Hegseth and tunnel vision

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I noticed some not fully idiotic people on Twitter are praising Hegseth. 

That seems ludicrous considering the overt stupidity and incompetence among other things, but bear with me - there's a reason.

 

Consider this: The status quo is a set of compromises. These compromises have upsides and downsides. Many (maybe all) of these compromises are suboptimal. 

Now imagine you're a zealot regarding a single issue or a handful of issues. You're vehemently opposed to the downsides of certain compromises and you may actually be correct about that, too. Being a zealot, you apply a tunnel vision. The things you care the most about get weighted like 95%, all else 5% - at least until something terrible happens to you or people whom you love. 

Then there's Hegseth acting as wrecking ball against decency and integrity,  wrecking some of those compromises without replacing them with better compromises.

The tunnel vision guy that you are notices that Hegseth wrecked compromises that caused downsides that you zealously hate and campaigned against. You apply the issue weighing of 95% and suddenly Hegseth looks like the saviour to you.

 

Meanwhile, people who pay attention at a more wide angle easily see that Hegseth is worse than even the warmonger Rumsfeld, who deservedly burns in hell right now.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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About optimizing and scale

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There's a curious thing happening when I do thought experiments, trying to optimise things to the best of my knowledge, processing ability (and preferences):

Answers ends up being very concise, clear and elegant when I look at the macro level.

Answers often end up very detailed and non-standardised when I look at the micro level.

This is for the same problem, such as "What should have been done about German anti-tank challenges by early 1942?".

I noticed this pattern repeatedly. 

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This leads to a mystery: Which set of answers is actually the better one?

The micro set could be better because it's taking into account details

The macro set could be better because it's taking into account the big picture. 

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I do suspect that armed bureaucracies mostly apply the micro approach because top leadership rarely forces elegant, decisive decisions that fit the macro answer pattern. They delegate and lots of subordinates ponder about micro level problems, coming up with many detailed answers.

 

IMO we could look at macro level to devise answers, then take the micro level into account to see whether the answers are feasible. To look at the micro level for more options leads away from standardisation, elegance, simplicity and in the end - it (likely) leads away from efficiency. 

 

This might be part of the answer to why armed bureaucracies fail to standardise vehicles, munitions and even training properly. It may thus in turn be part of the answer why armed bureaucracies have such very high costs.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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A look back: My theses as of 2014

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I had a summary of Defence & Freedom (my) theses back in (and up to) 2014:

/2014/05/blog-defence-and-freedom-theses.html 

Let's use that to see how good or bad that list looks today.

 

2007 looks fine to me, save for the fortifications thing. Field fortifications wouldn't work against Westerners, but Russians are incapable enough that they work against them.

2008 I suppose opinions vary about the counter-piracy thing. 

2009 I suppose my take on IFVs is still an outlier, despite the failures of BMPs in Ukraine. 

2010 looks fine. 

2011 The low force density thing is very debatable in light of how the Russo-Ukraine War went down, though I was rather thinking of a different scenario.

2012 The remarks on deconfliction, navies, army aviation and air force combat aviation are still outlier opinions. 

2013 I know the opinion on submarines is still an outlier. 

2014 They actually began getting ACV six years later, albeit I'll say those are underwhelming.

 

So 57 theses, only three of them were kinda (though not clearly) refuted by events and six are still very much outlier opinions (even though somewhat supported by events, but events did not change majority opinions).

 

I actually expected the list to have fared worse.

Maybe I should write a bit about the many "I told you so" theses. 

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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