fall into given the abundance of novelty and accelerating change in the seemingly endless worlds of S&T.
Google’s Eric Schmidt has an article in the current edition of Foreign Affairs entitled “Innovation Power”. Schmidt equates innovation to America's ability to lead in AI and related S&T touchstones. His article has the limitless optimism of the stuff written at the advent of the dot.com and social media eras.1 Schmidt argues for greater government intervention in S&T as the key to military innovation.2 As brilliant a man as Google’s Eric Schmidt is, he got it wrong. Both in terms of what military innovation requires and how to do it.
We are lucky enough to live in a time of technological plenty. From micro to macro, from subatomic, to organic, to planetary systems, all kinds of discoveries and improvements are being made at a frantic pace. In reality, we have grown inured to novelty in S&T. The shock of the new has given way to an expectation of the new.3 People have been conditioned by experience to expect extraordinary technological improvement at an accelerating rate. Novelty and rapid improvement have become mundane. These expectations are now so fully established that they have taken on the rigidity of the laws of Newtonian physics. The following "laws" illustrate this:
Moore’s Law: transistors on microchips double every two years;
Gilder's Law: the total bandwidth of communication systems triples every twelve months;
Kryder's Law: the assumption that disk drive density, will double every thirteen months; and
Neven's law: quantum computers are gaining computational power at a doubly exponential rate.
In other words, there is nothing new in technological change. The only thing that would be new is if rapid change suddenly ground to a halt.
S&T offer new opportunities in military affairs but they are insufficient to create innovation. The advent of flying machines generated decades of fierce opposition to adapting them to military operations. The resistance to the adoption of drones was a repeat of the same cultural clash almost a century later.
So innovation in S&T is not the easy solution many assume it to be.
New organizations ≠ innovation
The biggest problem in government is you cannot fire people. Just one negative actor can be incredibly destructive of the efforts of many to improve how things are done. There are very good reasons for bureaucratic tenure. In policy making, you need independent advice free of ideological, financial, and other manipulations. The huge downside is leaders get stuck with a lot of dead weight at best and sabotage at worst. This is not the only problem bureaucracies face that are unknown in the private sector.
Bureaucracy is not inherently evil. The critical issue is how it is designed. New organizations are needed to control new challenges. Prior to WWII, the Department of War did not have to create a physical, scientific, strategic and intellectual national infrastructure needed to control space. Splitting the atom, sequencing DNA, supercomputing and AI, the war in Ukraine, and many other issues, all add vast new issues to warfare and war - requiring an explosion of bureaucracy to control and guide these developments to maximize national advantage and mitigate aggressor opportunities.4
Crisis is a key driver of change. It is usually evidence that something different needs to be done. The base line assumption in bureaucracy is loss of control happens because the right organization did not exist to meet the challenge. The easiest, fastest, and most noticeable change a leader can make is to alter the org-chart. The imperative to "do something” in a bureaucracy almost always results in the creation of more bureaucracy. Sometimes this is for want of a policy to address the issue and sometimes this is the right course of action. The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence comprise exhibits A and B in this regard. DHS took 9 other agencies and added itself, a 10th mega-agency (in size and scope), over all the others. ODNI was another mega-agency (in scope but not size) created to govern the entire IC.5
Innovation is currently a hot button issue in the national security world because levels of uncertainty are high. “Innovation Offices” are being created across departments and agencies in line with a significant surge in war gaming. All of these efforts are designed to understand a strategic environment in flux and to try to avoid the age old trap of preparing for the last war. There is nothing wrong with these efforts. They are needed. Their utility will vary depending upon how well they are operated, supported, funded, attended, and heeded.
