From the article, “Forward from… Bureaucracy” by Cmdr Kenneth Brown, USN:
“Absolute power may corrupt absolutely, but overwhelming oversight creates underwhelming results.
The greatest technologies and most ingenious military plans are useless in the face of stifling bureaucracy and overbearing regulation. Regardless of what comes of the current transformation initiative, our speed and flexibility of action will not improve until the commensurate legal and regulatory systems, staffing procedures, and culture of caution change as well.”
So, in a fight to the death with an Non-Governmental Organization, our Government is the anchor dragging us to our death, while our enemy sits off to the side and watches us drown. Nice. Regulatory systems aren’t sexy, even in the most bizzarro world view, and as a consequence there aren’t a lot of futurists looking at ways to make the innerworkings of bureaucracy fit in an OODA-loop or reconcile the first principles of representative government and capitalism with social networks, internet speed, and asymmetric geopolitics. Too bad for the guys in the Deathstar.
(that would be us, in case you were wondering.)
from the article, “Shore up SOF” by Capt Dick Couch, USN (ret):
“…the SOF Truths: Humans are more important than hardware. Quality is more important than quantity. SOF cannot be mass produced. Competent SOF cannot be created after the emergency arises.”
SOF = Special Operations Force.
Being squarely in the “if it is worth doing, its worth doing right” camp and a perfectionist, I think that “anything worth doing right, is worth doing it to be the best in kind”. So, everything worth doing should be special, thus done by a Special Operations Force. In Tom Peters speak, SOF = PSU. Why can’t we all think like this (and be not sick in the head when no one thinks like us)?