amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics

5 results back to index


Four Battlegrounds by Paul Scharre

2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, active measures, activist lawyer, AI winter, AlphaGo, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, artificial general intelligence, ASML, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business continuity plan, business process, carbon footprint, chief data officer, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, DALL-E, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, dual-use technology, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of journalism, future of work, game design, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, global supply chain, GPT-3, Great Leap Forward, hive mind, hustle culture, ImageNet competition, immigration reform, income per capita, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, Internet of things, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, large language model, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, new economy, Nick Bostrom, one-China policy, Open Library, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, phenotype, post-truth, purchasing power parity, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, smart cities, smart meter, Snapchat, social software, sorting algorithm, South China Sea, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, tech worker, techlash, telemarketer, The Brussels Effect, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, TikTok, trade route, TSMC

Position in AI Race,” FedScoop, September 9, 2020, https://www.fedscoop.com/esper-ai-announcements-ai-race/. 206“either introduce efficiencies, or find cost savings”: Rachael Martin, interview by author, April 29, 2020. 206“Game Changer”: “The JAIC’s Business Process Transformation Mission Initiative Delivers,” Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, May 14, 2020, https://www.ai.mil/blog_05_14_20-mi_business_process_transformation_mission.html. 206“amateurs talk tactics”: “Where does the quote of ‘Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics’ come from? Is it true or not?” Quora, June 20, 2019, https://www.quora.com/Where-does-the-quote-of-Amateurs-talk-strategy-professionals-talk-logistics-come-from-Is-it-true-or-not. 207precision-guided weapons: Barry D. Watts, Six Decades of Guided Munitions and Battle Networks: Progress and Prospects (Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, March 2007), https://csbaonline.org/research/publications/six-decades-of-guided-munitions-and-battle-networks-progress-and-prospects; Lauren Kahn and Michael C.

Martin said, “The more that we can free up our military members to actually do warfighting functions as opposed to office functions, I think that we all win as a department overall.” Many of the military applications DoD is focusing on—predictive maintenance, image processing, or process automation—are back-office functions to support military operations, but that doesn’t mean they are unimportant. A common military aphorism is that “amateurs talk tactics; professionals talk logistics.” The vast majority of what the DoD does on a daily basis isn’t actually warfighting. It’s moving people and things from point A to point B. It looks a lot like what Walmart or Amazon does; it’s what happens at the end that differs. Fighting wars is what makes the military unique from other organizations, but the vast majority of military activity is in support, headquarters, administrative, or logistics functions.


pages: 282 words: 82,107

An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage

agricultural Revolution, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Bartolomé de las Casas, British Empire, carbon footprint, Columbian Exchange, Corn Laws, cotton gin, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Eratosthenes, financial innovation, food miles, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Kickstarter, Louis Pasteur, Mikhail Gorbachev, special economic zone, spice trade, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, women in the workforce

Solar panels and wind turbines are the most obvious examples, but it may also be possible to tinker with the biological mechanism of photosynthesis to produce more efficient solar cells, or to create genetically engineered microbes capable of churning out biofuels. The trade-off between food and fuel has resurfaced in the present, but it belongs in the past. PART V FOOD AS A WEAPON 9 THE FUEL OF WAR Amateurs talk tactics, but professionals talk logistics. —ANONYMOUS The fate of Europe and all further calculations depend upon the question of food. If only I have bread, it will be child’s play to beat the Russians. —NAPOLEON BONAPARTE “MORE SAVAGE THAN THE SWORD” What is the most devastating and effective weapon in the history of warfare?


pages: 482 words: 150,822

Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 by Thomas E. Ricks

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Black Lives Matter, classic study, colonial rule, COVID-19, critical race theory, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, Donald Trump, Ferguson, Missouri, full employment, George Floyd, Howard Zinn, Kickstarter, Mahatma Gandhi, mass incarceration, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, wikimedia commons

THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON, MID-1963 Taking the National Stage Logistics is often the unacknowledged key to military success. It also was the decisive aspect of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But what does that mean? Inside the military, everyone knows logistics is vital. As an old saying puts it, “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.” But there is rarely any drama to logistics. The better it goes, the less outside attention it receives. There are few, if any, heroic films made about logistics. In a nutshell, logistics means the planned military movement of people and goods—primarily food, fuel, water, medicine, and ammunition—in such a fashion as to have everything in the right place at the time when it is needed to carry out a mission.