If the mere creation of an "innovation" organization is treated as a solution, that should be a red flag. This is the danger of management by check-list. “Innovation? Oh yes, we have a department for that on the 3rd floor”. That is the wrong way to organize for innovation because it creates a perception that there is a designated place where novel thinking is permitted, reliving the rest of the organization from the burden of creativity. It inevitably creates an innovation ghetto that will be resisted by the rest of the organization.6
Shadow Bureaucracy
RDML Grace Hopper USN (PhD in Mathematics from Yale) joined the navy in WWII and remained on active duty until 1986 by special approval of Congress. A computing legend, Admiral Hopper is quoted as saying “The only phrase I’ve ever disliked is, ‘Why, we’ve always done it that way’ ”.7 It is most destructive phrase in the US DOD. It ends conversations. It is very rarely challenged. The underlying assumptions are so deeply ingrained no one questions them. Even when a new organization is created, the absence of rules is seen as the foremost challenge that must be urgently addressed - not an opportunity to try new ways to see, think or do.
The most extreme example of this phenomena was personally observed by MIL when an incoming senior commander and his team believed their new HQ was simply too broken to be fixed. Unable to fire people, they knew they did not have the time, energy, people or funds to do root and branch reform of the organization, while also running a war. So in the interests of speed and in an attempt to minimize resistance to change, they left the existing HQ in place spinning its wheels, and created a shadow HQ charged with implementing the new commanders vision for a small footprint, effective, agile, fast moving, decision-making machine.
The idea was for the shadow HQ to overwhelm and devour the actual HQ without the latter really noticing. The only problem with this idea was it was so maladroitly administered that it was like smacking a hornets nest to the ground hoping the hornets would not notice! Suddenly the air was filled a swirling black cloud stinging the threat to the hive. One sting is unpleasant, but manageable. Two or more will drive off even the most determined cocaine bear.
In bureaucracies, a sure sign trouble is ahead occurs when discussions turn to virology. In the Hive HQ, there was no time to do any work. All energy was devoted to discussing the formation of “anti-bodies” created by the “virus” of "new ideas".8 Both the old and new HQs failed as a result of this effort. Eventually, when the leader moved on, the new was subsumed by the old and everything returned to SNAFU.
Upstairs - Downstairs
Incredibly, while all that was going on, exactly the same thing was happening inside the old HQ in one of the J-codes, completely independently of the initiatives noted above.9 An innovative J-code leader got around the inability to fire people by creating his own shadow organisation. The difference was in the implementation. Slowly and quietly, he instituted an upstairs-downstairs divide that very few people noticed.
He put the dead weight downstairs in the huge open plan area where thinking is impossible. All the rote, color by numbers tasks that need to be done in any HQ, were allocated to that staff. They happily got on with building powerpoint presentations to show to other staff officers and making incremental syntax changes in sacred texts that no one reads. The brightest among them, would occasionally get consumed by hours of passionate debate about definitions in military doctrine. Sure, “words have meanings” (the favorite justification for this time-suck), but this was reductionism gone wild. It was all ‘angels on the head of a pin’ stuff.
They never went any further than discussing definitions. They never once had an operational or strategic solution to an actual problem the HQ’s fielded forces faced in the real world. It was evident they thought angel debating was extremely important and the highest form of “work”. If you see this in your organization, consider it a huge red flag.
“Doctrine is the last refuge of the unimaginative” General James Mattis
Downstairs was dominated by what MIL called the “RIP system”. Charitably, RIP stood for Retired In Place. Realistically, it was people who wanted to be left to Rest In Peace. The RIP system incentivized incurious indolence. Typically, a 20 year active duty veteran on their last tour in the HQ would retire on a 6 figure military pension. On their last Friday in uniform they would have a party, be given a medal (the staffing of which, and the text of the commendation, they wrote themselves), make moving farewell speeches followed by drinks and canapés. The following Monday the same person would return to work in casual attire and spend the next 20 years earning a 6 figure GS salary on top of their military pension. At the end of the 40 years, they would have two six figure pensions.10
“An organization gets the behavior it rewards” General James Mattis
Meanwhile, upstairs, the majority of staff were upwardly mobile uniformed officers on 2 year tours of duty. They were sealed off in a completely different world, getting on with the “real work” of the organization - which was solving nationally sensitive and important problems. Small teams aligned with specific threats or challenges were literally locked away in compartmented offices. The people downstairs were not given the codes to the cypher locks. No one really knew much about what happened upstairs because it was so secretive.
