Podcasts about on grand strategy

“The technology we’re working with today really makes a lot of those best practices and mental models and the whole toolkit more accessible than ever to more people.” –Marshall Kirkpatrick About Marshall Kirkpatrick Marshall Kirkpatrick is founder of sustainabilty consultancy Earth Catalyst and AI thinking tool What's Up With That. His many previous roles include founder of influence network analysis tool Little Bird, which was acquired by Sprinklr, where he was last Vice President Market Research. Website: whatsupwiththat.app LinkedIn Profile: Marshall Kirkpatrick What you will learn How generative AI transforms cognitive tools and lowers barriers to advanced thinking Techniques to combine human and AI-powered sensemaking for richer insights Practical strategies for filtering and extracting value from infinite information The importance and application of diverse mental models in modern decision-making Methods to balance manual cognitive work with AI assistance for optimal outcomes The role of adaptive interfaces in enhancing individual cognitive capacity Metacognitive approaches to networks and how AI can foster organizational awareness Ethical and societal implications of democratizing access to AI-powered cognitive enhancements Episode Resources Transcript Ross Dawson: Marshall, it is awesome to have you back on the show. Marshall Kirkpatrick: Oh, thank you, Ross. It’s such a pleasure to be reconnecting with you here. Thanks for having me on. Ross Dawson: So back you were very, very early on in the podcast when it was Thriving on Overload, and it was interviews with the book, and you got incorporated—some of the wonderful things you were doing in Thriving on Overload. So I think today, in this world of generative AI, which has transformed everything, including the way in which we think, the Thriving on Overload themes are still super, super relevant, and in a way, we need to be talking about them more. That theme at the time was finite cognition, infinite information. How do we work well with it? I don’t know if our cognition has become more finite, but the information has become more infinite, and there’s just more and more. But also, it cuts two ways, as in, what is the source of all the information? AI is also a tool. So anyway, let’s segue from some of your cognitive thinking tools, technology-enabled cognitive thinking tools and so on, which we looked at. So how do you—where are we? 2026, what do you think about human cognition in our current universe? Marshall Kirkpatrick: Well, especially when you frame it up in Thriving on Overload terms. I mean, those were four, five long years ago that we last spoke, and the book that came out of it was just fantastic. I think it has some timeless qualities, and I think that the technology we’re working with today really makes a lot of those best practices and mental models and the whole toolkit more accessible than ever to more people. That’s what I hope. I think that, yeah, between individuals and organizations, there’s so much that, historically, someone like you or me or the people closest in our networks were willing and able to do and excited to do, that many other people said, “That sounds like a lot of work.” The bar is lower now, because a lot of just the raw cognitive processing can be outsourced into a technology that serves as a lever. Ross Dawson: Well, I mean, that idea of levers for these cognitive tools is interesting. I guess, the very crude way of saying it is, we’ve got inputs into our human brain, and then we are processing information. I’m just thinking out loud a bit here, but it’s like, okay, we have tools to be able to filter, to present, to find what is most relevant, to present it to us in the ways which are most useful—very obvious, like summarization, visualization. Then as we are processing it ourselves, we have dialog, or we can have interlocutors who we can engage with and be able to refine and help our thinking. Does that sort of make sense, or how would you flesh that out? Marshall Kirkpatrick: Yeah, I mean, when you put it that way, it makes me think about Harold Jarche and his Seek, Sense, Share model, right? I think that AI, especially when connected to things like search and syndication and other traditional technologies, can impact all three of those stages. It can hypercharge our search. I think the archetypal example of that, on some level, feels like the combinatorial drug research being done, where just an otherwise cognitively uncontainable quantity of combinatorial possibilities between molecules can be sought out and experimented with for a desirable reaction. And then that sensing, or the pattern recognition that AI is so good at, is something that we do as humans—some of us better than others—and it’s a lifelong muscle to build and what have you. But the AI is really, really good at it, and so it’s a ladder to climb up in some of that sensing. And then the sharing component becomes so much easier with the rewriting capabilities—turn A into B, reformat something into a summary or a set of bullet points, or ideas and words into code. AI is just so excellent for that translation that makes new levels of sharing possible. Ross Dawson: That’s fantastic. Yeah, I had Harold on the show again in the Thriving on Overload days. But you’re right, that’s extremely relevant. Let’s dig into that. I love that you brought up that combinatorial search, which is so important. As opposed to going into Perplexity to do a search, it’s far more interesting to find the uncovered connections between things, which are relevant to what you’re doing. And that’s— Marshall Kirkpatrick: Absolutely. I remember reading, years ago, Dan Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind,” which preceded the generative AI era. But he said, if your kind of work is something that’s easily reproducible by computers, good luck to you. You really are going to need uniquely human practices in the future, and what exactly those are, I’m not sure, because the one that he identified, I don’t think has proven to be uniquely human. But I really appreciated learning about it from him, and that was what he called symphonic thinking, or the ability to draw connections between seemingly unconnected phenomena. So for many years, I have been doing a personal exercise with pen and paper that I call triangle thinking, where I’ll take three different phenomena—maybe that’s the owl outside my window, one of the notes that I’ve taken on paper, and something I come upon on the internet, or maybe it’s three very deliberately related things. I label them A, B, and C, and I ask, what might A have to say about B? What might B offer to A, and vice versa? I write out the six unidirectional connections between those things. And without fail, one, two, or three of those