No Way Out
Welcome to the No Way Out podcast where we examine the variety of domains and disciplines behind John R. Boyd’s OODA sketch and why, today, more than ever, it is an imperative to understand Boyd’s axiomatic sketch of how organisms, individuals, teams, corporations, and governments comprehend, shape, and adapt in our VUCA world.
No Way Out
The Battle for Your Mind: Neuroscience, Technology & the OODA Loop with James Giordano, PhD | Ep 35
What if the real battleground of wars was not a physical territory but the human mind?
Join us as we traverse the fascinating landscape of cognitive warfare, Neuro S/T, and the OODA loop with Dr. James Giordano, a Navy veteran and an expert in neurocognitive science.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil, is a highly distinguished neuroethicist, professor, and scholar. Currently serving as Chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program at Georgetown University Medical Center, he is also actively involved in various prestigious positions such as Chair of the Neuroethics Program of the IEEE Brain Project and as an appointed member of the Neuroethics, Legal and Social Issues Advisory Panel of DARPA. With an extensive background in brain science, ethics, and global health law, Prof. Giordano is widely recognized for his expertise in the field.
In the podcast, we venture deeper into the vestiges of warfare, we discover the intriguing dimensions of 5th Generation Warfare, a complex fusion of symmetrical and asymmetrical components. Non-kinetic engagements, clandestine operations, and covert activities present a myriad of challenges from legal to fog-of-war factors. We draw thought-provoking parallels with the Chinese military texts on unrestricted warfare, providing a fresh perspective on the transforming face of conflict.
On our YouTube Channel, we continue the conversation and examine:
- Hacking the Human Genome
- Epigenetic Modification and Phenotypic Shift
- The Psychedelic Revolution
- Revisiting Alcohol and Caffeine: Benefits and Burdens
- Impact of Technology on Cognitive Capacity
- Information Overload and Burdens
- Ownership and Security of Personal Data
- Identifying Predispositional Traits
- Data Manipulation and Biometrics
- Cultural Impact of Technology
- The Role of Education in Integrating Science, Technology, Ethics and Policy
- Major Threats and Concerns in Today's World
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil on LinkedIn
NWO Intro with Boyd
March 25, 2025
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Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch:
All right, welcome to no Way Out. Today you have Ponch, Moose and Gee. We're gonna talk about cognitive dominance, maybe some cognitive warfare, some information warfare, fit-gen warfare, liminal warfare through the lens of neuroscience and technology. For those guests that are just tuning in for the first time, we do highly recommend you listen to some previous podcasts with James Gimmian to understand the Sun Sioux a little bit better. We have some neuroscientists on their previous podcasts, including Dr McCabe. We have Enosipolito talking about active inference From the physics side of the house. Adrian Bejantz really understands flow, the physics of flow. There's so many guests that have been on to talk about complex adaptive systems and so forth, but today we're gonna dive into, I think, what many people are interested in, and that's neuroscience and technology and, more importantly, how do we hack our Oodaloop and attack our opponent's Oodaloop, and this may delve into warfare, sports, marketing, innovation. It's gonna cover many aspects of John Boyd's Oodaloop. So put your chin straps on and let's welcome our guest today, Dr James Giordano.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Good enough.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:It's awesome, did I get it right? Yeah, you got it right, thanks. A little bit of time in Italy, there. Great to have you here today, doc, and we'll put your biography in the show notes. But I do wanna anchor on two aspects of your history Number one, your time in the Navy. Number two, your time with the Marine Corps. So can you expand on that a little bit?
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Yeah, sure. So after I did all my PhD work and during my postdoc time I was a Navy Reserver Medical Service Corps went full active duty. After that, went through aerospace physiology training with particular emphasis on chem, bio and biological engagement, both with regard to left of bang in-prins for our own guys as well as those ways that these types of things might be weaponized they use as disruptive deterrents. At that time we were still engaged in some interesting operations, not only in the desert but certainly in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and we were concerned at that point that some of the older Soviet technology had filtered up and through and that was obviously being used for a number of different disruptive sources. So I did all my operational time with the United States Marine Corps.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:I was at a cherry point, did some work back and forth to test pilot school and also some stuff out on the West Coast with regard to ejection seat dynamics.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:So my particular area of expertise, obviously as a neuroscientist and neuropathologist, was the effective, high performance flight and stress environments, both those that we create and those that may be created, not only for us by our competitors and opponents, but those that we can create that are disruptive and how those then inference not only the flight environment, the aerospace environment, but any and all those who are involved with that environment, inclusive of special operations forces. So the idea of what is happening in the air and under the sea create some special stressful environments physiologically and cognitively. And that was the kind of thing that I was involved with, did a lot of times, as I said, with Q2, mostly electronics and also some Cambio stuff was with station operation engineering squad or another cherry point, and then did some work back and forth with the 26 Mu. So it was a good time in uniform, very happy and proud to have served, served with some great people. As you know, all gave some, some gave all.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So question two questions. You have a call sign. Perhaps we want to hear how you got that. Maybe We'll decide that in a second and number two, you work with Marines, so did you come across the Oodaloop early in your career, or when was that? So you get your choice which question I?
