What game theory teaches us about war | Simon Sinek

Thank you very much At the end of the Cold War, the United States made a political decision that may be one of the biggest mistakes of the 20th century. It has contributed to chaos and uncertainty today and it is not based on politics, it is based on

game

s in

game

theory

there are two types of games there are finite games and there are infinite games a finite game is defined as known players fixed rules and objectives agreed correct baseball an infinite game is defined as known and unknown players the rules are changeable and the goal is to perpetuate the game when you pit a finite player against a finite player the system is stable baseball is stable so is conventional war when you pit an infinite player against an infinite player the system is also stable the Cold War was stable and that is because in an infinite game there are no winners or losers, we cannot lose the game and that is why we work to keep the game in Play correctly .

In fact, since there are no winners or losers, the only thing a player can do is quit when they either run out of resources or have the will to play, problems arise; However, when you pit a finite player against an infinite player, it is the finite player who gets trapped in Quagmire. This happens in business all the time. The game of business is an infinite game. The business concept has been around longer than all the companies that exist right now and will exist long after all the companies that exist right now are gone. The curious thing about business is the number of companies that are playing finitely.

They win, they are playing to be the best, they are playing to make it through the quarter or the year and they are always frustrated by that company that has an incredible vision, a long term vision that seems to drive them crazy and long term. that player will always win and the other player will run out of resources or will and go out of business or be bought, sold, merged, acquired or

what

ever, this is also

what

happened to the United States in Vietnam. the United States were fighting to win the Viet Kong they were fighting for their lives they would fight forever if necessary this is also what happened when the Soviet Union was in Afghanistan the Soviets were fighting to defeat the mujahideen and the mujahideen were fighting to survive fighting for their lives Now, when it comes to politics, you have to know what game you're playing so you can play by the right rules, and this became abundantly clear to me when the Soviets drove their tanks into Afghanistan and bypassed the National Security Advisor in President Carter. called to the president's office and the president asked him what the policy of the United States is and Binski said that the policy of the United States is to expel the Soviets, it is a finite goal and then almost as an offhand comment he says and If we can't do that, we will make it as expensive as possible for them to stay.

In other words, the United States accidentally had an infinite strategy that is not fixed in time and we don't know exactly what it looks like. What we are trying to do is drain the enemy of the will and the resources to continue playing and 10 years later the Soviets pulled their tanks out of Afghanistan running out of resources and the will now if you think about what happened when the Wall fell Berlin. down below we were in an infinite game The Soviets and the United States and the Berlin Wall fell and the United States again made one of the biggest political mistakes of the 20th century, perhaps one of the biggest, they announced that they had won the game they had Won the Cold War, no, they didn't, the player quit because they ran out of will or resources to play and the problem is that because they thought they had won the war, they started acting like victors and the United States imposed its will. in the world for about 11 years and it turns out that the world didn't like it too much and, as happens in all infinite contests, new players began to emerge.

If you consider how the Cold War existed, it really existed in three strains. a nuclear tension both states had nuclear weapons to end all life there was an ideological tension one was an exporter of democracy and capitalism the other is an exporter of Soviet style communism and there was an economic tension which is what kept the Cold War alive and well, it is no coincidence that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are the only three things for which we will bear any burden and pay any price and fight forever to defend now that nuclear tension has been replaced by Pakistan and China, oh no, China was already there Pakistan North Korea, maybe Iran, ideological tension, Soviet style communism has been replaced by Islamic extremism and economic tension, the Soviet Union has been replaced by China, we do not fear a nuclear war with China, but the point is that all three tensions are alive and well, and you The problem is that everyone knows who their enemy is, but we don't realize that Cold War 2.0 is happening and we are still trying to decide which is more important.

We are trying to win and overcome all these things. You don't realize that the game is infinite, not finite, and US policies these days are getting shorter and shorter, creating confusion and chaos in strategy and how we present ourselves to the world. The easiest way to understand the game you're in is when you have an opposition force, in other words, it's not quite right, so you want great leadership, you want someone to say what we stand for, but if you don't have that, you can to say no to that, so it was really easy, the intelligence services, for example.

During the Cold War they fought like cats and dogs like they fight now, but they were all able to agree on one thing, it's not that, and they worked very, very well to combine their forces to confront the Soviet Union, we no longer have a singular, not that and then we are everywhere but all our enemies have a singular, it is not that and it is we who ideally want to execute all our decisions through our values, this is what makes us endure, our values ​​are durable and this is which is the basis of infinite competition, so consider that up here is where our values ​​are, what I call the why of our values, well, these things are infinite, they are enduring down here you have what I call what They are our interests and they.

They are finite and ideally what you want to do is make all decisions through our values ​​and then through our interests. Let me show you what it looks like, sometimes they go in our favor and sometimes they don't, for example, when we enter a battlefield and shoot a bad guy, we will take his wounded body, take him to our hospitals and risk American lives to carry him. to the hospitals, we will use American doctors, American beds, American medicines to nurse him back to health, that is not in our interest. but the reason we do it is because it's who we are, it's what we do, it's like it's our thing, when we make a decision based on our interests, it looks like this, so should we torture people now, the reason we did it? doing it abroad is because everyone knew that wasn't our thing because if we didn't have a problem with it we would just do it here so we hid it because we knew it was uncomfortable because we know what our values ​​are so what is ?

What has been happening in the world is that we have been evaluating all the things that have been happening ignoring our values ​​because we do not realize that we are in an infinite competition and we only look at our interests to think about what we should do. what we do in Syria and we make a very, very good decision based on Syria our interest in Syria and we make a decision and what we should do in Crimea and what we should do about Putin and what we should do about Iraq and Afghanistan and we are everywhere and the problem is that when you go back and take a look now no one has any idea what we represent, this is confusing for our allies who no longer trust us because we are no longer predictable and it is great for our enemies because they can exploit it .

Ideally, what we do is make all decisions through our values ​​first and even though it doesn't always go our way, like I said, we make decisions all the time that don't. It's always in our interest, like bringing an injured bad guy and putting him in our hospitals, it's not our interest, but what that does is it makes us predictable and it makes our allies trust us because they know what we stand for and they will be with us. we. or they will face us and together we will go through the infinite strife for as long as it takes.

This is where we are now. The C Cold War is alive and well and we won't help contribute to stabilizing the world until we start playing the game we're in instead of playing the game we're not in. Thank you so much.