Legacy Knowledge versus New Data

 

I am reminded of a quote from Winston Churchill during debate, “I admire the martial and commanding air with which the right honorable gentleman treats the facts.  He stands no nonsense from them.” 

For some time, I have been thinking through a blog post on the unreliability of human perceptions, shaky human reasoning in the arena of war and warfare, and resistance to data-driven analysis over legacy knowledge.   “Legacy Knowledge” in any field usually begins with the stuff “everybody knows” – whether it’s at their mother’s knee, in a classroom, from a mentor, or from their experience, and if they’re smart – from the experience of others.   History is replete with stories of conquering armies that accepted their own status quo for too long, only to be overturned by an upstart foe.  One common element in that acceptance is a tendency to believe the legend.

As Vladimir Putin is now amply demonstrating, decisions about making war are frequently affected by mistaken perceptions regarding threats and miscalculations about the conduct of war.  I have also seen at least one as yet unverified claim that the professional cadre of analysts at the FSB, Russia’s intelligence service, are putting out the word that they predicted this outcome, but Putin and his cronies ignored their warnings.

Some years ago, I went to see a movie called “Moneyball”, based on Michael Lewis’s bestselling book about the impact of data science on baseball.  I finally got around to reading the actual book last year and recognized that this story echoed themes from similar earlier episodes, as well as numerous comments from operational analysts, conflict simulation/war game designers, and systems thinkers about the resistance to their observations from their uniformed services and associated civilian officials.

Previous to “Moneyball”, Steven Johnson wrote “The Ghost Map” about the cholera outbreak in 1854 London and how one persistent maverick physician tracked down its source by the careful collection of information about who was contracting cholera, where, when and looking for the how by systematic study of his data.  His findings were rejected outright and ignored until another outbreak about 10 years later forced the issue.

These stories also bring to mind Thomas S. Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (originally published in 1962) which offered insight into how our knowledge of physics advanced as new hypotheses and theories supplanted old ones.  His study of how the scientific ‘establishment’ resisted new theories and new data contributed to a pattern of revolution in science when suddenly the establishment resistance to new thinking was finally swept away.

Kuhn argued that this concept was not applicable to other fields of human endeavor, I and others disagree with him and have found other fields of human activity in which ‘new’ knowledge faces similar challenges in the face of ‘legacy’ knowledge – for example, the ‘revolution in military affairs.’  The common thread linking these stories is the recurring contest in the human mind between ‘legacy knowledge’ and new data-driven ideas.

How Long Does It Take to Build an Army?

 

An army was originally raised simply by gathering together groups of people (usually men but sometimes women and even children) with whatever weapons they had to hand or could be given.  When the conflict for which they were raised came to an end – the survivors mostly went home.  Over the centuries, it occurred to several civilizations that there was a benefit to keeping an army together even after the conflict for which it was raised had ended.  They apparently knew enough about history and humanity to realize that there was very likely to be another conflict in the not so distant future and keeping an army together that had already fought and presumably won, or at least not lost, the last war was probably a good idea – it would certainly save time when the next conflict popped up and such an army of veterans might even have an advantage in that next conflict.

Keeping an army together even when there is no war for them to fight does offer an opportunity for peacetime training and an improvement of its military skills, and perhaps an opportunity to explore and develop more sophisticated tactics and even operations drawing on the experiences of those veterans.  Improvements to existing weapons or the acquisition of new weapons and the training of soldiers on these weapons might further improve such an army’s prospects in the next conflict.

History is replete with examples of the costs and benefits of sending an army home versus keeping it together against the dangers of another conflict.  I think this is the point at which we transition from raising an army to building an army as a social artifact, an institution within a larger socio-political-economic unit.  So just how long does it take to ‘build’ an army?  History suggests that this is a process of decades.

The army of the United States has been both raised and built over its history.  The army of George Washington was raised and brought to a level of capability that would win our independence, but then it was sent home.  We followed this pattern for much of our history, through a second war with Britain, a war with Mexico, a civil war, a war with Spain and two wars in Europe against Germany and its allies.  For most of that history, we also had a small standing “cadre” army, intended to provide the leadership and training for the army that was raised to fight each of these conflicts.

