589 - Models as a strategic tool

N. Lygeros

After the presentation of game theory in strategic world, it has become necessary to wonder about the role of model in strategy. Some notions peculiar to models have already been highlighted before, nevertheless the model was not considered as an entity in its own right. Whereas with game theory, it has acquired a real ontology. Within this new predictive context, the new tendency has become more effective in the sense that the model refers to a reality, at least as important as common reality. From a cognitive point of view, there is no more difference. This idea consolidated via deterrence process. For, this time, all the strategy is based on the non-achievement of virtual. Thus, the model indirectly becomes reality and reality a model to avoid. Though it could seem a radical point of view, in reality, it is only a first step to a more profound theory. In fact, if it is a mental schema as we have described in a previous article, then, the model is able to simulate reality without necessarily being able to be simulated by reality. Via this property, the model acquires a status superior to reality as regards its cognitive aspect. And then, it is possible to think a real mental theory only composed of an assemblage of mental schemata. From a purely strategic point of view, this time, we reach the notion of dogma where any contemporary strategy exists.
The concept of dogma enables strategy to exist in the future beyond the horizon of reality. The model does no longer imitate a reality. It first modifies reality according to the dogma and exists in this new imagined reality. It is no more an immersion of a model in reality, but a real ontological overflow of the model on to reality. The model is not subsequent to reality but predates it. This one is preconditioned by the model. Thus, via this structural modification, it becomes its own model. To achieve it, the strategist not only has to make his army evolve according to his vision, but he also has to persuade his adversary that only this vision represents reality. The first steps of this new way of addressing war as a whole are the notions of propaganda, misinformation and more generally psychological war. However, these necessarily basic steps can only act on mass in one’s own camp as well as in the adversary one. For they are naturally eliminated by counter-intelligence services and inevitably fail when it is a question of influencing the adverse headquarters. Thus, the psychological battle ends where it begins via the power of symmetry. The control of human elementary thinking can’t generate a dogma. This one evolves in the cognitive world, field where mental acquires its whole power and is not restricted by its own limits.

In this new model, the world is only thinking and strategy only idea. Lightning strategy can only comes from classical mental schemata breaking. In this new world where everything is model, reality is only an edge effect that has to be considered as such if we want to achieve irreversible processes in the battlefield. The power of model in strategy goes beyond the possibilities of reality for it exists in the reality of possible ones. In that way, the model as a strategic tool is the unique reality of strategy.