“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” —Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
Welcome to the Renaissance Humans Newsletter, where I focus on sense-making and story-telling in the turbulent twenties. The Renaissance (“rebirth,” in French) spanned from the 14th to the 17th century and marked a period of cultural, artistic, and intellectual renewal in Europe. A Renaissance Human fosters curiosity, critical thinking, and character in a journey of never-ending learning. They cultivate Mind, Body, and Spirit, in service of Community, and oriented to the Transcendentals.
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Human history is filled with conflict and its less lethal cousin, competition.
We who are alive today stand as victors in a long, long, line of individuals and groups.
Before our ancestors could thrive, they had to survive.
Survive what the environment— and other humans, threw at them.
And we are built for collaboration as well, to be sure.
Conflict and collaboration are the Yin and Yang of human interaction, with competition somewhere in between.
Today I want to focus on some simple concepts that enable us as humans to survive and prevail, either in conflict or competition.
On Tactics was written with Warfare in mind, but many of its lessons apply to other endeavors—business, sports, negotiations, and games.
I adapted this piece from a presentation I gave to the Midshipmen a few times during my final tour in the Navy as an NROTC professor.
Before we begin, here’s a Caveat Emptor from the author, Brett Friedman, Connoisseur of the Crayon1, Booster of the Boyd2, and Jarhead3 of the finest caliber (likely 5.56mm).
“The system presented in this work is only one part of the equation. It must be executed on the ground by people, and it is their ability to perform in the chaos of battle that determines victory. The training of the troops who will fight the battle is so important that one could say that battles are not won on the battlefield, but rather in training.” —On Tactics, p.191.
Taking a page from Boyd, Friedman divides conflict into physical, mental, and moral domains. If we remember our Taylor Swift, we recall when she opined (One of the stops on the Eras tour, I can’t recall exactly which.) “the moral is to the physical as to three to one.”4 Note this maps nicely to a mind/body/spirit framing.
When you chain a couple of these bad boys together, you achieve nonlinear effects. Nonlinear in the Chocolate and Peanut Butter sense, as in larger than the sum of its parts.
So, let’s get into it, beginning with the Physical Domain.
MASS
Concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time.
The phrase “Quantity has a quality all its own,” is attributed to everyone from Lenin to Stalin to Brezhnev, and even to the godfather, Carl von Clausewitz himself.
The goal with the concept of Mass is to focus and align the majority of our efforts at the decisive place and time. It is about synchronizing our power where it will have the biggest impact. This principle enables a much smaller forces to achieve decisive results against a larger one, while limiting exposure to our adversary.
MANEUVER
Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through the flexible application of combat power.
One of the catchphrases in the Special Operations community is Shoot, Move, and Communicate. Maneuver is the Move portion. It is the movement of forces in relation to the enemy to gain a positional advantage. Effective maneuver keeps our adversary off balance and protects our own force.
In combat, we keep an eye on our flanks— the area to the left and right of our line of troops. We maneuver to flank our adversary (depicted in the above stick man drawing). He who flanks first wins, goes the adage.
FIREPOWER
The capability to direct force at an enemy.
Changes in firepower can dramatically alter the balance of power. A large volume of accurate fire will immobilize the adversary, degrading their ability to perform, and allowing our own forces to maneuver more freely. Simply put, firepower is our offensive capability.
On the high seas, naval aviation brought an end to the era of heavily armored battleships. At present, we see the introduction of cheap, disposable munition-carrying drones on the battlefield in Ukraine, the Middle East, and other conflict zones.
How are we doing damage to your adversary? Is it with a cutting remark in a debate, a strong right cross in the boxing ring, or a Carl G round?
TEMPO
Relative rapidity or rate of movement; rhythm, or pattern of work or activity.
Speed is how rapidly we act. Speed over time becomes Tempo.5 We cannot be fast at all times, so we develop a rhythm. Like Mass, Tempo can be used in a specific time and place to create Relative Superiority. The judicious use of Tempo can allow a weaker or smaller human/group to temporarily prevail over a stronger/larger one by tiring them out or outpacing their responses.
This principle has connections to Boyd’s OODA6, in that we seek to make our relative speed faster than our adversary. This may be achieved by training our responses until they’re intuitive, or employing innovative techniques or technology.
The end result is, our opponent can’t keep up with the moves we make.
Let us travel on, into the Mental Domain.
SURPRISE
Strike at a time, place, or manner for which your opponent is unprepared.
Surprise can decisively shift the balance of power. By seeking surprise, forces can achieve success out of proportion to effort. Surprise can show up in Tempo changes, force size, direction/location of main effort, and timing. Deception, another of the Mental principles, can aid the probability of achieving surprise.
Stage magicians rely on sleight of hand to pull off their tricks, employing Deception to create a Surprise for their audiences. If we can violate the expectancies (what they think will happen) of our adversary, we can create a little window, an opportunity to press our advantage.
SHOCK
A sudden, powerful disturbance or blow; Using overwhelming power to try and achieve rapid dominance over the enemy.
The concept of Shock is an old one, dating back into misty antiquity, to knights plunging into masses of foot soldiers on horse. It became a catchphrase in the early 2000s to describe the U.S. employment of precision munitions and maneuver elements to rapidly secure territorial gains in Iraq.
It could be a Black Swan,7 a highly improbable, unpredictable event that has a massive impact when it occurs.t.
Examples of Shock include 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, Enron, either Epstein scandal, and Israel blowing up Hezbollah pagers. What is the line between Surprise and Shock? The degree of disruption, demoralization, or dislocation created in the adversary.
DECEPTION
Spreading a belief that is not true. Can involve propaganda, distraction, camouflage, or concealment.
