Using Wargames to Battle Uncertainty by Peter Scoblic

Описание: About this Event
Leaders have long struggled to make strategy amid the uncertainty of the future. This session will examine how Herman Kahn, the nuclear strategist originally with the RAND Corporation, presented wargames as a solution to that vexing problem by looking at his intellectual connection to Frank Knight, the early 20th century economist. Knight is most famous for his distinction between “risk” and “uncertainty”—uncertainty being characterized by the absence of analogy to past experience. Thirty years later, the problem of uncertainty galvanized postwar strategists at RAND, including Kahn, who were wrestling with the implications of the nuclear revolution, which had no historical precedent. This session will discuss how they used loosely structured games to manage uncertainty by creating analogy through what Kahn called “ersatz experience.” If the actual past could not provide a guide to the future, perhaps the (imagined) future could, enabling strategy in the face of the unknown.

Bio:

Peter Scoblic is a co-founder and principal of Event Horizon Strategies. He is also a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, a senior fellow with the International Security Program at New America, and an instructor in Harvard’s Professional Development Program, where he teaches behavioral decision-making. Previously, he served as the executive editor of The New Republic and Foreign Policy and as deputy staff director of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In 2008, Viking Press published his book, U.S. vs. Them, an intellectual history of American nuclear strategy. Peter received his doctorate from Harvard Business School, where his research on strategic foresight won the Wyss Award for Excellence.