2023.10.21 06:38
how one might predict what the other side will do
During some war, it could be, say, Brazil fighting Mongolia, and Brazil might have a secret project aimed at predicting what the Mongolian army would do. As part of this project, Brazil could gather a group of excellent military specialists and task them with impersonating the enemy’s staff, creating a sort of shadow staff. Each of these specialists would become a shadow of a specific member of the Mongolian army’s staff. They would thoroughly study the life story of the person they’re portraying, under the guidance of psychologists to understand their character and thinking process, and analyze their command style and approach to military strategy. Then, this shadow staff would meet and, pretending to be the actual Mongolian army staff, plan military actions. It would be somewhat like an RPG game—each participant would truly take on the role they’re playing, addressing each other by Mongolian names, with no mention that it’s not real to stay in the trance. Thanks to this game, Brazil would have good predictions about what the Mongolian army would do next.
The operation would be strictly secret: the members of the shadow staff would live and hold meetings in containers cut off from the outside world, unable to go outside, call their families, or tell anyone what they’re involved in until the operation ends. Initially, they perform so-so—sometimes the real Mongolian army does what they planned, sometimes something else. But by observing these discrepancies and learning, the shadow staff becomes more and more accurate copies of the originals, and after a while, their predictions are nearly perfect. If, after an all-night meeting, they decide, say, to conduct a parachute landing in a certain place, parachutists would indeed land there the next day.
One of these shadow generals starts to feel what someone watching a robotic arm mimicking their movements feels—they start to feel it’s their arm, and when the artificial arm is struck with a hammer, they feel pain. In this case, it means they feel their decisions genuinely affect what the Mongolian army does. Rationally, they know this isn’t true, that the real Mongolian army doesn’t even know they exist or about their all-night meetings or decisions. But instinct and daily experience tell them otherwise: whatever they decide happens.
One day, the situation becomes difficult. The Mongolian army has been in retreat for a long time, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that they have no chance of winning this war. Everyone in the staff agrees they should start peace negotiations, end the war, and negotiate some non-disastrous terms of surrender. The next day, a meeting is to be held to decide: continue fighting or negotiate a ceasefire?
The night before this meeting, the general gets an idea. A crazy idea that could turn the tide of the war, causing Mongolia to win and achieve its goals. This idea hadn’t occurred to anyone because it’s unthinkable for a normal person to do something so heinous, so inhumane. The general wonders what to do: should he share this idea with the other staff members? He’s sure no one else would come up with this idea—only the Mongolian general he’s portraying could think of something so inhuman. He’s convinced, however, that if he reveals this idea to the other staff members, they, faced with the choice: either lose or win, will choose the path to victory, even at such a price.
Rationally, the shadow general knows his duty is to communicate this idea at the meeting tomorrow: since it came to his mind, it came to the mind of his original counterpart as well. Hiding this idea won’t prevent the original Mongolian army from carrying out this operation—they will do it if the original general announces this plan at the original staff’s meeting, and the only effect of him, the shadow general, hiding his idea will be that the Brazilian army won’t be able to prepare for it. But instinct tells him to stay silent: how could he propose such a thing and then participate in planning the details of this heinous crime, knowing how much evil, death, and suffering it will bring, on both sides of the conflict? Knowing it will especially hit his hometown, his friends, parents, the people he grew up among?
With these thoughts, he goes to the meeting in the morning—and at the last moment, he can’t say, "Gentlemen, I have a plan." He stays silent, so the staff decides to recommend the government start negotiations for surrender.
The next day, he waits for news: will Mongolia carry out operation "unthinkable," striking an unprepared Brazil? But no: nothing happens. The real, original Mongolia starts peace negotiations. So maybe this time he was wrong, maybe the original general didn’t come up with such an idea? On one hand, he feels disappointed to have been a poor analyst, wrong in his predictions; on the other hand, he feels an irrational pride that thanks to his silence, humanity avoided something so terrible.
And everything becomes clear only after two weeks when, after negotiations end, Mongolia surrenders, the war ends, and the members of the shadow staff are led out of their container. It turns out they are in Mongolia. It turns out that Mongolia knew about the Brazilian operation almost from the beginning, and when, in the third month of the war, all members of the Mongolian staff died in a bombing, the Mongolian special services carried out a daring operation: they abducted the container with the shadow staff and brought it to Mongolia. Then, for many months, without revealing anything, they fed them real information and conducted military operations based on their decisions.
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