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:was also a neurocognitive scientist. So the idea of the Oodaloop, in terms of how humans and other creatures create cognitive impressions, build upon both non-Basian initially and then Bayesian type of processing, was fundamental to a lot of my training. The Oodaloop, as a very, I think, very simplified but important and valid heuristic, brings all of those things under a common rubric. Each one of those aspects of the Oodaloop whether that's observation, orientation, decisions and actions, as you know a multifocal and multi-componential, and so the real challenge for us in the brain and cognitive sciences was to look into each one of those domains, each one of those operational dimensions, to be able to figure out the underlying physiology and how that physiology was important to the cognitions, emotions and behaviors that ultimately drive those actions, and then to complete the loop, so to speak. So a lot of our work also engaged a broader construct of the Oodaloop that was really axiomatic to John Boyd's initial thesis, which was that nothing happens in the loop without things happening on and out of the loop, inclusive the consequences of your decisions and actions, and then how those consequences either affect positively or negatively, valently, in terms of cognitive consonants or dissonance, those Bayesian predispositions and biases that are so important to fundamental learning constructs.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:So our working construct of the Oodaloop was the Boudac loop or Dudac loop, where the B or D stands for Bayesian biases and dispositions and certainly the C reflects consequences. And those consequences are temporal. Those occur both in the short term, in terms of immediate reinforcement, consonances or dissonances, intermediate level, and longer term. And one of the problems is whether or not individuals are then responsive to those longer term consequences and being able to alter what may be their Bayesian predispositions to then change their observations and orientations. And that's where the idea of complexity of method in terms of cognitive success really requires flexibility of method in terms of heuristic.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I say, on that note, let's save your story on the call sign to the end.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Let's dig in. Let's go a little bit deeper here. My credibility goes right into the toilet as soon as we don't want that to happen necessarily. Yeah, let's go.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:All right. So I wanna summarize what I just heard. The Oodaloop really describes the outer and inner workings of the action perception, the way we emit actions and perceive the external world, and you said it gives us a nice simplified view of that. We don't get into biology, we don't get into a lot of the genetics with the Oodaloop, but we do know that orientation contains genetics, potentially some of our biology, our previous experience, our culture and, of course, what is known as new information or surprise that we get from active inference, from that surprise from the outside world. So that's a fantastic summary, summarization of the view of the Oodaloop and I do like the idea of the Buddha.
Mark McGrath :You can add two things to what Mike said yeah, buddha. So also also too, to add to what Pontch was saying the ability to analyze and synthesize and create novelty quickly. I guess what I'm gathering is that I think, in line with what Pontch is saying, the Oodaloop is not just some simple four-step little tactical model that can be reduced. It's a lot bigger and has a lot more potential.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:That is. I mean you have to think of the Oodaloop as being strategically embedded within the lifespan of the organism. So the continuity of the Oodaloop to contribute back to what then becomes those Bayesian dispositions and dynamics was initially a Bayesian predisposed but not necessarily Bayesian system is important. The other important part to recognize, as you both mentioned, is that we're dealing with imbrained organisms that are embodied, and that embodiment occurs in embeddedness within their environments and ecologies. So the internality and the externality of the Oodaloop, providing that level of flexibility and openness to a variety of different circumstances that base upon both prior expectation and realistic reinforcement, is fundamental.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Wow, blown away. Let's dive deeper in a moment. Before we do that, I wanna look at some common definitions, or look at some definitions of what many people are hearing on social media today. Media today and that's fifth generation warfare, liminal warfare, gray area warfare. I just wanna get your take on what is fifth generation warfare and is it fit into the neuroscience and technology, neuro weaponization that we're talking about, and same thing with liminal warfare, what's?
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:your take on this. Rather than sort of get down into the weeds with each one of those, I think it's probably fair to put them all under a common rubric, which is that there's some level of both symmetry and asymmetry in the current disruptive space, whether that's a competitive space or a conflicted space. So what you're seeing is essentially three things dynamically and interactive. Number one is some level of cooperation, characteristically with allies, but not just in some cases that cooperation does occur with potential competitors and what that does is essentially probe those cooperators, collaborators and ultimately competitors weaknesses and strengths. And that's vital for the next stage, which is actually to develop those domains and dimensions of asymmetry that are gonna produce leverageable capabilities that are then exercisable in hegemonic domains. So if you're looking at the idea of fifth gen warfare or, realistically, fifth gen engagement, let's move back from warfare, because much of that fifth gen space is gonna be non-kinetic and that non-kinetic domain is gonna be influential domains in terms of disruption and deterrence, rather than what may be purely defined as kinetic engagements. Kinetic engagements, I think, are militarily and politically relatively easy to deal with because we know the operational rules of engagement. Non-kinetic engagements in that fifth generational space become far more difficult for four basic reasons. The first is they're non-kinetic, and mounting any kind of response to a non-kinetic threat or a non-kinetic harm is difficult unless there is direct attribution. Which then brings us to the second point, which is many of those non-kinetic engagements occur within what is essentially a legal space. So attribution can occur within the legal domain, but very often there's been some preemptive exercise within that domain to create predispositions in the legal environment which is now being referred to as lawfare. So, in other words, a particular nation-state or group, or perhaps even virtual nation, even using virtual currencies, can create particular dynamics and parameters within international law that is auto-favorable, favors their own interests and therefore any transgression outside of those interests might be seen as problematic. Well then, that defaults back to international law, or at least national law with regard to intellectual property and other particular legal parameters, and then that nation-state or virtual nation can then exercise legal probity and say, look, we were coloring between the lines just because it's not your law, it's our law and under international law it needs to at least be respected with regard to acknowledgement for discourse and potential appeal. That just draws out the non-kinetic influential time space.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:The third is that very often non-kinetic engagements are specifically oriented towards the fog of engagement, the fog of war, the who done it? Is it actually an engagement? Was this actually intentional or was this just artifactual? As a consequence of many of the domains of non-kinetic space, whether that's the bioeconomy, whether that's informational, whether that's psychological informational in some cases that may also be purely bio-physical, but once again the question then becomes was there intentionality involved or was this artifactuality? Intentionality then has to defer back to the idea of some level of attribution. Now that gets tricky.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:And then the fourth domain that I think is really important to the whole exercise is that very often these non-kinetic engagements can be done in ways that are clandestine, at least, and covert intentionally, which then fortifies the third domain, which is the relative fog and ambiguity that necessitates the dedication of resources on the part of the group that has been assaulted or engaged, and then only expands the timeframe necessary to be able to maximize the opportunities for further use of either the science and technology itself in disruptive ways, in other words version 2.0, 3.0, keep them on their toes and guess them.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Just when they figured the first thing out, boom, you hit them with something new, or at least a novel development of version 1.0. But you just high-tail it the hell out of there, which then leaves attribution very, very difficult, because there really does not appear to be any viable trace that's significant enough to be able to generate the necessary military intelligence and or even political economic force, capability and leverage ability to be able to then point a finger accusationally. So again, I think, rather than talking about warfare, it becomes far more salient to talk about non-kinetic and certain types of kinetic engagements operable within this fifth-gen space which, by nature of that, is axiomatically asymmetrical and, by nature of the conversation we just had, there's a lot of fogginess there. Ergo, your gray zone.