Upstairs/downstairs was a clever solution to the challenges of the rest in peace system, because the RIP people had zero interest, ability or incentive to “rock the boat” with new ideas. They had two pensions to protect. It also got them out of the way, so the mission-focused teams would not be disturbed by endless nay-saying for which the drones had black belts.11
Methodology
So to avoid being a box on a “innovation initiatives” check list or org chart, much more is needed than just putting up a new sign over a doorway. Organizationally, innovation requires a mix of the right skills base, ways of seeing the world, authorities, funds, collaborations in government and out, and senior leader trust - resulting in their habitual engagement with the work of the innovators. Yet, even then, an office for new ideas runs the risk of becoming a make-work organization if their methodology is weak.
For example, scripted war-games designed to “validate” an outcome, instead of a genuine free-flow without guardrails (except the laws of physics, the laws of war and common sense), have no value. There is an apocryphal saying that when war with China breaks out, all the carriers will be sailed to RI because they never sink at the Naval War College Wargaming department.12 Games are a place to explore weaknesses in both sides, not faux-validate preconceived ideas.13 The best outcome in war gaming is a crushing Blue force (allied/friendlies) defeat by unexpected means.14 Finding previously undetected weaknesses in Blue forces should provoke new thinking that enables prevention/mitigation in combat. Finding weakness in Red forces should create opportunities for exploitation in combat. Admiral Nimitz remarked after WWII that the only surprise not anticipated by 1930s war games was the kamikaze.
Zero sum bureaucracy
Bureaucracies rarely advocate for a net zero sum reallocation of resources in the creation of new organizations. This is not just because self perpetuation is the prime directive of any organization. It is also because complexity is almost always additive to the challenges facing society. In the face of the additive nature of contemporary national security challenges, it takes genuine leadership and courage to cut and replace a function. Should a previously covered challenge blow up, there will be no end of recriminations.
In fact, a crisis does not even have to eventuate for resistance to new ides to spread like wildfire. The announcement of efforts to test and evaluate new concepts of warfare in the Pacific by Marine Commandant General David H. Berger, USMC, drove the entire Marine Corps community into a verbal civil war. It would have been easy and indeed, customary, for Gen Berger to ask for more resources ‘to do some studies’. Congress is not known for saying no to the fighting forces. Indeed, the legislative branch is so eager to fund the Pentagon it often forces them to buy or keep equipment the Pentagon publicly declares they do not need or want!
Instead, Gen Berger did something that is unprecedented in the annals of modern American military life.15 He decided to make change from within his existing budget. He reduced some equipment and organizations in order to trial new combinations of the same. In every case but one, these were side by side comparisons where old systems were retained but in reduced numbers.16 The only capability that was cut entirely was tanks. These were transferred to the US Army. Had he treated tanks the same as the other systems he paired back, he might have avoided some of the backlash.
The reaction to the trials of new ideas has been fascinating in that it quickly became personal and embittered because it’s not about fighting the next war at all. It is all about the threat of cultural change inside the Corps.17 The Force Design 2030 issue will be the subject of articles in the MIL because it is one of the most public innovation efforts underway in the DOD and it is pregnant with examples of opportunities and challenges for creative minds in a bucraucracy.
So the proliferation of bureaucracy is not innovation.
Cultural change ≠ innovation
If we knew for a fact that wearing hot pink shorts would guarantee a victory in a future war with China, would we be able to convince the operators of SEAL Team VI, III MEF, the 7th Fleet, the 25th Inf Div, and US Air Forces Pacific to adapt to the hot pink shorts innovation?
Not a chance.
If the introduction of aircraft, tanks, drones, and most recently, Marines without tanks, have caused military cultures to rupture; changing all uniforms to hot pink shorts would be like executing a bald eagle on live tv in front of an audience of inflamed Iranian clerics jumping up and down slapping their chests chanting “death to America”.
This ludicrous example is used to make the point that creating a creativity culture in the most structured system on earth is a big ask. By definition, the primary purpose of bureaucracy is to reinforce an established order within an obedience culture. Careerism, replication preference, risk aversion, inertia, and zero-fail expectations, all encourage stasis. The easiest decision is not to make one.
