The Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) recently released a collection of the writings of Cold War strategists Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter. Both Wohlstetters were tremendously influential in the development of security studies as a serious intellectual and practical pursuit. Albert pioneered new methods of policy analysis and challenged establishment beliefs about deterrence and nuclear strategy, and Roberta wrote a pioneering study called Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision that persuasively explained the intelligence failure that led to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter should be of use to anyone seeking to understand the development of modern strategic studies and its relation to current threats.
From the category archives:
The Red Team Toolkit
I recently asked the RTJ team to recommend the influential books they think the well-informed red teamer should read. I intended to create a top-ten list, but with so many good suggestions, I decided to go with them all. I invite RTJ readers to comment, critique, and chime in. Do you agree or disagree? What are we missing? [click to continue ...]
Over the next few weeks, we will be building an RTJ glossary to better serve the red teaming community. In it we will include terms and concepts relating to red teaming and alternative analysis. Throughout, we will emphasize applied knowledge. We encourage the members of the red teaming community to join in the effort. Watch for the first terms this week.
Defenders have always tried to anticipate the behavior of their adversaries in order to thwart attacks or reduce the damage they will cause. Historically, this process has been done primarily through intuition. Although it is difficult to identify all of the factors that lead to intuition, it would seem to be based principally on an individual’s experiences, and the ability to extrapolate how those experiences apply to new situations. Obviously the accuracy of the intuition will depend heavily on the breadth of the analyst’s experience and their powers of reasoning. Even if an individual can be found who possesses excellent intuition, it is almost impossible to transfer this knowledge to anyone else, or even to capture and explain the reasoning behind their understanding. [click to continue ...]
Asking the right question at the right time can help avert disaster. In fact, one could characterize red teaming and alternative analysis as the practice of posing and answering contrarian questions—questions such as “How could our adversary circumvent our defenses?” or “What flaws in our new product line might we have overlooked?”
A good question can help a decision maker challenge hidden assumptions and expose unexpected vulnerabilities. A poor question can foreclose options and reinforce biases. So, how does a red teamer pose good questions and avoid poor ones? [click to continue ...]
In situations of competition and conflict, no single player can dictate the outcome.1 What occurs depends on the strategy each player pursues. In turn, the strategy each player pursues depends on the strategy each player believes his or her opponent will pursue, and so on. Analysts often use game theory to model such situations.
In 1977, Peter Bennett introduced hypergame analysis, an elegant and useful extension to game theory. Unlike standard game theoretic models, Bennett’s concept permits players to perceive different games. This feature better approximates real-world conditions and, in particular, allows analysts to model situations involving manipulation, stratagem, and deception more directly. [click to continue ...]
Notes:
- If one player can dictate the outcome, it is no longer a situation of competition or conflict. [↩]
Not every analyst or red teamer is spontaneously creative. For those who occasionally struggle to generate new ideas, Zwicky’s morphological box can help. Even analysts who fancy themselves to be wildly inventive can benefit from the approach. [click to continue ...]
In many cases, a red team will benefit from reassessing the scope of a problem. This is particularly true when the attacker and defender’s points of view fail to align. The Duncker diagram is one way to reframe a problem and identify these possible asymmetries. It is also a good technique for generating creative solution alternatives. [click to continue ...]
