Unlearning 101

Osama Bin Laden and the Curious Case of Seeing What Isn't There

The big breakthrough in finding Osama Bin Laden came when intelligence analysts first noticed the million dollar compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan didn't have internet access. Next, the analysts observed the occupants never took their garbage to the street (like the other neighbors did) and instead preferred to burn it inside the compound. Finally, they knew a male occupant lived in the house but they never saw him outside.

Putting together the three clues -- each of which is a wonderful example of seeing what isn't there -- was enough to help the analysts unlearn the idea that Bin laden was living in cave somewhere in Afghanistan and was instead "hiding in plain sight."

P.S. If Author Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes books, were alive today I think he would have been pleased at how the intelligence analysts finally came to locate Bin Laden. It was similar to the way Holmes once solved a crime by noticing the curious case "of the dog that didn't bark."

 

There's No Defense for Not Unlearning

As a former naval officer, I like to believe I have an appreciation for the national security interests of this country. There is, however, a bit of conventional wisdom I'd like to challenge and it is the idea that spending more money of defense automatically makes us safer.

For example, if we continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on unnecessary weapons and this excessive spending, in turn, contributes to our exploding national debt could it be that the growing interest payments to our Chinese benefactors will be a bigger problem in the long run? It is a classic case of unlearning by learning to see what isn't there.

Also, is it possible that our soldiers, in well-intentioned efforts to protect our freedom by searching out insurgents in Iraqi and Afghan villages, might actually create more future enemy combatants every time they inadvertently kill an innocent civilian? If we are to unlearn we must always hold in our mind that the opposite might also be true.

The CIA Unlearns

Computer World had an interesting article discussing the CIA’s use of Intellipedia—a Wikipedia-like project for its analysts--a while back. As a former naval intelligence officer, I think it's a fantastic idea but—perhaps not unsurprisingly—the idea has been met with some resistance from within the intelligence community. According to the article, in fact, the founders of the initiative were originally called “traitors.”

The idea of sharing knowledge and working among different agencies is undoubtedly foreign to many in the intelligence community; but it is unrealistic to expect even the most talented analyst to stay abreast of all the information, data and knowledge that is necessary to track, monitor and anticipate our enemies actions. It is only prudent that we adopt new tools such as Intellipedia—which may help alleviate some of the burden.

However, before the tool can reach its full potential, it is essential that those intelligence officers who are not contributing to the wiki “unlearn” the idea that intelligence can only be analyzed one way or by a small group of people.

Interestingly, some of the most eager users of Intelliedia are older intelligence officers who view it as a way of sharing their vast knowledge with their younger associates before they retire.

(For those interested in better understanding the power of open-source initiatives, I’d refer you to the now classic story of how Gold Corp tapped the power of the Internet to find $3 billion in gold or this intriguing story, which I cite in my book, about how a citizen sleuth used Google Earth to uncover a Chinese military secret.)

Unlearn By Dispelling Old and New Ignorance

In his famous speech at Rice University where he declared that it was America’s intention to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, President Kennedy said “the greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds,” adding that “the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.”

 

Kennedy went on to offer a historical perspective for the magnitude of change society had experienced over the short course of human history. He asked his audience to condense the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history into the span of fifty years. Under this scenario, Kennedy noted that not much happened for the first forty years. Ten years ago, man emerged from his cave, and only five years ago did he learned to write. Christianity appeared two years ago, the printing press this year, and just two months ago the steam engine appeared. Last month electric lights, telephones, automobiles, and airplanes became available, and only last week did we develop penicillin, television, and nuclear weapons. To reach “the stars before midnight tonight,” Kennedy then poignantly added that Americans would have to “dispel old [and] new ignorance.”

 

Since achieving Kennedy’s goal in 1969, progress has continued exponentially. (Ironically, perhaps, with the exception of space exploration which, as Monday's 40th aniversary of the moon landing reminds us, has not made much progress.) Taking his historical analogy a little further, however, in the last proverbial "day" computers, biotechnology, the Internet, and the sequencing of the human genome have all appeared on the scene.