Mark McGrath :So for those of us that have done a lot of professional reading, as we're required to do is military personnel, right, we have reading lists, and one of the reading list items on many of the lists is unrestricted warfare, which is written by two Chinese officers talking about how they're not planning on necessarily planning on something kinetic as a showdown in the South China Sea.
Mark McGrath :And we had a Boyd's friend and collaborator, gi Wilson, on our show to talk about this exact point that they might be involved in lawfare, they might be involved in smuggling, they might be involved with media influence, tiktok, that kind of a thing. No, that's going to disrupt us that way versus. You know, we're all from the Naval services, right, they had showdown. It might not be the best idea for them, right? It might be something else that maybe other people aren't considering or maybe other people aren't thinking about. I mean, it sounds, as you described those four things, that seems to me to resonate what we're being warned about from unrestricted warfare. And then the paper that they wrote years before that, 10 years, the changing face of war, mm-hmm.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:And they wrote that. Yeah, a couple of things. I mean, you mentioned earlier that some of the work of Sun Tzu, and axiomatic to that work as part of that doctrinal stance, is know yourself very well, but know your opponent even better and being able to engage in understanding of the biopsychosocial dynamics of whoever is going to be the competitor, and clearly in this case the competitor is the longstanding in quotes. West, I think, speaks very, very strongly to three things once again. Number one is that China does have a strategic plan oriented towards at least 2049. And it's a consistent strategic plan across a variety of different domains, s&t, and that S&T, obviously being duly usable, simply being one of them. The other is, within that strategic plan is tactical maneuvering based upon whatever your competitors and opponents do, far more like a game of go rather than a game of chess or checkers.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:The idea here is to exercise some sustainable advantage rather than a clear win. There is no end to the game, so to speak. It's a long game, which is really more of a long engagement, which in some cases plays to both the weaknesses and the strengths of the West, particularly the United States, and that we change administrations every four to eight years and, at least implicitly. When those administrations change, there's the king is dead, long lived a new king. And as a consequence those tractionable entities of the prior administration can get very easily shuffled under the desk into a drawer or literally thrown into the circular file and as a consequence that then creates exploitable opportunities for our competitors to be able to see where those strengths and weaknesses lie anew and hit them at the shift points. And the more something is consistent but flexible in its consistency, the harder it is to topple. But if in that flexibility you're getting inconsistencies and literally changes of pace, direction and tempo, well that becomes a little bit easier to manipulate in a longer game, and they certainly recognize that. The other issue is that part of that strategic plan. The idea of a longer range plan, is that it tends to work retrospectively, in other words, what you get is something prospective when do we want to be in 2049 in terms of the S&T and how that's leverageable on the global stage, bioeconomically, in terms of the actual capability for force influence across a range of domains, lifestyle, health, orientation for heroic rescue, et cetera. And of course, within the military is duly usable entities both to buff up one's own people and to degrade or to disrupt others. But then the other issue really becomes okay. If this is where we want to be, year X let's just say that year is 2049 because it's historically and politically significant for a trans-pacific competitor, well then, what things do we need to do now to be able to realize or fertilize that geography and terrain, so to speak whether that's spatio-temporal or both and, situationally, to allow those things to successfully bloom into the garden we want to be able to reap in 2049. It's a very different site picture and it's a very different game plan. Along with that is, as you'd mentioned, the incorporation to multiple domains of what can be seen as the competitive space, lawfare being one.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Psychological operations, inclusive of being sensitive to the psychology of your competitor, not necessarily pure psyopsis in the sense that we define it in terms of those things that are influential, but those things that are sensitive to and responsive to what appears to be the zeitgeist of Weltanschauung, the worldview of whoever's going to be your competitor, and understanding that gives you insight to the nuances of the things that they desire. And everything, neurocognitively is based upon a rather simple, fundamental but, I think, heuristic equation, which is that individuals and groups, whether operating idiosyncrasies, radically or systemically are orienting towards maximizing the expected value of gain over the expected value of loss. In almost every situation we make, our brain defaults to some level of utility, even within a variety of other constructs, whether it's duty-based, whether it's theologically-based, et cetera. At the end of the day, we are egoistic, both idiosyncratically and systemically, and our peer competitors know this. And so appealing to those things that are going to have at least some level of apparent expected value gain versus loss is very important in then determining those aspects of psychological engagements by things like media narratives, postures, semiotics, iconographies, that are influential on both a subliminal and liminal level, that then also, in some cases, feed back into lawfare, because the nature and tenor of the law, the narrative of that law, has characteristics that are intrinsically appealing to parts of our psychology or, at very very least, create an argument that is a logical and rational argument, in other words the if and then comport as a rational argument and it feeds back onto Western philosophy, much of its own tenets, that sort of leaves us stepping and fetching going.