Tag: game of thrones

Cao Cao did nothing wrong

“I will rather I wronged all the people under the heavens than for all the people under the heavens to wrong me.”

Cao Cao

I listen to every episode of the Cognitive Crucible, but I don’t always post about them. It’s only if something jumps out at me.

And this time, I almost made it through the last two episodes without jotting anything down, and they both got me as they came to a close.

In episode #111, John Bicknell speaks with Dr. Victoria Coleman on her role as the Chief Scientist for the United States Air Force.

Good episode, I was enjoying it, and just as it was closing, two interesting things happened. First, when John started the “lightning round,” where he says a word or phrase and has the guest respond with whatever comes up, he offers “video games.” Dr. Coleman responded that she doesn’t play video games, but understands the importance.

Ok, nothing crazy there.

But then, when asked to recommend a book, Dr. Coleman offered the Chinese epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

There it is.

At the risk of oversimplifying, Romance of the Three Kingdoms is an epic novel that tells the tale of Chinese unification in the second and third century. Think A History of the Peloppenesian War meets Game of Thrones.

What struck me here, though, was the fact that this is a title and a series that many readers of this blog will know from the video game series that is based on the novel. I first learned of the treachery of Dong Zhuo, the brotherhood of Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei, and the ferocity of Lu Bu through playing the game as a kid (and as an adult). It’s one of the games that introduced me to the idea of palace intrigue and political warfare.

Incidentally, I had used a screen grab from one of the games as the header for a recent post on irregular warfare and the role of diplomats. Diplomacy (and treachery) plays a critical role in Romance, and it seeemed fitting.

If you’re not paying attention to gaming, you’re missing out. Which is why I scribbled the note down here. In the space of just a few moments, there was a serious connection missed between these two things – an epic Chinese novel and video games.

And innovation is connecting.

Now onto episode #112 with Jake Sotriadis.

Another fine episode, this one on the concept of future studies. Almost finished it, and then at the ~43:00 mark they wrap up with the “concept of the right answer”:

“When we’re talking about problems in the strategic environment that are linked to human nature, you realize very quickly that you’re not going to be able to “quant” your way – if you will – out of the problem.”

Thank you.

No matter how many people point this out, senior leaders demand we put a number on it.

There has to be another way.

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The Return of Tactics Ogre?

square enix tactics ogre catiua and denam

I felt genuine joy when I saw this late last week.

Square Enix has applied for a trademark, in Japan, for Tactics Ogre: Reborn, ramping up speculation that the 20-year-old Ogre Battle strategy RPG series is due for some kind of re-release.

The trademark application was filed March 31 and published on Thursday. Square Enix has made no official announcement of a new game in the Ogre Battle series, whose last original release was Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis for Game Boy Advance in June 2001. 1995’s Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together was re-released on PlayStation Portable in 2010.

New Tactics Ogre trademark signals a revival of Square Enix’s great tactical RPG, Polygon

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together is one of my favorite games of all time. I played the original on Playstation when I was a teenager and was completely sucked into its complicated political intrigue.

For those who have no idea, think Game of Thrones. A huge cast of characters, complex narrative, and brutal permadeath.

One of the things I loved about the game is that your characters – even main characters – could die. And those deaths have repercussions.

The other thing that made this game great is choice. You make lots of choices that affect the direction of the story. These choices are real and consequential – and incredibly difficult to make.

Tactics Ogre has appeared on the blog a bunch over the years. Way back in 2013, I used Tactics Ogre as a way to discuss deception operations. There is a pivotal, early event in the game that dramatically affects its direction. You – the player – get to make that choice.

There were two posts in 2014 as I was grinding through a 3rd playthrough of the game. The first is a reflection on another critical game event, the importance of choice, and the pain in dealing with the repercussions.

The second was on mentorship and some of the best wartime advice I’ve ever heard:

“Above all else, stay alive.”

Tell me that’s not true.

I even made a reference in a more recent write-up of an Irregular Warfare Podcast episode on foreign fighters. One of the things you learn in Tactics Ogre is that much of the conflict is spurred on by foreign powers with their own designs for how the conflict should play out.

