Flint Dille: Game Theory: Always Seize the Initiative

At 7:59 AM on September 11, 2001, when AA Flight 11 left Logan Airport in Boston nobody had ever heard of hijacking a plane and crashing it into a building, using Jet Fuel as an explosive. Forty seven minutes later, the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Seventeen minutes later, the second plane hit the South Tower. Thirty Five minutes later the third plane hit the Pentagon. However, thanks to Cell Phones and extraordinary courage, the Fourth Plane never reached it’s intended target, which was probably the U.S. Capital or The White House. Flight 93 crashed into a field 83 miles southeast of Pittsburg at 10:03:11 when civilian passengers turned counter-terrorist operatives fighting in the cockpit brought it down.

That means, in two hours and four minutes, the world had changed from not even imagining a threat to effectively countering it.

In a world of no good options, he heroes on Flight 93 knew that there was no good probable outcome for them, they took the best of a bad set of options.

Of course, they would have lived a little bit longer if they had just let the plane reach it’s destination. So, if the whole goal is the length of life, they made a bad decision. Odds are everybody on the plane, including the terrorists, were dead, anyway. Of course, they probably saved lives on the ground and they went out, literally, in a blaze of glory.

But still, they would have lived longer if they’d just sat in their seats.

So was living longer really the better choice?

I’m sure you can find some lunchroom or cryptid somewhere who thinks it was. They would have had a couple more minutes telling their family they loved them and what desk drawer the will was.

But most of us think they made the better decision by attacking, even though there were near zero odds of taking over the plane, killing the terrorists and landing successfully.

They re-defined their victory conditions by stopping the Terrorists from succeeding at their mission.

On Flight 93, they seized the initiative and took the only shot they could. They died heroes. Many others didn’t die on the ground. Our nation wasn’t further symbolically defaced. And symbols matter. Also, Al Qaeda experienced their first loss in the war on the first day when they had all the initiative. Yeah. They might have felt great, but losing to unarmed passengers moves you from total victory to marginal victory.

The Capitol and White House are still standing.

No other major target in America has been hit in the 19 years since.

Two hours and four minutes. That’s how long it took for civilian Americans to turn into counter-terrorist operatives and effectively counter a threat.

Define your goal. Seize the initiative.

Now, to the Coronavirus. Somewhere in early January we started hearing about a mysterious virus out of China. The stories were murky, the information unreliable, but when projections of millions dead landed, we took action. Most of us knew little about viral spread, had never warn a surgical mask, had never heard of Sheltering in Place, Social Distancing, herd immunity or face touching. Most of us had never worn medical gloves, while shopping or had ever used Zoom.

Now, we have done done all of the above. Many of us have washed our hands in the last six weeks more than we have in the three months prior to that. We have turned into virus fighters.

In short, like the Todd Beamer and the fighters on Flight 93, we have transformed.

Our victory condition is to come out of this better than we went into it, and that means personally and as a nation, spiritually and financially stronger.

We’re trained. We know our general objective. We know what we personally have to to do.

So, we have a choice. Stay in our seat, or storm the cockpit. In this case, the cockpit is a tattered economy, a shattered work force and cities that are petri dishes for the next plague.

Time to seize the initiative.

After all, we haven’t been passively ‘sheltering in place’, we’ve taken a crash course in survival: biological warfare edition.

Anybody who thinks we aren’t utterly different entities than we were a few weeks/months ago is utterly missing the point of the last six weeks.

And when we return to the world, we will return to a different nation as different people.

And like any other war, we’ll have victories, defeats and draws. That’s how wars work. In the end, we’ll probably win. Worst case, we go down fighting, on the field, not hiding in our houses. We’ve done our training. We are transformed.

Time to engage in a different way with new capabilities, awareness, strategies and tactics.

Best case, we create a cleaner, safer, more productive world and remember the lessons of this bleak era. We remember all the skills we’ve learned, we pay attention to potential threats and engage and defeat them before they spread.

We won’t be blindsided again because you have to be blind to be blindsided.

We won’t be blind again.

We’ll return to the world eyes open. With a Civilization upgrade or maybe a bunch of them.

If we seize the initiative with new strategies and tactics, our chances of victory increase dramatically.

Al Qaeda wasn’t foiled on Flight 93 by people cowering in their seats.

The Capitol was saved by people who engaged them and stopped them because they made the hard choice and seized the initiative.

The victory conditions in this game are a better, safer world. We’ll figure out what that means while we’re fighting, not waiting for a battle plan. We all know that all battle plans break on first contact with the enemy.