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Yeah, that's right. So sort of playing our game. And the last aspect that I've said elsewhere and I'll reiterate here is that our peer competitors and this is both transatlantically as well as transpacifically, have a relatively seamless triple helix of government, the research enterprise and the commercial enterprise. That allows, again, a seamless, boundless and very, very rapid transfer of resources, skills, services, deliverables, widgets, in and out of these various domains as politically motivated by a variety of different dimensions, not least of which economic, obviously bio-psycho-social in terms of things that can affect, but clearly political and military as well. So I think those factors are very important to understand with the entirety of the dimensionality and complex dynamics that we're seeing with regard to this new global shift.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Okay, so we're talking about the mind here. The battlefield, the brain, is the battlefield as a 21st century that you write about quite often. In fact, in one of your papers you bring up right away the key to victory or defeat in war is people. The key to people lies in the brain. We also know that. I believe China's doctrine right now is about mind superiority, and then Russia has something known as reflexive control doctrine.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:And, of course, John Boyd famously said machines don't fight wars, people do, and they use their mind, people, ideas and things, in that order. Some of the things you just talked about were really about how do we fold our adversaries back inside themselves morally, mentally and physically without suffering the same fate ourselves. That's something that we get from John Boyd. So, at the end of the day, here we're talking about, maybe, information warfare and cognitive warfare, or overall cognitive dominance. How do we understand what's going on in the mind of others, and so forth. Dr G, can you help us understand the difference between information warfare and cognitive warfare, if there is a difference, and perhaps take a look at it through the lens of the outer loop?
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:No, I think it's important to consider those as existing along a constellation or spectrum of capabilities and also context. So if we're talking about information, information is important to cognition. What we do cognitively is we take in sense data. We then assimilate those sense data with regard to some prior disposition or orientation to what those things are based upon, how we're sensing. That gives us a perception. That perception very often is linked to some cognitive domain that we like to call emotionality, and there's nothing that is neutral.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Anything is either positively valent or negatively valent. It's just a question of where, on that sliding scale, we list them. I mean, if you really think about it I know you asked the listeners to think about it Think about your idea of neutrality. You're not really neutral about anything, you know. You could say well, I'm kind of neutral about Brussels sprouts, yeah, but wait a minute. If it was a question of Brussels sprouts and ice cream, well, okay, somebody would go for the ice cream, somebody go for the Brussels sprouts, brussels sprouts versus pizza, somebody's gonna go for the pizza.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:So what tends to happen is that neutrality is is really a relative neutrality, and what we're really doing is we're Hierarchizing things all the time based upon the way they relatively feel to us in terms of gain or loss, playing, pain or pleasure, understanding that Information plays into the cognitive domain.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Because information, both in terms of current information, as it may have some speculative and predictive value this will lead to x, y or z, or has it has referential value. This then reflects alpha Bravo. Charlie is important because it's evocative For not only those cognitive domains but those emotional domains that drive decision-making and actions. So the informational space and the cognitive space Really represent an interdigitation, true interdigitation of one hand sort of washing the other. The way we Cognitively make sense of information is based not only on the information itself and the relative verticality of the information, what, in the philosophical languages Sometimes, if I do, is the dingan sich, the thing onto itself, but realistically, our perception, based upon our sensation of that that is then ground to some recollection of its relative meaning, contextually for us. So understanding that informational dynamic as an important cog in the cognitive wheel Can become exceedingly important in controlling and influencing narratives, symbols, expressions, dynamic interactions that are all operable within the human terrain.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Okay. So on information warfare, I understand it is controlling the flow of information. We can get that done through suppression, amplification, disinformation, misinformation, maybe even influencing the psychological safety of an environment. Does any of that resonate with you?