So, I hope this news is pointing at something real. A remake? A new chapter?

I’m there for it.

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Failure and Secrecy

tywin and tyrion having a conversation from game of thrones

Three things struck me from the most recent IWI podcast episode – all came towards the end.

“While we exist in the physical environment, where we find our relevance is in the cyber environment. And that is only going to increase as time goes on.”

General John Allen, LEARNING FROM THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE IN IRREGULAR WARFARE ~29:45

You likely already know this. Think about a great organization you are a part of or have some affiliation with that has a terrible online presence – or no presence at all.

It can feel a little embarrassing.

Now think of the opposite – think of that organization that has a terrific online identity but might not even have a building or office in “real life.”

That distinction is becoming less and less relevant.

To a point, of course.

At the end of the day, all of that internet showcasing won’t stop an army from breaking down the door.

Tywin Lannister: “You really think the crown gives you power?”

Tyrion Lannister: “No. I think armies give you power.”

Game of Thrones

But what if you don’t have a door to begin with?

Here’s the second thing – on failure, reporting, and incentives:

“If you have a zero-defect reporting culture where – if one of your soldiers loses a rifle – the idea that any step that you make is wrong, it’s going to torpedo your promotion chances. Then, the temptation to juke the stats about how many of your vehicles are working – I just bang this drum, ‘it’s the incentives, the incentives, the incentives.”

Simon Akram, LEARNING FROM THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE IN IRREGULAR WARFARE ~36:45

That short paragraph captures it all right there. What are we incentivized to report? Is it only good news?

Finally, special operations and too much secrecy:

“Talking about special operations forces… I do think we have an issue in the UK that special operations forces are too secret. I think we cover them in a level of secrecy that is ultimately counter-productive.”

Simon Akram, LEARNING FROM THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE IN IRREGULAR WARFARE ~37:30

He goes on to say that this (often) needless culture of secrecry actually hinders SOF’s ability to get things done across the spectrum – from recruiting to military operations.

While he is speaking about the UK, this cuts across to the US as well. There is a time and a place for secrecy, but for the most part, there’s no secret about what is going on. Pretending there is – whether it’s due to archaic rules or maintaining mythology – does us no favors.

Things are changing. Things have aleady changed.

The sooner we embrace this and start showing up in reality the quicker we’ll start seeing the needle inch the way we want it.

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Some thoughts on Colonel Volgin

colonel volgin torture scene

The man is terrifying. Probably one of the most terrifying villains I’ve encountered. I get serious Sir Gregor Clegane vibes from him.

The torture scene in Groznyj Grad is particularly brutal.

But as an interrogator, he’s the absolute worst.

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Revenge as Tactical Purpose

not you sophie
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When I was in graduate school, I came across the below paragraph, a rough attempt at painting the Arab tribal code in the time before the dawn of Islam:

Bravery in battle, patience in misfortune, persistence in revenge, protection of the weak, defiance toward the strong, generosity to the poor, hospitality to the visitor, loyalty to tribe, fidelity in keeping promises.

I always found it interesting that “persistence in revenge” was in there. The idea of revenge as a virtue is foreign to modern forms of law and behavior control. Or rather, we prefer the term justice. Revenge is personal, emotional. You wrong me, I’m going to wrong you, to even the score. Justice, on the other hand, is something legal. It’s more clinical, and often not as satisfying. Life in prison for a mass murder doesn’t always seem to square things out. Neither does the death penalty, for that matter.

Still, there is something very human about wanting to seek revenge. Look at our media: Kill Bill, Django, Game of Thrones. Revenge courses through our stories as one of the chief drivers of action. Zero Dark Thirty, a movie about the real-life hunt for Osama bin Laden, is essentially a revenge thriller.

With the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, there are renewed calls for “punitive” strikes on ISIS. That is, I suppose, strikes that we may not have carried out previously (why?) but now conduct to “teach them a lesson” or something.

