Bad Boyd, Good Receipts: Inside Snowmobiles & Grand Ideals with Ian Brown

The myths are seductive: a Top Gun fighter pilot invents the OODA loop from the cockpit of his F-86 and spends the rest of his life proving it. The truth is better—and far more useful. We sit down with Ian Brown to explore Snowmobiles and Grand Ideals, a new Marine Corps University Press publication that explores John Boyd’s recorded presentations and pairs them with contextual essays by Frans P. B. Osinga. For the first time, you can hear Boyd’s voice on the page: the questions he fields, the slides he barely touches, the ones he can’t leave alone, and the jokes that make the hard parts stick.

What emerges is a living flow. Orientation—not raw speed—sits at the center. Surprise is an outcome, not a lever. Implicit guidance and trust, not slogans, generate tempo. We trace Boyd’s ideas from Destruction and Creation through Patterns of Conflict, Organic Design for Command and Control, The Strategic Game of Interaction and Isolation, and The Conceptual Spiral, showing how the 1995 OODA sketch lands late as a synthesis, not a starting point. Along the way we connect flow and team science to cohesive action, revisit Vietnam’s CAP program to understand tempo, and dig into narrative, messaging, and the danger when words don’t match deeds in a world where every person is a sensor.

This is Boyd without the folklore—no shortcuts, no decontextualized slides—just primary sources, carefully transcribed and annotated so leaders in business, education, policy, and the military can apply the real mechanics: build better world models, test them against reality, and keep them provisional. If you’ve ever been told to “go faster,” this conversation explains why you should get oriented first. Listen, share with a friend who cares about natural intelligence and if it challenges your priors, leave a review and tell us what changed.

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MCUP Snowmobiles and Grand Ideals

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March 25, 2025

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome Back, Boyd Aficionados
• 4:31 Why Transcripts Matter More Than Slides
• 9:36 The Technical Mountain: From Cassettes to Text
• 16:16 Context from Frans Osinga
• 21:51 What Slides Miss: Q&A, Jokes, and Emphasis
• 27:26 Sports, Flow, and Implicit Trust
• 33:36 Messaging, Narrative, and Word–Action Gaps
• 41:36 OODA’s Evolution, Not Origin Story
• 50:16 Surprise Is an Outcome, Not an Input
• 56:16 Orientation Over Speed
• 1:04:36 Vietnam, CAP, and Tempo
• 1:12:36 Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and Misreadings
• 1:22:26 Beyond Warfare: Science and Business
• 1:30:16 Ranking Boyd’s Works and Use Cases

Transcript

Mark McGrath: 0:57

So, Ponch, we brought back for another installment on No Way Out. The man that we know for sure spent more time in the archives than you and I. And you and I have spent a lot of time in the archives. And Ian, we're chasing you, but we're not quite at uh the amount of time, the hours that you've logged in in the archives, but we're we're working on it. So, Ian Brown, welcome back to uh No Way Out.

Ian Brown: 1:19

Yeah, well thank you, Mark and Punch. Uh always good to be back and talking with some fellow uh Boyd Aficionados. Though I'll I'll say if we're talking like raw time in the archives, it could be it could be balanced because most of the stuff in in and say the majority of the work on this book was just me like on my computer or on my iPhone listening to audio recordings and trying to figure out what the hell was getting what what what people were saying with the the god-awful audio equipment of the the late 1980s.

Mark McGrath: 1:49

Well it's a it's a Herculean event effort. It's it's it's excellent. And as we've had Chet Richards on this on the show several times, and we've talked with Chuck Spinney a lot. If you don't understand the briefing, not just the text of the actual documents, but if you don't understand and get some of the back and forth, and we've, you know, Punch and I have listened to those audio recordings, you know, we've seen your transcript. Your transcript of Pattern of Conflict, Patterns of Conflict, that's already that's in this again, was already phenomenal. If you don't understand that, it's going to be hard to understand Boyd, and you're going to wind up with bad Boyd.

Ian Brown: 2:25

Yeah, and that's really um, that was the ultimate goal of this project was to remove, remove sort of the I you could call it a barrier, you could call it an excuse, call it whatever you want, but remove, you know, the impediment to understanding what John Boyd said about, you know, subject X, Y, or Z by giving you, you know, to the best that we can without resurrecting his body from the grave, his thoughts in his own words to the greatest extent. And so that's what so you now, you know, you can agree or disagree with him or otherwise, or or come up with different interpretations, but the goal of this was you at least have to acknowledge and and or have the opportunity to grapple with him in his own words rather than having him interpreted through, you know, second or third parties.

Mark McGrath: 3:12

We well, we'll not focus on the the technical aspects, which I imagine if you I don't know, if you want to give a quick a quick summary of the technical side, because I want to focus on the meat that you deliver and show what we talk about all the time. Orientation is everything, and a bad interpretation of the Oodaloop sketch will kill you. But just speak to the technical uh mountain that you had to climb, um, and then we're gonna get into the the meat of the book and everything.

Ian Brown: 3:39

Yeah, sure. So I'll I'll uh let me I'll go back to the beginning as best I can, but I'll make I'll try and make this fast. So I'm holding up this is the cover, I don't know if you can see it, of uh Snowmobiles and Grand Ideals. Right now it is only in digital format. Um unfortunately I heard from uh the university press their printing house that they normally use had like a pipe break in it. And so the physical copies are gonna be delayed a few weeks, but they should still be out in the next month or so, you know. So certainly in time for uh a hefty Christmas present for those who are, you know, boy lovers of many of the people.

Mark McGrath: 4:12

And tell everybody the price, too.

Ian Brown: 4:14

Oh, it's free.

Mark McGrath: 4:15

Yeah. Your tax dollars paid for it. So make sure you get this book.

Ian Brown: 4:19

Yes, you've already, yeah, you've already paid for it basically, so you might as well go read it. The the digital version is is available right now off the Marine Corps University Press's website. But the uh, and before I go any farther, uh let me add just as always, my usual disclaimer that my opinions are my own and don't represent the views of my employer or any other organization with which I may be affiliated. So the technical so what the book is, right? It is full of verbatim transcripts of all of Void's presentations, at least the ones that we know were recorded at some point. The bulk of them are from um archival holdings uh that Marine Corps, the Marine Corps History Division has. The only one that was from a different source was, I believe, let me double check to make sure I got this right.

Mark McGrath: 5:03

We had a we had a uh a transcript of just that that we made available through HGLX that uh Chet Richards was kind enough to write a foreword to, but that's the one from uh Spacecast. Spacecast, yes, yeah.

Ian Brown: 5:15

Yes. Um the the the all of them are from so Patterns of Conflict, a strategic game, organic design for command and control are all recordings of when Boyd was talking to uh largely a Marine Corps command and staff college audience back in the late 1980s, and these are all held, and um there's they are digital transfers of cassette recordings from those those presentations. And then uh the conceptual spiral was I think we we all had the same video from uh Spacecast, which was a um the the background of what Spacecast is, I I have a footnote in the book somewhere about it, but it was it was like an Air Force, like kind of um like little mini, mini think tank like uh you know, hacking, um, hacking session, brain hacking session in early 1990s. Um down in Florida, Boyd was invited to go to give the conceptual spiral talk as part of the agenda for that presentation. But but as I said, so the technical side is most of these were digital transfers of audio cassettes. And so um I undertook this effort um uh and with the initial attempts of the patterns of conflict back in like 2015, 2016 when I was working on um my master's, which eventually became the new conception of war. Um so this is sort of before you had lots of things like generative AI and other like large language model tools that can help you sort of parse this. So I had to kind of do this the hard way. But what I uh what I and what I ended up doing was there are transcription companies out there that predated, you know, the surge in LLMs and AI assistants. So I had uh with the very generous funding of both the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation and then later on the Marine Corps University Foundation, they provided funds for me to send the audio to a transcribing house basically to do a first pass, right? Like I there are there are dozens of hours of audio. Me, I don't have the time to sit down and go through that like word by word by word and generate a new transcript. So um I paid somebody else to do it. They did a first pass, and the first pass was probably like a it was about 60 to 70 percent of the way there, right? You know, like most of the words that Boyd is speaking are normal English words, he just talks really fast. Um, but they're they're they're at least interpretable as English words. Um, and and there's some parts of the audio where you just can't hear it. So it was useful to have like the third-party transcribers identify where the where they thought the audio was kind of muffled. So then I came in after all of this and I did like the refinements. And some of that was based on all the context uh of you know, of being sort of immersed in in Boyd and people who had written about maneuver warfare. I could fill in some of the blanks, right? Like where like if the transcriber just couldn't un understand or end a word at all, I was like, oh no, that's the German word finger spitching of fuel. There's no reason like a third-party transcriber would know what that word is, right? But those are the kind of things that I would polish out a lot of very specific, like uh people names or place names or conceptual ideas or doctrinal concepts that the transcriber couldn't figure out. I was able to fill in those blanks. So I mean, I ultimately I've listened to all of these recordings like many times to go in and fill in the blanks, but it was just from a workflow standpoint, it was very useful to have that somebody else do that first pass to give me like the the bedrock. And then I went through and cleaned it up and added the context and also added the uh you know, footnotes and annotations to explain a lot of the, you know, the the words or the oh by the ways that Boyd talked about. So that was basically the process of how how all these transcripts finally got out there. And then, you know, I had to do a little bit of interpretation to figure out where to embed all the different slides, you know, because Boyd's going through his slides at the same time that he's talking. You know, but what like once you know like where slide one starts in in the audio, it's not terribly hard to follow along. And yeah, he always says next slide.