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Yeah, I think we need to go one step further. Okay, it's also Influencing and affecting the content of the information, and by the content I think we're talking about two things the actual content itself and it's constructive presentation in the words. How are we spinning that content? Are we spinning in a way that then is evocative of a particular emotional valence that may be reflective of what we know who is ever going to be the recipient is Resonant with or to, and I think that then becomes very important, because that brings us then squarely into the psychological cognitive domain. Right, one of the things that I think speaks interestingly to Boyd is what I'd like to call Boyd 2.0 or 3.0, and you know Boyd's comment.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:There is that Machines don't fight wars, humans fight wars. Yeah, humans do fight wars and they fight wars in the domain of both the mind and, if you will, muscle, in other words military might. But increasingly there is a reliance upon technology and machination. I mean this reflects some of the work of the cognitive scientist and philosopher Merlin Donald, who's looked at epochs of Cognitive development across human anthropological history, and what we see now as we moved into the cognitive technological domain, where there is an increasing at least the symbiosis or cognitive symbiosis, if not actual fusion, and in this case it's not just a hybrid fusion, it's becoming ever more of of a chimeric fusion, at least a functional chimeric fusion of what humans are capable of doing and what adaptive, assistive neuro and cognitive technologies are able to do in a way that is reciprocally Beneficial, where the human essentially teaches dynamics to the machine or machine system and the machine system does same to the human. But our group, specifically working with two colleagues of mine, dr Rachel Wurzman and Dr Diane De Uless, have also pointed very strongly to the development, the iterative development, viability and Arguable value of what we have referred to as new or int, neurological intelligence and neurocognitive intelligence, where it's not only utilizing machine based systems to assess what are the actual mechanics and processes and dynamics of human thought across its various ranges of expression and engagement, but also utilizing those techniques and technologies to actually interface with Human thought, human cognition and human behavior.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:So the idea here I've increasingly complicated sophisticated and precise human machine teaming, where you're now getting reciprocity, whereby the Aspects that are beneficial and functional are over functionalized or hyper functionalized and those areas of limitation and weakness are therefore Gapped and bridged as a consequence of both so Pro-boyed. Certainly there are humans in that loop and on that loop, but, somewhat contra-boyed, the idea that the machine is going to play an increasingly dominant or at least expressive role In parts of that loop are becoming the reality Today, not in the near future. Today, I mean, we see that already and part of the challenge and opportunity is to understand those processes, both on the human side and on the machine side, and to understand what's going to be necessary to both guide and govern them in those ways. They're going to be commensurate with international law, laws of international rules of engagement or, to what extent, contemporary ethics, laws, inclusive of military laws, many to be revisited, if not revised or not completely generated anew, to remain apace if not slightly ahead of what the technology is Capabilizing us to do.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Okay, so I do want to come back to cognitive warfare in a moment. Some of the comments you brought up here triggered some thoughts about the USS vincen's Years ago, when we accidentally shot down an airbus. And then, of course, the collision is 2017, where we had Ship set. See that we're just doing some basic nap. I hate to say basic navigation. It's not basic in the military, but we had some tech or human machine teaming challenges, you might say, potentially brought on by some acceleration of technology as we get into this domain of the human machine interface, keeping humans in the loop. Can we go back to that a little bit more? How important that is, that in your mind when it comes to decision making and sense making debatable.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:I mean, I think, in terms of a broad based philosophical and sociological set of western constructs, and again, western. In quotes it's very important. I mean clearly the. The idea of the individual and the primacy of the human person in any and all actions that deal with humans has been a long-standing Tenet of so much of western philosophy and, to some extent, eastern philosophy as well. However, one of the issues that I think becomes very important to understand about some of the eastern philosophies is that they are, by nature, naturally ground. Let me explain. In other words, they embed the human in the human's natural environment. With appreciation for that environment, I mean even something as simple and I'm being very, very tongue-in-cheek as the.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:The symbology of yin and yang demonstrates the interaction, reciprocity of those particular forces in dynamic interaction and complex dynamic interaction. Where one increases, the other may increase, but there's an essence of each in both and, as a consequence, what does that mean? So the extrication of humans from their environment is not something that has been axiomatic to much of eastern philosophies, whereas in the west there's more of a humans having dominion over those environments. Fair enough. However, this is where things get a little dicey. Your question is to what that might actually mean in terms of the way we approach some of these cognitive dynamics. I think changes as well. So, if we look at At what, what those issues are with regard to humans being in or on the loop, for us it may be important because of the primacy of human value. However, there is also the construct of whether or not humans are Imposing a builder's bias over the AI and, in that way, tying AI's hands to do what AI or machine learning can do best, which is to compensate for human foibles. So if what we're looking for someone to correct us and keep us in line, well, obviously, if what we're doing is going back and saying, no, don't do that, do this then what we're really doing is, at least implicitly, auto correcting ourselves and simply using the machine as the tool. That may be okay, but is it? Is it? Is it sufficient? And here's where it gets arguable.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:There are schools of thought that would suggest that humans on the loop Provide a failsafe mechanism that allow whatever is going on in the loop to occur, and so that there is at least one step where things come out of the loop and is then Disseminable, usable within human ecologies, where humans have to give the ultimate thumbs up or thumbs down and, as a consequence, they can then feed things back into the loop that can then modify what's going on in those machine learning and or AI loops. So has to be more commensurable with what are the values and values desiderata of the human users that are then going to entail, obtain and ultimately utilize whatever is coming out the other end, so to speak. But here too, what you're then getting is a post facto bias. There is a third school of thought that says look, if we build the device in particular ways and construct not only heuristics for it but also provide some mechanisms by which it can develop some type of quasi hermeneutics, in other words, it can see into what the human users need and want, but do so on a more expansive level, might it be, then, that the machine system is able to appreciate a construct such as global citizenry Far more than if, in fact, a human user were to develop a system that may be, at least implicitly, if not explicitly, oriented towards more Proximate goals. So here you have to entertain the idea that the system itself, if given doctrine parameters, could create systems that are far more expansive and potentially beneficial For humans on the whole, to be able to be appreciative and engaged across dimensions of what might be cultural separation and non-consensus, versus those systems that are necessarily Fostered and engendered to have something of a narrower precept or a narrower facet on that lens.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Of course, the backside of that, the potential dystopian aspect of that, what appears to be utopian view of machine learning and AI, is Could the systems themselves then be able to demonstrate or construct what they view as common goods and Begin to utilize those common goods as reparametization for human culture, human conduct, human concepts, constructs, the human condition In those ways that are not necessarily fully transparent to the human user, and this is what it sometimes referred to as a reverse jojoba phenomenon.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:In other words, now the creation becomes far more quote godlike than the creator and then takes on creative capacities that are not necessarily, you know, fully visual or fully visualizable to those who are then being subjected to them.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:So, in other words, if I'm telling you, well, this is for your own good, because I'm able to see around the corner, over the block and sort of over the edges, and you can't, are you going to trust me?
