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Comment by throwaway129386 | Hacker News Reader

As someone who works for the Defense Department I found this article totally unsurprising. This sort of story is common. The question people should be asking is why does it take a 3-star general's blessing in order to get a team functioning computers that are usable for something besides Email and Microsoft Office.

Another major obstacle that isn't touched on in this article is buying things. Typical timeline for purchasing anything through the normal mechanisms is minimum 4 months and 6-9 months isn't uncommon many years. Doesn't really matter how much it costs. So any group that wants to get things done on a reasonable timeline ends up putting a substantial portion of their budget on a contract who's sole purpose is to be a purchasing vehicle that circumvents the usual buying process.

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I think this article does a wonderful job explaining why the military is built the way it is:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/08/08/the-command-and-co...

If Command and Control is such a bad way to run a team, why does the military use it?

This was explained to me in NCO school. I was in the Israeli paratroopers in 1986. Probably the worst paratrooper they ever had, now that I think back.

There are several standing orders for soldiers. Number one: if you are in a mine field, freeze. Makes sense, right? It was drilled into you repeatedly during basic training. Every once in a while the instructor would shout out “Mine!” and everybody had to freeze just so you would get in the habit.

Standing order number two: when attacked, run towards your attackers while shooting. The shooting makes them take cover so they can’t fire at you. Running towards them causes you to get closer to them, which makes it easier to aim at them, which makes it easier to kill them. This standing order makes a lot of sense, too.

OK, now for the Interview Question. What do you do if you’re in a minefield, and people start shooting at you?

This is not such a hypothetical situation; it’s a really annoying way to get caught in an ambush.

The correct answer, it turns out, is that you ignore the minefield, and run towards the attackers while shooting.

The rationale behind this is that if you freeze, they’ll pick you off one at a time until you’re all dead, but if you charge, only some of you will die by running over mines, so for the greater good, that’s what you have to do.

The trouble is that no rational soldier would charge under such circumstances. Each individual soldier has an enormous incentive to cheat: freeze in place and let the other, more macho soldiers do the charging. It’s sort of like a Prisoners’ Dilemma.

In life or death situations, the military needs to make sure that they can shout orders and soldiers will obey them even if the orders are suicidal. That means soldiers need to be programmed to be obedient in a way which is not really all that important for, say, a software company.

You need a 3 star general's blessing to get computers because the whole military is built around authoritarianism and slavish obedience. It is built on those things because, in war, they are necessary. This has an unfortunate knock-on effect of making every decision take way too long and severely limits the autonomy of everyone in the chain of command, in often ridiculous ways. But if it comes down to being better at developing new tech, and winning a war, the army clearly has priority on the later rather than the former.

> This has an unfortunate knock-on effect of making every decision take way too long and severely limits the autonomy of everyone in the chain of command, in often ridiculous ways.

Not necessarily:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics

> the whole military is built around authoritarianism and slavish obedience

This is a huge misconception people have about the military. In fact the core philosophy of command in western militaries is one of enabling people to make their own independent decisions. The military wants nothing less than non-thinking obedient slaves because they know that’s how wars are lost.

For an example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics

If you have only non-thinking slaves you are done the moment anything doesn't go to plan. Instead of working with the situation the whole operation would come to a halt until people could reach their superiors to find out how to proceed. They would probably be dead by then.

>This is a huge misconception people have about the military.

I just gave you a first hand account of it, and a concrete illustration of it is the current topic of discussion. It's difficult to call what is being clearly demonstrated through multiple channels "a huge misconception". Especially considering this is an Israeli NCO saying this, when the Israelis have a reputation for actually being one of the most individualistic armies in the West.

>In fact the core philosophy of command in western militaries is one of enabling people to make their own independent decisions.

Compared to the earlier forms of warfare, this is absolutely true. A modern NCO has a level of independent from central command that would have utterly flabbergasted officers even a hundred years ago. Heck, Roman centurions were afforded less autonomy to make decisions than we give modernly to srgts.

But in absolute terms, compared to the civilian sector? The military is still an extremely authoritarian place that is utterly slavish to obedience. Because it has to be, men still need to obey their superiors when told to do things they might not want to do. Yes lower and lower ranks are given the freedom to set their own objectives and adapt on the fly to changing circumstances, and compared to the rest of military history that is quite something, but they still are not remotely individualistic or all that autonomous compared to non-military contexts.

