Warning Analysis for the Information Age - Higgins Counterterrorism ...

environment. In a world of limited resources, an organism or organization isalways faced with the choice, “Do I use my resources today or save them fortomorrow?”The guns or butter tradeoff comes from the dichotomy between the need of theorganism or organization to sense and respond to the environment and the need toreproduce. The more resources put into systems that allow efficient ability tomaintain today’s organism or organization—the guns that allow defense fromenvironmental threats—the better the existing organism or organization can survivetoday. However, the more resources put into systems that allow effectiveability to build tomorrow’s progeny organism or organization—the “butter” tobuild new infrastructure—the better the progeny of the organism or organizationwill be able to survive tomorrow. In a world of limited resources, an organism ororganization is always faced with the choice, “Do I use my resources to makeguns or butter?”The intelligence or operations tradeoff comes from the dichotomy between theneed of the organism or organization to be able to effectively sense (observe andorient) and to efficiently respond (decide and act). The more resources an organismor organization can use to observe the world in fine detail in many ways andintegrate those observations into contingency plans for a wide variety of environments,the better it can make informed decisions. However, the more resources anorganism or organization can use to make rapid decisions and conform coordinatedactions, the better it can exploit the environment. In a world of limitedresources, an organism or organization is always faced with the choice, “Do I usemy resources for better intelligence or for more efficient operations?” This ultimatelytranslates into “Do I organize myself into a network or into a hierarchy?”The best kind of organization in any case is the one that can best completeDecision Cycles that address the three tradeoffs... Today or tomorrow? Guns orbutter? Intelligence or operations?As we will see shortly, the critical point in any Decision Cycle is the transitionfrom orienting to decisionmaking. This depends on both an accurate and completeinternal map/model of the world and the ability to provide actionableoptions for all foreseeable futures. An organization that can build and implementthe most effective and efficient plan will be the one that will prevail.And we will see that the choices made by the organism or organization notonly determine how much of its resources to allocate to intelligence but also whatkind of intelligence to value most... current intelligence, tactical warning, or strategicwarning.62