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:So the question here is whether or not that type of a system becomes paternalistic that tends to have a negativistic connotation do what I say, not as I do, and therefore exercise a some level of controllable dominion not always positively or parentalistic, in other words, being local parentus, whereby the trust that we put into that would be the same as the child puts into the parent, which again gets back to the idea of sort of reverse creation or reverse construction. We'd like to think that, in fact, that we're the parent and the machine systems are offspring. But at what point do we sort of surrender that, as we very often do as we age and go all right, son, daughter of mine, you know you take care of me because I'm becoming a little more enfeebled and you're far more technologically capable than I am. You seem to have no more and as a consequence, you have a very, very different feel for the novelty and various aspects that are simply brand new of your environment as it affects me. I mean, those three dynamics are entertainable for sure.
Mark McGrath :Would it be not so it wouldn't be peer to peer. It sounds like when you say paternalistic, it sounds like it would be more of a subordination, like the human actors are subordinate to the machine. And as a dad of kids, I immediately think of the movie Wally, the Pixar movie, where the control, the artificial intelligence, takes control of the human population over several years.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:That's a good point. I mean, I think it's what sometimes referred to as the Latourian question from the work of the historian of science, bruno Latour. Science doesn't necessarily give us answers. It just prompts ever more provocative and controversial questions that we're then tasked with answering somehow. I think the problem with paternalism is that it's taken on an ethical connotation that has been negativistic.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Clearly, some of the bioethical work coming out of the 60s and 70s with regard to controllability etc. And when you see that in any term that may have a security implication, it stinks. We don't like that idea. But the idea of protection again, I think, is multifocal or at least is two-edged. Clearly we're looking for something to protect us. I mean, think here of a blade, a knife. Yeah, so it can be very, very useful. It can protect you until it drops. Falling knife has no handle. So here too the question is where will the blade cut? And am I going to be on the right end of the blade? Or is it that there's something intrinsic about that knife that requires a new set of skills for me to use it in those ways that are going to be beneficial to me? Well, if in fact the knife itself comes with a set of not only instructions, but actually something that is proactive, to guide the user in how to do this well and how to do this appropriately, to use that tool well. There's some benefit in that.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:That's the idea of parentalism. In other words, as a good parent, you can appreciate there are certain things that your kids can know because of their existing knowledge base. Going back to that whole Bayesian thing, what can they relate to? And they're not yet ready to know? For a variety of reasons, they don't understand the workings, the mechanics or the implications of that. If, in fact, they know this, knowing leads to doing and they're certainly not in a position to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, and or it's something that they simply cannot get their head around. In other words, there are aspects of that that are not only unknown to them but are too complicated for them to know right now, given the expansive knowledge it would require.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:So what you do as a good parent, at least ideally, is to take care of your kids, take care of your offspring. You protect them in those ways they need protecting. You give them information they need to grow and to progress. You let them grow and progress, and you do so in an iterative way that's ever more reciprocal, that allows you to take your hands more and more off of them as they grow and mature, but you're guiding the maturation process with regard to a common vision of what's going to be their desirable good or a valuable good. Well, I mean, there's something, at least axiomatically not to belabor that term benevolent to that wanting to do good.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:The problem is whether benevolence translates into beneficence in practice, because what may be good for me may not necessarily be good for you.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Which then gets back to the point that if we're developing machine learning systems, kum, ai systems, those AI systems, by their literally nature, should be oriented towards humanity as a whole, appreciative of both those things humanity has in common and those things that humanity has in distinction, to have a reconciliatory effect towards those distinctions, towards definable, valuable and expressed common goods and commonalities for the human user.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:And this once again says well, all right. Now, where do humans come into that loop and how do they do that? And are we then prepared, as humans, to abandon some of our nationalistic orientations that to date have provided us with certain hegemony, et cetera, and sort of trust that to an object of our own artifice and say all right, you've got the con because we're going to screw up the pooch and we'll keep a finger on this, because what comes out the other side should be beneficial for us. But are we willing at that point to be quote the obedient child if in fact we are understanding and trusting that these systems have parentalistic benevolence as a goal? But it may not be apparent to us each and every step forward.
Mark McGrath :Do you think I mean when you say that? It makes me think of sort of the way we're at right now, culturally at least speaking, here in the United States, that people seem very willing already to surrender themselves to the whims of things that they've heard, be it from an authoritative source, that essentially the technology would take over and all that's doing is just feeding into that what they're already willing to relinquish because they saw it on the news or they heard their favorite person say it about it, or they draw a distinction between what they're hearing in media and they accept it as a reality. And it just seems like what you're describing is all that's doing is just getting outsourced to technology, in a sense, and tapping into what they're already willing to do and believe and understand because, as Nixon said, they'll believe it because they saw it on TV.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:I mean, everyone was amazed at that movie, forrest Gump, because there's Tom Hanks interacting with the late John Kennedy, right. So, wow, how'd they do that?
