Category: Military Strategy

  • Why is it that governments (or large organizations) rarely do anything intelligent?

    This is a strategic exercise in understanding how large groups of people operate. TLDR: You try getting a large group of people to agree on anything while trying to figure out how to pay for it while keeping them all out of trouble. If you can get three strangers to agree on Pizza toppings I’ll…

  • Who would win between Grand Admiral Thrawn with 6 Imperial Star Destroyers vs Grand Moff Tarkin with the first Death Star?

    This is a guilty pleasure.  Yes, I have read far too many books, and a star wars fan, and spend too much time on Quora. Honestly, this is just an illustrative exercise in assessment and investigation scenarios and options.  At first Glance, it would seem that anything vs the Death Star is no contest. But…

  • Is the US uninvadable?

    So kids, this is something I killed a morning  with on Quora back in April – an excuse to write about a scenario I’ve obviously been thinking about for a long time.  After a few months it’s at 161,500 views, so I figure it’s worth sharing on my blog that gets a handful of hits…

  • TED, FRY, Complexity, Systems and Strategy

    First in a series on prediction.  I hope. Today is a simple if abstract discussion.  The math of strategy.  Now the majority of my peers at ASP specifically avoid the quantitative, and most strategists I’ve encountered are  MBA’s, historians, or soldiers that are not that keen on math, and don’t have much use for it…

  • Motives, Managing Expectations, Alignment and Friction.

    So, been gone for a very long time. Explanation – life is what happens while you are making other plans.  Survived the “new normal” economy.  New day job, new house, lots of new changes. First a good strategic lesson I just picked up from a really popular blog:  The Art of Non-Conformity “…one important fact:…

  • The coolest thing I’ve seen all year (AI)

    Hi there world. First – A warning to all you young turks out there gearing up to change the world. It will vary with circumstances, but infants are resource consuming schwerpunkts, that will make it difficult to finish any other projects (Apologies for the slow trickle of articles). Teaser – the lead in is a…

  • The Difference Between Intelligence and Espionage

    An out­side the box strate­gic dis­cus­sion by Ted S Galpin The Dif­fer­ence Between Intel­li­gence and Espi­onage. Is a mat­ter of life and death. (2016 Bonus answer – because this article gets a ton of traffic – here’s the direct answer: Intelligence is information gathering. Espionage is illegal.  When you break the law to obtain information…

  • You don’t know Sun Tzu

    An out­side the box strate­gic dis­cus­sion by Ted S Galpin You don’t know Sun Tzu Well, actu­ally maybe you do.  But Prob­a­bly not the same way I do. I’ve been work­ing long days on the strat­egy book, and Sun Tzu cer­tainly takes some time to inter­nal­ize.   There’s a say­ing — “there’s noth­ing new under the sun.”  That’s…

  • In Afghanistan, there are no coin­ci­dences

    In Afghanistan, there are no coin­ci­dences. An out­side the box strat­egy analy­sis by Ted S Galpin. Reprint from July 2nd, 2010 This week we’ll talk about Afghanistan, mainly because cur­rent events make it too fun not to.  Last week I orig­i­nally started doing a detail ref­er­enced the­sis on Afghanistan, but  real­ized that Strat­for has already done that, so…

  • Strat­egy bogged down by reality?

    Strat­egy bogged down by reality? A per­sonal note. Ok seri­ously, one of my prob­lems is get­ting “looped” by the every­day grind. Let’s step back a moment. What do I mean by looped? I need to explain John Boyd, his OODA loop, and a lit­tle his­tor­i­cal context. In brief, John Boyd was an Air Force Colonel, rep­utably…