Mark McGrath: 9:06

Like I know in the conceptual spiral, he always says next slide. Like the sound on that one is pretty clear, but the the the video of that is horrible.

Ian Brown: 9:14

You can't it's all murky, but yeah, the the the that that one was probably the the least of a challenge because the audio at least was good. All the command and staff college stuff was hard rough. Um but you but like you can hear him. There are pauses and you can actually hear him like moving the acetate slides on the projector. Um so so it was it, you know, once you knew where slide one started, it was not it wasn't terribly hard to follow along with it. Acetate, what the hell is that, man?

Mark McGrath: 9:41

Yeah, let's tell some Gen Z kids about we're gonna have to have to look up acetate.

Ian Brown: 9:45

Yeah, they have to because they're not gonna know what that is.

Mark McGrath: 9:47

They're likely not listening anyway. So if they are, we'd love to hear from them. But uh so technically this thing was a bear and you and you got through it and it took a while. And you go to the bullpen and you bring in the dean of uh Boyd Scholarship that's not a direct acolyte of his, Franzo Singa, of course, the author of Science, Strategy, and War, which I give to clients as a textbook. I'm like, read this, we're gonna work, we're gonna work through this, and you've got him engaged. What was uh what was that engagement like with Franz?

Ian Brown: 10:18

Uh so I'm incredibly grateful to Franz because he he really I came to him at the 11th hour because part of what I I wanted this book to do was not just like I wanted the the vast majority to just be Boyd in his own words, and then you go and you know interpret and apply as you want to, you know, but I also I did want context as well. And nobody I know has done sort of more independent research on the conceptual, the intellectual, the scientific underpinnings of Boyd's ideas than Franz O'Senga. Like the book you just mentioned. Like to me, science, strategy, and war to me is like the the gold standard of just from a from a completely like um you know intellectual standpoint, reverse engineering, all the underlying concepts, the the scientific uh and and cultural and other themes that you know were very much kind of in the air at the time that Boyd was alive, that he was soaking up. And and he, you know, Franz goes through all of Boyd's presentations and is like, hey, when he when he does this, you know, throwaway mention of chaos theory, you know, this is what was going on with chaos theory in the 1980s. And and so Franz has really provided to me like the the intellectual gold standard for um the the the the background, you know, the swimming pool of ideas that Boyd was swimming in at the time that then lets you give greater context. So um I had I had wanted to have that contextual framework as part of this book. Frankly, if I had to do it myself, it was gonna take a lot longer. And uh this book was already late by a few years. And so it was kind of a Hail Mary pass. I'm like, I had talked to Sean Callahan actually about doing some of this as well, but his his own workload as you know the new director of the history division, yeah. Um simply, you know, you know, perfect man for the job, right? But didn't didn't really allow him enough time to to do that. Although he was very helpful. He had his own, he's done his own transcripts that he had done in teaching in elective at Marine Corps University. So I did not, we we sort of had this like this plan to um compare and contrast like the transcripts and maybe filling in some of each other's blanks. Um due to due to my the timeline for the book and his uh and you know his bandwidth didn't work out. Although he did, I think for strategic game, he provided um some really good commentary and helped sort of fill in the blanks on that one.

Mark McGrath: 12:38

But I was saying I was hanging out with him this past weekend at Annapolis for the Navy football game, and he was talking about some of the work that he that he collaborated with you on. Of course, he's really busy with the 250th anniversary, so he's got other things on his mind at the moment.

Ian Brown: 12:52

Yeah, so I like you know, I've I've fully appreciated that it would this this might have been this was too just too much of an ask for all the other stuff he had to do. So I'm like, you know, who else knows Boyd as well? I'm like, I know I I had I exchanged like brief emails with Franz O Singa a while back. Um, so I still had his email address, but I just kind of threw a hail on Mary and was like, hey man, like this is the project. I would you've already written a huge amount of contextual um explanation of of all Boyd's different presentations. Like, I'm not asking you to do any any you know any new work really, but if you if you would be willing to sort of adapt some of your stuff, um, that would be hugely helpful to just give context to all of these things to the readers. I think that's the biggest value. It was fantastic.

Mark McGrath: 13:37

I think that's the biggest value is that is the context that this provides because it adds more if you use the briefings that are all available in multiple spots, if you just use the briefings, you're missing out on a lot. And this, you know, he delivered all these briefings a million times. You know, there's a million transcripts that we don't ever have, but the ones that you're able to create and the ones that we're able to memorialize, it's important because it does, I think it does add a lot of structure um and and and meat to the uh you know to the to the the format that we are they're all familiar with. Because you could take discourse on winning and losing from Grant Hammond, you could get, you know, chet's got all the the briefings up or whatever. You can just read them, but it's the engagement that you miss. It's the it's the the back and forth. And there's some things, especially in the patterns of conflict transcript. I mean, that's why I've I've listened and read to that one. That that transcript that you had on that was was brilliant. I've sent that out to a lot of people, and there's things that he mentions in there, like Wayne Gretzky, and you know, the the the question and answer that he has with somebody on uh on terror, you know, it's almost like he's predicting 9-11, you know, uh years before.

Ian Brown: 14:48

Yeah, well, so so the night like having France give give that overall context was fantastic, and I'm I'm deeply grateful for him like just saying yes to this extra workload and was like, oh, by the way, you've got like a month to do this. Um how's that sound for you? You know, this is an offer you can't refuse. Um, but I think, yeah, having I one I think having all the transcripts together, you finally get um a lot of the stuff that's in between the slides that is simply not apparent. And if you saw this in Patterns of Conflict, the trend continues across the other presentations where um you you really it really shows you which ideas and themes he he weighted the most in turn in his presentations and and which he he didn't weigh quite so heavily. And so there are times and as now you see uh in the in the transcripts of him going through his presentations. Now sometimes he'd like talk about a slide for like two seconds and then he's on to the next one and the next one. And then sometimes you'd have a slide that would have only like a few sentences on it. He's on the case. He'll spend like 15 minutes, he'll spend like you know, half the class just talking about that one slide and you know letting the the natural back and forth the question and answer with the students and the audience go. So to me, that was one of the most illuminating things about you know finally having his his his ver his words, his verbal, you know, oral presentation along with the text, because they are they're complementary parts of a whole. And if you're only going by the slides, then you you're you you sort of naturally want to treat each slide as like kind of evenly weighted because you don't have anything to tell you otherwise. Now you you see what the way he uses the slides. Um you see what he thought was the most important points to emphasize, which things were um you know, not unimportant, but less important to him. And then there's actually a couple cases in the in the we have an appendix, just like I had an appendix in New Conception of War. Um, but in this book, we have an appendix of about uh I'd say a dozen slides from two different presentations that Boyd skipped entirely in in in the instances that he was presenting them. I think one of them was about six or seven slides from a patterns of conflict, which kind of near the end, he just like like he skips entirely through them. But I think he said, like, oh, we'll come back to them, and then he he doesn't really come back to them. And then let me get the other presentation here.

Mark McGrath: 18:00

A new conception of air to air.

Ian Brown: 18:03

Um no. Oh, conceptual spiral. There's a couple slides in conceptual spiral that he just glosses over in the in the you know recording that you did for Spacecast. Um, but we we included them as an appendix because they are part of the slides that everybody has. Um and and we wanted we wanted this to be you know as complete a book as possible. So, you know, I I brought I talked to this about you know with with the editor, and like I know I I know this make just makes your job even harder, and this book is already hundreds of pages long. But like if this is our one shot to do like the definitive void, can we include those slides like somewhere? So at least like they're they're in as part of the publication. It's noted in patterns of conflict and conceptual spiral where he skips them, but the slides are still there so that you know in the books that you can go and look at the things that he skipped over.

Mark McGrath: 18:52

I mean, some of the like I was saying, the QA is also important to add context and color. So, you know, like in Patterns of Conflict, somebody asks, why do organizations always write memos back and forth and boys answers? CYA, cover your ass. Like that kind of that that kind of, I don't know, that that that sort of banter, I think, helps add more things to think about when you're looking at the concepts. So, you know, when he's talking about organizations being that are founded on mistrust being doomed to fail, that kind of dialogue I think has a lot more weight.

