On secrecy and surprise

After the mathematician turned jungle explorer had an affair with the chief's beautiful daughter, the chief pondered a suitable punishment.  "You will be executed at dawn some day in the next week such that it will be a surprise," he declared, and the explorer was put in jail on Sunday evening to contemplate his fate.  

The chief was known to be a man of his word, so the logic engines began to whir. Maybe there was a way out of this mess after all.  He figured that he couldn't be killed on the final day,  next Sunday at dawn, because if he had made it that far, it would no longer be a surprise.  That ruled out Sunday.  Well, how about Saturday?  Since Sunday was out of the question, if he survived till Saturday, THAT would no longer be a surprise. So Saturday was out of the question as well.   Curiously,  so therefore was Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday, and even Monday.   In fact,  no day would be a surpise!

At dawn on Monday he smiled, knowing he was safe, and, as the Chief's men arrived and proceeded to execute him, he was indeed surprised.

There are many situations in which secrecy is not required in order to achieve "surprise".

In any contest in which your opponent is simply unable to believe that you are doing something, call it "X", you can simply continue to do that and your opponent will suffer the damages caused by your use of "surprise".  If you subscribe to Liddell Hart's rules of strategy, and you believe the element of surprise is a key component, this does not mean automatically, as has been assumed, that therefore you require secrecy of operations.

I say this looking at the current furor over WikiLeaks.  While most policy gurus are fighting over how and where to apply pressure to stop the leaks, I'd like to step back a few more steps and consider the case where we adopt a strategy that is immune to leaks -- not because there aren't any, but because they don't matter.

It seems to be taken as an unquestioned tenet of action that the optimum behaviors occur in the darkest dark,  with maximum security and secrecy surrounding them.    Let me challenge that head on, and say, frankly, hogwash.

Let me propose instead an alternative tenet and rule of operations, which says that the optimum behaviors occur in the brightest sunlight, and have no need for secrecy -- which is good, because secrecy is increasingly impossible to obtain.   The very nature of secrecy requires compartmentalization and the creation of silos of knowledge and action, which are directly in the way of any kind of large scale coherence of thought or action.

Now, the idea of abandoning secrecy strikes one like the idea of "open-source" software -- our first reaction is that such a thing is patently absurd and couldn't possibly work.    But,  we are increasingly aware that open source software not only works, but works better and more reliably than software developed in tight corporate secrecy.   Something is apparently wrong with our mental lenses and insights, because this comes as a surprise to us.

And,  despite being front-page news,  every time we see it it comes as a surprise.   It is itself an example of something that can hide in plain sight because our mental model's blind spot falls directly on top of it, shielding it from our sight.

There's more of that going around than you would think.  In fact, as Thomas Kuhn (Structure of Scientific Revolutions) would agree, anything that goes against the prevailing paradigm ( effectively, the current narrative, story, or myth) is, de facto, invisible.  It is either not seen at all, or when it is forced upon our consciousness, it evaporates quickly leaving no trace or change in our model of the world.

There is these days a transition in management thinking from McGregor's Theory X ( people are disruptive idiots who need a strong whip hand and know zilch and don't care) to Theory Y (people are caring allies who know a lot and if left to their own devices will help out.)    There is much evidence that open-management models work better for many kinds of tasks,    because facts known by the "lower" levels of the organization are no longer kept secret from the top level of the organization.   More to the point, those "in power" are more willing to listen, and once they listen, are no longer surprised by actual intelligence from below.

Some threads come together here when we try to take these facts and apply them to pondering what national policy should be regarding secrecy of operations.

First - if secrecy is abandoned as a policy,  then we have a chance that the left hand will know what the right hand is doing.    I'd affirm that as a requirement for success, and not an easy one to achieve in these days of leaky on-line systems that we attempt to surround with expensive and intricate layers of nested security that only have one sure property -- they are a pain in the ass in terms of doing one's job.

Second,  if we continually are honest and open about what we are doing and why,  after a while this can serve as a basis for trust,  which, as writers in social capital have noted, will lower the transaction costs for every event.We are far more likely to find willing allies if they actually believed, based on observation, that we were being honest and sincere and open and capable of doing what we said we'd do.

But, a contrary thought goes, wouldn't that mean we would lose all the benefits of deception and surprise?

As to surprise,as I mentioned above, it is possible to maintain perfect surprise in plain sight, if your behavior is contrary to what your opponent believes it must surely be. If our opponents believe we are liars and thieves, then any action we take which is honest and fair will come as a surprise to them.    We do not lose the strategic and tactical benefit of "surprise" by being completely open.

How about deception.  Isn't it true that the best outcomes of negotiations or diplomacy arise through use of clever bluffs and lies and deceptions?

Actually, the latest word on negotiations is that  where interests are admitted and facts are not hidden, open negotiations can lead to and often do lead to far better outcomes for both parties than negotiations based on bad faith. 

But surely diplomacy depends on lies or at least silence that preserves a lie, doesn't it?

Let's look at an example. When your girlfriend asks if you like her haircut or recipe for stew, and you can't stand it, aren't you better off lying about it?  What about the impact of facing that new haircut and that stew for supper every week from then on  -- is that going to strengthen and  improve the relationship?

It is no longer obvious, at least to me,  that diplomacy requires lies in order to function.  Diplomacy doesn't require lies unless your entire behavior and being is one huge lie, and you are terrified of being "found out".  It is possible to disagree with someone "diplomatically". The diplomacy per se is in how the response is delivered, the human context surrounding it,  not in the content of the response.

It is possible to say "I don't like the haircut but, listen, it doesn't really matter because I really love YOU so much and I'm just blown away by the effort you put into getting it to make me happy."  That can work.  That is what diplomacy can still be about -- knowing how to disagree without it being disruptive.

This is hardly a comprehensive analysis of this subject, but I put it on the discussion table anyway.  Maybe,  expending our treasure to protect our shield of lies and deceptions is not the most effective strategy available to us.

Maybe, long term, we'd be better served, both internally and externally, by taking down the massive shield of secrecy and putting our energies into being worthy and reliable allies.

Comments welcome, public or private.