While I think revenge has a place in the human psyche – it is something we feel, after all – summoning it as a tool of the state seems misguided, childish, and dumb, a device used to appeal to the masses who want us to “do something.”

If our goal is to destroy ISIS, then we should seek to do that, however the policymakers decide is best.

But revenge should not be a part of the mission statement.

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The Battle of Castle Black

game of thrones the battle of castle black

This post makes generous reference of Game of Thrones, s4/ep9 (The Watchers on the Wall). So, if you haven’t seen it, there are spoilers below.

The Battle of Castle Black

I’m a big fan of Game of Thrones. I haven’t read all of the books yet, but the HBO show is my absolute favorite thing on television right now.

This past Sunday’s episode The Watchers on the Wall was especially good. Instead of darting back and forth between different characters and settings, we stayed fixed on The Wall for the entire episode. We wouldn’t be teased by Jon Snow and then whisked away to colorful, sunny Mereen or treacherous King’s Landing for a few moments of differing drama or comic relief only to get sucked back to the North. There was no respite.

The entire episode was grim, ugly death.

While watching, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on back in those other places and with those other characters, especially given the dramatic ending of the previous episode. The men of the Night’s Watch, underprepared and grossly outnumbered were there in the dark, holding off a massive army many times their size, all to protect the warring and distracted factions far away to the south who were completely oblivious to what was going – in their name – at The Wall.

For the Night’s Watch, the battle is their only reality as they struggle to keep back the horde,  at least for the night. They are not distracted by the trials of captors going on back home – they don’t have that luxury. For them, victory in battle offers no escape. It simply means preparing for the next watch.

The day after watching that episode, its residue still lingering in my mind, I was struck by how that “stuck” feeling I got while watching it felt similar to what a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan feels like. When you are there, you are there. There’s this feeling of doing something gravely important but coupled with a dark knowledge that it is completely unimportant and uninteresting to those back home, the feeling that they are completely oblivious to what is happening – in their name.

There’s no escape, either. You fight, sometimes for no other reason than because you are there, spurred on in moments of weakness facing giants by memorized oaths. And when the fight ends and the smoke dissipates, you collect the dead, rebuild the defenses, and prepare for the next battle.

Through the entire episode, my mind kept slipping to King’s Landing and other places, thinking that they need to send troops to counter the invading force. Maybe one day, but I remembered that in Westeros, The Wall is a distraction, a side-show. It is where factions send their trouble-makers and irreconcilables.

There is, of course, a nagging memory of why The Wall exists and why the men of the Night’s Watch are important, but it’s not important enough to warrant straying from the daily drama of trials and intrigue that captures court life in the capitals.

It all seems a little too familiar.

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The Rains of Castamere

why we fight
"When I go home people'll ask me, 'Hey Hoot, why do you do it man? What, you some kinda war junkie?' You know what I'll say? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you, and that's it. That's all it is." -- Black Hawk Down (2001)
“When I go home people’ll ask me, ‘Hey Hoot, why do you do it man? What, you some kinda war junkie?’ You know what I’ll say? I won’t say a goddamn word. Why? They won’t understand. They won’t understand why we do it. They won’t understand that it’s about the men next to you, and that’s it. That’s all it is.” — Black Hawk Down (2001)

Doctrine Man posted the above photo and quote from Black Hawk Down yesterday as part of this weekend’s steady stream of Memorial Day-related posts to counteract a supposed disinterested public while also helping us lose ourselves in a “twilight of sentimentality and nostalgia.“

The quote is a variation of the answer to “why we fight” that usually boils down to doing it “for your battle buddies on your left and right.” That is, today, the reason we go to war is simply to protect the ones with whom we’ve gone to war. Put simply, we’re there and doing it because we’re there and doing it.

Force protection.

I’ve always had a hard time swallowing this. Maybe I’m too cynical, but it seems to be a lowest common denominator rationale – there’s no good reason we’re doing this (conquering, for example), so the best we can come up with is this pseudo-spiritual link between the men and women in a given unit. The concept is popular among troops and when uttered, is usually met with nods of gritty determination from exhausted soldiers grasping for a reason to strap on heavy body armor, pick up their rifles, and step out on another ghost patrol.

