Vanguard Magazine

24 DECEMBER 2020/JANUARY 2021 www.vanguardcanada.com sNakes aNd ladders a Simple mind map of the military information economy c4isr By CAPT P. SCOTTy MARSHALL W e, at the bottom of the military food chain, re- count a legend about a list of acronyms, buzz words, and technobabble circu- lated amongst our betters. "Learn these terms, say them during meetings, and nod gravely," they say. "Your troops will believe you can see the future, and budgets will fall like manna from the sky." C4ISR has been on that list for decades, and as buzz words go, it has been buzzier than most. I have always liked the quote misattribut- ed to Einstein postered on many a dorm room wall: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." In the spirit of not-Einstein, my intent here is to provide the reader with a simple mind map for much of the alphabet soup supped during those meetings, and often repeated in impenetrable articles forwarded to us by bespectacled smart people. Four Boxes I am an Intelligence Officer and tend to see the world through that lens. However, everything here should be understood to apply to any aspect of the military informa- tion economy. We are essentially involved in the same game: providing leadership with a knowledge advantage in the context of competitive decision making. Intelli- gence tries to provide a Commander with that knowledge regarding the adversary; Operations provides it regarding friendly forces; Logistics, regarding the movement of resources, and so on. In the simplest form, this advantage is present when we know things; however, it is also necessary that the knowledge be 'findable.' Presence of information and the extent to which it is findable will serve as two axes in an explanatory four-square logical construct, resulting in: Box #1 – "We know we know" Box #2 – "We know we don't know" Box #3 – "We don't know we know" Box #4 – "We don't know we don't know" In Box #1, the required knowledge is pres- ent, findable, and relevant. Box #1 is always the gold standard and is the enabler best placed to confer the decision-making ad- vantage leaders want. The whole game in a military information economy is to provide leaders with a vantage point in Box #1. In Box #2, some aspect of the situation is understood well enough to know the ways in which our knowledge is lacking. Perhaps we simply don't know something signifi- cant, or prior knowledge we had has been overtaken by events. Box #2 suggests that we know what information we need, or at the very least, we can temper analyses on related subjects through an understanding of our knowledge gaps. Box #3 and Box #4 are significant prob- lems and liabilities. Box #3 means that we have information on hand that could sup- port a decision, provide warning, or in- creases the efficiency of resource allocation, but due to some critical failure of technol- ogy, policy, or analysis, we have squandered this opportunity. Box #4 means that we fail to understand the subject enough to even understand what we don't know, and as such are incapable of even scoping our own ignorance. The red boxes are the states of knowledge in which much political am- munition is given to those who oppose the military on principle, often with calls for explanations as to why resources are allo- cated to the service if our ignorance level is that high. The scary things with rending claws and bloody fangs that blind-side us when we can least take the hit live in Boxes #3 and #4. To give a sense of the stakes, the Ameri- can 9/11 Commission determined that more than enough data existed to antici- pate an attack on the World Trade Center towers by Al Queda, but that information was locked in disparate stovepipes and held by petty squabbles between agencies (a Box #3 problem), and that moreover, no one agency had a dedicated group of individuals examining the problem in suf- ficient depth to be able to understand the true risks, aggressively determine gaps, and either collect the data from other agencies or put in place their own collection plans (a Box #4 problem). What resulted were thousands of deaths, several wars, and im- measurable blood and treasure expended to overcome the Western World's inability Information Findability We have the information We don't have the information We can find the information We can't find the information "We know we know" "We know we don't know" "We don't know we don't know" "We don't know we know" 1 2 3 4

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