Spot Report From The Future: War Between Pakistan And India Has 70% Chance Of Going Nuclear

Each year, in my strategic intelligence class, I use an old-school war game as the capstone of the game-based learning portion of the course.  Last year, we looked at a potential conflict on the Korean Peninsula but this year we were able to examine a hypothetical, near future, force-on-force conflict between India and Pakistan using Decision Games' Showdown.

The premise of the game is that "something" happens such that India feels compelled to invade Pakistan.  To win, the Indians have to take four of the five major Pakistani cities while not allowing the Pakistanis to take even one Indian town.  The Pakistanis win by preventing an Indian victory or by taking two Indian towns.  A draw is possible if the Indian player takes four cities but the Pakistani player has one Indian town.  Showdown is a 2 person game so we actually had 28 games being played more or less simultaneously.

The results?  In the 28 games, Pakistan won outright in 11 of them (39%) and India won outright in 7 (25%).  In addition, there were 3 draws (11%) with the remaining seven still too close to call when we ran out of time (4 hours).  It was a pretty even battle for the most part (You can see the number of cities taken plotted against the number of games in the chart below).

X axis = No. of Cities taken; Y axis = No. of games

Oh...yeah.  And in 70% of the games, the conflict went nuclear before it was over.

It is not preordained that this conflict will go nuclear when the game begins.  The Pakistani player must use nukes first and must be losing before the nukes are released (this is simulated by a rule that increases the odds that nukes are released with each Pakistani city taken). 

Showdown only simulates tactical nukes but it does so in a fairly sophisticated way.  Each side gets a fixed number of nukes to begin the game with a random plus-up to simulate the unknowns inherent in the size of the two nuclear arsenals.  Likewise, nukes can be duds (fail to explode upon contact) or get shot down by either sides' air defense systems.  Neither dud nor shootdown is highly likely but it helps create a sense of the fog of war. 



The photostream above is of the final dispositions of forces for both sides at the end of 15 of the games.  The darker pieces are the Pakistani units and the lighter pieces are the Indian units.   The cell phones used to take most of these pictures don't give much detail, so I have provided a clearer image of some the counters below.

 

This year, I asked students to make estimates about their opponent's strategy, devise their own strategy  and then execute that strategy.  In the after-action review, we went back and tried to determine why someone won or lost.  In many cases, students were able to determine that it was a poor or good estimate, strategy or execution that led to their defeat or victory.  In some cases, however, luck played a major role and occasionally (particularly in the games that were still up in the air when time ran out) it was impossible to say.

While I am a fan of games in the classroom in general, I particularly like using these old school war games with intel students.  It forces them to not only make estimates but to come to grips with the consequences of those estimates while simultaneously giving students a sense of the complexities inherent in modern warfare.

Part 7 -- Beyond Borders: Europe, India And South Africa (How To Get A Job In Intelligence)

Part 1 -- Introduction
Part 2 -- The Intelligence Job Market From 20,000 Feet
Part 3 -- The Good News!
Part 4 -- Even Better News!
Part 5 -- Beyond The Big Three
Part 6 -- Beyond Borders

It has been my pleasure over the last several years to get to know a number of intelligence professionals in other countries. I recently reached out to some of them to ask them what the job market was like for intelligence professionals in their neck of the woods. I received some good replies that I thought were worth sharing.

(Note: I have lightly edited these responses for length and clarity (ie spelled out abbreviations, etc). Chris, Nimalan, Dalene; if I messed up what you were trying to say in the process, please take me to task in the comments)

Europe
by Chris Pallaris, Head of Open Source Intelligence at the International Relations and Security Network, Zurich, Switzerland

For my part, jobs are certainly to be had in Europe, both in the public or private sector. One caveat: the economic crisis has meant more people staying in university longer. The research positions in a great many university-affiliated think tanks are tough to land and are likely to remain so for a little while longer.

The problem, however – and this has been echoed by a number of people I have spoken to - is not attracting applicants but rather finding those with the qualities and skills that are really in demand. The problem here is as much one for the employer as it is for the employees.

Students may leave university with good subject or region specific knowledge. But they lack the IT and information literacy skills that will allow them to jump in at the deep end. More notably, many lack the tact to deal with the sensitive issues that invariably cross their desks (a consequence of letting it all out on Facebook as a matter of course perhaps?). It’s a little unfair to expect them to have these skills from the word go, but in the current climate... My advice as an occasional recruiter: a little old school courtesy would go a long way towards making up for any skills shortages.

