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The Pentagon May Retire "Yoda," Its 92-Year-Old Futurist
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Of all the weapons the Pentagon relies on to defend the United States, one of the strangest and most secretive is Andrew Marshall, a 92-year-old man who's spent the last 40 years staring into the future trying to predict the next big threat to America. Known fondly as "Yoda" to his many fans in Washington, Marshall heads up the Office of Net Assessment—the Defense Department's think tank tasked with taking a long view, out-of-the-box approach to defense strategy. In his role as the Pentagon's visionary sage, Marshall is credited with predicting the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of China's global prominence, the role of autonomous weapons and robots in warfare, and even helping end the Cold War. Now, facing budget cuts, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is considering reorganizing or possibly even shuttering the futurist think tank, Defense News recently reported."
He never saw it coming
uh the title makes it sound like they are going to uh assassinate the nice old man
So, now we know who Yoda is, as well as the Jedi Knights.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
He's been trying to predict the future for the last 40 years. Unless everything he writes gets stamped 'above top secret: incinerator's eyes only' surely we have enough material to evaluate his efficacy by now?
How did it go?
Sounds like one of the few places in the defense industry that's got things right lately.
I'm truly interested. He either called it and they ignored him, in which case he's not useful, or he didn't call it, in which case he's not useful.
I'm sure he costs less than a redundant engine for the F-35, but everybody who says that each of the thousands of useless programs don't need to be cut because they don't cost too much is ignoring the rest of those other thousands.
If he's as smart as the ethos contends, many think tanks would be glad to hire him on. I only hope I'm fortunate enough to be in such a position when I'm 92. Also cool that he was already 60 before he picked up his nickname - most career military are outta-there at that point.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Does our government have no bounds for incompetence and intellectual laziness? They believe a single man is the best at this stuff? Do they really buy into guru-ism? Or is he just their Captain obvious, which in U.S. governmental terms roughly translates to "the one person who doesn't assume wildly imaginative scenarios that involve a fairly tale planet that assumes world leaders follow some sort of good/evil paradigm where foreign leaders are akin to evil geniuses?"
Ugh, this is so stupid. This is the only long view think tank in the Pentagon, the only one who looks at the entirety of a nation and tries to predict what will happen and more or less gets it correct. One of the big complaints about the military is they're "always fighting the last war"; this group was specifically designed to try to predict what a conflict 20 years from now will be and start preparing for it. Marshall needs to retire; he's damned old, but the group's purpose is still relevant.
40 years ago was 1973, which was 4 years before Star Wars, and 7 years before Empire Strikes Back, which is where Yoda is first mentioned and appears.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If they get rid of what works the next thing you know the Pentagon will prioritize the capture of the rebel leader Louis Riel before the Saskatchewan Rebellion spreads to the central US.
We've shifted all the money over to non-war bullshit like praising the homosexual agenda, watering-down the combat arms with females, spending millions rehabbing non-deployables who should be kicked out, employing thousands of majors to work on power-points, doubling-down on suicide prevention classes every year, and covering every surface of every building with sex harassment posters... I'm surprised this dude has kept his job THIS long.
"I also predicted this due to ever-growing social spending leading to increasing cost-cutting pressures on everything else. I'd like to claim authorship of this repeatedly successful prediction method, but I cannot."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
When 92 years old you reach, look as good, you will not.
Envisioning the implosion of a corrupt, bankrupt police state? Brilliant! Most populous country on Earth is in the ascent? Wizard!
The difference between someoldguy and "Yoda" appears to be that someoldguy is really good at predicting the exact same things in hindsight.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
and apparently he's been senile for the last 15 years...
Be seeing you...
When 92 years old you are, less senile you will be not.
The think tank should remain. Defense Department has to be ready for the next thing. Nations lose wars because they fight the next war the same way they fought the last one. A think tank like that might keep you ready.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Yesterday.
In actuality, the predictions attributed to him were widely predicted by many people
and found in Science Fiction long before his predictions. Even Popular Science
back issues tend to look prescient with hind signt.