“We are on the threshold”: Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 265. “We are ready to go on a national level”: Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 102. “agreed that it would take”: Branch, Pillar of Fire, 102. King was even thinking about conducting sit-ins: Jones, The March on Washington, 167. 7. The March on Washington, Mid-1963 “Amateurs talk tactics”: See, for example, Barrett Tillman, D-Day Encyclopedia: Everything You Want to Know About the Normandy Invasion (Regnery, 2014). Etappenschweine: David Moore, “Logistics,” in The Oxford Companion to Military History, ed. Richard Holmes (Oxford University Press, 2001), 515. “be the spark”: Quoted in Lucy Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition (University of California Press, 2002), 150.


pages: 379 words: 118,576

On Her Majesty's Nuclear Service by Eric Thompson

amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, British Empire, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Etonian, Fall of the Berlin Wall, friendly fire, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Parkinson's law, retail therapy, Winter of Discontent, Yom Kippur War, young professional

A few weeks later, the appointment was vetoed by my Director-to-be who thought I would cause trouble because of the Marconi incident with my Thompson Torpedo and for fitting Sub Harpoon in Odin. It was outrageously below-the-belt. I was then appointed to DNLP, which I assumed to be the Directorate of Naval Lost Property but was actually the Directorate of Naval Logistic Planning. As any half-qualified warmonger will tell you: when it comes to war, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. DNLP was the Planning Directorate for Fleet Support, one of the largest organisations in the entire Defence establishment. The Chief of Fleet Support managed the Royal Dockyards, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (tankers, stores and ammunition ships), naval aircraft, armament depots, the flotilla of marine auxiliary craft such as tugs, aerial farms, telephone exchanges, and the entire supply chain that provided victuals, spare parts, transport, clothing and medical supplies.


pages: 509 words: 153,061

The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 by Thomas E. Ricks

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Berlin Wall, classic study, disinformation, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, friendly fire, interchangeable parts, It's morning again in America, open borders, operational security, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Suez crisis 1956, traveling salesman

Stone commented: “History has shown us that leaders often rise from the most difficult of times and circumstances, and we should not be surprised if Iraq’s future leaders are today being held in coalition force custody.” The way they were treated today might shape the country’s policies in the future, he warned. SURGING THE IRAQIS An old military aphorism holds that amateurs talk tactics, but professionals talk logistics. In fact, real military insiders often focus on larger personnel issues—raising, training, and equipping the force—because that is the key to long-term, sustainable success. The U.S. effort to create a new Iraqi military had never gone particularly well. Part of that grew out of the political obstacles facing Iraq: A member of the Mahdi Army, for example, might not be well equipped or trained, but he knew what he was fighting for.


pages: 812 words: 180,057

The Generals: American Military Command From World War II to Today by Thomas E. Ricks

affirmative action, airport security, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Charles Lindbergh, Columbine, continuation of politics by other means, cuban missile crisis, hiring and firing, MITM: man-in-the-middle, no-fly zone, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, South China Sea, Yom Kippur War

In personnel policy In Colorado Springs, one evening in March 1976, four military officers were discussing American personnel policies in the Vietnam War. “If you attempted to run a business like that, it would go under,” commented an Air Force officer. “Ours did,” an Army infantry major responded. There is an old military saying that amateurs talk tactics, while professionals talk logistics. In fact, real insiders talk about personnel policy, which as they know shapes the American military to a surprising extent. Even had the Vietnam War been better conducted by American generals in the field, the personnel policies put in place by generals back at the Pentagon still might have undercut the American effort.


pages: 497 words: 144,283

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 9 dash line, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Basel III, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, capital controls, Carl Icahn, charter city, circular economy, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital map, disruptive innovation, diversification, Doha Development Round, driverless car, Easter island, edge city, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, failed state, Fairphone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, forward guidance, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, ice-free Arctic, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, industrial robot, informal economy, Infrastructure as a Service, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, Khyber Pass, Kibera, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, low cost airline, low earth orbit, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass affluent, mass immigration, megacity, Mercator projection, Metcalfe’s law, microcredit, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Monroe Doctrine, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, openstreetmap, out of africa, Panamax, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Planet Labs, plutocrats, post-oil, post-Panamax, precautionary principle, private military company, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Quicken Loans, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, the built environment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero day

Today the principle could simply be called competitive connectivity: The most connected power wins. States must protect their borders, but what matters are which lines they control: trade routes and cross-border infrastructures. All great strategists know the importance of the saying “Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics.” Empires have always focused on infrastructure as a tool of extending influence. The Romans and the Ottomans built sturdy roads stretching far from their capitals and placed these on maps used by armies and traders. From the fifteenth century onward, European colonial empires built standing supply lines and overseas administrative capitals across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.