Fun with Friction: QMN004

The Quartermaster Newsletter, Monday, 29 April

FUN WITH FRICTION. (Today’s report is a 4 minute read)

BLUF: 200 years ago we figured out friction’s everywhere. We overcome it by pushing decisions down to the lowest possible level based on a well-understood, centralized intent that gets us all to the same goal.

Brady here. On Friday we got KS’s take on friction points and an hour prior we also had Buzz Andersen’s turn at Why Is This Interesting talking about top-down oversimplification and dictation and its historical roots. Both concepts are at the core of a topic I think is critical to convey here - how elite organizations like the US Army Special Forces thinks about friction when it raises armies around the world - and where its mindset comes from.

In the same period of European history Buzz described, Prussia led by Frederick the Great had built the most enviable land army in the world. Trained ruthlessly to be a formation of unfeeling, unthinking robots (kind of like The Unsullied in GOT), as long as they were led by a competent marshal (and Frederick the Great is considered a genius) they were unstoppable. Battle after battle they wiped the floor with the competition because they did whatever they were told regardless of consequences - but times change. Napoleon Bonaparte was leading an army that functioned a lot more on esprit de corps and personal initiative, and cleaned the clocks of the Prussians at the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt on the same day in 1806. The force that Frederick the Great had built on thoughtless execution couldn’t match the one Napoleon created around on-the-ground decisions by emergent leaders. Luckily there were a few young Prussian officers who witnessed what happened and why and devoted their lives to building a learning organization to overcome the weakness that Prussia had developed.

Among many other foundational concepts, Carl von Clausewitz was the very first to coin the term friction in this context - and he identified it as the difference between real war and war on paper - and has been summarized as the sum of “uncertainties, errors, accidents, technical difficulties, the unforeseen and their effect on decisions, morale and actions.” For instance, KS lives in New York City and has to deal with friction all the time - especially when he’s running and rucking around Manhattan. On a continuous basis he has to quickly avoid large groups of people, traffic lights, barriers, and mass transit infrastructure - all things that can seem static but that together can turn a normally 30-minute run into a 90-minute chain of stoppage and frustration. KS can’t change Manhattan and all these sticking points, but he can modify how he approaches his morning run to make sure he accomplishes his goals in a timely manner. He can understand the intent and make adjustments as he goes, in order to meet that intent.

The thing about friction, Clausewitz found, is that it’s inherent to war and can’t be avoided, and that the proper response is not to try to out-calculate friction, but to understand it and work with it. Commanders have to find the opportunities that lie in war’s naturally occurring friction in order to be successful. The problem for 18th century generals was that they couldn’t see or react to battlefield friction fast enough to make a difference in the fight. Using the guidance of Clausewitz and a few other visionary leaders of his time, the Prussians figured out they had to delegate decision making ability down to the lowest possible level (which means inherent decentralization in execution) based on a well-understood, centralized intent to make sure all forces were fighting toward the same goal. The result of these realizations and methods for achieving success from those early 19th-century battlefields until today (and all the improvements made since then) is a concept and practice called mission command - which is the basis for the way Green Berets plan and fight all over the world for the last 60 years.

And mission command is a story for another newsletter. If you want to get a jump on the topic I can’t recommend Stephen Bungay’s The Art of Action enough. (BJM)

INTERNET OF VULNERABLE THINGS: Hordes of research robots could be hijacked for fun and sabotage (2 min read) As more robots are connected to the internet, they will become targets for cybercrime and mischief. “Tellex and her team discovered more than a hundred systems vulnerable to being accessed and even manipulated over the internet.” The interesting thing here is this bridges the gap between cyber and physical security. If we’re talking about robots being hacked to do actual physical damage, will executives start to take more steps to secure their hardware? (KSA)

ALL YOUR DATA ARE BELONG TO US: You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook. (10 min read) “In the case of apps, the Journal’s testing showed that Facebook software collects data from many apps even if no Facebook account is used to log in and if the end user isn’t a Facebook member.” This included heart rate, ovulation and the homes people were considering buying. In response to this article, period tracking app Flo says it will stop sharing health data with Facebook (3 min read). (BJM)

UNDERSTANDING THE YOOF: Youth Spies and Curious Elders (3 min read) “The curious elder isn’t interested in judging youth, they’re interested in learning from them.” Kleon’s whole post is worth it for the Eno quote: “Whatever happens next, it won’t be what you expected. If it is what you expected, it isn’t what’s happening next.” The mind wobbles. (BJM)

Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.

KS Anthony (KSA) & Brady Moore (BJM)