The Jesters tackle counterproliferation

We have several enduring interests that our longtime readers will have noted us discuss before. The first - consumption of interesting audio media - is based on the inevitable realities of the Beltway commute, frequent extended travel time, and long periods of enforced downtime at various airstrips, motor pools, and other transient spaces around the globe. The second is the conviction that better insight can often be generated by the jesters at the futurists' court than the professional prognosticators – or at the very least, the clowns utilized for illustration and the divergence analytic methodology.

It is not often these interests converge. However, there is apparently a growing and vibrant podcasting scene occupied by speculative fiction writers of all sorts, and it is from that space that we were given (by a more science fiction oriented colleague) a story which illustrates – as only a fictional vignette can – the potential difficulties of future counterproliferation activities in the expeditionary and post-conflict environment. Thus we also recommend highly to our readers the short piece “Clockwork Atom Bomb” produced over at the Escape Pod “podcast magazine” (an entity which we had not previously been familiar with, and do not otherwise attempt evaluate). We think the piece will also be of particular interest to those which routinely must argue the effects of perverse economic incentives in transnational issues, and those that handle accounts related to sub-Saharan Africa.

The piece is not recommended for those that take their analytic tasks too literately, or their futures intelligence within too narrowly constrained boundaries of simple linear projection. But it is perfect for a short diversion to recapture otherwise lost time.

Insight problems, red cell mindsets and alternative analysis

We have long held mixed opinions regarding the computer security guru Bruce Schneier. While he often says interesting and provocative things, and has a distinct flair for memorably naming common phenomena (including introducing nomenclature such as security theatre, which even senior Transportation Security Administration officials have adopted in their own verbiage). At the same time, his off the cuff commentary frequently reaches far beyond his area of expertise into things of which he clearly has limited knowledge, but which he asserts with the same confidence – with less than useful results. It is a classic problem of the expert’s paradox, one frequently seen in those SME’s that spend a great deal of time in the media’s limelight.

Despite this caveat, we do commend to our readers a recent piece in which Schneier has brought to our attention an interesting course in computer security. The course attempts to inculcate the “attacker’s mindset” into new students, teaching them to view problems from the adversary’s perspective in what intelligence professionals will recognize as a classic red cell fashion. He notes that this kind of thinking is quite alien to most engineers. We concur, and to this category we would also add lawyers, most economists and political scientists, as well as others of like inclination which have been educated within the formal strictures of similar academic disciplines that do not value alternative models outside of their own recognized boundaries.

We are happy to see such matters being discussed in the otherwise normally disconnected halls of the academy. We feel it crystallizes an approach to addressing one of the core problems of the intelligence profession – that of teaching analysts about insight problems, and in particular the kind of insight problems that require experiential epiphanies to begin to understand. Much of the lack of creativity and loss of imagination in the intelligence field can be attributed to attempts to bound non-deterministic problems too tightly within the confines of a given methodological approach. While structured analytical techniques are vital to exploring the fleeting quicksilver of insight, those who try to squeeze too hard will find that quicksilver escapes their grasp. You cannot teach insight – you must inspire it, and teach the methods which can reliably generate such inspiration.

We view this as a vitally important and almost entirely neglected aspect of current intelligence education and training. Given that alternative analysis has been enshrined as a requirement to meet community standards, and that formal red cell efforts continue to proliferate throughout many agencies and organizations, cultivating the kind of analysts which can perform well in those environments is vital. And unfortunately, most current instruction falls woefully short of that which is needed to accomplish such a task.

Jesters at the futurist court’s table

This post’s title refers to a statement once made by the author Bruce Sterling regarding the role of science fiction and other speculative writers in the larger business of futures analysis. However, those fools have several advantages that have caused them to be increasingly sought out by the “professional” prognosticators.

Firstly, they are unafraid to experiment and to push the boundaries. A good speculative writer has imagination and innovation at the heart of the work, something that naturally trends against the grain of the conservatism often found in other types of futures analysis. Commercial authors who write for entertainment value do not risk ridicule for odd ideas, but rather find their successes in the obsessive and fractal complexity of the subcultures out of which spawn the very drivers of futurity.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, despite the odd bells and inappropriate comments that interrupt the supposed gravitas of an official proceeding, these are first and foremost writers and storytellers. Both are something of a lost art in many shops - destroyed by neglect of poor hiring and training processes which do not value those skills, and deliberate suppression through the seven levels of editing and coordination hell whose only purpose is to produce the blandest of common denominator products with no remnant of voice.

It seems that our neighbors to the north, in an effort to explore their own pathways to transformation and the reinvention of a martial traditional into the post-modern hydra of peacekeeping and human security, also chose to seek the service of such a storyteller. Theirs was Karl Schroeder, and the work, Crisis at Zefra, can be found along with a host of other interesting material in their National Defense Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts.

It should be noted that no less an authority than Shakespeare recognized the crucial contributions of the jester, clown, and fool to the courts of power in many of his works. Given that entire industries have been spawned as men chase the visions of their youth’s idle stories, the role of those who can conceptualize such futures will be ever more critical. Unfortunately, like most truly good analysis, this is a difficult and often non-reproducible art outside of the few unique minds which have mastered it. But the cultivation of this human capital is possible with a little effort and investment, if the right breathing space for such creativity could be carved from the darker reaches of the stifling bureaucracies that would naturally crush such heresy.

In a related matter, we note and second the call by Zenpundit for the inclusion of others outside of engineering in the development of new tools for visual analysis: “Sometimes concepts or scenarios are alinear and are best conveyed by ambiguity and paradox and the input of actual artists whose processing may be more intuitive and actively visual might give the data an entirely different, possibly better, spin.” Undoubtedly true, and well worth exploring.

We hasten to add, however, that we do not wish to see further examples of the “Hollywood factor”, where set designers and other species of professional illusionist are called upon to craft the foundations of new efforts. While the results make for good visuals and press conferences, we should not be in the business of fooling ourselves. There is enough of the aura of the mystique wreathing these matters as things now stand. After all, when even the simplest of small plastic tools can take on totemic importance, we need no artificially constructed cultures. Those which are allowed to grow organically from within serve the purpose far better.

So between the boundaries of the absurd and the insight of the sublime, the jesters may help the community walk the troubled path of prediction. Some early efforts have been made to incorporate new types of individuals into analytical efforts, primarily dealing in alternative analysis and Red Cell efforts. Perhaps the increasing use of boundary spanning information sharing and communication environments for production, enabled by new technologies, will allow experimentation beyond the normal Delphic focus group approach and into new methodologies more closely integrated with the storyteller’s art.