Programmed to Fail - 7. Complexity

Acquisition Talk

Welcome to a special series on the acquisition talk podcast that gives you an audiobook tour of my research project titled, Programmed to Fail: The Rise of Central Planning in Defense Acquisition 1945 to 1975. I’m Eric Lofgren of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. You can find this book for free and over 1,300 blog posts on my website, https://AcquisitionTalk.com. In this chapter of Programmed to Fail, we dive into how complex order in the real world emerges from simple and iterative systems of nonlinear interactions. The umbrella term of complex adaptive systems is used to describe self-organizing systems of emergent order that adapt to an uncertain environment. While these properties are not in general desirable for weapon systems that humans use in the field, they are certainly desirable properties for the defense acquisition system as much as they are for market economies. In this chapter, we trace John Boyd’s work from weapon systems design into complexity theory that leverages Godel’s incompleteness theorem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and the second law of thermodynamics. We find that the only realistic way to generate a system that exhibits complex behaviors beyond the foresight of any individual is to build from the bottom-up according to simple rules. Tacit coordination based on local conditions can then give rise to emergent order, a process not appreciated by advocates of top-down planning and built into the foundations of the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System. While complexity theories have started to penetrate the philosophy of military operations, we are still at the early stages of appreciating these ideas in the world of defense acquisition. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com