Ian Brown: 19:24

Yeah, that's like yeah, it's the kind of stuff that just doesn't come out in the slides because like he never talks about covering your ass in the in the slides, but it's something that simply unfolded as part of like, you know, organically the discussion with the students. And it's it's like little little factoids like that, or like, you know, you mentioned, you know, talking about Wayne Gretzky and hockey. Boyd uses a lot of sports analogies in his discussions with the students to like, you know, explain the concepts. Like he'll talk about uh how in either like a hockey team or or a basketball team, right? Like you're always on, you're on offense and defense at the same time. And so, you know, but sometimes teams will get into a like this this sort of higher mental state where like everything just seems to be going right. You know, you're just you're clicking, like all your all your passes are clean, all your shots go in the net. And and you know, he's describing a state of an organization that has implicit communication, implicit trust with each other that isn't isn't expressed via words. It's just been established in how they've trained and practiced together, and now you're seeing it on the floor of competition. Um, and and and it's and it's a great fantastic analogy. He also talks about, you know, when it comes to tempo, right? Like clock management. Like sometimes you want to like you want to burn time off the clock by keeping the clock running, you know, especially in football, right? Like if you're ahead, you just want to burn time off the clock because you don't you want to minimize the amount of time the other team has the ball. But sometimes you want to slow the clock down, right? Slow the tempo down and make every second count to your advantage so that you you you can exploit or gain an advantage, even if there's only, you know, like again in in in football or basketball, right? Like you call key timeouts so that you can you can halt the tempo, reorganize yourself, and uh possibly adjust your strategy so that every one of those final few seconds, you still have an opportunity to gain an advantage. And and that stuff just isn't, it's just not in the slides, but you hear him talk about it in the in the transcripts, and it like it like, aha, I've got some practical applications of these things that he's you know talking about at very high levels. What do you got, Brother?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 21:27

Oh, there's a solid connection to what you just brought up between implicit guidance and control, uh the reallocation of the dynamic reallocation of resources with a high flow sport activity like hockey, and of course uh flow states. So the the what you just brought up there is is perfect, and that is implicit guidance and control leads to that heightened sense of peak performance or or those flow states. And that's what John Boyd brought up. He didn't mention Mihai, he chicken me high anywhere uh that I found, but he did understand flow at a different level. And I think that's I just want to point that out for our listeners that when you're when Ian's bringing that up, that's the connection. The second tech connection is uh dynamic reallocation of resources. And that is a team science thing which says that highly interdependent team activities, uh things like basketball and hockey, which are also flow games, uh moving something from a point or an area to a point, uh that is what we want to emulate and and and copy uh in business uh and in warfare is is how do we do that at a high level.

Ian Brown: 22:26

Yeah, and I think the words you just used are like, you know, he he was sort of talking about these things and but not necessarily using you know terminology that came later. Um I that that is actually one of the I think the key insights that readers can get from this book is and I I think I mentioned it a little bit in my preface to it, is that Boyd sort of like he had this, you know, instinctual or kind of of gut level understanding of some emerging trends, but you know, the the trends were still very new and nascent and didn't necessarily have the words or terminology attached to it yet. But it was clear he was like he was he was thinking about it, right? And so one of the points I made in in the introduction is Boyd regularly talks about the use of like strategic messaging and narrative and having having word have actions match words as ways to either generate trust and cohesion on your side or by showing the divergence between word and action, generating mistrust and lack of cohesion on the other person's side. And he often talks about, you know, people look at like your subordinates, like they'll look up at you and and you're saying one thing, but you're doing another thing, and they'll they'll be like, you know, those dirty rats, you know, they're they're they're talking out about they're hypocrites, they're talking out of both, you know, sides of their mouth. Um and I I and I in in this day and age, like it is it is so much easier for disparity between word and action to be observed because every human is now a sensor in the information space, right? Like boy, like you know, 1997, boy died. The internet was, you know, taking baby steps toward being something that more and more people had access to. Uh but I think 1997, I'm still in high school. I, you know, had a dial-up modem that was competing with the actual phone line in my house, you know, for internet access. And the the volume of information you could get from this thing called the internet was not huge. Whereas now, you know, like I'm looking, I've got I'm talking to you through one mobile device and I'm holding two others and or wearing one other here. I have three different information nodes on my body, right? And this is now like this sort of the standard for um a lot of people on this planet, even in the poorest of countries. Like poor countries, everybody's still got a cell phone, right? Like it's the the technology is so cheap and so proliferated. And now each one of those is an information node into you know, actions matching words, or having boy talked a lot about having a positive strategic method, right? Like a you a unifying vision, a vision so noble that could, you know, bring your bring your friends together tightly, but then you know, work as a work to undermine your adversary because your message contrasts with their very negative message, and people are going to want the positive one, right? So simply having having a positive message that said that says, hey, it's good to be on my team, come to my team, is a is a strategic weapon. Um and we and again, we have so many more devices now that allow those messages to get out and get proliferated that I think I think if you know, if you did jump drop boy down on the world today, the way messaging, both good messaging and bad messaging is being used, I think he would he would inherently understand because he was already thinking about how you use messaging either as a strength on your side or a weapon against the on the other side.

Mark McGrath: 25:53

We won't go.

Ian Brown: 25:54

He just didn't have words for it.

Mark McGrath: 25:55

We won't go down the rabbit hole, but one of the things I've been taking the charge on is fusing Boyd with Marshall McLuhan. And Boyd with the you know, the medium is the message, and again, we won't go into it in depth because we want to stay on the book. I'll just say that Boyd inherently understood everything that Marshall McLuhan was saying, even though he never read them. Although Andrew McLuhan, who's his grandson, who's a previous guest on our show and um we interact with quite a bit, was surprised that he never read Marshall McLuhan because he read everything else. Like he bracked, he basically bracketed around all the things that McLuhan had read. So I guess it made a lot of sense to him that that Boyd would understand these things inherently. What you're underlying and underscoring right there is the fact that, yeah, Boyd actually did understand the medium and its effect on people and how the form does it is it is important, more important oftentimes than the content.

Ian Brown: 26:47

Yeah, and I I've I've been I've read some of your stuff that you've been putting out with McLuhan and Boyd. And um, you know, as a as a former Canadian myself, I've I'm I deeply enjoy seeing Marfa McLuhan's name get more recognition. Although I've I've read his book, I mean, and it um I think he wrote a few books, but sort of like McLuhan's central book. Man, that was a hard read.

Mark McGrath: 27:08

Understanding media, yeah. Yeah, that was a hard read. For our founding strategists on the world of reorientation, we're actually having uh for our monthly Zoom in October, we're actually having Andrew come and explain us and kind of give us the the cheat sheet of how to of how to read that effectively. Because it's once you it's like Boyd, honestly. McLuhan and Boyd are the same in this sense. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you once you get Boyd, you can't unget it and you can't unsee it. McLuhan is the same and they and they go together so well. Um, the other one that I talk a lot about is Tayer Des Chardin, which they had both been familiar with, and Boyd had read. And the more that you get into Boyd, particularly around orientation, it seems to me, and the more the deeper that you read that book, Phenomenon of Man, by Taylor Des Chardin, which which Boyd read, which by the way, my next trip to the archives, I want to find that and and read the margin notes because I I think that probably had a lot more effect on on Boyd than we than we than we know or understand. But we won't, we don't need to go down that rabbit hole. So you write this book, this is great because I I think one of the things that you do really well is something that Ponch and I do um a lot, is crash the misconceptions of the simplified ODA loop that was invented over the skies of Korea by a fighter pilot. You know, I f I feel like all those things are bullshit. And when we talk about authentic UDA emerging from you know the YF-16 and the YF-17 flyoffs and all that stuff, and and his work on destruction and creation, we start talking about that. Your your and Franz's book is actually receipts. Here are the receipts for that.

Ian Brown: 28:40

Yeah. Um I and that's why I um the last chapter in the book, we um it focuses explicitly on the ODA loop. Although I again I think in in having all of this finally together in one place for the reader, you can, you know, you can you can watch Boyd's intellectual progression over time because we've we've tried to order the presentations in the you know the the point in time at which Boyd first started talking about them. So, you know, Patterson of Conflict was the first big one, and he iterated a ton on that before he ever started spitting off these other presentations that look more deeply. Um, you know, so but it yeah, the the book is structured in such an order that you are walking through um, you know, Boyd's own sort of intellectual journey as he, you know, taking destruction and and creation as the engine that's driving everything else. And then each of the presentations is is really him trying to explore more deeply different aspects of destruction and creation. Yeah. Um, and and some, you know, patterns of conflict very much grounded in the real world, grounded in military history. Some of his other presentations get a lot more abstract. Um, but I'd say like organic design for command and control is fairly abstract. I'd initially thought the conceptual spiral, like based on the slides, was very abstract, but it's it's actually a very deep walk through like the scientific method and scientific progress and how people, you know, built on the work that previous people had done in different spaces. And so like the book itself was showing how like Boyd is building on himself over time as he's more deeply exploring his own ideas. But but two things I think about O loop is uh interesting is that one, yes, we I included a chapter at the end with some analysis of it based on Boyd's notes in the archives where he sort of gets into, you know, well, you know, okay, where did I get what what did the different pieces of the loop mean and where did I get them? Uh but if you are if if you read the book from start to finish, you you see that uh the the OODA loop wasn't was not like uh first like he didn't come up with it and then try and like spend the rest of his life trying to fill it in. Right. The way it flows is that he's uh he's he references it, but he doesn't uh uh it's it's not like uh a key uh foundational underpinning. Uh it's really something that he he fleshed out and really came to near the end of his life, which is why if you look in, you know, if you listen to patterns of conflict, yeah, he talks about oodaloops. If you listen, if you I say listen, now you can read it, right? Yeah. That's the whole that's the whole point. But as you re as you read through his presentations, he references oodaloops.

Mark McGrath: 31:13

Well, and if you listen to those and you read those, one would think, without any other previous knowledge or reading destruction and creation, one would think that he's just talking about this. But his own at least the illustration of his own thinking evolved because in '95, when he drew the Oodaloop sketch, it's very clear that he's not talking about this. He's not talking about uh yeah.