 

What Kennedy's analogy reminds us it that will need to continue to “dispel old ignorance” -- or continuously unlearn if you will -- only on a faster scale.

Unlearning the Future

Carl Sagan once advised the public to “never underestimate the power of exponential.” It was sound advice. Unfortunately, as with so much other wise counsel, it is easy to dismiss.

You shouldn’t.

Consider just a few recent examples of exponential growth. In 1998, a small Silicon Valley start-up was conducting 25 million web-based searches a day. The company had developed an impressive technology but it hardly seemed transformative. Ten years of exponential growth later, though, and Google has changed everything from how people get their news and entertainment to how politics and health care are practiced.

Wikipedia offers yet another example of exponential growth. Who amongst us could have imagined in 2001 when the first 100 Wikipedia entries were placed on the Internet that within eight years the site--which relies on free labor no less--would become the most widely used information source in the world?

It would be easy to believe that Google and Wikipedia are unique and, as such, represent one-time anomalies. They are not.

Ironically, if you type the word “exponential” into Google, the first search item that comes up is an entry from Wikipedia. If one then clicks on the list of “exponential topics” at the bottom of the definition there is an odd looking word: zenzizenzizenzic.

The term is defined as a number to its eighth power. Thus, the zenzizenzizenzic of 2 is 2(8)--or 256.

Now, zenzizenzizenzic might seem like a rather innocent concept but recall that Google and Wikipedia both experienced zenzizenzizenzic-like growth and, in the process, transformed a number of industries; and, in the coming decade, so too will a number of other emerging technologies.

Consider, for example, that Intel Corporation recently announced it had successfully doubled--to 2 billion--the number of transistors it has crammed onto its next-generation computer chip.

The real world manifestation of Intel’s zenzizenzizenzic is that we can now purchase a computer over 200 times more powerful than the one we bought a 1997--at one-third the cost.

Moreover, because the semiconductor industry will likely continue its little trick of effectively doubling the number of transistors it can place on a computer chip every 18 months this implies that by 2020 the zenzizenzizenzic of today’s 2 billion transistor could morph into a 500 billion transistor computer chip. Try wrapping your mind around what such super-powerful computers might enable us to do and achieve.

Exponential growth is not simply limited to the computer and Internet industries. Data storage, bandwidth, gene sequencing and even the growth of synthetic diamonds are all expected to undergo zenzizenzizenzic progression in the coming decade.

In fact these fields are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. According to Gartner Research, the field rapid prototype manufacturing (i.e. machines which can physically print objects) will grow more than 100-fold. And in the past year, researchers in Finland have replaced a patient’s lower jaw with synthetic material growth from stem cells; researchers at the University of Minnesota have successfully demonstrated that they could grow a beating rat heart from living cells; and self-driven robotic cars have successfully navigated through an urban environment. Progress in these fields will not stop.

It has been said that the future is here, it is just unevenly distributed. This is true and if one studies the amazing technological progress occurring in information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, neurotechnology and robotics and then applies the power of zenzizenzizenzic to these advances, it is easy to understand how it would behoove us all to reconsider Carl Sagan’s sage advice and begin preparing ourselves for a great deal of unlearning. 

The Air Force Needs to Unlearn

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting review of the book, Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel, a while back. It is a history of the world’s first machine gun. Interestingly, although the gun was patented during the Civil War and Mr. Gatling urged the Union Army to adopt it—arguing that it would "save lives, wounds and sickness, by lessening the numbers subjected to the perils of war"—nobody listened. It wasn’t until the Spanish-American War in 1898—almost 40 years after its invention—that it was first deployed.

This little lesson in history is directly applicable to a new, modern weapon—unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Last year, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates complained that the Air Force was not adopting the use of UAVs—also known as drones—fast enough. He further argued that the Air Force generals who weren’t adopting the technology were unnecessarily putting airman’s lives at risk.

Gates is right. UAV’s can now fly for hours over enemy territory and, if necessary, deploy an assortment of weapons. Perhaps it is time that a great many Air Force generals who learned the importance of using fighters and bombers to engage and suppress the enemy now “unlearn” that behavior. The sooner they do, the fewer American lives the military will unnecessarily put at risk.