Acting on unverifiable ideas for change, that resist easy measurement, takes real courage.
Technological change “as innovation” has a powerful attraction that organizational and cultural change do not. Unlike the others, technological change arrives pre-verified by clearly identifiable “metrics”. If there is risk in implementation, it is usually of the deconfliction and/or integration kind. But these are often technologically solvable. Alternatively, after a certain point, the inapplicability of new technology usually becomes sufficiently clear to result in program termination.18
Bureaucracies are excellent at measuring inputs but struggle with measuring non-technological outputs. Organizational and cultural change rarely produces clearly identifiable “metrics”. That alone makes such changes comparatively high risk. Cultural/organizational change may multiply, not divide problems, and there is no clear way to know which effect is taking place.19 As Jerry Muller brilliantly observed, unlike the technological sphere, in the socio-cultural sphere “not everything that is important is measurable, and much that is measurable is unimportant”.
All of these factors combine to make cultural change the hardest venture upon which anyone can embark. There is no set template. It’s hard to measure other than “command climate” and “productivity” - which are likely under multiple influences that are hard to separate. In many cases a good command climate - or a bad one - are sufficient to know if a culture is healthy. A positive climate may have nothing to do with innovation. Also, what does “productivity” look like in a policy organization? MIL would hasten to suggest the volume of text produced is not the metric of success.
Look for outputs - has a problem been solved or minimized? Has a better way of thinking about a problem been identified? Has a better way of doing things been found?
Yet while cultural change is the hardest and in many ways most important innovation, it too is insufficient to generate true innovation.
The answer is a combination of all of the above factors are required to innovate in the largest and most complex system in the world. In the next post we will outline the reasoning behind this equation - Innovation = Possibilism + Adhocracy + Methodology
Remember those articles - the world would be brought together in unique ways where new communities of enlightened happy connected people would be formed across barriers. None of those articles foresaw how Russian agitprop would commandeer social media feeds using cut outs like Cambridge Analytica to suborn elections, create domestic strife and ferment civil war in the US (or Brexit in the UK) resulting in an attack on the certification of an election by a violent mob who had been stirred up by completely fake news by Russian and domestic propagandists (Internet Research Agency and Rupert Murdock’s Fox that was recently exposed as knowingly inciting its viewers with what it knew to be total lies about “the stolen election”).
Schmidt’s article also has the feel of the military literature of the same period. The “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA) was driven by technology that was so advanced that no enemy had a chance against the US. This came out of the quick and easy 1991 Gulf War. That war stunned the world with never before seen high tech weapons systems developed for Air-Land Battle in Europe against the Soviets. Who can forget watching the real-time nose cone video of a Tomahawk fly thousands of miles into a window of a building. It was impressive. It scared the hell out of the Chinese who decided there and then to embark on a massive military modernization program to prevent the US from dominating Chinas coast. In a sense, the Gulf War created the modern Chinese military and the Anti Access and Area Denial (A2AD) it projects deep into the third island chain.
He acknowledges that the free market system has successfully got the US on top then argues we must emulate the CCP’s centralized government run system. In a nutshell, ES wants the USG to spend on S&T firms in the same way it spent on defense firms in the Cold War. He wants government spending on tech companies (like those he and his friends run) to soar to keep up with China. He is advocating the USG emulate the CCP in taking a direct hand in S&T investments. He notes the free market approach of the US system has worked - until now. But the Chinese govt has advantages we do not "In the Chinese model of civil-military fusion, the government promotes domestic competition and funds emerging winners as 'national champions'. The American model relies on a more disparate set of private actors"... which he thinks is not up to the challenge of keeping pace with the centralized Chinese model. Consequently "the United States will need to invest in all parts of the innovation cycle, funding not just basic research but also commercialization."
Without this spending, ES argues, the US risks intelligence failures. The fact is, with the best funded and most sophisticated intelligence collection systems in the world, we continue to suffer intelligence failures and strategic surprise (end of the Cold War, 9/11, Arab Spring, J6). Not because we underinvest in S&T but because we do not value, invest in, and create the right culture to cultivate innovative intelligence analysis. We are world class collectors but the evidence suggests we are not as strong in analysis or, alternatively, have great analysts we ignore on the big questions.