Anyone who reads slashdot can predict global trends and be right some of the time.
I'd be more interested in some of the predictions which never came about.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Of course, that may be the SciFi spurring inventors.
Kid reads a book about flying cars. Dreams of becoming an engineer, works hard through school, gets to MIT or Stanford or some other high end engineering college, happens to take private pilot license as a hobby, and eventually is able to design a working flying car.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
So "the men who stare at goats" was a documentary?
How's that working out for them?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Everyone has lost the fact that dude is 92 years old.... Time to retire, it is! Workaholics...sheesh. Go take a break already!
Your date is off a little. He predicted it in 1916.
Like any "futurist," fortune teller or psychic, the accuracy of his predictions is based on having even the slightest clue, making vague or broad enough predictions that they're almost universally applicable, and relying on selective memory to erase all the predictions you made that didn't pan out. (Like some war with China that was mentioned in TFA.)
Which isn't to say that a think tank devoted to thinking about future wars and military tactics or strategies is a bad idea, or charlatanism, just to say that his ability to predict the future is being wildly overstated. I'm sure he has a sharp military mind, and good analytical skills to make the correct predictions he did, but that's a far cry from predicting the future.
I mean, I knew Google was going to be huge before their IPO... now that their stock's over $1,00 per share, does that qualify me as a technology or stock market futurist?
While the USN has been slow to adapt, relying on more conventional aircraft carrier refit packages to add complements of drones, in reality the paradigm shift means that drone frigates make a lot more sense, in terms of force projection and our actual enemies faced.
As well as the secret drone mods we do to "commercial" shipping units.
That and shifting to a shorter supply train using solar and wind resources to reduce our logistics.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They used to play cards together.
... and he's telling them something that they don't want to hear.
Of all the weapons the Pentagon relies on to defend the United States, one of the strangest and most secretive is Andrew Marshall, a 92-year-old man who's spent the last 40 years staring into the future trying to predict the next big threat to America. In his role as the Pentagon's visionary sage, Marshall is credited with predicting the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of China's global prominence, the role of autonomous weapons and robots in warfare, and even helping end the Cold War.
His most recent predictions included "damn kids on the lawn", the loss of a his pants, and "there are 4 monkeys in the attic - I'm sure of it"!
Mr Marshall will be missed.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Back in the 70s?
Sure - it's a very safe prediction to make if you had his job. There were basically three possible outcomes: the USSR lost, the US lost or there was a nuclear war and we all lost. In two of these outcomes he's probably out of a job or dead regardless of whether he was right or wrong but predicting that the USSR will lose is the one scenario where he gets to keep his job and so the only scenario where he has to worry about being correct. So what would you predict?
Cynicism aside what we would really need to know to see whether he is good at predictions is how many other "yodas" the Pentagon had making predictions and getting it wrong. If you toss enough coins you are likely to find one which comes up heads 10 times in a row.
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Envisioning the implosion of a corrupt, bankrupt police state? Brilliant! Most populous country on Earth is in the ascent? Wizard!
The difference between someoldguy and "Yoda" appears to be that someoldguy is really good at predicting the exact same things in hindsight.
but the US hasn't (completely) imploded yet. (ZING!)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Moving your piece in Chess to prevent an attack on weak squares is more important then your response to an attack. That's what he did & anyone who thinks China isn't a threat to the US is a moron.
the weaponization of drones was predicted nearly 100 yrs ago by tesla.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I'm not thinking in business terms. I'm thinking in terms of how effective it would be at destabilising the US economy. The answer is, not very. It's a bad strategy.
It would have no real negative effect on the US, probably break the US out of its economic downturn; while it would reduce the value of China's wealth, reduce exports, and pretty much be a one-shot deal with no follow-up beyond a shooting war. And this kind of attempt at economic warfare wouldn't just piss off the US, it would unite the whole developed world against China, due to their attempt at undermining the bond/currency markets. Plus it would fail, which would make China look foolish, costing it further influence, and possibly increasing unrest at home.
OTOH, taking advantage of the power vacuum created by the US's entirely self-inflicted economic failures...