“Honestly, at this point in the war, is anything really worth someone’s legs or their life or something like that?”
-As quoted in Stars and Stripes (November, 2013)

Jack_Churchill_leading_training_charge_with_sword.jpg (1003×643)

Earlier today, I read about “Mad Jack” Churchill, a British officer who was known to go into battle with a longbow and sword. It’s an incredible story and the picture is otherworldly. It was this macabre quote of Churchill’s though, that captured my attention: “If it wasn’t for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another ten years.”

This is reminiscent of LTC Kilgore’s famous quip of “Someday this war’s gonna end...“, spoken with the sick sadness of a man lost in war, warning his troops to soak up as much of the grim death before it’s all over.

While Kilgore is fictional, Churchill is not, and there seems to be a “type” that indeed is a ‘war-junkie.’ I’m not sure it’s necessarily for the mechanical aspects of war – the shooting, the bleeding, the death. Rather, it’s the whole experience of the campaign. It’s the sights, sounds, and feelings swirling around for years. It’s life in the emerald city. It’s an endless summer where the only victory is survival.

“The dead only know one thing; it is better to be alive.”
-Joker, Full Metal Jacket

In generations passed, strict dedication to duty might have been enough to sustain the fighting heart. Or perhaps, simply, the casus belli was better, or at least understood. Certainly in a firefight, the only thing that matters are those on your left and right, for they will bring you home (the “warrior,” mind you, is dead). As soon as the first bullet is fired, the world washes away and all are instantly swept to a dark arena where humanity disappears and natural instinct takes over.

My point though, is that in order to get to that arena – that point in time where the only thing that matters are those on the left and right – required a series of decisions made by men and women on and far from the battlefield. It is in those decisions where we should find the answer to “Hey Hoot, why do you do it man?”

Not for fame or reward
Not for place or for rank
Not lured by ambition
Or goaded by necessity
But in simple
Obedience to duty
As they understood it
These men suffered all
Sacrificed all
Dared all-and died

I’ve heard it said that this generation, more than others, needs to know the “why” more than those of previous generations. I’d say that’s fair and true. “We’re going on this mission because I told you so” might get them out of the wire, but it is unlikely to tame (or unleash) the “beast in the heart of every fighting man.”

And it will certainly leave them thinking about what it all meant for the rest of their lives.

Something to think about.

This, incidentally is the 500th post on Carrying the Gun.

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What it’s like when a new Platoon Leader meets his Platoon Sergeant in combat

When I saw this scene, I immediately thought it looked like a new platoon leader meeting his platoon sergeant. Especially in a dire situation, like combat. It is one of the strangest arrangements we have – a young, fresh soldier is placed in charge of a few dozen men, many of whom are older and more experienced.

The tit for tat exchange in the beginning of the scene is similar to what will happen over time in a new platoon leader’s experience. Members of the platoon will test the leader by pushing the limits of what can be said in his presence, the other members of the platoon (in this case, the boat) looking on, waiting for the reaction.

Later in the scene, Theon meets his First Mate – which is really more akin to the platoon sergeant in this case. The bald guy in the beginning is more like the super-aggressive squad leader. The First Mate welcomes Theon, and says “They’re not going to respect you until you prove yourself.”

Here’s the text of the first scene above:

Theon: You’re the crew of the Sea Bitch? I’m your commander. Welcome.

Stop.

STOP!

Your captain commands you to stop!

[laughter]

Rymolf: Where are we headed, captain?

Theon: The Stony Shore. To raid their villages. There’ll be spoils in it for you, and women, if you do your jobs well.

Rymolf: And who decides if we’ve done our jobs well?

Theon: I do. Your captain.

Rymolf: I have been reaving(?) and raping, since before you left Thelon’s balls. Don’t reckon I’ve got much use for ideas on how to do it. Don’t reckon I’ve got much use for a captain at all. I’m thinking I can do the job of captain real well myself. All I need is the ship. You don’t know where I can find myself a ship, would ye?

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