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Finalists

Evan Dudik

Stress Testing Strategy and Policy Using Ideas from the Philosophy of Science

This paper introduces the fundamental insight of Sir Karl Popper, as modified by Irme Lakatos, that a theory should make explicit the data that would falsify—not-verify—that theory. The paper argues, using Popper’s insight, that worthy policies and strategies proffer precise predictions of what facts, tests or observations would falsify the strategy. The paper applies Popper’s falsification to geopolitical policies and strategy, testing recent strategic proposals regarding China and Ukraine propounded by writers such as George Friedman and Henry Kissinger. It briefly employs Hempel’s Covering Law model of scientific explanation to make explicit the logic of falsification and analyzes real-world barriers to falsification using in-depth interviews of retired front-line U.S. military foreign area officers and other intelligence and foreign policy veterans. It examines two organizational scenarios where falsifying observations are welcome and not so welcome and provides suggestions as to how to make falsification a real-world activity in a world where messages of contraindication receive a less than welcome response.

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Ido Levy

Learning from the Enemy: Creative Bursts and Our Learning Competition Against Islamic State Suicide Bombs

The Islamic State (IS) has demonstrated strong innovative tendencies. Most prominent among its adaptations was the employment of suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (SVBIEDs) as weapons of conventional warfare. This paper analyzes the Islamic State’s development and use of SVBIEDs through a framework of terrorist innovation and learning competition and introduces the concept of ways of innovation. Using past literature, primary sources, and interviews with military personnel, it identifies the main drivers of IS innovative processes as well as those of its adversaries in their efforts to counter the SVBIED. For IS, ideology, leadership, experimentation, and organizational capital were key drivers fostering creative bursts and intellectual outliers. For the coalition, opportunity created by the interaction of coalition and partner forces was the main driver. The Islamic State’s disregard for force preservation made its innovative processes costly. Lack of creativity among partners and absence of ambitious coalition leadership and operational thinking inhibited anti-IS innovation. The case study shows that organizations with ambitious goals and leaders, strong organizational capital, and a penchant for risk-taking are more conducive to creative bursts and intellectual outliers. Development of strong relations among actors within an organization can also lead to greater innovative capacity.

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