Faced after World War II and Korea with a potential armed conflict with the expanding Soviet Union and its ‘allies’, the USA decided that it was time to build an army, though still modeling it on our experience with citizens inducted into its ranks for short periods.

One key element in building of an army involves training that army on how to train an army.   Baron von Steuben in his drilling of the men at Valley Forge was actually training trainers as each soldier who passed through his tutelage was expected to return to his own unit and pass on what he had learned.  A critical tool with which you build an army is having good examples.  An army can find these in the performance, behavior, and even demeanor of those who previously served in that army.  The U.S. Army and many others draw heavily upon their own history in heritage programs that endeavor to give the latest generation of soldiers positive role models.  The ranks of our armies, especially among the cadre, have always included members of families for whom such service was a tradition if not the occupation of choice and their names are quickly recognized by students of our military history.  In other words, the examples provided of service across generations are invaluable assets.

A second critical element is that an army has to have something to fight for.  Historians and others have long noted that for Americans, each war is usually presented in the terms of a crusade by which we hope to achieve something better.  Author Michael Shaara gave Colonel Lawrence Chamberlain a speech that addresses that question rather well –

“This is a different kind of army. If you look back through history, you will see men fighting for pay, for women, for some other kind of loot. They fight for land, power, because a king leads them or — or just because they like killing.

But we are here for something new. This has not happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free. America should be free ground — all of it. Not divided by a line between slave state and free — all the way, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here, we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here, you can be something. Here, is the place to build a home. But it’s not the land. There’s always more land. It’s the idea that we all have value — you and me. What we’re fighting for, in the end, we’re fighting for each other.”

Historically, individuals fight for survival, for the comrades alongside them, for their families and their larger community even up to and including the nation they represent.  They fight in the hope that by winning their fight, their families and their descendants will have the chance to live an even better life and not just in a material sense.  But they have to hope and believe that that better future is possible or else individual survival again surpasses all of these other things in importance.

Finally, as with many aspects of the human experience, building an army is not something that can be done for a society – that society has to do it for itself, it has to own that army, that army has to reflect the society for which it will be asked to go to war.  Armies that are not integral to the society will not succeed in defending that society and both will fail.

The Irrationality of War and the Failure of Human Reason

 

One of the first things I observed about war and warfare when I began studying them is that war is probably the most irrational of behaviors of humans.  Serious students of war have long agreed that few if any wars have brought greater return to the victor than what the combatants expended in blood and treasure in the war.  Such recognition that war is irrational is not a modern idea:

The outcome corresponds less to expectations in war than in any other case whatever.  Livy

All sciences have principles and rules.  War has none.  Maurice de Saxe

There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.  Sun Tzu 

We must also consider just how bad humans are at waging war.  The number of commanders who won every battle they ever fought can be counted on your fingers while the number of commanders who lost every battle easily fills a graveyard.  Few generals across history can show a success rate that if translated into an MLB batting average would get them on a Hall of Fame ballot.  The master philosopher of war, Clausewitz, expended great energy at the beginning of his magnum opus in identifying the multitude of things that not only could but would go wrong if you chose to go to war.  Modern students of the field are not much more encouraging:

War is a wasteful, boring, and muddled affair.  Sir A P Wavell

War is always a matter of doing evil in hope that good may come of it.  B H Liddell Hart

A contemporary thinker on the subject, Edward Luttwak, wrote an entire book explaining how what is logical in war is usually what would be illogical in any other field of endeavor – “Strategy, The Logic of War and Peace”.  A classic example of the apparent topsy-turvy logic of war is the Roman proverb – “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

History is flush with examples of the irrational on the battlefield.  Watching the British Light Brigade of cavalry charge a line of Russian cannon while also receiving fire from guns on the Brigade’s flanks prompted the French General Pierre Bosquet to declare, “C’est magnifique, mais c’est ne pas le guerre” – “Magnificent, but it is not war.”

