Social Media for Military Analysts

In response to a recent post noting a lack of social networking presence in the Air Force's analytic community I was asked a slightly surprising question. On reflection this should not have been surprising if I were taking more time to examine my own assumptions and for introspection, but here it is:

What is the value of social networking to analysts ... and the rest of us? 

It occurs to me that there is more than a little wisdom in the question. It has become an assumption and article of faith (at least for some) that social networking is a value-added activity. But unexamined assumptions are something to fear, so here we are.

I've spent some time and glucose turning over my own assumptions, and I've come up with a few interrelated ideas for why social networking technologies can not only add value to the analytic enterprise but may even be essential to the continued success of our community.

Thomas More
Wikimedia Commons

To begin, and to make sure we're all on the same argumentative page, what do we mean by social networking? The dictionary, that most reliable of sources (and a favorite), defines social networking as "the development of social and professional contacts; the sharing of information and services among people with a common interest." Like a lot of definitions, this doesn't necessarily clear things up, not least because under this definition prolific and brilliant correspondents such as Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus were a social network, and while this is true it also isn't the focus of the contemporary conversation. These legacy networks all still exist, but there are new technologies that facilitate the creation of new (or if not entirely new then at least new in scale) networks. So, what we're talking about here are the new, technologically-enabled forms of social networks and social media. ("Social media" isn't much better as a terminology, since the same objections apply. More and Erasmus interacted in a social network via the available social media of letters.)

Desiderius Erasmus
Wikimedia Commons

Without trying to create a precise definition of the technologies and forums involved, I include in the model outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs (like this one), communities of practice (consider the Military Writers Guild as a fine new example), and other online publications with relatively low cost of entry (e.g., The Strategy Bridge, War Council, The Constant Strategist, The Complex Systems Channel, etc.). The line blurs with more traditional forms based in an online medium (look to ForeignPolicy.com and War on the Rocks as examples), and gets really fuzzy from a social network perspective when we start talking about traditional media with an online presence (e.g., the Air & Space Power Journal, the MOR Journal, etc.). These are all very much in the mix, but it's really the first category that's of most interest here.

One thing you may notice about this list is a general absence of robust exploitation of the digital social media by the Air Force's analytic enterprise. But these efforts take ... effort ... and one wouldn't expect a wholesale plunge into the available medium if there weren't tangible benefits that outweigh the costs, opportunity and otherwise, and I suppose this is the fundamental motivation for this post. Here are four broad reasons for social networking in our community that resonate with me.

Lifelong Learning

There are effective models for distance learning, but in general the value of an educational experience is multiplied by active, daily engagement with those around you (professors and fellow students). This engagement enhances the pedagogical experience in any number of ways. 

For any given concept we are almost certain to hear alternative views and questions we never thought to ask, increasing our understanding of it. These alternatives can be found without that engagement (e.g., by actively seeking and reading competing visions of a given topic), but the costs associated with this sort of study are high and the human  proclivities for delightful cognitive biases present a non-trivial barrier. When each member of the group is exploring the possibilities in their own way and informed by their own background, we distribute the effort in and increase the likelihood of finding constructive gems. 

Gerhard von Scharnhorst
Wikimedia Commons

In addition, I happen to think that writing our ideas down and putting them out in the world forces us to consider our positions more carefully even than conversational academic interaction. As Scharnhorst said, "The preparation of a short essay is often more instructive for the author than the reading of a thick book" because a requirement to present and discuss an issue drives a deeper study. Thus, we are enjoined to read, think, and write, a common theme in this space (here and here, for example). This achieves the noted first order pedagogical outcomes and also yields second order benefits (e.g., improved communication skills). We further experience the tertiary benefit of permanence, since ideas captured and promulgated in writing are not lost. Conversation in the classroom is ephemeral, but discourse in social media is accessible, searchable, and cross-linkable. (Big data, anyone?) This last alone is powerful enough to motivate alternatives to learning and interaction driven exclusively by conversation. 

Finally, the inevitable divergence of intellectual ideas, with equally serious, well-intended, and well-informed students arriving at divergent conclusions, teaches us something important about contingency and uncertainty. In a perfect world, this also inculcates a certain amount of intellectual humility. 

All of these may be available to an individual among their local peers, but they may also be difficult to access ... and well-formed social networks in a digital medium can fill the resulting gap. We can also exploit the revolution in massive online open courses (the Santa Fe Institute has some fantastic things going on in complexity studies, for example). These are easy to access and bring in the flavor of social networks, but why would we leave another low-cost rock un-turned?

Carefully-constructed social networks are one way of replicating the values of brick-and-mortar education and augmenting the available alternatives in an environment that does not permit face-to-face engagement in the context of life-long rather than episodic learning. And we earn many second-order benefits in the process. With blogs we get comfortable with and better at writing. With Twitter we learn the value of a bottom line and elevator speeches. And so on ...

Access to Expertise

The second idea that occurs to me is one I've mentioned elsewhere in this space: expertise. Effective analysis encompasses a myriad of disciplines (military history, military theory, sociology, psychology, international relations, economics, mathematics, statistics, religion, regional history, anthropology, computer science, military technology and capabilities, etc.), and analogies from each of these can inform our understanding of the others in the context the decisions we inform. This is deeply ingrained in our humanity, but it is also in the nature of humanity to make mistakes, and we do so with alarming frequency and occasionally unpleasant consequences. The likelihood of mistakes is amplified when the export of these metaphors is overseen by dilettantes since amateurs by definition lack the tools in either the source or destination context to evaluate the utility of those metaphors. So, expertise is important. On the other hand, it is difficult for any one individual, or even any one organization, to include deep expertise in the diverse areas that encompass effective analysis ... and we are left with a conundrum.

