“Intelligence” is information for competition.
Sims, Decision Advantage, p. 1
In the book Decision Advantage: Intelligence in International Politics from the Spanish Armada to Cyberspace1, Dr. Jennifer Sims argues that in order to deal with future challenges it is important to understand how intelligence is used by the decision-maker. They write, “in general, decision-advantage involves having more options than an opponent has, as well as the capacity to choose among them with greater certainty, timelines, and impact than he can” (Sims, p. 14). Intelligence is most useful to a decision-maker when it, “reduces uncertainty relative to an opponent’s” (Sims, 14). Decision-advantage, Sims argues, is built on intelligence-advantage which is discussed thusly:
Such an intelligence-advantage is achieved most efficiently by building on the terrain of uncertainty, that is, the competitors’ relative knowledge, informational resources, and familiarity with applicable rules at the opening of conflict.
Sims, p. 14
Put another way, “intelligence-advantage implies superior competitive knowledge, while decision-advantage encompasses the larger idea of having richer and clearer options than the adversary” (Sims, p. 15). In effect, Sims argues that the purpose of intelligence is not to simply determine the truth but rather to empower decision-makers to make better choices when dealing with events often beyond their control.
To illustrate the point, Sims presents 11 case studies ranging from the Spanish Armada in 1588 to Czechoslovakia in 1938. Sims also writes extensive chapters on the applicability of this new general theory of intelligence to the current day, especially in the context of cyberspace and intelligence. The case studies and modern commentary help illustrate four fundamental requirements identified by Sims to achieve intelligence advantage:
- Superior capacities to collect relevant information.
- Sufficient detachment of collection from current policy and known threats to enable discovery of the unexpected.
- Superior transmission of intelligence and strategy among intelligence providers and decision-makers to create advantage over competitors.
- Superior capacity for selective secrecy. (Sims, p. 406)
Writing in a bit of a glib manner Sims asserts:
What this study has done, however, is something quite different. It has offered a defintion of intelligence (information for competitive advantage), a method for finding when it might have mattered (winning and losing decisions), a way to track the knowing and confusion back to sources (finding connections between decision-makers and the collectors supporting them), and then determined whether and to what degree those connections were engineered rather than lucky.
Sims, pp. 407-408
Wargaming with Decision Advantage
As I read Decision Advantage I constantly tried to relate Sims’ new general theory of intelligence to my wargaming table. I finally recognized that Decision Advantage, focused as it is on international politics, is a very strategic view of the role of intelligence. As such, the lessons learned are perhaps best applied to strategic-level wargames. Intuitively, one almost certainly must believe that decision advantage has applicability at the operational and tactical levels of warfare; the book is simply not explicit on those connections. I will be noodling on those thoughts for a bit.
It it too bad that Sims ended their case studies in Decision Advantage in 1938. I am very curious to see how they might analyze Operation Bodyguard as part of the Overlord D-Day landings. Bodyguard is the focus of the 1994 wargame Bodyguard Overlord by John Prados from Spearhead Games. As I quoted in a September 2021 post I wrote on Bodyguard Overlord, “Moreover, this game creates for the first time, a coherent set of mechanics to incorporate campaign-level intelligence play into a traditional wargame environment.” It would be interesting to bring Bodyguard Overlord back to the gaming table and replay it with a weather eye towards Sims’ fundamental requirements for intelligence advantage. In the meantime I may have to pull out that great strategic-level World War II wargame, Cataclysm: A Second World War by William Terdoslavich and Scott Muldoon from GMT Games (2018), and see what—if anything—it has to say about decision-advantage. As I wrote way back in 2018, Cataclysm is in many ways a Clausewitz-style wargame where “war is merely the continuation of politics by other means.” Does gameplay in Cataclysm reflect any aspect of decision-advantage? Gotta play to find out!
- Decision Advantage, Jennifer E. Sims, Oxford University Press, (C) Oxford University Press, 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197508046.003.0001 ↩︎
Feature image courtesy RMN
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