Category: Reform

A central critique in my book, Defense Facts of Life: the Plans/Reality Mismatch (Westview,1985), what the trend toward increasing technical complexity in the Pentagon's weapons and organizational arrangements caused all sorts of self destructive pathologiess — which I described in considerable detail and in subsequent studies.

I defined “complexity” as a quality of the “whole” that relates the number, arrangements, and coordination of its “parts” to one's ability to comprehend the “whole.”  It follows logically that increasing complexity runs up the number, multiplies the arrangements, and makes more intricate the coordination of the “parts,” and in so doing, makes it more difficult for one to understand the “whole.” Complexity is therefore, by definition, always a subjective quality that describes a tenuous connection between the observer and the object of observation.  That is why, you should feel uneasy when some expert tells you something is complex, because he is really saying you will have difficulty understanding it, and by implication his greater knowledge puts him in a natural position of superiority upon which you should place your faith.   The natural consequence of that superiority makes complexity a dangerous quality, because it can be used to screw the minds of others.

Based on my long experience in the Pentagon, I became convinced that one reason — perhaps the main reason — why the internecine factions in the military – industrial – congressional complex (MICC) evolved a powerful bias to design and buy ever more complex (and costly) weapons and organizational arrangements that are so often ill designed for the realities of combat is that the increasing complexity makes oversight of MICC's activities more difficult.  That creates an opacity which in turn makes easier for the contending factions in the MICC  to pursue their own narrow agendas and enrich themselves with a variety of bait and switch strategies (collectively known as the front loading and political engineering power games), even when those pursuits undermine the welfare of those the MICC factions claim to protect and serve, like taxpayers and soldiers at the pointy end of the spear.

Continue reading “Journal: Complexity to Avoid Accountability is Expensive”