If Sun Tzu didn't say "When your enemy is fighting himself, you might as well sit back, laugh, and grow your rice", I'm sure he would if he was looking at the US and China today.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Wonderfully - they really like being one of the vanishingly few people to have a flying car, and the profit from the few they sold is keeping the bills paid.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The primary role of the Pentagon is to envision what warfare of the future looks like. They take a 20 year view and ask the following questions (and run the following scenarios):
1) Who is/could be the enemy?
2) What does the battlefield look like (jungle, desert, urban, etc).
3) What kind of weapons/tactics will be used against us.
4) Most importantly, what type of military hardware would we need to have in order to counter that threat 20 years out.
They then take this 'long view' and use that as a road-map to invest in future weapons technologies. Mind you; this road-map gets updated every year. Then again, every year, the Department of Defense (DoD) retires 5% of old military technology, and buys up 5% of what's new... and at the end of that 20 year cycle, you have a 100% refreshed military that his hopefully ready/capable to counter whatever threat is coming at us today.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 90's, the war plans changed to a dual-theater conflict between 2 large nation-states (i.e. Russia & China). That is the military they built up to fight, essentially a land war in East Asia. When 9/11 happened, DoD was caught *completely* off guard. The reactionary spending that took place cost hundreds of billions more than it should have to up-armor Humvee's and build MRAP's simply because they had failed to plan for battle in the mountains of Afghanistan/Iraq engaged in guerrilla warfare. (Perhaps this is why it was time to retire Yoda?)
If you shut the think tank, the Pentagon will no longer be the R&D arm of the DoD, and within 10 years, certainly within 20 we will be a completely reactionary military force. From there, I do not see how we could or would remain a military super power. I'm not stating this in order to take a position on this being good or bad; I just wanted to put it out there that this would be the consequence of eliminating this central, core component of the Pentagon - and the role it plays in our entire national defense establishment.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Which were used by the US at least since 1959 and various other examples in use or in development since then.
Oh, and as for the AirSea Battle Office, some apparently believe that it is redundant and superfluous as other parts of the US military already got that covered.
Since the ASB Office was first announced in August 2011, the Pentagon has faced charges that it is redundant with missions performed by other parts of the defense bureaucracy. It has often struggled to define how the ASB Office differs from other areas of the Pentagon, and to explain the value it adds to the services.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I grew up in the 70s and 80s. I never thought we would see a Communist state abandon the Planned Economy and embrace the Free Market. If you brought the idea to me when I was 18 or 25, I'd have thought you were nuts. What Communist wanted to give up that much power over the individual? How could a nation, so accustomed to marching in lockstep with it's leadership handle economic freedom? Russia wasn't doing so well after Communism and China was reportedly employing one third of this population to spy on and control the remaining two thirds. Today, many people wonder if the government's form really matters when Communist nations like China and Vietnam are creating a strong middle class while few Democracies are facing a future where its children are worse off than their parents.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
Same reason why slave owners gave up slavery for workers - you don't have to take care of them. Communist leaders "gave up" communism by transferring public entities to themselves as private businesses making them instant billionaires with no legal obligation for the workers/people anymore.
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No, the Bush "cronies" were good. They new back in the early 90's that invading Iraq was a fool errand. Same with Afghanistan. But look at Halliburton's profits since we engaged in "state building" over there.
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Predicting the demise of the Soviet Union or the rise of China is pretty easy. Empires made up of different ethnic groups always tend to collapse (Roman and Mongol empires). As for China, large countries are either destined for domination or collapse. So the fact that China's still existing means it's destined to reclaim its former glory as a world power.
What I'm more interested in is his predictions about the development of war technology. How much of his vision is genuine insight and how much of it is wish fulfillment? So he "predicted" the use of remote controlled airplanes in warfare, then maybe some general thought, Hey, that's cool, and decided to spend some money on the weird idea. Even if the research project started small, consistent funding eventually led to the development of drones.
I wonder, if this guy predicted mechas, would that lead to the production into gigantic, piloted robots?