Also, it’s important for young graduates to note that intel jobs increasingly come in lots of different flavors: as information officers/knowledge managers, in policy planning units, as market researchers etc. All make use of intelligence skills. Moreover, there is a growing call for people who can think about the future (scenarios, foresight, etc.) without having smoke pour from their ears.

In the “competitive intelligence” domain, my (albeit limited) experience suggests that the best “spooks” and strategists have served a long(ish) apprenticeship in one or more departments (research, planning, marketing etc.) before graduating to a competitive intelligence role. Knowing the business or industry you’re in is part and parcel of being able to survey the market, identify trends, anticipate threats, etc. That may be something worth passing on.

I would also proffer the following advice: a good job as an analyst, researcher, desk officer, etc. in a lowly but effective department is far better than a sexy sounding intelligence job in a dysfunctional agency. The important thing for young graduates is to be around people who can teach them how to get things done and not just how to navigate the political rapids.

India
By Nimalan Paul, Manager, Infiniti Research, Mysore, India

Regarding the job market for intelligence analysts in India, I am no expert but here is my take based on what I have seen, read and heard.

National security -

Analyst jobs are possible through positions in RA&W or the IB. Entry into these organizations, like other Indian government organizations is through the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). The UPSC recruits people for government services ranging from typists to scientists all year round through written tests and interviews across various cities and towns.

I haven't been tracking this for long but have never come across specific requirements for IB or R&AW. What I understand is that people, once selected through the UPSC for a certain "grade" of employment, are then moved on to junior level positions in IB or R&AW. So, in effect, what I understand is that the UPSC recruits for a certain grade of officers who can get drafted into the IB/ R&AW or if luck has it, get into the Indian Postal Service as well (incidentally an ex director of R&AW was previously head of the Indian Postal Service).

Apart from this, the senior officers of R&AW and IB get deputed from the Indian Police Service (IPS) and to some extent from the IAS (Indian Administrative Service). The IPS is the point of entry for someone to reach the upper echelons of the Indian police force. An IPS officer, for instance, starts much higher in the hierarchy and moves ahead faster than a police officer who started as, say, a constable. Entry to the elite IPS / IAS is by means of a rigorous examination and interview.

Once selected, these officers are trained in an exclusive training school and are considered the creme de la creme of Indian youth and groomed for top government roles. Having an IPS or an IAS tag to your name is also highly prestigious. The point is, if you have an IPS tag you might serve in a local police force but then there are very high chances of being deputed either to the R&AW or IB. R&AW and IB have their own training programs for analysts, operatives, and the like which the IPS officer would undergo.

R&AW is also supposed to have its own cadre system like the IPS / IAS called the RAS (Research and Analysis Services) but I have never seen an advertisement or heard anything much about it.

Law Enforcement -

Apart from the police force with its various divisions, we also have the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which is something similar to the FBI. Recruitment to the above is also through the UPSC. They have their own training academy in Gurgaon near New Delhi. In the end since its all government service, CBI officers can be deputed to IB and R&AW and vice-versa.

Corporate -

This is, by far, the easiest way to get into intelligence analysis and very transparent - unlike the others. However, not many companies have a competitive intelligence (CI) division and it is only big multinational corporations who have a team of approx. 4-5 people to take care of their intel needs. Examples that come to mind are Oracle, SAP and so on who have teams of less than 10 people to take care of intel needs.

However, from what I understand, recruitment is essentially internal - mainly from the sales / marketing teams because they would know the competition better. A CI executive from a big corporation whom I had the chance to speak to said his job mainly involved helping Sales close deals and since he himself had worked in Sales in the past, it helped.

The other option is to work for market research firms, otherwise referred to as KPO firms (Knowledge Process Outsourcing firms). They need analysts and India has a lot of these KPOs (the biggest being Evalueserve which, incidentally, exhibited at the SCIP Conference this year). These are not pure play CI firms (the word CI is relatively unknown here) and do a lot of market research and other activities for European and US clients. So, in effect, you do not have a specific CI analyst but an analyst who also does CI! Therefore there are very good chances that there are no dedicated CI processes, tools and techniques in these organizations.

To sum it up, in India, there is no clear field of work called "intelligence analysis" nor is there a clear tribe of people called "intelligence analysts" except for government service and they never talk about it.

South Africa
By Dalene Duvenage, Owner, 4Knowledge Analysis Solutions, Johannesburg, South Africa

Glad you asked, but as you would expect, we're in a totally different position. We have no academic programs in intel here...I'm starting an African intel college with Don McDowell in the new year, but it might be only 2011 that we actually present accredited courses. Which means that we're not in the position that graduates from Mercyhurst would be, looking for jobs in intel per se. Also, our analytic cadre is way smaller in "statutory intel" (i.e. domestic, foreign, police and defence intel). I would say it is not bigger than perhaps 400 (most probably nearer to 300).

