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The other day a friend of mine and I were talking politics and the conversation moved into a discussion about the U.S. military’s growing pains as it has shifted from the offensive force that brought down Saddam’s Iraq to the force that has had to fight the peace, what Tom Barnett calls the Sysadmin. We both agreed that this would take much more than different sets of equipment and that combinations of skills would be needed for the job. Then my buddy said,
“Yeah, but they don’t teach that way so nobody goes to school for that.”
I was thinking about that statement all day long.
My buddy was right, we don’t go to school for that and that brought me to my “neat idea”, the Sysadmin University.
Disclaimer: Like all “neat ideas” this one should be taken with a grain of salt as it completely pie-in-the-sky and almost totally impractical. However, most “neat ideas” do carry a nugget of useful truth buried inside them.
Imagine a university or several universities that focus on teaching and building the combinations of skills and abilities necessary for the Sysadmin concept, sort of a Sysadmin West Point. Double majors (or even triple majors) would be the rule not the exception. Obvious combinations like International Finance or Law Enforcement / Criminal Justice with Languages would most likely be common and certainly useful, but combinations like Global Economics or International Law with Public Relations could prove more interesting and valuable when applied in the context of Sysadmin.
I imagine that entry into the university could be offered under the basis of a term of service in the Sysadmin for a period of time during enrollment and / or following graduation. I would also imagine a very strong ROTC program where the Sysadmin service requirement could be shifted into the Leviathan portion of the armed forces. In this way the Sysadmin U. feeds into the military and possibly through the G.I. Bill the military feeds the Sysadmin U. I can also imagine entry into the Sysadmin U. by scholarships offered by other government agencies like DHS, State, FBI, CIA or USAID, or NGOs like the Red Cross.
I think the real key to making this sort of education truly valuable in this context would be to combine a focus on critical thinking with exposure to environments and ideas at home and abroad. In fact, this is the major flaw that I immediately see in the concept. I fear that, like many universities and colleges, the Sysadmin U. would quickly institutionalize and lose its ability to teach to a standard and vision that works in the “real world”. Fighting this would mean students who do a lot of study abroad under a broad range of partnerships and possibly a constant churn of the instructors and programs, a kind of creative destruction that would force reevaluation of focus and direction.
How Does This Fit Into The Larger 5GW Theory?
On its face this isn’t Fifth Generation Warfare, but in a larger context I believe that as part of an ability or even requirement of a 5GW organization to be able to act on all sides of a conflict and the possibility of a 5GW organization increasing and decreasing resiliency in a system in order to accomplish its goals. The people who excel in this sort of program would be exactly the kind of people who will be able to act in the horizontal manner mandated by 5GW as I currently envision it. Sure, there are people in the world today who have these multiple skill-sets, but I would imagine that the vast majority of them attained those skill-sets not because they were encouraged to, but because they had a personal interest in both areas. I would also say none of them were taught in the context of what would be necessary to act as part of a 5GW organization of as part of Barnett’s Sysadmin.
In other words this isn’t about 5GW any more than a tank or an APC is about 3GW, but having tanks and APCs that are fast, maneuverable and punch out of their weight class are tools that certainly do help in 3GW. In this case though the 5GWish Sysadmin certainly is possible without this kind of training, but training people to think horizontally and giving them these combinations of skills are tools that certainly would help.
Posted by Arherring on Oct 28, 2006 03:18 PM
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9 Comments
Eddie from Live From The FDNF once considered a Sys-Admin Academy & Exchange, which would have a more limited source of students, although they would come from many nations:
On top of that, he suggested exchange programs between various militaries.
I find Barnett’s recent ‘dream dichotomy’, of a U.S. Leviathan and a Chinese SysAdmin, to be a little too limited; but I also question whether an international SysAdmin force can be effectively constructed in the short term. Can any broad-scale international effort now be achieved? —or rather, now be achieved openly? It strikes me as quite possible that the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ would have made a better proto-SysAdmin than a joint Leviathan, come to think of it…
I think it would be far better, to start, to have an actual SysAdmin Program within the U.S., with students accepted from allied nations, with requirements for actual service following graduation from the program of, say, two years (maybe more). A kind of ramped-up Peace Corps. Establishing this alone would require a lot of work and have many internal hurdles to cross. However, considering RevG’s ideas about the disparity between education levels and useful activity — the U.S. may be breeding the next generation ‘superempowered individuals’ without providing new opportunities for their satisfaction within the workforce — I can see how such a program might become quite important. I do not see it being successful if it follows a head-up-your-ass approach toward recruitment, however; i.e., it would need to have its own identity outside the realm of the Defense Department or military. I also think the very idea of it would need to be promoted, in a way that doesn’t lead to impressions that this is merely to be an arm of the military.
In my notes for writing this post I have a whole section that deals mainly with exchange student programs and internships to cross-pollinate between U.S. and other countries. I think that exposure to places and ideas outside our own would be very necessary. This idea was, however, downgraded to a way to keep the Sysadmin U. from becoming stale and institutionalized, perhaps that shouldn’t have happened. Also, I have a small section in my notes that I never really explored that deals with starting Sysadmin U.’s in Gap coutries where the Sysadmin is operating.