Ian Brown: 31:35

Yeah, he's not. And it's and in in the notes that are in the archives, and we have in that final chapter, I've I've got some snapshots because I found I didn't find these notes until I think after I'd written A New Conception of War, and I was starting to go into This project. But you know, he's got um there's a number of different sort of versions of the Oodo loop that he was toying around with, some of which he like he substituted like the steps of the scientific method rather than O O D A. It was, um, I'm not gonna try and read his handwriting here, but they're like O O A H T, you know, you know, hypo hypothesis and thesis, right? Like, yeah, so he he was looking at it from a few different ways, but then there's a um a final note where where he talks about like where the different pieces of the loop come from, right? Like, so in and the analysis and synthesis synthesis, excuse me, inside orientation, his note says equals destruction and creation. Yeah, right. Like so that's like that kernel, that engine that underlays everything is the very beginning. He talks about UDA equals POC. So he's talking about patterns of conflict. He talks about um the different components inside orientation. G-H, C T P E U C equals O D C C. Uh so that's your genetic heritage, your cultural tradition, previous experiences, unfolding circumstances, those he's linking to organic design for command and control. I and I'm not sure.

Mark McGrath: 32:55

We should show you Ponch and I have a spreadsheet of all the when we were in there of all the abbreviations that we've looked at, because the ones that you have in the book, we've actually we actually have screen like pictures that we took while we were in there too, and it's still incomplete. And we've involved, you know, spinning and richards and G.I. Wilson and others to try to crack the code, and there's still there's still abbreviations we're still trying to figure out.

Ian Brown: 33:18

Yeah, so it was it was I appreciated the fact that Boyd left at least like a little bit of a key in some of his notes on this, you know. But the but the the ultimate point was the final oodle loop that he came up with, he didn't draw it down until near the end of his life. And it was pretty clear, like it was not the starting point. It was like the the summation of all the other decades of thought that he had done. And that was his way of his thinking evolved. Depicting this. Yeah, his thinking evolved, and and that was the sort of the final summation, but it it was not the starting point. It wasn't oodaloop sounds cool. I'm gonna try and spend the rest of my life smashing stuff in to fit it. He didn't he didn't build it until he had spent decades exploring lots of other ideas and concepts.

Mark McGrath: 34:00

What that's a key word, exploring. And that's another commonality that he and McLuhan had. They were exploring and explaining. They weren't, or they they weren't, or were they rather they were exploring, not necessarily explaining, because things were always evolving and changing, and they both they both saw that, and they both were able to let go of things once they realized that that thing was no longer wrong. They weren't going to ride something down to the bottom. They they would let go and they would they would uh you know incorporate or reorient to the new information. They both had that in common, which is another really interesting uh um it's it's an expansion of what they do because of the constant process of this exploration and discovery, the constant process of uh destruction and creation. And you see McLuhan do the exact same thing within within years of writing a book saying the complete opposite a couple of years later because of new information or new explorations that he realized that that was no longer accurate or relevant.

Ian Brown: 34:55

Yeah, and I think you again in sort of the chronological flow of these of the presentations now, as you see it like if it if if Boyd had like just sort of like locked his thinking into, you know, these examples from military history explain everything, and that's just gonna be my go-to for the rest of my life, you'd like his other presentations would probably just read like you know, different excursions on military history. Yeah. But they they don't. And that's that's what I think is really interesting is chronic as chronologically he's letting his mind go to different places that are um not necessarily directly related to the starting point. So like you, you know, you start off with military, well, actually, you start off with destruction and creation, right? Which uh which does have a very heavily sort of science-informed framework to it, you know, but then he spends a lot of you know, the longest presentation being patterns of conflict. He he spends a lot of time swimming in military history. But then as you go forward, you can get it.

Mark McGrath: 35:52

And he's riffing off of even though he's talking about military history and conflict and warfare, he's still riffing off of destruction and creation.

Ian Brown: 36:01

Yeah, he is. And then and then he he can't like each of the following presentations. It's all a riff off destruction and creation. Is another riff. And so like you go like conceptual spiral is heavily like it is, man, it is deeply like scientific method in the history of science and form. Oh, totally. If you were to look at it in isolation, you you'd be like, these were not done by the same guy.

Mark McGrath: 36:22

Well, well, so so so that that's the point, though. When people say, I'm gonna write a book about Boyd and how to use it in business, or I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about Boyd, or we're gonna teach you the Oodaloop sketch, and they haven't read or dug deep on destruction creation conceptual spiral. I'm sorry, you're not gonna be able to grasp anything of John Boyd. If you don't understand destruction creation fundamentally, and that everything from that was riffing and developing riffing and then ending his life really with the with the Oodaloop sketch. And I don't know how you can teach good Boyd if you're if you misunderstand or don't understand or have never read destruction and creation.

Ian Brown: 36:58

Well, you know, the my hope, my goal with this book is that you you can at least teach better Boyd. Yeah. Right? Because now you've got the The receipts. You have the receipts. The primary you have the receipts, you have the primary source material. I have listened to all the audio so that nobody else ever has to. And it's now bad though.

Speaker 02: 37:19

Be honest.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 37:20

So I have a confession. I have a confession. Uh patterns of conflict, I always push this side. It wasn't the most important thing to me until the book came out. And here's why. When you look at the transcript, you there's 81 times that it's mentioned in there. Uh John Boyd brings up surprise. It's in the brief, it's in his transcript as well. Why does this matter? He points out very clearly that um it's about surprise minimization. We create surprise for others, we take actions that create surprise, and we want to minimize that surprise. Now, where am I going with this? This is in patterns of conflict, something that I pushed aside for a long time. And again, going back to what you just published showed me I was wrong. That contains the piece of information that makes a strong connection to what we've been arguing about for the last four or five years. And that is a connection between Boyd's journey to sketching Noodaloo and where we are today with the latest and greatest in neuroscience. And that is the free energy principle and active inference. The purpose of the free energy energy principle is to minimize surprise. Living system minimize surprise. That's what it's what it's about. So just this week, after reading it, I'm like, holy shit, there it is, right there. John Boyd's own words coming right out saying we have to minimize surprise, right?

Mark McGrath: 38:31

So I and he and he also says to tag on the what Ponch just said, he also makes it clear in the audience in the transcript that surprise is not an input. You can't input surprise. Surprise is an outcome. It's not saying we're going to use surprise here. You know, you you hope there's surprise, but you don't know that.

Ian Brown: 38:48

Yeah, and that's uh that's one of those areas where I found I I hope that the you know the full transcripts prove helpful because um, for example, he does uh at the end of Patterns of Conflict, he does this excursion on like the principles of war. And in the slides themselves, it doesn't really capture his sort of very clear disdain for like trying to make lists out of principles and just like throw them all against the wall and you know think that you've discovered something smart. You know, he made but he makes the point in all of these different lists, and he has like five or six different lists by country, which they're all different, by the way. So I think he said, like, will the real principles please stand up at some point? You know, but his point is they're not they're not organized or categorized, like they have inputs and outputs all mixed together, which is not not helpful if you're trying to figure out if if I want, as you said, if I want surprises my output, what is my input? But I have like surprise and you know, speed and a bunch of other principles just listed without any any methodology of is surprise my input or is speed my input? Or like, you know, and that's the he doesn't spend he doesn't spend a tremendous amount of time, and it's you know, it's at the end of like six hours of him talking. So um you can understand his audience might have been a little aghast at that point, but it's the his explaining, you know, why you can't distill things down into principles and why it's important to look in terms of inputs and outputs, because as you said, surprise is an output. So what do I have to what do I have to put in? What do I have to do to have a surprise be the thing that is then imposed on my opponent? Because I don't impose surprise. Like there's no there's no like artillery shell of surprise or J DM of surprise that I'm dropping, right? I'm dropping high explosives, which is so my input is violence and physical destruction and shock. Uh so my my output from that could then be surprise and shock and loss of tempo. But it's uh and I I think he also talking about surprise, he he sort of doesn't appreciate folks who are like, oh, I'm I'm just never gonna be surprised, right? It's like I will never be caught by surprise. He's like bullshit. No, like you can never, you can never like think of every possible thing the enemy's gonna do to you. You may get surprised by something you did not expect. The important point is is your mental framework adaptable enough that you can like absorb the blow, adjust, shift, and then keep going to you know, either continue your operation or adjust it based on the new circumstances, right? But simply saying you're never gonna be surprised is well, it's gonna hurt. You say that, it's gonna really hurt when you're surprised because you're not gonna have an answer for it because you didn't think through that eventuality. Rather than I don't know what my opponent's gonna do, they're gonna do stuff that I don't expect. So I'm gonna prepare for that by building myself good orientation, good implicit communication, and having my having me and my subordinates able to respond with agility when the surprise comes, because it's gonna come at some point.

Mark McGrath: 41:38

Yeah, that's another thing that you guys do a great job at is really zeroing in on the primacy of orientation and not speed. Speed's important, but if you're misoriented or disoriented, your speed doesn't matter anything. You're just going really fast in the wrong direction.