(Note: As a former military officer, I would like to add that I hope society will eventually unlearn war as  a means of conflict resolution altogether, but until such time as an enlightened policy is achieved I think it prudent to work towards policies that prevent, reduce and minimize such conflicts.)

Ask a New Question

On my other blog, www.jumpthecurve.net, I have a posting entitled "The Future of War: Ethical Robots?" in which I challenge conventional thinking. I started with the basic assumption that most people are uncomfortable, if not downright quesy, with the idea of robotic warriors. However, one of the best ways of unlearning something is by simply asking a new question. In this case, I asked myself if robots could be more ethical than their human counterparts and, to my surprise, I answered yes.

Unlearning War (with Robots)

From how we and our enemies fight futures wars to what it means to wage war, robotics are poised to transform virtually every aspect of war. The transformation will require generals, admirals, politicians and even citizens to unlearn much of what we currently think about war.

Below is an excellent TED presentation from P.W. Singer, the author of "Wired for War" that highlights many of these issues:

Unlearning the Nature of War

In 2005, I wrote a book on General George C. Marshall entitled "Soldier, Statesman, Peacemaker: Leadership Lessons from George C. Marshall." One of my favorite quotes of Marshall's is the advice he pounded into the heads of his junior officers: "Study the first six months of the next war."

It was great advice in the 1920s and 1930s (when Marshall trained over 200 officers who would later become generals during World War II), and it is still great advice today. To this end, I'd like to direct you to two news articles from today's papers. The first is from The Guardian and it discusses how the brain will the battlefield of the future. Among other things it discusses how drugs may soon be used as "pharmacological land mines," and how the advances in neuroscience could alter our definition of torture.

The second article reviews how the U.S. may be vulnerable to Internet attacks such as those which Russia is currently employing in its war against Georgia.

Together, the two stories strongly suggest that military planners should be "studying the first six months of the next war" because the next war is likely to be radically different from that which they are currently planning today.

Unlearn or Die Even More Unneccesarily

A few weeks back I had a posting  entitled "Change or Die ... Unnecessarily” in which I provided a few examples of how our inability to unlearn could, quite literally, cost some people their lives. Well, the other day, one of my favorite thinkers, Josh Wolfe, sent me a copy his weekly newsletter, The Forbes/Wolfe Weekly Insider. In it, he unveiled some startling research from a forthcoming book: apparently, six times as many people died in their cars from the 9/11 terrorist attacks as did the number of people who died in planes.

The authors don't state their research in quite this bold of a fashion; nevertheless this is one implication of their finding. On the face of it, the idea sounds absurd -- everyone knows only a few hundred people perished in the airplanes that crashed into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and in the rural field in Pennsylvania.

Essentially, it is the author's contention that because millions of people refused to fly after the 9/11 attacks -- and instead chose to drive (which is demonstrably more risky in statistical terms than flying) -- an estimated 1,595 additional people have since died as a result of the 9/11 attack than is generally recognized.

If these people could have unlearned that their fear of flying was an irrational act because it caused them to engage in an even riskier activity, it is likely they would be alive today.

On a somewhat related note, I recently received a copy of a powerpoint presentation from one of the world's leading epidemiologists, Michael Osterholm. In it, he coherently argues that the United States is woefully unprepared to deal with the very real possibility of a major pandemic.

Interestingly, in his slides, Osterholm makes the point that it possible that more people will die from non-influenza-related deaths than from the flu itself.

How so, you ask? Well, much of the pharmaceutical industry utilizes "just-in-time" inventory procedures. In the event of a pandemic; major shipping, trucking and distribution centers will be hampered and maybe even shut down entirely. As a result, hospitals -- which already have a dangerously low supply of many critical life-savings drugs -- will run out of important drugs in a matter of days.

The effect: people will die unnecessarily. That is, unless, we can unlearn the idea that "just-in-time" inventory for certain critical supplies is not necessarily a good idea.