1 Soul Bound
1.1 Finding her Feet
1.1.5 An Inscrutable Mastermind
1.1.5.2 Sharpe Lecture: decision loops
Nadine had entered the lecture theatre to the sound of clashing swords. The podium at the front had been moved from the center of the stage to one side and Tomsk was exchanging blows with a woman. They were both wearing masks and other protective gear, but she could guess it was Tomsk simply because nobody else was that damn tall. His reach was far longer than the woman’s, but she more than held her own; she moved like lightning, pushing him back and back.
Dr. Sharpe, who was sitting in the front row, waited until people had arrived then, still sitting, he started talking into a mic, so everyone could hear him over the sound of the swords.
“The world’s best fencer doesn’t fear a merely good fencer. She can predict his every move.”
Tomsk tripped over his own feet and fell, his foil flying out of his hand, bouncing off the podium, and hitting the woman in the middle of her back.
“She fears terrible fencers, because no-one can predict what fools like that will do.”
They both stopped, stood up, removed their helmets to have some water. He was smiling broadly, she was laughing silently.
“Thank you Alex and Kate. Let’s look at why that is. Slowly this time. When you’re ready.”
They put their helmets back on, and stood facing each other in the ready position, right foot forwards, body turned so the right shoulder is ahead of the left shoulder, foil in the right hand pointed at the opponent’s eyes, left arm back out of the way and right arm nearly by the side, bent at the elbow with the hand in front of the center of the body.
Alex slowly extended his arm, and his foil lightly tapped Kate’s right shoulder. Kate did nothing to stop him, her sword as steady as if held by a statue.
“This is a direct attack. If Kate can anticipate, by how he stands or where he is looking, that Alex is about to do a direct attack, there’s a move she can do that beats it.”
Alex withdrew his sword, and then slowly started to repeat the same direct attack. This time Kate moved her sword to deflect Alex’s away from her shoulder and in a continuation of the same move, placed the tip of her sword on his chest.
“This is a parry-riposte. If Alex can anticipate that Kate has prepared herself to respond that way to a direct attack by him, he can defeat her by pretending to attack, but not actually carrying through on it, in order to get her sword out of the way.”
The fencers began again. Alex started to do a direct attack, Kate started moving her sword to parry, Alex halted his attack and circled his sword under Kate’s still moving sword so he now had free access. He placed the tip of his sword on her chest.
“This is known as a feint. However, if Kate realises Alex is bluffing and his initial move is just a feint, she can ignore it in favour of just doing a direct attack of her own.”
The fencers began again. Alex started to do a feint. But this time, rather than trying to parry it, Kate just started extending her own arm. Alex halted his attack at the same point as during the feint, but Kate just kept extending her arm, ending with her sword touching Alex’s shoulder.
Sharpe brought up a slide:
Rock beats Scissors direct attack beats feint attack
Scissors beats Paper feint attack beats parry-riposte
Paper beats Rock parry-riposte beats direct attack
“But fencing is more complex than a child’s game. In Rock-Scissors-Paper, the two opponents always make their moves simultaneously, then prepare for their next move. In fencing, preparation is a matter of making decisions with your mind and of moving your body and placing your weight. If the two opponents have equal speed of thought and movement, then it comes down to skill and how well they read or anticipate each other’s intentions. But if one is faster than the other, they can force the other into making hasty decisions that are bad or predictable. They can attack while the other is still off balance or has their sword out of position.”
The two started fencing again, speeding up in stages, until the blades were a blur.
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“Control the timing, control the tempo, and you can pick a moment for your attack when they are not prepared to receive it, surprising them and either allowing you to hit them or forcing them to hastily retreat.”
Tomsk was retreating now; Kate cornered him and lunged, body fully extended, and struck home. He died dramatically, much to her satisfaction. She placed a foot upon his defeated body and raised her sword over her head in triumph, before giving him a hand up. They both took off their helmets and bowed, then left the stage.
Dr. Shape clicked onto another slide, showing a man by a fighter jet.
“This is an American pilot Colonel John Boyd. They called him ‘forty second’ because not only did he always defeat his opponents in aerial plane-versus-plane dogfights, he generally took far less than a minute to do it.”
“He spent the latter part of his life, explaining to generals and executives how he did it. Boyd’s theory was that, in battle, opponents keep cycling through four steps: observe–orient–decide–act.”