As an antidote, social networking offers access to the extended mind, the notion that the environment plays an active role in cognitive processes. Social networking facilitates the creation of an environment in which experts can interact and access the expertise of others, and our own ideas are shaped and improved by the process. In a sense, anyone who has worked on a headquarters staff has seen this concept made concrete. A staff is essentially an extended mind for the commander, improving his or her memory, facilitating multi-tasking, and enabling decisions across a broader array of activities than would be possible for the commander alone. Social networks simply extend this idea to digital interaction.

Adam Smith
Wikimedia Commons

The emphasis placed on expertise here does not mean we should each be narrowly or perfectly stove-piped in our education and experience, storing all expertise in each field of interest in distinct socially-networked nodes. There are efficiencies to be gained from this kind of specialization "and the division of labour is in this, as in all other cases, advantageous to all the different persons employed in the various occupations into which it is subdivided," but we each need enough breadth to inform the creation of potentially useful metaphors, applying our individual fields to other fields and to common problems. We need enough commonality and sufficient linguistic overlap to communicate our ideas to each other. Interestingly, this is also something social networking can facilitate, though it comes with a corollary danger in that we may choose our socially-networked associations unwisely or narrowly and create digital echo chambers for ourselves.

This notion of collaborative expertise makes me consider my own profession. I come from an Air Force community culturally dominated by Operations Research, a discipline "employing techniques from other mathematical sciences, such as mathematical modeling, statistical analysis, and mathematical optimization" to arrive "at optimal or near-optimal solutions to complex decision-making problems." This is a relatively young and inherently cross disciplinary field (with all the depth-and-breadth-balance problems that entails) that grew out of efforts by scientists, mathematicians, computer scientists, etc., to solve operational problems in World War II. These folks were experts (in some cases luminaries) in their respective fields, and together they were able to do incredible things that might have been impossible for any subset to accomplish on their own. Social networking is one way to access and connect that kind of expertise.

Expertise is obviously available through scholarly journals and other professional reading (and we should be reading them). But that places the onus of expertise back on us. It is also something we can access in forums like the annual Military Operations Research Society Symposium, but the cost of entry in a forum like this one is surprisingly high and in times of budget constraint (now?) this is at least problematic.

Networks and Requisite Variety

The third idea is related to Ross Ashby's law of requisite variety (from cybernetics/control theory). Basically the ability of a system to influence outcomes in the environment is contingent on the number of possible disturbances in the environment and the number of responses available to the system. More responses available reduces the variability of outcomes. This is very much related to John Boyd's so-called OODA "loop" (nothing more than a cybernetic feedback process).

The OODA "Loop"
Adapted from Frans B. Osinga
Science,Strategy, and War

To survive in an environment, a system must be able to orient to disturbances in the environment (i.e., understand its causes and effects) and have as many responses available as there are potential disturbances. What happens when a system doesn't have the wherewithal? It can die out, it can change, or it can organize into a higher-order system with greater complexity and more available responses. A cell may not be able to defend against a contagion, so some cells organize as organisms (e.g., people). Organisms may not be able survive in the environment alone. So organisms organize as families, tribes, and nations. Another way of saying this is that an system must be as complex as its environment.

(The language I'm using here is a little sloppy, and I don't mean to imply that there is consciousness in the cells and that they choose to organize. There are energy efficiencies and synergistic outcomes from organization that make these states structural basins of attraction and the outcomes emerge. They are not designed, as such, in either a bottom up or top down way. A more agency-oriented argument can be made when talking about collections of rational organisms--i.e., us.)

Social networking is one factor creating an environment in which new and more disturbances are possible. But networks create social structures with increasing complexity and associated with this complexity we can achieve greater potential for appropriate orientation and add potential responses, giving us more capability to influence and respond to the environment. (I hesitate to use the word "control" in this context for fear the semantics of that word are too loaded.)

There is an interesting aspect of this network concept. We have to be careful about the networks we create. Connecting everyone to everyone else is a recipe for entropy and white noise. Some of the necessary controls tend to happen in an emergent way. But some of it will generally come from conscious choices by those involved as well.

Lt Gen Glenn A. Kent
Courtesy of USAF

In any case, it is clear that the world is changing under us, and changing rapidly. As it does so, the tools of analysis must change as well. Glenn Kent is and should be a hero to our profession, but the world he faced was different, and optimizing against an analytically stable and monolithic adversary is no longer an option. It is our professional obligation to help our senior leaders understand the interactions of the dynamic environment and evolving force structure in the context of adversaries large and small, shifting alliances, changing footprints and geopolitical realities, new opportnities and threats in the domains of space and cyberspace, and more. These are nontrivial problems with the future in the balance and muddling through in isolation is not an option.

Because I Must
There is a final reason for pursuing the possibilities of social media and social networking in our community that touches on the personal. Rainer Maria Rilke's advice to a young poet is resonant for me.

"Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, ‘I must,’ then build your life upon it.”

Not everyone may feel the same, but I feel I have a voice. I have things to say about things that matter ... and so do you. Social media gives us an opportunity to give those things voice, to touch the lives and minds of others, and to have our lives and minds touched in return. Social media, if you use it with deliberate intent, enables your humanity.

So What?
I've asked before, and I'll ask again. I see forums all about dedicated to collaboration in national security endeavors. If there is value in these endeavors, then where are the options for the analytic community?