In Bangalore
Delhi went well. Full writeups when I have time. Now in Bangalore meeting up with private sector leaders.
Originally was focusing on the big players – Infosys and Microsoft, but the former proved pretty ambivalent and the latter wasn’t able to offer much more than a tour.
So, shifting focus to smaller companies who have been streamlining governance. Many a helpful smart guy.
To Delhi
Fly into Delhi the morning. Immediately off to a meeting with senior members of the Railway Board, then meeting with members and senior staff of the National Security Guards – an elite counter-terrorist unit.
Then spending the weekend looking at targets/historical sites and hopefully hiking a bit in the foothills of the Himalayas. Then back in town to meet with guardians from the Railway Protection Force and members of RITES (a government backed infrastructure consultancy).
Also, a briefing with elite Para Commandos is in the works at their static-line/HALO/HAHO training school in Agra but is still up in the air. OPTEMPO is such that we won’t know until the day of.
Shlok + 2007 Boyd Conference
Very cool. Thanks to Bob Howard who, courtesy of SWJ’s reserved block has set me up with a seat among the fathers of next generation warfare.
Still need to work out logistics, but any tips on hotels and such would be appreciated.
Nigeria Update
Two Indian nationals are taken hostage. As a result some 120 Indians quit ( all are technical workers – engineers and technicians). The two hostages are released.
On Critiques of BNW
Most of the critiques I’ve read of Brave New War center on its lack of the traditional focus on politics and culture (“the why”). Mountainrunner has a post up that channels that school of thought.
There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of insurgencies raging across the globe. A collection of Friedman-esque case studies would have been found lacking due to the sheer amount and complexity of the hundreds of insurgencies littered throughout the world. Instead, in the book Robb ‘simply’ (I use the term loosely) reads the emergent empirical datapoints and connects the dots. Those dots make up a framework.
Since Brave New War is a framework, it does not need to fill out the global details. The complexity is a layer below the emergent datapoints. As a result, as previously stated, it probably would not have been able to do so in a real or satisfying way.
That said, you can (and should) zoom in with the framework that Brave New War offers. The details will be filled out by those of us in the slipstream. That is exactly what I am hard at work doing in India.