Ian Brown: 41:57

Yeah, I think he he says the words, I think it's in Patterson Conflict, where he's like, people talk about like speed, we're gonna go fast. It's like you're gonna go fast, you're gonna go fast. If all you're doing is going fast for the sake of going fast, you're just gonna drive yourselves crazy, right? Like speed, speed on its own is not the point. It's the tempo and relative speed compared to what your adversary is doing. And as he does with the sports analogies, which again, they're not in the slides, but they're in the the transcript. Sometimes you want to slow that speed down. Yeah. Right? Like he makes he makes the point about the V, you know, the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong. They had a very slow tempo, right? Like they were happy to slow down the clock and use every single second and extend that game as long as they could, because they knew the longer that game extended, eventually we would run out of we'd run out of energy.

Mark McGrath: 42:45

They had a completely different orientation. So at that scale, their OODA loop was processing completely differently than than ours. Yeah. And it's um yeah, yeah. I think the We went down, I don't say a rabbit hole, I think we went down a a really good route with that because we brought up patterns and how Boyd was talking about Bruce Palmer's book and then the Kripenovich book, uh, I think the Army in Vietnam. And then he was also talking a lot about the CAP program. So I went back and pulled my old TBS copy of The Village and we read that, and we had Bing West talking about it.

Ian Brown: 43:20

And Bing West came on the show and he was talking about how that orientation and approach was actually highly effective that the Marine CAP program was using and the Marine and the in the uh and the Army Green Berets were using, and Boyd talks about it in the transcript that you have, and that was the one thing that was actually working really well in the in the Vietnam War, but the prevailing orientation didn't yeah, it was the you know, on our side, we wanted we wanted we thought that like fast speed and immediate results was the way to to succeed in that conflict. Um and it wasn't. It was the you know, the CAP program understood the the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, they want to extend the game. So the CAP program, we're gonna extend right along with them, right? Um as long as it takes. Um, until we stop doing that.

Mark McGrath: 44:13

Well, and and the Marine Corps University, which you're affiliated with, has done a great job of uh I I wish that stuff was more widely, widely shared. You know, the uh the uh punch, in fact, what was our first trip to the archives together? There's that little room where they have all those sort of free books you can take. And they had the copies of uh civic action from uh 1966 to 67 or whatever it was, and the publishing approval date from some major general was January, early January of 68. I'm thinking, oh my god, he wrote that the morning or the sorry, the month that the TED Offensive was about to start, and he was telling, you know, these these uh I can't think of the guy's name. He was a professor at NPS for a long time, but he was basically telling everybody, hey, this is working. You know, this is actually working, and nobody, nobody cared.

Ian Brown: 45:01

Yeah, well, you had you had the shock and surprise of the TED Offense to be something that, you know, was not expected. And we, you know, we the Royal We didn't have the the agility or the mental framework to realize that, hey, they, you know, the Viet Cong actually came out and exposed themselves and uh and we really hurt them. But the problem was going back to the you know, the words and actions not matching, we we've been saying, and you know, stop me if you've heard this before in recent wars, like we've turned the corner in Vietnam, we've turned the corner in Vietnam, and then you had the Tet Offensive look like, wow, they were full of shit, right? Like obviously there's still very strong armed resistance. Why are we here? What is this all about? And changed changed the strategic narrative of the war. And it demonstrated a very big disparity between our words and our actions, because if we had turned the corner, how the hell did they just launch like a full cross-country attack on multiple points simultaneously, right? Like if we've turned the corner, they shouldn't have been able to do that.

Mark McGrath: 45:59

So why kind of on this topic then, you know, the the other the constant debate of Clausewitz versus Sun Tzu, and and Boyd, I think, understood both better than anybody. Um and he used to say the art of war was the one book that he could never find fault with, and he had a lot of contradictions, and we've we've all three of us have all been in the archives to read that copy of On War and read all the marginalia. In fact, I took a picture of every page where he wrote a margin note. He does a really good job in the text of patterns of conflicts explaining Clausewitz's shortfall. How do you think that the transcript helps color that in? Because it seems it seems to me that it does make the case that there are good things about Clausewitz, but if you're a Clausewitz absolutist, you're gonna get to that situation we just kind of described, the difference between success with CAP and uh Green Berets and Gorilla Warfare versus the you know the conventional dump everything, bring everything to a bloodbath mindset.

Ian Brown: 46:53

So it's interesting because I've had uh a friend of mine who's also done a fair amount of work, both both both on Boyd, but also Klauswitz, who has a theory that like for all of Boyd's apparent angst against and criticism of Klauswitz, Boyd may have been like kind of a closet admirer in some way, or at least a grudging admirer, because he spends a lot of time grappling with Klauswitz. Um yeah, as you can see from that that screenshot right there, like um I I think I did a like a word, uh, a word and an idea count at some point. And like some Sun Tzu and Klauswitz are like the top two theorists that Boyd discusses, certainly in patterns of conflict, right? Where you know, where we're talking military theory. Um and I think I think he devotes a lot of time to it because he takes Clauswitz seriously, right?

Mark McGrath: 47:45

Like there are there are some theorists shit on Klauswitz, but he he he points out the contradictions, I guess.

Ian Brown: 47:52

That's he he does. And I think I think part of it was likely, you know, he he legitimately found found flaws in it. And and as part of his building, like his building block approach, he's like, all right, there are pieces of Klauswitz that we can take, but there's also pieces that we want to leave behind, and we don't want to like get locked into a Klauswitzian model because it's not it's not complete, right?

Mark McGrath: 48:14

And that's and I mean he would he wouldn't even say like we should only be Sun Tzu and nothing else. He would never say anything like that.

Ian Brown: 48:20

No, he uh but he's you know but he he does spend a lot of time critiquing Klauswitz. But um I like I said I think it's partly because he he he thinks there are there are insights in Klauswitz, but there are also flaws, and he wants to distinguish the one from the other so that you are taking the useful stuff forward, um, but then layering it on top of it all the other things he explores later on in patterns and conflict. Um and I, you know, I also think like it's it's clear he takes Klauswitz seriously because there are some theorists and writers who he very obviously like boy is like almost dismissive of. And interestingly, one of one of them is sort of like the key villain in this other book about Boyd, which I had some serious problems with a few years ago. And we know the book. Don't even mention it. And and and actually that book was part of the catalyst for me to finally get off my my ass and finish this one.

Mark McGrath: 49:13

Uh that that book has robbed many a bird of some of the best birdcage liner available.

Ian Brown: 49:20

It's yeah, it's it's rough. But this is why going back to the going to the primary source material, doing the archival work, you know, that we we have collectively done to find out what did he actually think, what did he actually write in the note in the in the marginalia. But it was oh lord, VH little heart, right? So Boyd is is fairly dismissive of Hart. I think he he mentions him by name one to one or two times in in the version of Patterns of Conf that I use. Um in the in the video version, he mentions him, I think, but in both cases, it is highly dismissive. And he says, you know, Hart's book strategy, it's more like I'm paraphrasing, but it's mostly garbage, right? Like so it's heart, heart has one maybe good point, but the rest of it is mostly garbage. It's not worth your time. That is not something that is captured in the slides, but it's it's interesting because that book, that other book, one of the core like pillars of its thesis is that Boyd was deeply enamored of BH Little Hart and was just like sucking down all of Hart's ideas without question. And like you you listened to his his presentations and now you can read them, right? Boy, like Hart, he Boyd doesn't give Hart almost a second thought. He's like, Yeah, that book's strategy, it's not that great. Moving on, let's talk about Klauswitz, right? Because Klauswitz, you know, had but he takes Klauswitz seriously as somebody who is a you know like a pure intellect, right? Like I need I need to take Klauswitz seriously because Klauswitz was serious and thought deeply about war with uh put a lot of rigor and effort into it. And yes, I have some problems with his framework, and these are what the problems are, but I take him seriously.

Speaker 02: 50:58

Well, it's also unfinished, too, right? Didn't Klauswitz not.

Ian Brown: 51:01

Yeah, Klauswitz died out before he had a final draft, and so a lot of it is you know his his wife's best efforts to be like a post-to-mis editor, you know. Um yeah, so you know, in Klauswitz's defense, maybe he would have revised a lot of the stuff to Boyd critiques had he lived longer, right?

Mark McGrath: 51:16

Um I mean that that that take on that bad book, I think it's just it it reduces Boyd to like a warfare strategist only. And one of the things that Ponch and I talk about incessantly, without without end almost unceasingly, is the fact that Boyd is looking at complexity. Military conflict is a portion of what he's talking about, but at the highest level, this is universal application. This is for use in any organization where humans make decisions. It doesn't necessarily have to be a uh a rifle battalion. It could be it could and that's where that's and it could be in any domain, too, where humans experience conflict, which is not limited to warfare.

