Why Goliath is the Underdog #001

"The central secret to Hezbollah's success is that it trained its (global) guerrillas to make decisions autonomously (classic 4GW), at the small group level. In every area -- from firing rockets to defending prepared positions to media routing around jamming/disruption -- we have examples of Hezbollah teams deciding, adapting, innovating, and collaborating without reference to any central authority. The result of this decentralization is that Hezbollah's aggregate decision cycles are faster and qualitatively better than those of their Israeli counterparts." Global Guerrillas, Sunday, July 30, 2006 THE SECRETS OF HEZBOLLAH'S SUCCESS, Organizational Improvements

Rumsfeld vs. 4th Generation Warfare: He loses!

"Several years ago, a Marine friend went down to Bolivia as part of the U.S. counter-drug effort. He observed that the drug traffickers went through the Boyd cycle, or OODA Loop [decision cycle], six times in the time it took us to go through it once . When I relayed that to Colonel Boyd, he said, 'Then we're not even in the game.'" William S. Lind, More on Gangs and Guerrillas vs. the State, April 29, 2005

Micro-power (termites of power) is spreading to all areas of human endeavour. Rather than the bi-polar world of the 20th century, we are entering a hyper-polar world -- a world with hundreds, thousands of smaller centers of power. Central Banks used to call all the shots, but now there are hundreds of independent hedge-funds that limit central banks, for one example. I don't know what the ultimate outcome will be and I don't think anyone does. -Moises Naim, Venezuelan Minister of Industry, Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, July 25, 2006, 12:21:36