Deception refers to attempts to mislead our adversary. This is usually achieved by creating or amplifying an artificial fog of war via psychological operations, information warfare, visual deception and other methods. Diversionary attacks, feints, decoys; thousands of tricks have been successfully used, and still have a role in the future.
Examples include Russian Little Green Men, both Deception and Confusion. Another is Operation Mincemeat, the effort to deceive the Axis powers in World War II as to the location of the Allied landing site.
CONFUSION
State of bewilderment, lack of clarity; disorder; ambiguity.
We can devote a whole essay to just this principle alone, so I’ll keep it short. One easy example is the “firehose of falsehood” technique, used by Russia to great effect in incidents like the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014. Political operative Steve Bannon told author Michael Lewis in 2018, “the real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
Brandolini’s Law: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude than that needed to produce it.8
The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent. ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
And last but most definitely not least, the Moral domain.
COHESION
The act or state of cohering, uniting, or sticking together. Morale; Espirit de Corps.
In the military, Cohesion is more than everyone getting along— it is a willingness to die for others. This relates to Cohesion within a unit, where you depend on one another for survival, and the bond of trust up and down, between leaders and the troops. Both of these develop from strong bonds of mutual confidence and discipline.
A martial military culture foster qualities that are not duplicated anywhere in the civilian world, including the courage to risk our own life under fire, far from home.
Two German terms in particular relate to Cohesion. The following definitions (and the one in the footnote) were written by Jason Lefkowitz:
Einheit — “Unity.” Mutual trust; cohesiveness. Victorious organizations foster a common outlook among all their participants, from the lowest to the highest; a feeling of “we’re all in this together.” This outlook is fostered by participation in common experiences, which help individuals in the organization continue to relate to each other, even as their own individual careers focus on the things necessary to develop their own individual fingerspitzengefühl.9
Auftragstaktik — “Leadership by contract.” Mission command; specifying the goals and boundary conditions but leaving the how-tos up to the person receiving the task. Victorious organizations avoid micromanagement, preferring instead to have leaders define goals and then offer subordinates a defined set of resources and constraints they will have to operate with in order to achieve those goals. The subordinate then has the free choice to either take on the package of goals, resources, and constraints, or decline to do so if she feels the goals cannot be met with the resources and constraints offered. The leader can then either work with the subordinate to tune the parameters of the project to a point where she can honestly say she can fulfill its requirements or try to find someone else who can work with a different set of parameters. Hence the phrasing “leadership by contract” — once the two have scoped out the task and the subordinate has said she can get it done within the parameters described, an unwritten contract is in effect between the two; the subordinate’s responsibility is now to do what she has promised to do, while the leader’s is to ensure that the resources promised are made available and the constraints described don’t change.
Taken together, this sense of trust allows a mass of humans to gel together, into something larger than the sum of its parts.
Final Thoughts
These nine are simply a scaffold, a proto-synthesis, a temporary conclusion to be held loosely, especially as conditions change. A tactician must mix and remix these concepts into a unique alchemical combination suited to the moment and context.
It’s a Craft, which I view as an in between point between Art and Science.
This quote manages to summarize what we’re trying to accomplish with these Tenets:
“Many years ago, as a cadet hoping some day to be an officer, I was poring over the “principles of war,” listed in the old field service regulations, when the Sergeant-Major came up to me. He surveyed me with kindly amusement. “Don’t bother your head about all them things, me lad,” he said. “There’s only one principle of war (Cohesion) and that’s this: Hit the other fellow (Firepower), as quick as you can (Maneuver, Tempo), and as hard as you can (Mass), where it hurts him the most (Shock, Confusion), when he ain’t lookin’ (Deception, Surprise)!”
-Sir William Slim
Currere Certamen Tuum
Marines adore their reputation as knuckle-dragging brutes, and revel in LITERALLY eating Crayons (The author may have partaken in such ritualistic consumption of crayons (THEY’RE NON-TOXIC, CALM DOWN); however, they are pound for pound better students of war than every other service, in my completely biased opinion.
As a Service, Marines gave Air Force Colonel John Boyd the most respect. Friedman in particular is a fan.
Term of Endearment for US Marines, given because of the distinct shape of their ceremonial covers (hats).
Napoleon.
The OODA Loop that is not a Loop is an acronym stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. I discussed the OODA Loop during my A Frame series here.
We could be pedantic and say it could also be a Gray Rhino, but we’re trying not to live our life that way.
See also Henry Frankfurt’s wonderful essay, On Bullshit.
Fingerspitzengefühl — Intuitive competence; ability to read the flow of seemingly chaotic events (e.g., a battle). Victorious organizations find roles for people that match their talents, and then give them time and opportunity to develop their skills to such a point that they can react to new situations automatically rather than having to consult policies or wait for direction from above. The word fingerspitzengefühl translates literally to “fingertip feeling,” and this gives a sense for the meaning of the term; by the time a baseball pitcher, say, reaches the major leagues, he’s thrown so many pitches that he has an intuitive sense for his own strengths and weaknesses and how to apply those against the strengths and weaknesses of each different batter.
Great read. The key I found was that the foundation is discipline. Only when you know the team is going to execute with discipline can you quickly adapt and mix and match, forming, unforming and reforming tactics and strategies as the situation develops.
I’m looking forward to reading this one mate.
Before I do I’m putting here something I’ve been refining for about a decade, I’ll come back to it when I’ve read your wise words and see if it still works.
‘The art of the art of….
At pace to make optimal decisions
And take maximal actions
In liminal space
With minimal data
At speed
And have the capability and capacity to handle it.
Across 6 dimensions ‘
Thanks for doing the hard yards