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Brian Hilton
ISSS Meeting at Asilomar, June 28-July 2, 1999
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Special Integration Group on Business and Industry, July 1, 1999, 1:30
p.m.
These participant's notes
were created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s)
and comments from the audience. These should not be viewed as official
transcripts of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual.
Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected.
Questions about content should be directed to the originator. These notes
have been contributed by Ian Simmonds at the IBM
TJ Watson Research Center ( http://www.research.ibm.com ).
Employed by the auditing business within the "Defence Industry"
in the UK. Really, it's the killing people business.
Since "killing people" is a rare event, you really need to know how
successful you will be in those rare events.
Warfare is a very systemic thing:
Fighting power is about a balance:
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physical component -- manpower,
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conceptual component -- how they deploy and set up their stuff, at all
levels from general to every soldier. Very hard to assess that, especially
under high stress conditions
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moral component -- willingness of people in the face of extreme adversity
to maintain what you are doing no matter what.
This relates to previous speakers in that military practices have evolved
over a huge amount of time.
Ego:
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you cannot be a military leader and be disfunctionally egotistical
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great military leaders (in Britain) have always exposed themselves
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military leaders reinforce these morals by exposing themselves with their
troops
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organization deliberately sets up training to structurally remove ego --
deliberately move people around, all the time.
The move towards "economy":
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using virtual reality to do that
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but the problem with simulated reality is that you can hit the reset button,
so it is not adequate
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even in real simulations, such as war games, you have problems
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deliberately encourage diversity
Another "economy" is to remove the boundary between forces:
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"transportation is a common need"
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but there is a need for the diversity of organization because of different
risks
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in the air force, out of 70000, about 500 put themselves at physical risk,
so tremendous antipathy between pilots and ground crew -- and this is desireable
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in the navy, most people are at risk. Here, only one person is in control
(the captain), so you need a social relationship
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in the army, everyone makes decisions because they are "on there own" on
the battlefield, so needs to be morally committed. So very tight personal
relationships.
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each of these cultures has distinctly evolved over time, and rightly so.
Joe Arteaga: so the simulation stuff removes the moral dimension, so is
potentially very dangerous
Brian: the ideal of modern warfare is to have the other side believe
that they cannot survive, and thus not to dare to attack.
Ely Dorsey: the key driver for the military is to justify its existence.
Compounded by the interests of the military industrial complex. The question
is on the legitimizing on the topic of military.
Enrique: I'm the father of a son who was sent to the Malvinas/Falklands.
Enrique: It would be interesting to study companies that are more like
ships, air force, army.
Brian: Warfare has tended to be evolutionary.
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