Ian Brown: 51:52

No, it's not. And and that's why I I I hope people find this particular book valuable because yes, you've got patterns of conflict, which is about war, right? And he's talking to military audiences mostly when he's delivering that. But all of his other presentations, you know, the organic design for command and control, you know, that's talking about leadership and communication within an organization. And that's that's as applicable in the business world in an organization as it is in a rifle battalion, right? And then you if you fast forward to the conceptual spiral, that's all about like the scientific process of build, like looking at what past work has done, but not unquestioningly accepting it, looking at it, questioning it, taking what works, but then continuing to ask what if, right? Like that, you know, so-and-so came up with like this equation, and in conceptual spiral, he's got like four or five slides, which when I was footnoting these, it was really painful. And I ultimately had to make some editorial decisions about how much detail like to put into each of those, because I otherwise I'd be writing like biographies of like four dozen different scientists, and then then that chapter would be about those scientists and not about Boyd. So I hadn't truncated a little bit. But his point is like he talks about all right, scientist X came up with this equation to explain gravity, right? And then scientist Y looked at this equation and I was like, hey, this is good, but I still have questions, like there's I feel like there's something missing. They enhance that equation and they come up with their own, and then a then a third and a fourth and a fifth sign, like so the process never stops, right? Yeah. And in that context, he's in and of trying to find, you know, the better a a better, a more, a fuller, more core, more coherent answer to the problem in front of you. And he's talking about the scientific method in that particular instance, but that always comes back to destruction and creation, which is I am always looking for a better, fuller answer to the problems that are in front of me. Yeah. As with like, and that's part of his point about Clauswitz, is like if you take Clauswitz as the final answer, you have stopped trying to grapple with all of the problems that came since.

Mark McGrath: 53:59

You're only looking at a pyramid from one side.

unknown: 54:02

Yeah.

Ian Brown: 54:02

You only see a triangle or or a square or a square or whatever. Or whatever. And that's and and you know, I think part of his why he beat up on Klauswitch so much was not to not to disparage all of Klauswitch's ideas, because he he does pull forward some stuff from Klauswitch, you know. But his larger point is, and and it's the same point in conceptual spiral, and it's the same point in destruction creation. You can't like you don't you can't stop and say, all right, so and so has figured it all out, and I'm just gonna like, I'm just gonna religiously follow that framework without exploring or inquiring and at any point after that, because that's how you start having that divergence between actual reality and your ability to survive in that reality and reality as you sort of see it. So, like if we only ever took Newton as the final answer for physics, like we'd all, you know, we probably wouldn't have cars or have an American flag on the moon, right? Right. If we'd only taken Klauswitz as our our final framework for conflict, would we still be, you know, fighting in closely packed formations, but just murdering each other under hails of bullets?

Mark McGrath: 55:03

Yeah, our under our understanding of the universe goes a little further than Ptolemy or Copernicus these days, you know. But that's the conceptual, that's because of the conceptual spiral and the continuous cycle of destruction and creation.

Ian Brown: 55:14

Yeah, and that's and I think kind of uh again, if you follow the chronology of the book, his his the core engine driving it is how do I survive and thrive in a in an uncertain, ever-changing world. And each presentation is like a different slice of looking at of of ways to do that and things that you need to do within that. And yeah, one of them has a highly military context, but other ones have, you know, scientific and engineering context, and others have like, you know, the strategic game of isolation and interaction. Yeah. Hey, you could apply that sure to business strategy, but also to political strategy. Football, hockey, football strategy, yeah, it's teaching. It's a certain it's like, how do I make my organization better? And if I'm competing against other organizations, how do I uh how do I exploit their fit their their fissures and or their their their poorer understanding of the reality around them?

Mark McGrath: 56:07

And your understanding of Boyd, Ian, how do you like I I have my ranking and I know Ponch has his, and how would you rank an order of importance? Because I've asked I've asked some of the acolytes this that are still with us. I've asked them this, and number number one, the answer to number one is always destruction creation, because there's no that's what he riffs off. So that's so that has to be number one. Then how would you stack the rest of them in order of importance? And I I I I I have mine, but I would hear yours first. And it doesn't have to be all of them, it could be like the one, two, three, because I I kind of have a one, two, three and then some peripherals, but what do you think? I I don't know. And by the way, number one has to be destruction creation.

Ian Brown: 56:51

No, no, destruction and creation is is the engine that drives everything else. Yeah, like that there's no question of that in my mind.

Mark McGrath: 56:57

Yeah.

Ian Brown: 57:00

Maybe I'm biased, but uh I I probably I I would submit that patterns of conflict due to its sheer size would probably be number two because due to its size, it allows him to go off and explore uh sort of in more more in different tangential conversations with his students to to get you know more deeply into some of his ideas, even though they are rooted in in military history. Um it's just I think the the scope and scale of the presentation created more opportunities for him to have those extraneous discussions with his students that go off in interesting directions. So um I just there's a lot of there's just a lot of stuff, useful, interesting stuff that you can sift through in patterns of conflict. So that's why I would put it as number two, just for it's got a lot of meat to chew on in there. The the other three, I I I don't know that I could like say, hey, one of one of these is absolute must-read compared to the rest, because they're all quite they're all different from each other. And and the point is they're all exploring you know that engine of destruction and creation in different ways. And I I'm I might say like, you know, it it kind of depends on you know what problem maybe you're looking at. Like if you're looking at if you're looking at a you know, a question of maybe, you know, in internal leadership and and you know, organizational excellence for yourself, maybe you're looking at organic design because he's talking about you know what how do you effectively you know communicate and work with subordinates or your own leaders, you know, to kind of achieve a goal. And and he gets away from the idea of like command and control. Um, and I I forget what he he replaces it with sort of two. Appreciation and leadership. Yeah, as as as the structure for doing that, right? So that's if if if if if leadership and communication is your question or problem set, you should probably look at that one, right? Yeah. Whereas um if you're if you're looking more at a a higher strategic level of, you know, not not trying to defeat military militarily an opponent, but understanding how to how to craft like a strategy for yourself and and have better strategies than than competing organizations, maybe the strategic aim of interaction and isolation is something you should look at. Whereas the the conceptual spiral is almost it's so different. It's almost like you're it's almost like him looking back through the development of ideas in the way he did with military ideas and patterns of conflict, except now he's looking at it from a scientific perspective. Yeah. Um, and it happens to be shorter, you know. So it has that that going for it. But it's it's almost like a complete like I'm gonna, I've I've looked at, I've looked at my ideas of competition through warfare. I'm now I'm gonna look at it from a totally different angle through science, but I'm gonna see some of the same things, right? Like constantly adapting, building on what has come before, asking questions, you know, finding, finding, challenging those assumptions of, well, you know, maybe, maybe New Newton didn't have it all right, right? Like just like he says, maybe Klausovich didn't have it all right. If you never ask that question in the first place, you never get to maneuver warfare and you never get to the moon, you know, to put it to put a lot of people.

Mark McGrath: 1:00:13

Do you feel like like like I like sort of uh like I think of Boyd's development, and you know, Chet Richards has that epistemology that kind of goes from uh destruction creation all the way to his death, sort of culminating in Oodaloop sketch, and it has all the inputs inside of it. So, you know, all the warfighting and all the other history and eastern philosophy and everything that he put into it. And and I kind of see it as like sort of the say the one, two, three, of course, destruction creation is the number one, the core, because everything is a riff off that. Then patterns, organic design, command, control, and strategic game are kind of like laboratories for the next big one, which is conceptual spiral, which sort of reaffirms and expands on what he what he sets out with destruction creation. And then it comes to the essence of winning and losing, which is the distillation of pretty much everything, where Udaloop sketches the only time it's ever depicted, then he dies. You know, like that's kind of the that's kind of like the big three, if you will. But I buy into what you're saying and what what Ponchett said about the concept of surprise, patterns, and the other ones really strikes me at these laboratories where he's developing the ideas that you can't have conceptual spiral if you don't have those building and leading up to that, because they sent them on so many different academic rabbit holes that came even got him to the point where he had a conceptual spiral that allowed him to distill it all in essence of winning and losing with the with the Oodaloop sketch.

Ian Brown: 1:01:35

Yeah, and uh, you know, I'm I I hope, you know, I hope people read it and maybe they, you know, they they they weight things their own way um in terms of you know which one is uh is preeminent after just. and creation. Um, but I I you know the I the at a minimum, like you the reader should see development of thought and the way that the material is arranged, which is why, you know, the essence of winning and losing and then the final chapter on the oodaloop is at the end because that is that is the culmination. That you know he didn't he didn't one of it I'm sure drives you crazy as well, but drives me crazy is this idea like the the odo loop like he it sprung fully formed like Athena out of his head and spent the rest of his life trying to fit every peg into that square peg into that round hole right no like that was that was as you said it was the it was the distillation and then the the sketches that he made make it very clear the each presentation is a element that fed into this this final framework that he called the Oodo loop it was never the beginning the oodloop just is it's a quick snapshot of you know dozens and dozens of hours of discussion and other research that he had done over decades. It's the capstone it's not the it's not the engine destruction and creation is the engine.

Mark McGrath: 1:02:54

Well it it became the capstone because he died you know and ironically I mean you know when you look at the you look at the trajectory I mean that was the fitting place where it stops I guess to some extent but what do you think like where do you think he was headed next if he had lived you know he died only at 70 which is not old by today's standards but you know if he had kept going where where do where do you think that he would have gone well like so like I said earlier I think if he had lived deeper into the digital age I think he would have inherently recognized the opportunities and vulnerabilities of of every human being suddenly becoming a potential node for strategic messaging and and narrative.