I mean why do you suppose we retain the officer/enlisted divide, and still demand both sides keep a cordial but distant relationship? It's because we still need the authoritarian stuff as a backbone, so when an officer says "Jump" an enlisted man jumps rather than trying to argue. The Soviets found this out the hard way after the 1917 revolution, when they tried abolishing the officer corps. as a vestige of elitist authoritarianism and it backfired so horrifically they had to gobble up defecting white army officers just to survive.

> I just gave you a first hand account of it, and a concrete illustration of it is the current topic of discussion.

You gave an account for a single situation, which is completely different from the normal business: Being caught in a minefield under fire. Yes, there are situations where the military (or self-defense or many other things) train you to the point that muscle memory takes over and you just do what you have learned. Using that anecdote to somehow say "the whole military is" is not even a stretch anymore, it's just wrong.

>You gave an account for a single situation, which is completely different from the normal business: Being caught in a minefield under fire

The first hand account is the former Israeli NCO paratrooper, the mine field example is just an illustration for why the military retains that style of management despite its problems.

>Using that anecdote to somehow say "the whole military is" is not even a stretch anymore, it's just wrong.

And I can clearly see you didn't actually read the whole article I linked to, and are instead trying to argue just based on my minor quotation. I really recommend you fully read it before arguing, both for your own edification and because it's really interesting.

> The first hand account is the former Israeli NCO paratrooper

The worst paratrooper they ever had, per their own admission.

The US does not train the same way Israel does. Which does not train the same way China does, or Germany does, and so on.

>The worst paratrooper they ever had, per their own admission.

Because he wasn't suited to military style leadership. So he became a software dev instead, and he enjoyed that much more.

Still, this is a fair point.

>The US does not train the same way Israel does. Which does not train the same way China does, or Germany does, and so on.

The IDF is, as I said above, famous for its individualism and relatively lax standards of discipline by Western military standards. I suppose having fought several huge wars of national survival within living memory makes you throw all the superfluous authoritarianism out the window and retain only those parts of it which are essential to function.

So if even they are still very heavy on authority and instant obedience, the US isn't going to be any better. Nor, especially, would China who follow the Russian school of top-down control compared to the Western emphasis on bottom up (aka mission-style tactics the other fellow linked to).

> I just gave you a first hand account of it

From someone who describes themselves as being very bad at the job! Maybe this was what he was getting wrong?

> when an officer says "Jump" an enlisted man jumps rather than trying to argue

This is what people get wrong. When an officer says 'jump' the enlisted man actually responds 'tell me what you want me to achieve, sir, then it's my job to decide how I want to make it happen whether that's jumping or something else'.

A junior non-commissioned officer will tell you respectfully but firmly to back well off if you start telling them how to complete a task.

>From someone who describes themselves as being very bad at the job! Maybe this was what he was getting wrong?

Perhaps. He was really awful at the whole "military discipline" part of being in the military. Now he's a software developer, so that all worked out for him.

>This is what people get wrong. When an officer says 'jump' the enlisted man actually responds 'tell me what you want me to achieve, sir, then it's my job to decide how I want to make it happen whether that's jumping or something else'.

I personally only have 2nd hand accounts of the interaction from the officer's side, so I may well be getting it wrong.

My physics classes had a few navy guys in them, who were trying to get...something or other, they needed a degree in a hard science to get a promotion. I don't really know what exactly. Anyway, being really interested in ships I talked their ear off about everything whenever they'd let me. And the topic of ordering men around was always treated with a certain...presumption that every word they said would be instantly obeyed without question. Stand here and look over there at the horizon until I say otherwise sailor. Scrape this wall with this scrapper sailor, and then paint it over. Carry this crate below decks, no stopping sailor. Inventory the armory sailor, mop the deck sailor, etc. etc.

As has been mentioned, this is a common (albeit incorrect) use/understanding of what Command and Control actually is.

I wrote an article some time ago to reframe this in a business context: https://adamdrake.com/command-and-control.html

In short, when all startups are complaining that people don't show initiative/don't have alignment/etc. what they're really saying is that they have inadequate Command and Control!

These approaches and processes for keeping people working together with unity of purpose towards a series of objectives have been refined over thousands of years and under the most difficult circumstances. Ignore them at your (and your team's) peril.

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