[Review] Blink

Blink



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Have you been craving comprehensive explanations on how 9/11 was executed, how the criminal justice system is broken, or why the U.S. is losing the war in Iraq?  Malcolm Gladwell may just have the answers.  I just finished Blink on my way to work.  It is by Malcolm Gladwell, the same author/columnist who brought us The Tipping Point.    Essentially, it discusses how our subconscious thought patterns are actually better at making decisions than our rational, analytical minds -- and that the human mind can be overloaded with too much information. 

The major flaw in The Tipping Point was that it is hard to pinpoint when one is reached.  Gladwell, did a good job setting the stage with each of his stories, but the key 'tipping' moment remained shrouded in mystery.  In addition, in spite of his book-long outline of different factors that can cause a product or idea to tip, it still seemed very difficult to predict with any degree of certainty if your idea would reach critical mass -- or if it was practical/feasible to put the pieces in place to facilitate the takeoff of a concept. 

Blink suffers from few such maladies, focusing on the human brain's ability to make incredibly accurate snap judgements, often without being aware of doing so.  Or, as Gladwell puts it, "The power of thinking without thinking."  In this book, Gladwell manages to convincingly explain how Amadou Diallo was shot while he reached for his wallet.  He also explains how the United States was successfully attacked on 9/11, and how the country came to screw up and lose the Iraq war.  He explains why Kenna (one of my favorite little-known musicians) has failed to take off commercially.  His novel summarizes why the criminal justice system produces racist outcomes.  And he describes how you can tell whether or not a marriage will last or not.  Issues of race, gender and cognition are explored thoroughly (for instance, Gladwell points out that blacks who self-identify their race before taking a cognitive exams score fifty percent worse than blacks who do not fill out a form identifying their race before the exam).  Naturally, these hypotheses are backed up by field experts at each stage and present a high level of attention to detail. 

For me, the most powerful section of the book was the story of a war game staged by the United States Armed Forces.  It was the most expensive war game in history, literally costing millions (if not billions) of dollars to stage.  A highly-regarded maverick general was chosen to command the army of a rogue Middle Eastern commander who was stirring up trouble in the region.  Meanwhile the opposite team represented the United States full military presence including massive intelligence networks, technological superiorty -- and a system that broke down the enemy's military, economic, political, and social systems to analyze the most vulnerable areas to attack.  Every tool the Pentagon had was at their disposal.  The 'good guys' started by cutting the rogue commander's communications, surrounding the area with overwhelming force, and demanding a surrender. 

But General Van Riper, playing the part of the rogue commander, was unfazed.  He had all the leaders allied with the U.S. assassinated.  He communicated with his troops using light signals and couriers.  He delegated a lot of decision-making power down the command chain.  And he launched a sudden, surprise missile attack that in real life would have sunk more than a dozen American ships...and killed 20,000 American troops.  As the rogue Middle Eastern commander, he had routed the United States - killing about as many U.S. troops as were lost throughout the entire Vietnam War.  I'll let Gladwell take it from here:

"For a day and a half after Red Team's surprise attack on Blue Team in the Persian Gulf, an uncomfortable silence fell over the JFCOM facility.  Then the JFCOM staff stepped in.  They turned back the clock.  Blue Team's sixteen lost ships, which were lying at the bottom of the Persian Gulf, were refloated.  In the first wave of his attack, Van Riper had fired twelve theater ballistic missiles at various ports in the Gulf region where Blue Team troops were landing.  Now, JFCOM told him, all twelve of those missiles had been shot down, miraculously and mysteriously, with a new kind of missile defense..."The day after the attack, I walked into the command room and saw the gentleman who was my number two giving a completely different set of instructions," Van Riper said.  "It was things like -- shut off the radar so Blue forces are not interfered with.  Move ground forces so Mariens could land without interference....The second round was all scripted, and if they didn't get what they liked, they would just run it again."

Millenium Challenge, the sequel, was won by Blue Team in a rout.  There were no surprises the second time around, no insight puzzles, no opportunities for the complexities and confusion of the real world to intrude on the Pentagon's experiment.  And when the sequel was over, the analysts at JFCOM and the Pentagon were jubilant.  The fog of war had been lifted.  The military had been transformed, and with that, the Pentagon confidently turned its attention to the real Persian Gulf.  A rogue dictator was threatening the stability of the region.  He was virulently anti-American.  he had a considerable power base from strong religious and ethnic loyalties and was thought to be harboring terrorist organizations.  He needed to be replaced and his country restored to stability, and if they did it right -- if they had [systems like] CROP and PMESI and DIME -- how hard could that be?"

And this is probably the biggest reason why the U.S. is losing, in a nutshell.  This is also the reason why were caught off-guard by 9/11 -- and why such a low-tech attack worked.  It wasn't necessarily because of a lack of good intelligence; Gladwell here casts his lot with those who argue that the United States actually suffered from TOO MUCH intelligence. 

This book may change the way you think -- or at least compel you to consider experimenting with different decision-making techniques.  The most important aspect of this book is that we can train our unconscious mids through practice to harness and improve our rapid cognition abilities -- and, in so doing, create more positive outcomes for ourselves and others.  If these studies and stories have the same impact on you as they did on me, you will want to refer to them over an over again. 

This book really should have been Gladwell's first.  After all, before you set an idea in motion to reach the tipping point, you have to think - and blink.  

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