John Boyd, Where Are You Now?

Ben Daniels

It’s been a busy week for securi ty professionals. Among other catastrophes, the new 600-page report from the Commission on Intelligence Capabilities details U.S. intelligence failures, that is, the failure to learn enough about the activities of other countries to predict their attitudes and behavior and how that deficiency will affect our national securi ty. This report also discusses the opposite problem, that of protecting our own secrets from those other countries - counterintelligence.

John Boyd had a gift for analyzing historical events, the thoughts and actions of the people involved and then synthesizing these factors into a cohesive method for making strategic decisions. His genius was the abili ty to organize vast amounts of human warfare history (2,500 years’ worth), and distill all into a common structure he called the OODA Loop.

Much has been written about Mr. Boyd and his works. What is relevant to this discussion is his ultimate conclusion: it is not the hardware, equipment, or even weapons that will prevail; it is only the human mind, operating in a manner that keeps its adversary unbalanced and unable to cope with unanticipated circumstances, that will prevail.

The OODA Loop is the sequence of “observation-orientation-decision-action” steps employed by humans when functioning in a given environment:

* observing elements within that environment
* orienting and re-orienting to evolving circumstances
* making decisions and
* implementing courses of action.

John Boyd identified his “Grand Strategy” as getting inside your adversary’s OODA-Loop, performing these functions faster and more efficiently than the adversary, thereby “maneuvering [the] adversary beyond his moral-mental-physical capaci ty to adapt and endure”... “enmesh[ing the] adversary in … uncertain ty, doubt, mistrust, fear, panic... so the adversary cannot “focus his efforts to cope” with the tactics that “penetrate, splinter, isolate... envelope, and overwhelm him.

John Boyd liked to quote military strategists, from modern Israeli generals to ancient philosopher-warriors like Sun Tzu, who observed the cardinal rule: “know your enemy”. They accomplished that task, literally, by personal observation. The human mind, employed to discern the workings of other human minds, calculate their strategy, and overcome it... the OODA-Loop.

Ask yourself: is anyone inside our OODA-Loop? Is there an enemy that has our nation unbalanced, poorly coping with circumstances that an enemy has created, in fear and panic, diverting resources both fiscal and human with the result of actually increasing the fear and panic? Are we now full of doubt and mistrust of each other, in confusion and disorder, wasting time and energy pointing fingers, and thus failing to recognize the real and actual signs of our enemy’s plans and activities? Is the enemy causing our unbalance, by both real and anticipated activi ty? You betcha!

Vast, well-funded agencies collect, analyze and synthesize information, and feed it into the OODA-Loop for decision-making and implementation ... only to later compromise the really valuable portion, the human part. The human analyst’s conclusions these days are often “second-guessed” and subverted, and often by political motivation. Uninformed as to the real story, we begin to distrust our operatives and agents and allow elected representatives to reduce the human element. But as we spend less money on the “eyes and ears”, we lose the capabili ty to “observe”, the critical first part of the OODA-Loop. The result? We no longer have the capaci ty to “know the enemy”.

While we need to be focusing on activities for the human mind to perform to succeed in Intelligence, more and more efforts are relegated to machines and equipment. The government, and law enforcement as a whole, exhibits reduced trust or value in the contribution of the human mind. If there is a million dollars to spend, we don’t spend it on training humans to evaluate other humans, perhaps because there’s nothing to show for it, or so goes the theory. Instead, we spend it on a million-dollar box with wires and a screen... something you can touch, look at, point to and say, “that’s where my million dollars went, and it’s so shiny, too.” Then, we hire someone who gets paid $6.50 an hour to operate it, yet another example of failing to value the human component.

All the successful strategists know one thing - to “know the enemy” starts with being able to recognize and establish their intent. And that is why we, as a nation, are falling short at both intelligence and counterintelligence. After all, isn’t the point to be able to predict the behavior before it happens? To be proactive in keeping the planned events from taking place?

So how do we determine intent? Certainly not with a face-scanner, x-ray machine, metal detector, photograph or ground sensor. Intention, a human psychological status, is determined by trained observation and assessment of human behavior. That is the true essence of the term “human resources”. Human contact, interaction, observation, assessment, comparison of “normal” to “actual” behavior patterns, psychological manipulation of humans by humans… human intelligence… properly gathered, corroborated, analyzed, integrated into an assessment plan, protected from political influence, and presented without apology or hesitation.

Take the securi ty screener at the airport as an example. Whether they realize it or not, the securi ty screeners are conducting intelligence and counterintelligence in the same manner as the 600-page CIC report describes. While the screeners are dedicated and want to do a good job, the system in which they operate reflects the failures cited in the report. They are gathering information, but not using it... or failing to gather it at all. What are they trained to focus on? To find your lighter or tweezers, but not to assess the look in your eyes, your manner of speech, mental state, or the clothing you are wearing. Your face could be on wanted posters all over the place, but they will never notice it, because they are looking for tweezers and lighters in your luggage and pockets.

Do the screeners ever really look at the face of the passenger presenting themselves for inspection in order to assess their whole presence? Do they ever look around their own securi ty environment to assess what is happening beyond their station, and how this passenger might be related to it? Compare one passenger to another? Is there anyone observing from the side, looking at the big picture? Are the screeners trying to determine intent? The answer to all these questions is, of course, “no”.

If the search is not designed to determine if this passenger is a threat to the securi ty environment, then what is the point? You can take the terrorist’s lighter, but he can still take control of and fly the airplane after he overpowers the crew with the broken whisky bottle he got in the du ty-free shop after he passed the securi ty checkpoint. The only point of spending all that time and money on searching is to take away the weapon from someone who has the intent to use it to do harm.

It is only when we place a premium on determining intent, that we can succeed in affecting the OODA-Loop of the enemy, or for us today - the terrorist. Human intelligence is the key to both intelligence and counterintelligence securi ty functions. Nothing will ever replace it, or work as well. Technology can enhance it, but reliance on technology alone only dulls our senses, and distracts us from what is so obvious to us as humans, and not at all obvious to machines. When we make more and better use of our innate intelligence to perform these securi ty functions, we’ll do better... and John Boyd can rest easy.

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