What is growing is the private sector's investigation or "intel" units. They would normally have investigators with support personnel at the beginning, until they realize or are told about the benefit of having dedicated analysts. Sometimes people from statutory intel will be appointed as managers in these units and they have experience with the benefits of dedicated analysts.

Those in the private sector having the job description of analyst can be found in the banking sector or competitive intel market, with all the variants of names for what they are actually doing. The biggest growth is in the counter-corruption, crime investigation and risk management units of our local, provincial or national government departments or even the private security sector, because our police capacity is so dismal.

These units are separate from the police and have the mandate to secure and prevent crime/corruption in their department or company. Most of these units at this stage do not have dedicated analysts, only investigators, but I'm busy penetrating this market (it sounds a bit self-serving, but it will benefit the profession in the end).

So, if you put the previous number of about 400 in statutory intel and these quasi analysts together it might run up to 1000? Serious thumb sucking here...

The typical scenario at such a private or government investigation unit will be: A manager who has heard about intelligence, is not sure what it means and what it can do for the unit, investigators and support personnel. But it sounds sexy enough, or they have intel background and want someone from the outside to come and convince their employees that this new approach is the best. When I give intel awareness workshops to such a combined group, we go through the intelligence process, they realize what intel can do, how they can work better together to create knowledge and impact on the decision-making level. This bird's eye view course provides everyone a sense of what intel is.

Thereafter, we coach and mentor throughout the career progression of the analyst or manager. (The learning pathway is on my website http://www.4knowledge.co.za/training.html) Those identified to be analysts or do analysis type of work will then do a proper intel analysis course. There are investigators who also attend this course, which helps a lot with the dynamics and post-course inculcation.

As they progress as analysts (and I stress the professionalization of intel analysis), they would come for further courses according to their needs and the learning roadmap. Now the idea with the college is that they could 1) do the diploma or certificate or whatever or 2) they attend these short courses which will then be accredited towards that qualification.

More about the analysts in the statutory environment: Due to our history of amalgamation of all the different intel services after 1994, you will have people with a Masters degrees in anything from social sciences to physical science to people who have no qualifications. Of course, it has an impact on the quality of analysis and all sorts of other ramifications. We also have the same problems re: the long vetting process. I have heard of excellent candidates who just could not wait for a year to be approved and took a job at a private company.

Also, the poor state and stigma of our intel services is definitely something that the connected and inquisitive new generation keep in mind. As with the US, we're also bleeding 45 -60 year old veterans as well as some of the new generation that just could not fit into the paranoid, stove pipe, restrictive culture of our intel. This for me, is the saddest. Which just reinforces that intel has to change, and FAST!

Hope this helped. I'm just starting to scratch the African market, and it seems as though there are only a few analysts and that the same process needs to be followed to let the people realize firstly the benefit of intel-led policing/security/business/risk/intel;) and then see the benefit of dedicated analysts.

Next: Going It On Your Own

Towards An Unruly World: Ideas Of Interest (Day 1 -- International Security Forum)

Related Posts:
Live-blogging The ISF
BBC Monitoring

The ISF Conference began yesterday at the International Conference Centre in Geneva. It is a magnificent facility, with 640 attendees, and the speaker's list looks very interesting but the rules of the conference are going to cramp my style.

The whole ISF is being held under the Chatham House Rule and this prohibits me from citing who said what. That said, I can report some of the ideas to emerge from the conference.

Some of these ideas were unsurprising but some of them either had surprising twists or were brand new ideas entirely. I will start with the unsurprising ones first:

The Parade of Horribles. Climate change, war, terrorism, energy, food and water shortages, the demographic time bomb, WMDs, cyberwar, economic collapse... Lawyers call a lengthy string of terrible things like this the "Parade of Horribles". It is a rhetorical device designed to engage attention and compel action and it was used in much the same way here. What was interesting was the degree of consistency -- the same list of threats came up in multiple different contexts.

China and India. There seemed to be a good bit of concern and a certain sense of inevitability that China and India would emerge as future powerhouses. Nothing new here, of course, but the degree of certainty about this shift in power was noticeable. Certainly I heard more of this type of talk here in 24 hours than you do in the States over the course of several months. In addition, it was rarely just "China" and mostly "China and India".

Solutions. There was also a remarkable consensus about solutions: Reinforce international institutions (including the UN Security Council and regional initiatives); establish the "right amount" of regulation for markets; and increased coordination between defense, diplomacy and development agencies/organizations.