“Observe - gain new data.”
“Orient - synthesise this new data with what you already know.”
“Decide - modify your plan, based upon your modified understanding.”
“Act - change what you’re doing, if your new plan calls for it.”
He paused for a moment, to check heads were nodding and that the students were following his explanation.
“Your aim is to cycle through this loop faster than your opponent does. Get inside their decision loop, in the same way that the faster fencer does. Here’s how a colleague described Boyd’s endgame.” he brought up a slide
The key is to obscure your intentions and make them unpredictable to your opponent while you simultaneously clarify his intentions. That is, operate at a faster tempo to generate rapidly changing conditions that inhibit your opponent from adapting or reacting to those changes and that suppress or destroy his awareness. Thus, a hodgepodge of confusion and disorder occur to cause him to over- or under-react to conditions or activities that appear to be uncertain, ambiguous, or incomprehensible.
“Of course, in 2030, humans rarely fly military fighter planes. Unmanned planes can literally stay inside the turning curve of their opponent, because they are not limited in how many Gs they can pull without losing consciousness. But the principles remain the same as they did back in Boyd’s day. Get more data, assimilate it better, stay flexible so you can react to opportunities, and act before they do.”
“That first bit, getting more data than your opponent, sounds very similar to the asymmetric information advantage we were talking about last week, doesn’t it? Mislead your opponent. Surprise can be when your opponent doesn’t see something until it is too late, but more often it is when your opponent does see something, but incorrectly categorises what it is or what it intends to do, like a feint in fencing.”
“Why is that vital to organising an effective protest?”
“We’ve spoken about the importance of controlling the narrative. Painting yourself as someone the populace identifies with and your opponent as ‘the other’. We’ve spoken about factors affecting the perception of hypocrisy and of whether an action was justified or an atrocity. I’d like to briefly mention three types of propaganda.” he brought up a slide:
White propaganda
- Messages you generate, that correctly appear to come from you.
Grey propaganda
- Messages you generate, that are unattributed and untraceable.
Black propaganda
- Messages you generate, that incorrectly appear to come from your opponent
“So, for example, if I stand in front of you and claim that I’m a better fencer than Alex, that’s white propaganda. The claim is untrue, but it is clearly me who is making the claim.”
“If I pay Kate to claim that she has seen me duel against Alex and that I won all three matches, and you are unaware that I’ve bribed her and believe her to be a neutral expert, that would be an example of grey propaganda. The same if I had her spread that claim as a rumour from a friend of a friend.”
“If I forge a letter appearing to be from Alex, bemoaning his losing a match to me, and leave it where you can ‘accidentally’ find it, that would be black propaganda.”
“What if I fake a video, by taking a video of Kate beating Alex and morphing it using software so that it now appears to show me defeating him. If I then show that to you, is it white, grey or black?”
He suited his actions to his words, clicking a button to display a video of Alex being beaten by Kate with Kate’s head crudely replaced by Sharpe’s own head.
“You laugh. But consider now what happens if you are leading a peaceful protest and someone marching along with you, proudly carrying your banner, is secretly working for your opponent? What happens if that infiltrator waits until the cameras of the media are upon him, screws his face up in apparent hatred and rage, and then hits a cute police woman over the head with your banner, leaving her bruised and bloody? Who will get the blame? Who would listen if you later claim ‘he wasn’t one of us, we’ve never seen him before’ ?”
“Always have a way to identify to the public which activists you accept as being on your side, and a clear way to denounce those who are not part of your movement. Control your brand. Get inside your opponent’s decision loop. Don’t let them get inside yours.”
“Counter-intelligence is vital, and the best way to acquire it is to win defectors to your cause by winning the moral argument. Someone who can be bought by financial considerations once, can be bought a second time. Someone who converts out of conviction, because they can no longer stomach staying with their current side, is far more reliable.”
“Imagine if you knew about the infiltrator in advance. You could have someone march behind him with a placard that had an arrow on it pointing to the person saying ‘This guy’s real name is Emilio Vidal, he is being paid by Exxon’s department of dirty tricks, bank account number 07395254, he is not one of us.’ wait until he is just about to hit the photogenic policewoman and then pull the cover off the placard so all the media photographs show it clearly.”
“Parry-riposte.”