The killings of American soldiers by Afghan troops are turning into a “rapidly growing systemic threat” that could undermine the entire war effort, according to a classified military study.The study by Jeffrey Bordin, a political and behavioral scientist working for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, warns that the magnitude of the killings “may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern history.” Based on interviews with some 600 Afghan troops, the report concludes that there is a dangerous “crisis of trust” between Afghan forces and American soldiers that is being ignored by top commanders. …Mr. Bordin and other similar researchers, part of a so-called Red Team within the military, are tasked with finding weaknesses and shortcomings that the enemy may exploit.

      Red teaming is not a search for a worst-case scenario, but rather a look at the role of assumptions. Some assumptions can prove to be valid if accurately defended. Others are not.
       One red team study I’d like to see on Afghanistan would be on the feasibility of the emerging “Biden-plus” consensus. While the flaws of the current policy have been detailed, I have yet to see a substantial look at the assumptions of the lighter footprint model.

• Every system has an architecture; it is the inherent structure of the system. The architecture exists regardless of whether an analyst ever describes it.
• An analyst or engineer creates an architectural description when he or she models the structure of the system. The architectural description characterizes or describes the whole system.
• Systems have stakeholders. Stakeholders aren’t limited to the system’s users but include, for example, persons who sponsor, develop, implement, maintain, and depend on the system.
• Stakeholders have concerns. A sponsor might be concerned that the system must be delivered on time, a developer might be concerned that a needed technology is delayed, and so on.
• A view characterizes the whole system through the lens of a single concern or a set of related concerns.² To describe a system, the analyst or engineer will typically need to build many views. Each view may in turn contain many models.
• A viewpoint helps the architect structure the views. It should specify the stakeholders, their concerns, and the conventions used to construct the view models.³ In the domain of software engineering, for example, Rozanski and Woods apply six viewpoints: functional, information, concurrency, development, deployment, and operational.⁴

The following list summarizes the relationships among these six terms:

• a system has an architecture,
• an architecture is described by an architectural description,
• a system has one or more stakeholders,
• stakeholders have concerns,
• a viewpoint addresses one or more concerns, and
• a view conforms to a viewpoint.⁵

      So again, why is this useful to red teams?
      Most red teams “architect” target systems, even when they don’t use the term. Sometimes the process is informal and the resulting description is unsophisticated (and perhaps even undocumented). Sometimes the process is structured and the resulting description is much more complex. Rarely, however, do teams apply the same concepts or terms to their architectural descriptions.
      The real advantage of IEEE 1471 in this context is that teams can employ different tools and approaches and still use the same high-level concepts and terms. Remember that the IEEE standard recommends a common method of describing architectures, not of building them. The concepts and terms are abstract enough–yet also robust enough–to facilitate communication without constraining methods or imposing burdensome requirements.
      It is worth noting that I am not arguing that all red teams should adopt the same viewpoints and views. Most teams have different goals, customers, issues, and constraints, and these factors naturally yield different architectures, stakeholders, concerns, viewpoints, and views. I am, however, arguing that we should at least use the same terms and adhere to the same high-level structure in order to share ideas, concepts, and, yes, sometimes even viewpoints more efficiently.⁶
      Sandia’s IDART, for example, employs views, a concept another team might call viewpoints, a set of perspectives, a set of models, or something else entirely. If IDART and other teams were to use the term views consistently (along with the rest of the IEEE 1471 terms and concepts), they would be able to compare their methods and products more easily without surrendering their teams’ basic methodological independence.⁷
      Architecting–whether formal or informal–is just one of many functions red teams perform. While the lack of shared terms extends to most of these functions, we need to start somewhere. IEEE 1471 offers us a foundational set of concepts and terms on which we can begin to build a true discipline. And as we all know, Wild West gunslingers, card sharps, and cattle rustlers never were much inclined to discipline, but a clever sheriff could keep the assorted rowdies in line with a good set of shared terms.⁸

Dr. Mark Mateski is the founder of Red Team Journal.

Notes:

1. To learn more about the standard, see, for example, Rich Hilliard’s presentation or this FAQ written by Mark Maier, Dave Emery, and Rich Hilliard.
2. As defined in one IEEE 1471 FAQ, “A view is a collection of models representing the architecture of the whole system relative to a set of architectural concerns.”
3. In the same FAQ cited above, a viewpoint is defined in these terms: “A viewpoint captures the conventions for constructing, interpreting and analyzing a particular kind of view. Viewpoint conventions include languages, notations, model types, modelling methods, analysis techniques, design rules or other operations on views.”
4. Rozanski and Woods, Software Systems Architecture, 2005.
5. For those who are interested, ISO defines the terms and illustrates their relationships diagrammatically here.
6. That said, we should always be careful to avoid tainting our analysis with an engineering bias. The answer, of course, isn’t to throw out any engineering-based approaches, but to be aware of the perspectives we adopt when we use them.
7. I continue to emphasize the latter point because some red teamers will assert that any standard, no matter how loose, will encroach upon their methodological independence.
8. And yes, I purposely used rowdies. Some of the red teamers I know would probably consider themselves modern guns for hire, and a few, I suspect, are decent card sharps. For all I know, a couple might even be cattle rustlers.