Some of the surprises:

Cyberwar/crime. There was far more talk concerning this issue than I thought there would be. If you take a look at the panels in detail, you can see that cyber takes up quite a bit of real estate. Interestingly, there is not a single panel devoted exclusively to terrorism (though it permeates the discussions here) but there are several devoted exclusively to cybersecurity issues. At one point there was even talk of Alternate Reality Games!

Emphasis on intelligence analysis tools and methods. No one called it that, of course. No, they used code words such as "security foresight" but they couldn't fool me -- they were talking about intelligence. Collection of information did not seem to be an issue; figuring out what the info we have actually means did.

"Resiliency". I think I witnessed the birth of a buzzword. The word "resiliency" kept coming up. The need to build resilient societies, have resilient systems. I think that the use here is similar to the way environmentalists use the word "sustainable" and the way network theorists use the word "robust". There was a sense that the runaway process of globalization had sacrificed too much of the world's resiliency for the sake of efficiency and that at least part of the current set of problems was due to this imbalance (Note: John Robb has been talking about the "resilient community" for quite some time but it was interesting to see the same term crop up here).

Following The Month-long Elections In India (Link List)

Beginning tomorrow, India is going to take a month(!) to decide the new composition of its Parliament, the Lok Sabha. 700 million voters will decide on about 500 seats in a series of elections that begin on April 16 and end on May 16, 2009.

We spend an awful lot of time in this country talking/worrying about China but for my money, the real player over the next 20 years is going to be India. Whether you agree with that assessment or not, India is definitely going to be important and watching the Indian political process unfold and estimating the future trajectory of India's policies based on the results makes a good bit of sense.

It is going to be a complex operation, though, and, in the past, these votes were marred with all sorts of bribery and other shenanigans. Fortunately, there are a number of online tools that will allow Indians to more actively take part in (and the rest of the world to watch) these elections.

I would start with the Wikipedia article on the elections. It provides a nice overview with a massive number of links and other data. Particularly interesting is the discussion tab on the Wikipedia page. It gives some insight into a number of the behind-the-scenes issues and arguments with respect to this election. Another good general overview comes from the BBC in their special report on the 2009 elections.

The University of Maryland's (Baltimore County) Ebiquity Research Group has also put together a very nice website that will track news and other data emerging from the elections as they take place. Likewise, the blog Google Maps Mania points to a joint Hindustan Times/Google effort to track the elections as well.

Google Maps Mania also points to my personal favorite: Vote Report India. Using the innovative Ushahidi platform, Vote Report India will allow people all over India to email, text, tweet or otherwise report violations of India's electoral code. The site is already active and already getting hits (See image below for recent reports of violence).

This tool has the potential to provide an unparalled transparency to the electoral process. While it will inevitably have many of the flaws of any "tip" line, it also holds out the promise of some really interesting HUMINT on the elections.

Excellent "Lesser Taught" Language Resource (DLI via DangerRoom)

Wired.com's DangerRoom featured an excellent language resource from the Defense Language Institute for some of the lesser known (only because they are lesser taught in the US) languages. Not everything on the site is accessible to non-military but the stuff that is available is very good. In addition to the fine language resources, I was particularly impressed with the "Countries In Perspective" section that provides short, descriptive country studies on about 20 countries.

China's Demographic Problems, India As A Counterbalance To China And A Revolution In Political Economy Against Jihad (Fora.tv)

A few recent gems from Fora.tv:

Nicholas Eberstadt: China's Looming Demographic Troubles
AEI Fellow Nicholas Eberstadt discusses the effect of an aging population on China's workforce, the skewed gender demographics and its implications, and the future of China's social capitol.
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008
Location: Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA,
http://fora.tv/2008/04/28/Nicholas_Eberstadt_China_s_Looming_Demographic

Mark Helprin on India Counterbalancing China
Mark Helprin answers whether India, an up and coming power in the world, will act as a counterbalance to China.
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008
Location: Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA,
http://fora.tv/2008/04/28/Mark_Helprin_on_India_Counterbalancing_China

A Revolution in Political Economy Against Jihad
Walid Phares calls for a revolution in political economy in the war against jihad.
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008
Location: Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Washington D.C.,
http://fora.tv/2008/04/23/A_Revolution_in_Political_Economy_Against_Jihad

Podcast: The Potential Partnership Of India And China (Harvard Business School)

I have recently discovered the papers and other products put out by the Harvard Business School through their "Working Knowledge" series. All good stuff but I thought that this brief podcast by Prof. Tarun Khanna was particularly interesting given the recent discussion of China and India in the DNI's recent threat assessment. HBS doesn't give me an embed option for their podcast so you have to go here to listen to it or you can click here to download it.