Ian Brown: 1:03:35

And yeah I think he would have had he would have had tons of stuff to say about that and it would have tied it would have all tied back to you know the my perception of reality versus actual reality. Now that we have you know 500 billion different different input nodes and output nodes of of what reality means to us. Yeah he he probably would have had tons to say about how do you with that that huge volume now of information nodes going in and an ability to access it coming out I'm sure he would have had tons to say about all right, okay, so how does everybody being their own information node now affect your ability to you know to prevent that that disparity between actual reality and and your perceived reality.

Mark McGrath: 1:04:20

I think as you know uh which by the way Ian everything you just said is a perfect seg into how the the fusion of Boyd and McLuhan works so well.

Ian Brown: 1:04:29

Yeah which is and well this is a little bit of a discurse but this brings you back to an interesting point because you'd said that there's no sort of evidence that McLuhan's book was part of Boyd's reading. I think part of what I I I would like people to get out of the book is starting to understand you know where there might have been gaps in Boyd's own ideas and his his look at because it's been a a long critique and I think this is probably a fair critique but Boyd's pretty much silent on like naval warfare except for like an O by the way in patterns of conflict at one point he talks about how I forget the order here but like it was either you got Corbett and Mahan and one of them was beholden to Jomony and one of them was beholden to Klauswitz. So if you study Jomony and Klauswitz you basically like gotten the essence of Mahan and Corbett and that's kind of all he has to say about naval strategy which you could argue is a is a is a fairly large gap because most of the world is ocean and being being silent on strategy on the ocean um is is maybe that's in that's an interesting point and you know he never had to crash a plane into a ship so he has a yeah yeah he has a completely different perspective in that respect. And he's also fairly silent about you know things like logistics which again if you're if you're in that giant ocean domain man logistics you're you're doing nothing without logistics and he again like Boyd he I don't think he ever he ever presented himself or intended to be like a have a theory of everything when it comes to warfare right but you know but he did spend his largest presentation is about warfare and there are aspects of warfare he doesn't talk about so you know now you've got the fullness of his words in front of you you can start I identifying okay the these are places where uh you know Boyd was silent or if we're looking at the other presentations you know he talks about organic design for command and control which has a you know appreciation and leadership element communication is a huge part of that but he doesn't talk about McLuhan at all right and he he talks about strategic messaging and narrative and how you can use messaging and narrative to get allies to your side to peel peel allies away from your adversary and get them to you know but he doesn't talk about McLuhan who is all about how you use like media and messaging to achieve certain goals.

Mark McGrath: 1:06:47

Yeah.

Ian Brown: 1:06:48

But the bracketing on that's frustrating too man I'm telling you it's like it's so you know so part of you know part of what I I hope readers get from the book is you will it'll be clearer where the gaps um in Boyd's coverage are which potentially you know create some interesting opportunities to explore um you know where well you know how how do we improve on boyd right like boyd didn't stop at Klauswitzer Sun Tzu we can't stop at Boyd either so understanding those you know accurately understanding you know gaps or shortfalls in Boyd's own ideas okay how do we take the goodness of Boyd and then build on top of that looking at things that potentially fill in those gaps but you just add Rs to the end man that's all you do risk and then you put pre Uda uh and then you just start adding things to it is really cool.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:07:39

I'm joking.

Mark McGrath: 1:07:40

That's easier than I thought. Are you familiar with Ouda R I I think I've heard of it.

Ian Brown: 1:07:45

I'm not sure I've yeah you're not missing much.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:07:50

It just shows that folks haven't got in and done the work they just don't think they'll read destruction creation. They don't understand that risk is inherent inside of a simulation that you run within your own OODA loop right that is uh expected free energy or risk and uncertainty.

Speaker 02: 1:08:04

And the way they the way they design it it's like an imploding circle it falls on itself. That's what your organization will do if you use it too. But whatever.

Ian Brown: 1:08:13

I mean I I would submit that you know your your analysis and synthesis is including risk as part of that.

Mark McGrath: 1:08:19

Like you don't need a lot of we know that because we actually read the stuff we we we know that yeah but like the people in the you know it's the Peter principle I guess I don't know like this stuff becomes mainstream at NATO or wherever the hell it was because it it like people still I mean maybe we should maybe this is a great place to go people still are afraid of Boyd. They still don't like to talk about Boyd. They still don't like to because they because they're afraid of reform they're afraid of innovation. You know you mentioned naval warfare I mean remember that the Navy wouldn't give him the time you know that he that he demanded to so he never had that back and forth exchange of learning like he did with the Marine Corps and to some extent the army you know because they don't give it a second thought they are are content with what they think and what they believe and they don't want their assumptions challenged.

Ian Brown: 1:09:07

Yeah well hey maybe I again you know part of my goal in writing this book was that now you you don't have an excuse for not at least attempting to grapple with Boyd because you know up until now you know it's it's an excuse that I don't buy but like you can get away with it and saying you know we only have Boyd's flies and they don't you know I I'm gonna critique the slides but not the rest of it. Or Boyd's inaccessible because he never wrote anything down which you know okay granted he didn't he didn't write down all of his speaker notes although all of these recordings had been freely available at the archives or on YouTube for those you know who were willing to put the time into it as as you know the two of you and I have tried to put the time into it. But okay yeah the audio kind of sucks and it's and the video is grainy so okay I in it inaccessible and I'm using air quotes up to a point, right? This I hope removes that excuse because now you have a written document you wanted Boyd in writing damn it I gave you Boyd in writing and you know because it's uh also available in PDF it's searchable right it's searchable you could now you can plug it into all that great generative AI and LLMs that I didn't have when I was writing this and have them start looking at you know themes and keywords and stuff like that because it's now in a format that it can be parsed and studied and searched and uh and more easily processed. So um so now you you don't have an excuse for not grappling with Boyd. You mean you like again you don't have to agree with him and he's got his own gaps and and shore falls or gaps in the reading like he never read which he would admit if he had told you he said if if you think this stuff is doctrine take it out and burn it right now.

Mark McGrath: 1:10:48

I that's that's not what I'm here to do.

Ian Brown: 1:10:50

Yeah but the the point is you no longer have the excuse that he didn't write anything down. Now you've got the written boy deal with him in his own words accurately and then then we can get a better understanding for what he what he thought where he is still useful and where where we need to fill in some blanks. As we wind down one last technical question you know there is that other video of tra of patterns of conflict did you ever attempt to like at a congressional office or something I'm not sure who exactly did you ever try to transcribe that way so um I believe Sean Callahan has a transcript of that um and and that compare and contrast process was was going to be um uh potentially how we were gonna collaborate and again just I I had you know I had a very aggressive timeline for getting the book done and he and he had his own responsibilities and we um we you know we were able to do that with I think strategic game but we had a plan to do it with all the rest of them and you know life just you know for both of us life life gets in the way um the I I think the the one he does at the congressional office it's a little it's a little bit shorter because I I think he'd he may have had some time constraints that you know in the evening with a bunch of Marine Corps students who were just there to like hang out and listen to him, you know, he could spend all night right and the students would still be there. But I also think the the one that I have in my book because he's talking to a military audience he goes more deeply into some military and marine and indeed Marine Corps specific stuff than he does with with the congressional staff office. Because like when he talks about FMFM1 war fighting like his students know exactly what that is because he was caught off the presses at that point. Whereas with the congressional office maybe they I forget exactly when it was recording but you could go to like if you'd say FMFM war fighting to a bunch of congressional staffers unless they're deeply involved in Marine Corps policy they don't know what that is.

Mark McGrath: 1:12:40

If you were to speculate and guess because that's what it would be speculation and guessing I don't know if anybody's disclosed this we know for sure that Mike Wiley was in that room I speculate and guess that General Van Riper the future Lieutenant General Van Riper is in that room because his voice is absolutely unmistakable to me anyway on the on the trend on the tape. But I've heard that John Schmidt was in that room G.I. Wilson and possibly Zinnie do you have any confirmation of who was in attendance at all?

Ian Brown: 1:13:12

So I think in in a couple of the transni I mean future general I mean you we all know but General Anthony Zinny I I I'm I'm so like Wiley absolutely was there because he he and Boyd call each other out several times. And he mentions Mike he says Mike you know frequently in the he mentions John and I think I call it out in transcribing that's one of them for those for those other folks if they were in the room I couldn't I I didn't they either were silent or I just didn't recognize the sound of their voices because a a lot of the interaction like the question and answers it's clear it's officers of a lesser rank than Boyd would have held when he retired right like you know it's command of South College right so a bunch of majors and they're they generally start out the questions with you know so sure I'd like to ask about whatever um you know General Van Riper or Zinny probably would not have been talk that way right um and and that's one of the one of the things that I I I note in the transcripts up front is like I there's no class rosters that I could find in the archives. So aside from aside from we do know the dates though right we know the dates yeah we know the dates they're they're all in the spring of 1989 except for um conceptual spiral which was a different different time frame so we we know it was spring of 1989 for the rest of those presentations so like Van Riper and Zinnie they would have been colonels around then or brigadiers maybe they yeah I guess it wouldn't make sense that they were there. They would have been generals. Yeah they would have been generals at that point. Yeah yeah so I short answer is I don't know based based on the discussion going on in the classroom I I kind of don't think that they were there because I feel like if they were there Boyd would have called on them the same way he did with Wiley and uh and John Schmidt a couple times. So I I I don't think we were there but I don't have any any evidence one way or the other unfortunately.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:15:10

Hey guys uh my I'm about to go through a cycle of destruction creation on my front door here but I want to share a few things. So future backwards starting with destruction and creation. We know that Coram writes in the book that Boyd was on a journey to understand the nature of creativity. This is after the YF 16, yf 17 fly off which you point out in your in your book on Spiller's critique of the Oodaloop Boyd makes it very clear that the Oodaloop came after that it emerged after that. Prior to that, and this is going back to what Moose brought up about the Navy the Navy did engage with John Boyd and they pointed out to him in 1969 and I don't know if you heard this yet from um Captain Dan Peterson the uh Top Gun 1 the guy that created Top Gun our Navy fighter weapon school they engaged with John Boyd and challenged him on his EM theory Naval aviation did not not not the institution it's still navy I mean well no no that yeah but the good part of the Navy.