… the reciprocal nature of all action in war means that attempts to grasp its complexities through a static, unilaterally based concept will never succeed…. a realistic approach must consider how one’s adversary interprets the war as well. Thus, perceiving the nature of a war is a reciprocal and dialectic process in which it is important to consider how one side’s perspective and actions affect the other side’s actions and reactions.¹

The second principle is what Handel refers to as the “paradoxical nature of the calculus of risk”:

Superficially, it is rational to assume that very high risk strategies, whose apparent chances of success are low, are normally unacceptable whereas lower risks would be readily taken. In reality, such assumptions may be less than rational: an attacker can calculate that because attacking at a certain place or time would involve high costs, his adversary would rationally conclude that the probability of choosing this strategy is extremely low. Paradoxically then, option for a high-risk strategy might be less foolhardy than is first assumed.²

He notes as well that

… the idea that something ‘cannot be done’ is one of the main aids to surprise …. Experts tend to forget that most military problems are soluble provided one is willing to pay the price.’ But once someone is prepared to pay a high price, it may be added, his price is actually reduced. This leads to the following paradox: ‘The greater the risk, the less likely it seems to be, and the less risky it actually becomes. Thus, the greater the risk, the smaller it becomes.’³

      Reciprocal net assessment (RNA), is designed to address these issues by explicitly modeling (1) the reciprocal and dynamic nature of conflict and (2) differences between the opponent’s perceptions. RNA is based on hypergame analysis, an extension of game theory in which the players are free to perceive different games. That said, an analyst does not need to understand game theory or hypergame analysis to apply RNA; all that is needed is an understanding of these five basic concepts:

1. Any player may perceive or misperceive the other players’ options, preferences, and intent;
2. What each player perceives or misperceives influences each player’s intent;
3. Perceptions are based on information and awareness;
4. Perceptions can be manipulated; and
5. A player who perceives an opponent’s misperception secures an advantage.

      In the coming months and years I am certain we will see other approaches emerge as decision makers and analysts recognize the problem and acknowledge the limitations of existing methods. Until then, analysts and decision makers must be cautious when applying the results of more traditional risk assessment methods.

Dr. Mark Mateski is the founder of Red Team Journal.

Notes:

1. pp. 94-95
2. p. 243
3. p. 243

• Competition and conflict involve a continuous, dynamic interaction, sometimes described as the reciprocal nature of conflict.
• Within this domain, a participant will seek to achieve a differential advantage over his or her opponents.
• Rarely do all participants in a conflict or competition perceive precisely the same situation.
• All perceptions are open to manipulation.

Given these conditions, a participant may pursue an almost unlimited number of strategies. Many of these strategies will be highly contextual, but patterns do exist. Successful participants, for example, will be likely to

• understand and respect the potentially complex interplay of opposing strategies and perceptions;
• manipulate the opponent’s perceptions and biases;
• exploit seams and opportunities;
• exploit the elasticity of risk; and
• resist their opponent’s efforts to do the same in reverse.

      Presuming a static opponent is the main decision making flaw that drives the need for red teaming, yet the red team itself may also presume it faces a static opponent. To complete the loop, the analyst or decision maker should “red team” the red team or, in other words, account for the actual and perceptual interplay between the attacker and defender (roles which may themselves may be dynamic). Traditional forms of red teaming, I believe, do not address this issue adequately. A more complete form of analysis would emphasize (1) what each participant could or might do to the other and (2) how awareness of this interplay offers advantages to the participant who possesses this awareness. I view RNA as one possible form of this more complete analysis.
      RNA is based on five basic concepts, each of which is either stated or implied within the game theoretic structure of hypergame analysis:

1. Any player may perceive or misperceive the other players’ options, preferences, and intent.
2. What each player perceives or misperceives influences each player’s intent.
3. Perceptions are based on information and awareness.
4. Perceptions can be manipulated.
5. A player who perceives an opponent’s misperception secures an advantage.

      These five concepts are captured in two complementary diagrams. The first diagram—the wheel (figure 1)—portrays the reciprocal nature of decision opportunities. The second diagram—the ladder—portrays the advantage a player gains by perceiving another player’s misperception. If applied properly, the RNA diagrams should encourage red teamers, analysts, and decision makers to consider the perceptual aspects of conflict much more explicitly and systematically than they might otherwise. By varying the aspects of perception and misperception using these diagrams, it is possible to generate critical scenarios that intuition may overlook. These scenarios may in turn help decision makers avoid decision pitfalls and recognize decision opportunities.

Figure 1: “The wheel”–one of the two main RNA diagrams.