The proof of this is how the IC handled the Ukraine pre-war period. This is a case study in the importance of the right people in the right places at the right time using highly refined analysis. According to a fascinating account quoting all the major players, the biggest challenge was convincing people (here and abroad) that Putin really was building up to something on the scale of a WWII blitzkrieg assault - not his typical ‘little green men’ covert action that everyone assumed, or hoped, it was going to be.
With American credibility undermined by our unsubstantiated justifications for the war in Iraq, that were later revealed as hollow, ‘just trust us’ was not going to work. So to their great credit the Biden Administration engaged in a successful new intelligence policy of radical declassification and sharing. First, to convince those who did not want to accept a full scale invasion was on the cards (reminiscent of 1930s). Second, to deny Putin red-flag and fake casus belli narratives. The result of this innovation in intelligence policy resulted in Putin getting cornered and unable to deny his aggression. Narratives are bigger than battles in some respects. The IC forced Putin to die on the narrative hillside.
Putin assumed his energy and refugee weapons would break NATO and the EU. They might had his aggression been a surprise. Instead, his actions validated US warnings that his plans were on a WWII-battle scale. Thus empowered with forewarning, his neighbors understood if they didn't hang together they would hang individually. They knew they had no choice but to resist.
The Kabul withdrawal came to a head in this period. Like many, MIL was furious at how it was handled. The article on intelligence innovation in Ukraine gave MIL a much deeper appreciation why Afg was mishandled. The American war there was over, due to a long list of reasons, including the Trump Administration’s own rush for the doors - setting artificial deadlines, making bad deals with the Taliban and releasing terrorist en mass. One way or another we were getting out. The Biden Administration rushed the withdrawal because a much greater threat was about to explode in ways that could change the world overnight. Strategy as MIL always told his war college students, is about prioritization. The article enables readers to see the NSC/IC/DOD got the Kabul/Ukraine prioritization right. This was a classic innovation in intelligence operations that will be studied for years to come. It had nothing to do with changes to S&T and everything to do with thinking and acting differently.
Hat tip to the late, great, Australian art critic Robert Hughes.
Warfare and war are two distinct phenomena. War is the ‘why’, warfare is the ‘how’. Both of these radically changed and grew exponentially more complicated with the advent of the space and nuclear ages. Bureaucracy had to be created to develop and implement solutions to the myriad challenges and opportunity presented by both. An ideological position of maintaining “small government” and ignoring these issues by not creating organizations to manage them, would have been a dereliction of duty and undermined the national security of the United States and global security more broadly. The point being, not all bureaucracy is inherently evil. It is often badly needed. The issue is not (always) the size of bureaucracy, but how it functions.
Previously the Director of CIA wore two hats - head of the entire Intelligence Community (IC) and leader of the agency primarily responsible for HUMINT. The CIA performs many functions, but HUMINT is its official core business. ODNI appears to have been a success. The transition to the new system had some turbulence, but from the outside looking in, it seems both CIA and ODNI have adjusted to the new arrangements in productive and useful ways. Much of this was due to leadership in both organizations willing to work with one another and supporting the change.
DHS was created to detect, deter, prevent and fight terrorism within the United States (the homeland). It had ample detailed advanced intelligence of a domestic terrorist attack and did nothing.
Up to and including the leader who created it who over time will likely be turned against it by the “innovators” disturbing the peace with a constant stream of “new ideas”. Typically, such offices become the butt of jokes as “the place where ideas go to die”.
To see her interview with David Letterman click here.
This was long before covid and the first time MIL heard viral metaphors in the work place. The passionate hatred of “the new” was boundless.
In US military HQs organizations are divided by by code. J for “joint” and numbered 1-8 or so (it varies) where 1 relates to administration, 2 intelligence, 3 ops, 4 logistics and so on.
Some were mission focused professionals whose experience was invaluable. Their dedication was such they they would have signed up for a second hitch even if it meant they ended up with one pension that they could not access until they finished their second job.