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:How'd they do that I mean these types of pressed digitations and the shared demand. They were common in film. We see it often. I mean it's the kind of things that we allude to very often as the magic of the stage. Really, when we're talking about magic, all magic is an illusion. I mean, it's not like real magic where I turn literally a butterfly into the tiger. It's illusionism.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:So the question here is are we falling victim to a new type of magic, which is the relative illusion of eroticality, based upon, once again, the information that we're receiving and the way we here at DeFour have cognitively processed information as being veridical? Back to the Nixon quote, if I see it, I believe it. Well, come on, tom Hanks was not interacting with JFK, I mean, but yet there it is. And there's a lot that we can do utilizing our technology. That appeals not only to the sensory domain but the perceptual domain. So we're taking these things in as sense data and perceptually making some sense, some rationalization, sense in the cognitive domain, based upon its relative resonance to those things we know. The world works this way. Well, I think one of the problems with that is that, in general, the public, the informed public, has not remained in step with what the science and technology are capable of doing. So we're essentially continuing to use yesterday's heuristics for the way we engage, acquire and utilize information in the cognitive domain, despite the fact that the mechanisms in process for generating that information may be quite different and then require at least an additional, if not multi-additional, processing, integrative and analytic steps.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Again we go back to some of the work of Merlin Donald, saying as we move into this sort of cognitive technical domain, it becomes important for the cognitive domains to appreciate the technological capacities so as to be able to work cooperatively with them and not work subjunctively with them.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:So I think that that level of subjugation of the human cognitive to what the science and technology is capable of doing in many ways rests upon our own responsibility to be obligated to understand the consequences of the things we build and the way we use them. Which really gets back to the term technology. I think when many people use technology, what they're really referring to is tech-nay, the tools themselves. I mean, I've advocated and will unapologetically reiterate here that I think we have to revisit and reground the word technology to what it means tech-nay, logos, sort of a very rational accounting, sort of a logo-centric accounting of the tools that we build, why we build them, who's building them, what they're building for and how they can be used in a variety of real-world constructs and situations. So the logos to the tech-nay is becoming ever more important as the tech-nay is becoming capable of its own logos.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Hey Doc, I wanna bring us back into a tacking and hacking the OODA loop and I think one way to get there is talking about automation bias, and I remember a little bit about automation. I did go on a dinosaur tour. I did not see any dinosaurs, so I was a little upset. Then I asked for a refund. I didn't get one. But when you think about reducing human capability, automation bias can actually do that. It can actually attack our previous experience. It could be considered a way of attacking our cognition. There are a couple of other elements in there that we can look at, to genetics and culture. So under those lenses, can you help us understand what are some of the technologies or ways that OODA hacking or neurohacking or biohacking, however you wanna look at it? What are some of those ways that you're looking at now to improve human performance? And then take a look at the other side, it's what technologies are out there that are influencing our opponents or can be used to influence opponents.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Wow, that's a huge question. So I mean we can go from the relatively simple low tech side to the rather complex and sophisticated high tech side. So let's do that. I mean the more we tend to learn about the brain and its interaction with the body, and that brain-body interaction with whatever ecology or environment it's in, the more we're able to assess those particular nodes, networks, mechanisms and processes. And by assessing them we not only get a more, I think, detailed, if not precise, at least to date precise understanding of how these things work, but we also develop a larger roster of targets and in other words, if we do the recon, so to speak, in the neurocognitive domains of the brain, that reconnaissance can provide us with what may be accessible and affectable targets for various types of manipulation. And then, once you're talking about manipulation, I mean you really have to think of any form of intervention as a re-ostat. I mean you can do things that are very, very mild and things that may be donnable or doffable, wearables, affectables, and you can do those things that are far more extreme, that induce a somewhat more durable effect on both brain substance and its structural functional relationships, inclusive of the cognitive, emotional, behavioral domain, and things that are exceedingly indwelling and therefore highly invasive, although the current move in the field is to make that level of invasiveness minimized so as to be able to introduce things into the brain space in ways that are minimally invasive and non-surgical but nonetheless as potent. A case in point I think one of the more exciting projects that I've had the opportunity to interface with is a current DARPA project called N-Cubed or N3, which is next generation non-invasive neurocognitive and non-invasive neuromodulation. And again, this is not a high side project. Our listeners can go to wwwdarpadotmil and just look up N-Cubed or N3. And it's a very interesting and, I think, in many ways highly provocative project, because what it allows us to do is to utilize state-of-the-art engineering to be able to introduce vast arrays of sensors and transmitters into the living brain that make that brain and its functions accessible in real time, remotely. So I mean here clearly you've gone from things that are relatively low tech. If we assess the brain, we can understand various things that we can do environmentally human-terrain, team interpersonal interactions, various forms of optimal healing, ecologies, environments, nuances, training, milieu that can then create particular capabilities and performance and key domains of performance being sensitive to all the parameters of performance that we have to appreciate. In other words, certain aspects of performance might work within a system, within a neurological system, but then the system by its nature is set up. Its biology is to counterbalance sort of increases or decreases within its system, so things even out. So how many systems do we need to affect to be able to get a deliverable change in some measurable performance metric, whatever that may be, cognitively, behaviorally, decisionally, emotionally, whatever?