On reading the FDNF article the two concepts are on the same wavelength but his posits something more along the lines of a Sysadmin boot camp for people who already have skills that will be valuable for Sysadmin work. I was thinking a bit more ambitiously, taking people without established skill-sets like new high school grads, or people with complimentary skills or experiences like U.S. military members who have been overseas and worked in that environment, and training them to a Sysadmin standard with the context of their studies being Sysadmin work. Hopefully, that will also translate to other things down the road that increase general resiliency in the U.S. military, public and private sectors.
The big questions seem to be:
- What system is being maintained? If a SysAdmin force is just another way to project American power (whether with exclusively American citizens or includes people from other contries), there will be serious opposition. The current system is one in which the US is on top. I think we’ve reached a point (Iraq, Afganistan, general squandering of good will) where any arrangement that maintains a system of American dominance will be challenged heavily. So who would command the force made up of graduates of the SysAdmin University?
- Could such a thing be accomplished outside the framework of nations? The State is weakening, and State interests are often competing. If a SysAdmin force is made up of members of State Armed Forces (like NATO), each will be pulling in it’s own direction. There would likely often be competing interests about when, how and where to deploy the force, and for what aims. Maybe thinking outside the “box” of State monopoly on war would add something to this idea…?
RyanLuke,
Sysadmin really isn’t a force for the waging of war so much as the waging of peace. Its operations may be kinetic as it conducts security operations but many, perhaps the majority, will be non-kinetic as it builds infrastructure and connectivity in parts of the world where such things don’t exist or can’t handle the workload. As such Sysadmin isn’t about projection of power (unless you mean connectivity and Core rule-sets). Sysadmin actually would put power into the hands of people who have no power due to deprivation by bad actors or disruption by warfare and disaster, and trusting in them to choose in their own best interests. Sysadmin U. graduates, wherever they come from, would use their skill combinations to help make that process more efficient and resilient.
I think RyanLuke’s concerns are valid and worth considering. Any program which appears to be instituted within the U.S. for the purpose of going overseas to ‘build’ or otherwise change conditions, may seem like a bit of ye old American Arrogance. Many might ‘beware strangers bearing gifts.’
A very good question. Someone like Bill Gates might be a very good choice. Get Oprah to highlight the program on her show while highlighting the many difficulties populations in the Gap have with daily living, etc. (I’m much less likely to suppose that the sort of GWB ‘faith-based initiatives’ would work — for obvious reasons, I think — even though I know that many of these organizations do good work in poverty stricken regions.) Bono could be brought in, as well; and I’m sure that many celebrities and entertainers would lend their support, if the SysAdmin were constructed outside the strict realm of the military-industrial complex.
In fact, I suppose that the dream of bringing increased happiness and peace (through good works) would be an easy dream to sell. Maybe as a part of the ‘ramped-up Peace Corp’ idea we could add a little of the bleeding-heart, and to that build the sort of ‘public works’ programs that helped the U.S. get out of the Great Depression — but for those areas outside the U.S. now needing to get out of their own various ‘depressions.’
The real problem comes from the likely need to perturb some regions before the SysAdmin enters, since such perturbation introduces the spectre of the U.S. military. I suppose this is why the Leviathan should probably have an international flavor as well, or at least a lot of diplomacy before actions are taken. Tying the two processes together without driving off the volunteers who are 100% opposed to any sort of violent intervention would also require some finessing. I think, however, that if the SysAdmin were constructed properly, many of those extreme (but potentially useful) pacifists would turn a blind eye to the need for a military pre-intervention as long as the military could step out of the way rather quickly after it has done its work. Hmmmm.
Guess why the US Army loves the Army Reserve and National Guard?
It is a big pool of system admins to tap into.
The Army Reserve and National Guard: are their efforts currently focused on supporting the work of the US Army, adding to it; or are they being utilized to build the systems that will make a viable state in the ME?
The goal of a SysAdmin U would be to train super-empowered individuals who would be unified by a morally powerful worldview. Super-empowered centres of order, rather than disorder. Because it is the individuals who are empowered, no one can say what that order might be. There would have to be great trust in these people, because their power, creative thinking, and ability to influence world events would be very high order.
Thoughts?
Although this sounds good, I’m not sure it’s true. One might say that each of these individuals, stepping into a depressed environment, are relatively more empowered than those they will help; but that’s not really superempowerment except from a relativist point of view. Some think that ‘superempowerment’ must indeed be great (and, ‘in deed’), in order to deserve that name, while I think that general empowerments that come from, say, education and democracy and capitalist freedoms, are pretty nifty as well and will have larger, aggregate effects on a society although no single individual is making the Big Bangs.
The ‘morally powerful worldview’ will probably be necessary, but I imagine that a lot of it will be inculcated during education — and not necessarily in an open, direct, hierarchical way. Whatever these folks learn will be their worldview, in large part, which they impart to those they are aiding elsewhere: science, politics, educational systems, engineering and infrastructure building, etc. And rather than have a quite limited but unified dogma or system to impart, they will be imparting knowledge and so forth that is in their areas of expertise. You are more likely to have some ‘guiding lights’ that help direct their activities (as far as assignments and requisitions, etc., go) and those individuals will have to have the larger view. The most general worldview held by all will focus around efficiency, peacefulness, happiness, harmony, and all those really big ideals, and you’ll probably want some feedback loops set up to prevent any of these individuals going rogue on purpose or accidentally.