The current system would make Karl Marx proud of what the workers have achieved in their own interests. Right wing politicians might call this double or triple socialism - getting double the income and all the benefits from the state, with free lifetime socialized health care and free university tuition for kids as the cherry on top. but the gravy train does not end there. The system to determine the degree of disablement of veterans like these seems pretty lax. One might be forgiven for thinking that a 100% disable vet would be someone who lost limbs or had crushing TBI or other unseen injuries. Many do. However, you don’t see veterans like this in military HQs. MIL was sat next to a perfectly able retiring 06 as he was coached on his retirement paperwork by an RIP colleague. The Colonel grew delighted at how disabled the system said he was because it all added to his bottom line. The thing that was really hard to take is this individual was the sort of person who would rail against ‘welfare queens’ without any self awareness whatsoever. The wife of an officer who received Tricare - maintained she deserved socialized medicine because her husband was a combat hero, by which she meant he went to a war zone. I knew the man well. He never went outside the wire. These are all good people, who served their time and got what they were due. The problem is the incentivization structure.
There was always exceptions in either organizations. if you were a dedicated go-getter stuck with the drones or vice versa you did not enjoy life much.
The Naval War College has a famed war gaming department that gained its reputation in the 1920s and 30s when it successfully predicted most of the events of WWII in the Pacific theatre (War Plan Orange).
See Karl Popper.
Basic war game terminology is as follows: Games are comprised of 3 cells - White - Administration of the game; Blue - friendly forces; and Red - enemy forces.
Likely also the most expedient. It allowed him to get on with putting his vision straight into the test and evaluation phase, instead of getting bogged down in years of funding battles within the E ring - the most dangerous battlefield in the world - that would have still been raging when he retires without one idea being tested.
The obvious implication being they could be reconstituted if the testing and evaluation program proved they remained a superior solution to the problem set.
Take away the unique aspects of the Marine Corps and it just becomes a second land army. This at any rate is the deepest fear in the pit of any Marines stomach. In part because it has already happened in 1918 and 2003. But the logical extension - and biggest monster under the bed - that the Corps will be disbanded, is ludicrous. It didn’t happen in 1919 or 2020. It is no going to happen. But try convincing a Marine of this. Likewise, the Air Force as the “newest” service (before the Space Force came along) has similar unfounded fears.
The Marine “Force Design 2030” debate has elements that are unique to the Corps. The USMC prides itself on being operationally self sufficient. It came to this position through blood, toil, tears and sweat. Marine units “task organize” to meet a variety of challenges where each task force has its own, land, logistics, and aviation, components. Marines do not call in the Air Force to provide close air support on operations. They call other Marines with whom they have trained from a common baseline of expectations, techniques, tactics and procedures. In other words, from the same culture dedicated to mutual interlocking support.
Tanks were viewed in this lens and as such was too much for many to stomach. Call in the Army to support a Marine Task Force with heavy armor? It is too much. It breaks the cultural code. The initial lines of resistance addressed this issue only obliquely. Phrased in terms of the destruction of the concept and application of combined arms where tanks are a fundamental component part.
Yet another fundamental creed of Marines is to ‘improve, adapt and overcome’. Have they worked effectively side by side with Army armor in the past? Of course they have. Equally they cant get o the fight without the Navy (a source of endless tension between the two services when the issue of the amphibious feet comes up). It is possible to reform the way the Corps does warfare while maintaining the integrity of its task-organization construct. It will just take a lot of thought, trial and evaluation.
There is a whole sub-set of this debate related to the lessons of the war in Ukraine that will be addressed elsewhere on MIL. Suffice it to note, that evidence both for and against tanks (for the most contentious example) has been presented by both Russian and Ukrainian misuse/use of these platforms in different contexts. How applicable that is to a small island campaign in the Pacific is an additional analytical wrinkle to be ironed out. That opens another debate, which is should the USMC focus on the requirements of the Pacific like it did in WWII, or should it continue to be a global emergency first response force capable of all operations in microcosm, before the Army and Air Force show up in sufficient strength to take over the heavy lifting.
Politics and money often get in the way of pure technological decision.
Possibly until much later when the damage is done. The Marine debate is all about this risk - in part.