Mark McGrath: 1:15:57

Yeah the part that actually knows how to knows what they're talking about right yeah um so but the Navy as a whole institutionally rejected Boyd.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:16:04

Right. So this is my story. Dan Pederson meets with John Boyd and his guys and they challenge him on his EM theory and they say hey you're forgetting about the most important thing. So remember this is before the YF-16, YF-17 flyoff this is 1969, the emergence of the ALT report and then our fighter weapons school um standing up in Miramar, California. And they challenge him on this and they're like hey dude your your your theory forgets about the most important thing the human in the cockpit right and John Boyd stays with the Fluid 4 Air Force stays with the fluid for we we see what happens after that after the emergence of our weapons school but the point there is uh John Boyd was fixated on an algorithm his theory a closed loop theory or a closed system theory theory right and then prior to that he had aerial attack study which he basically looked at the geometry spatial orientation of fighter of a dog fight looked at the aim nine B, looked at all all these other things and was able to break down what he knew intuitively down into how you do these things. So I'm just going backwards for the future backwards from destruction and creation. All of this led up to him trying to understand the nature of creativity. Why did a man like him come up with the M theory? How do you do this? And that's where destruction and creation came from and that's where we get the oodaloop it's not like you point out in the book it's not from the cockpit of an F-80 that so many guys get wrong.

Ian Brown: 1:17:23

Any thoughts on that yeah so first off yeah I've I've been listening to some of that interview with the the top gun guy and this so that's this is part of like why I I've enjoyed studying boy and and part of what I hope the the book does is get other people to jump like more deeply into some of those areas that I just you know I never I never had the time or ability to follow the thread on. So the so like like that interaction between him and Navy fighter weapon school not something I was aware of, right? So that's that's an area of potentially new and interesting exploration and be like, okay, can I find you know can I now find some threads of Top Gun going through his presentations. Again just not something I'd I'd encountered in my research but it could be there somewhere in the archives um you know waiting to be you know pulled out and then connected back with with his presentations. But yeah I I don't know what it's gonna take to to frickin' kill the vampire of you know where the Uvu came from or the F-86. I I kind of hoped that my first book might help kill that vampire. I know you know you guys have tried to slay that vampire um I'm trying even harder now with this book to slay that vampire the Folk Lord it's so powerful and the myth is so powerful. I mean I've written an article about it the myth of 42nd Boyd it just people just like the story the myth they they do and I um you know part I part of the I I think the how do I put this part of the challenge in in killing that vampire I think is that some of some of Boyd's most sort of ardent proponents and and enthusiastic followers or biographers didn't do him any favors in how they presented some parts of that story. Like you know you mentioned you mentioned Robert Coram's book which for a long time was on the Marine Corps professional reading list um until it got taken off. And I think Grant Hammond's was on there briefly and then my new conception of war got put on there as the boyd book that's on the reading list. But you know I as I was doing my own research for that first book you know I kept finding man there are parts of Corum's narrative like they sound really great. He tells a great story not accurate. But the the problem is the really good sounding story is you said like it's already halfway around the world for stories.

Mark McGrath: 1:19:42

We want to be a lot of people before the truth gets its pants on you know so I mean think about a swashbuckling aviator knocking down enemy fighters with a silk scarf and whatever it's so much more interesting than the reality of a guy locking himself into isolation academically for years of reading books and reading books and writing notes and calling guys at like two in the morning with ideas like that's not romantic at all.

Ian Brown: 1:20:04

Yeah you know like the the the you know the picture of boyd like you know heroically climbing out of his cockpit on a front of I mean that's a great picture absolutely yeah we you we use it we reference it all the time because it is it it it definitely turns heads yeah but but you know but what you know but who who is who is the the real boyd it's the guy who for fun in his off time stole computer processing time to slide punch cards in to go explore uh engineering algorithms right like that that's that that's who he was like he you know maybe 40 seconds of his time is up there dogfighting but what he did for fun was slide punch cards into computers to explore more deeply relationships between different energy states.

Mark McGrath: 1:20:48

Bill Gates of fighter aviation there you go man well I I even try you know on the on the whirl I mean again we we have the because you know Punch and I certainly love the the the fighter pilot Boyd of course it's important to us but at the same time I've tried to integrate more imagery of Boyd as he is most often dressed for this type of work you know wearing a shitty suit with a short sleeve shirt and a tie and he looks out of place. He looks like he slept in his clothes. I mean that's the that's the academic boyd that's where all this stuff really uh really originates from.

Ian Brown: 1:21:21

Yeah he looks like one of the Bobs from Office Space you know like that's that much much better in terms of organizational structure than the Bobs from Office Space.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:21:34

Yeah there's a video circulating on LinkedIn now uh there's an Australian fighter pilot telling us that the Oodle doop came from the cockpit but it's missing one important thing. It's it's missing intent.

Ian Brown: 1:21:43

I'm like oh my gosh dude yeah just shut up yeah people are so easily seduced by just whatever but well I mean I'll all all I can do is just as a you know a an amateur historian like if you go back to the primary sources you will you're always doing the right thing so I've this is I I've I've no schlitz left to give this is my last effort to get the primary sources out there publicly accessible easily searchable readable right in a written form that you all wanted the written form now now it's in the written form and start to deal with it in its actual terms and maybe someday we'll slay the vampires of uh of all of the myths and the legends close with this close with this so I'm listening to no way out and I'm a I'm an athletic director at a high school or a college or I'm a I'm a hedge fund manager I'm a special needs parent I'm I'm somebody not a war fighter why do I need to understand and learn about John Boyd uh well it's as we've been talking about this this whole time like there's Boyd was about more than warfare I think is the ultimate thing and the the core engine driving all of Boyd's ideas was not warfare but it was it's the destruction and creation conceptual model of how of understanding your picture of reality is always incomplete and you have to always try and update yourself, suck in new information, be willing to change your perspective and let go of old conceptions if they don't match the facts of reality anymore. And having your mind open and agile enough to all of those things so that you you may never get close to a perfect you know your perception reality may never be close to what is actually happening out there. But you're always trying to get it to as close as you can because accurately understanding the world around you know give it puts you in a better position to survive on your own terms, which is one of the points he makes in destruction and creation to part of that surviving on your own terms is, you know, bringing others with you, right? Like building up your own whether it's your your family or your team, right? Like building making your organization stronger and more cohesive because you are part, you know, the more people on your team working with you who understand what you're doing, the stronger you are together and you are then better postured to uh to deal with any adversarial or or competitive challenges that come your way. And I think that's part of why like yeah if you listen if you don't have to listen now if you read Patterns of Conflict and the other ones it's it's kind of why he constantly goes to sports analogies because it's like not everything is warfare, right? There's other fields of competition. Sports is one where nobody's dying right but you still want to win. So the the the idea of of that that cohesion that understanding of reality on your side and exploiting failures to understand reality on your opponent's side applies as much to the basketball team or the hockey rink as it does to war. It also applies to uh you know competitive business challenges uh it applies to the scientific method right um because that's the only way you get forward progress is by never never accepting that your mental model is complete or done or freezing it and thinking you never have to do any work again. It's it's I know it sounds exhausting but you don't ever get to stop. You know you don't ever get to stop that process of of of having of building your mental model to be as as accurate as it is to deal with the challenges in front of you because that's the best way to deal with those challenges.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:25:20

Yes.

Ian Brown: 1:25:21

There is no way out man there's no way out there's no way out you have to do the reading right there's no way out you have to do the reading and it's not it's not inaccessible.

Mark McGrath: 1:25:32

That's and and and you just made it even more accessible for people.

Ian Brown: 1:25:36

I sure hope I sure hope so because if I see another article or book about the Oodaloop coming from the F-86 or about how Boyd just loved BH Littleheart and was all about BH Littleheart. Bad I might think when that when when this book comes out it's going to be very hard thick and hefty I may start throwing that thick and hefty book at other people hoping that if it hits them on the head maybe the knowledge will penetrate penetrate.

Mark McGrath: 1:25:59

Maybe because I don't I don't know how else to give you that information right yeah I've done everything I can yeah all right Ian Brown the book is Snowmobiles and grand ideals co-authored with the great Franzo Singa we really appreciate you coming on No Way Out and helping us drive the wooden stake through the heart of the vampire of bad boy well done my best.

Ian Brown: 1:26:23

Thank you guys again for the chance to talk with you appreciate the opportunity and I will certainly let you know when the print copies come out.

Mark McGrath: 1:26:30

Excellent we'll should be sure we tell everybody in our network awesome