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:The other issue is that at what point do those outputs of optimization asymptote? In other words, it just can't get any better. I mean, the case in point that my longstanding colleague, john Shook and I like to talk about is we'll think about something like beauty. I mean, you know, once somebody is like drop dead beautiful, how much more beautiful are they gonna get? And is it really noticeable that, wow, you've really gotten ever more beautiful? Once somebody is the global what Chesh champion, judo champion, wrestling champion, how much better are they going to get when they've beaten everyone and continue to beat everyone? Well, things change, however, if, in fact, those methods that individual uses to become as beautiful as they possibly can be or as potent on the wrestling, judo, archery, whatever field as they are, are suddenly then popularized. So now you're not the only one. Now you're beginning to get a little bit of that brinksmanship, and then what ends up happening is the threshold shifts in terms of what represents not only good enough, but perhaps the ideal. So what this then causes is a relative escalation in that need to then develop new tools and technologies to be able to not only run with the pack but in some way to be ahead of the pack.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:But here too there's an asymptote you can only get so so much. I mean realistically. If we take a look at even the most avant-gardistic interventions, their enhancements, and If you keep going, you then get radical modifications. You're now being able to do things that humans as a species simply don't do or can't do Seeing in the infrared or ultraviolet range, being able to hear ultrasonically or subsonically, in a variety of other performance metrics and capabilities. Humans as a species have not been able to do this. And it's not just a question of donning some piece of equipment like an airplane or an aqua lung to do it. It's actually modifying the inherent structure so as to be able to then create these physiological capacities Characteristically by linking them, either as hybrid or chimeric, with some machine system. That's true. That's true cybernetics. That's a true cybernetic organism cyborg but this is well as well.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Sensory substitution is possible.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Oh yeah, yeah okay, let's face it. I mean, there are plenty of military programs who have have sort of taglines like dogs, nose, cats, eye, bat, ear, and these are all oriented towards creating an increased Sensory in the human user so as to be able to capable eyes, a broader range of functions towards health, operational protection, enhancement and survivability.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Are you seeing the MVGs we wore years ago? Cat size are. Second the cat size we wore years ago.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:They're the MVGs right.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Okay, I never thought about that.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:Thank you. Yeah, I mean the idea there was what we're trying to be able to develop, some type of sort of fancy word, felinomimetic, in other words, cat like night vision. Yeah, and In many ways there are a whole, a whole bunch of other things that have grown from that. I mean, there are things that we can do within the ultrasonic and subsonic auditory range the idea of being able to develop some type of modified sniffing device that allows you to literally have at least an increased Acuity across a range of odors that can then be translated into some, some odor that exists within the human neurosensory and it's oh, it smells like. So an IED smells like bad fish, right? So again, those, those projects been underway, and of course we can also take a look at things like exoskeletal suits, the idea of being able to link Motor control and sensory control to controlling some type of automated systems such as a drone, whether it's an aerial drone or submersible or land-based drone. And then again, the idea of utilizing machine systems, computational systems, to be able to decipher, if you will, or or Recognize, certain patterns of human neurological, electrophysiological activity Before the human user does, so as to be able to then cultivate those types of activities in that they are Directional towards performance metrics. So the machine is priming and guiding the neurocognitive function of the human user in ways that are obtuse or opaque to the human user. But the machine is able to pull that out. So utilizing things like neuro feedback, utilizing Stimulatory based EEG mechanisms, whether it's transcranial, electrical and magnetic stimulation, various types of vagal nerve stem that use real-time sensors. So the multi-directionality and reciprocity is is there.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:So to take that back one step, even with radical modifications, there tend to be certain ceilings on radical modifications, that least of which is how radically modified the user wants to be right and what might be the longer-term implications. In other words, yeah, this is great for now, but a Year from now you're gonna have a horn with purple flowers grown out of your head. You, okay with that? Some people may be. I mean, you and I have both worked with the so-come community like, give it to me, it's gonna make me a better warfighter, an operator. Yeah, give it to me. Give it to me now. I'm already in harm's way.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:So, yeah, I can deal with a horn sticking out of my head, but not universally. I mean, underwritten to that concept is that, well, somebody's gonna take care of me, right? I mean, you guys are gonna keep doing research, and this is one of the things that we've argued for is, it's okay to go there, but there better be at least some clear Information to where was gonna be the consented user, that we're either gonna continue the research or take care of you or not. And if the answer is we're not, well then if you want to be the new neurocognitive Neuro, not go right ahead. You're boldly going where nobody's gone before. But, cowboy, you're on your own. When I got to carry you, not to mention the fact that if we put some gizmo in your head that's a fancy neurological term we put some glow, winky or gizmo in your head and you get version 1.0, and five years from now, version 2.0 comes out. Guarantee you're gonna get version 2.0. That could render you and your system obsolete.
James Giordano, PhD, MPhil:You want fair? Go to Iowa in the summer. There's a great fair every year, but we just can't build that into this equation. Or are we, are we and? And the other aspect of that is yeah, there's only so much we can do to our own. And then at some point you have to think to yourself Is it far more cost effective in terms of time and literal cost in terms of 6.0 to 6.3 plus project development, to just do stuff to your competitors? In other words, you can either optimize your own, you can denigrate them, and those two things are not Not necessarily on two separate sheets of paper. I mean the same methods we can utilize to optimize our own, if flipped on its head, so to speak, can be used to grant a, denigrate, disrupt or even, in some cases, functionally and parametrically destroy your competitors or those with whom you're in conflict.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Hey doc, we're coming up on about an hour time right now. What I'd like to do is invite you to stick back or stay back with us and we'll go into overtime and we'll dive more into the, the attacking mode, you know, influencing somebody's in good a loop, as well as maybe diving into some neuro data, some Some some some ethics and things like that. I know we have a lot more to dive into, but I do want to thank you for being with Us today and for our listeners. Please join us over on our YouTube channel, where you can pick up the Actually the video of all this and continue with your conversation there. Mark, do you have anything for the doc before you go into overtime?
Mark McGrath :No, I have a long list of things to talk about in overtime and I just want to reiterate what Ponch said. Thanks and Semper Fidelis. Okay, semper Fidelis.