Conflict simulations and wargames and simulations will usually not allow players to carry out “irrational” actions even when historically documented.  “Infantry in Battle”, published by the Infantry Journal, presented case studies drawn from the Great War.  One in particular captured the irrational nature of war and warfare. 

On October 29, 1918, the 2^nd Bn/61^st U.S. Infantry received an expected order to capture the German held town of Aincreville.  The battalion commander knew the town was defended by an arcing line of machine gun posts outside of the town and that a prepared artillery barrage would fall about 200 yards in front of the machine guns roughly two minutes after the defenders fired a green star rocket.  The number and condition of the defenders was unknown, but the rumble of supply wagons could be heard along with enemy voices.

The American unit was very tired after almost three weeks of long marches, five days of heavy operations resulting in heavy casualties and little result, several days as reserve while under artillery fire, before receiving replacements and taking up their current position.

There was no covered approach to the German positions and an American artillery barrage would simply alert the German machine gunners and bring down their defensive artillery fire.  In the American commander’s estimation, his weary battalion might choose not to advance under fire across the open ground.  However, estimating that the Germans were just as tired, he believed that if he could bring his battalion to close quarters an attack could succeed.  Upon receipt of the order, he proposed an alternate plan.  Depending entirely upon surprise, the actual plan was known only to the battalion commander, to Lieutenant R W Young - charged with carrying out the attack, and to four or five sergeants in Company F.

The attackers jumped off at 2:30 am without artillery, machine gun, or heavy weapons support, the men moving silently in two waves.  The sergeants who knew the plan were mixed into the second wave to ensure everyone advanced together.  The plan anticipated that the attackers would get within about 30 yards of the German machine gun posts before they were discovered.  When fired upon by the one or two of the machine guns they would take cover.  Lieutenant Young would then fire a green star rocket from a captured German Very Pistol he had secretly carried.  Not seeing the lieutenant fire the rocket, the Americans still recognized the German signal for calling down the defensive barrage.  As soon as Lieutenant Young could see that everyone recognized the danger, he yelled, “Beat it for the town!  It’s your only chance!”  The men ran through the line of still mostly unaware machine guns, across a small shallow stream, and into the town where they were directed into houses and cellars to wait until morning when they would attack the German defenders from the rear.  Once the town was secured, they would signal that with another prearranged rocket.  The village was captured with only one or two casualties, one of them sadly Lieutenant Young.

If it’s stupid but it works, it isn’t stupid.  Sgt Murphy

The biggest challenge for human beings pondering war and warfare is knowing when they actually must go to war as opposed to when they merely ‘want’ to go to war.  Given the irrationality of war and warfare, one should clearly go to war only rarely and under the direst circumstances.

A lot of what happens in war and on the battlefield and how you respond to it depends upon how you perceive it.  The facts and foibles of human perception one of the most critically important aspects of warfare.  I am reminded of the allegory from Socrates, who described a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. They watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. These shadows are the prisoners' reality, but they are not accurate representations of the real world.

Modern science offers us numerous explanations about the limits of human perception.  Our eyes do a pretty good job of capturing light from objects around us and transforming that into information used by our brains, but our eyes don't actually “see” anything. That part is done by our visual cortex. Our eyes being slightly apart creates an image that needs to be corrected.  Scientists describe what our eyes ‘see’ as simply a simulacrum constructed by the brain based upon the signals transmitted to it by the visual receptors at the back of the eye - a mental projection of what the brain interprets based upon the signals reaching it from the eye as the eye perceives light reflected from the world.  Researchers have also determined that human memory is subject to error as each time we access a memory our mind alters it.

Researchers of human behavior long ago identified one of humanity’s most deeply rooted reflex instincts – fight or flight.  Rooted deep in our mammalian past, this instinct pushes us to quickly identify threats and then act by either fleeing or fighting.  Either response frames others as a threat without benefit of a cooler assessment of either capabilities or intentions.  Actual human Intentions are one of the most difficult things for humans to judge.   The essential point is that humans basically are not very good at conducting wars, turn to warfare far too easily and too often as a solution to problems beyond war’s ability to resolve.