end up being real keepers, where I say, “Aha, that’s a really interesting idea. I’m going to take action on that.” And now, by the time I’ve got the letter B written out, an AI has done that ten times over. I like to do it both ways—still both AI and with my naked brain—but that combinatorial ideation, the generative combinatorial ideation, is, yeah. I’m curious what your thoughts and experience and hope for that might be. Ross Dawson: Well, there’s a prompt I use called “Apply Diverse Thinking,” where it generates extremely diverse perspectives on a topic—who might those very unusual people to think about something be, and then what would they think about this particular situation? Of course, there are a whole array of different thinking tools. There’s Marshall McLuhan’s tetrad, which is a little bit similar to your thing where, again, you can and should do it—well, not manually. What’s the manual equivalent of brain? Marshall Kirkpatrick: Thoughtfully, perhaps. Yeah, good one—deliberately, manually. I mean, Azeem Azhar over at Exponential View uses a fountain pen and paper and will sometimes have his team come online and they’ll do two-hour thinking sessions with no AI allowed. They just get on, I believe, Zoom, and just think through things with pen and paper, individually and together. And then they’ll kick off OpenAI or what have you, and use all the tools afterwards. Ross Dawson: Yeah, well, a couple of things. Actually, research has shown that in brainstorming, it is better for everyone to ideate individually before doing it collectively. And of course, that’s unaided. I think there are analogs there where—actually, one of the frameworks I just released last week was basically to say, think it through for yourself before you ask the AI, because then you have a reference point. If not, you don’t have a reference point to say, “Well, what am I expecting it to do? Let me think it through for myself,” even if it’s just a little bit, as opposed to just going in blank—”All right, give me an answer.” Just that simple thing of thinking through for yourself first is enormous. What it does is, obviously, give you a reference point for that. And I’m going on a lot about appropriate trust at the moment—as in, trust the AI enough, but not too much, which I think is absolutely critical capability. And part of it is being able to say, “Well, this is what I think it should be giving me.” Now you have a reference point for what it gives you. Marshall Kirkpatrick: Yeah, that sounds great in many cases. I do think that’s the right tool for the job in a lot of places, but not necessarily all. I’m thinking of the Iron Triangle of product management—fast, cheap, good, pick two. On some level, just handing the AI the keys for certain decisions is uniquely fast and cheap, right? And maybe it’s good enough. Ross Dawson: Oh yeah. Well, you’ve got to choose your battles, because if you’re now doing ten times what you were doing last week, then maybe for a tenth of those you can do some thinking before you delegate it to the AI. Marshall Kirkpatrick: Yeah, a strategy for how to do that. I think, well, that sounds important—some checkpoints along the way, some random selection of testing things. Ross Dawson: Well, that’s interesting. One of the critical things people talk about with AI model oversight is sampling. As they say, “Okay, I’ve got 1,000 outputs—I’m going to take 20 of them and check how good they are.” You’re not checking every output, but you’re doing some kind of ongoing sampling. Marshall Kirkpatrick: Are you checking with your own deliberate brain, or are you checking with another AI? Ross Dawson: It could be either, depends on the case—how critical it is. This comes back, of course, to the fact that accountability is only human, and so the human who is accountable has to make that decision: “All right, I’m happy for another AI to check it,” or, “Actually, I want to go in myself to see.” And that’s a judgment call. Marshall Kirkpatrick: Totally. And it feels like a process design issue and a personal accountability matter. I mean, “The AI made me do it” is not a viable excuse. Ross Dawson: Let’s hope it remains that way. So, good for those Seek, Sense, Share stages. Sense is one of your superpowers, both in the way you think and also the way you use the tools. It’s probably worth introducing—now you’ve just released this wonderful product called What’s Up With That. So just tell us about the product, but also, I want to go to the bigger context of sense—sensemaking, how we use it generally, how AI can use that, and your role with the tool in that. Marshall Kirkpatrick: Yeah, you know, I think there are so many different ways that sense can be made of anything, so many different ways that anything you read or think about or do can be put into context. It’s just overwhelming. I think we all have our favorite—not all of us, but those of us who are into this have our favorite tools, our favorite ways to—you know, a lot of people will think about something in terms of its past, its present, and its future, or they will break it down in analysis into parts, or they’ll synthesize it together with other phenomena and see how to understand. I think sometimes of the famous Donella Meadows quote, the mother of systems thinking, who said, “Systems thinking isn’t any better than analytical linear thinking than a telescope is better than a microscope.” So there’s just a superabundance of fascinating, powerful tools that all provide different views on anything we’re trying to make sense of. One of the things that I’ve always found a lot of joy and usefulness and power in is learning about new lenses and processes and tools. Now that generative AI has put the ability to develop software into my hands—instead of having to go and hire someone else to build that software—I have built a system that takes as many of those different models and lenses and processes for making sense of something as I can. I mean, it would be trivial to pull up a list of 200 mental models. I might go visit Shane Parrish’s website and The Knowledge Project. I think of ones that would be particularly useful, like, “Tell me who the intellectual predecessors are of this thing I’m reading,” or one of the other capabilities inside of What’s Up With That—my favorite, probably, is a combinatorial one called Fertile Edges. That says, “Take what I’m reading right now, identify the topic that it is a constituent of, and then find other adjacent topics where innovative people have built bridges between those adjacent topics and what I’m reading about, and tell me who those people are.” And that’s really fun. So I have built this sensemaking system, and that’s a part of What’s Up With That. There are really three parts to it. The first is, it analyzes whatever you’re reading or watching, and it pulls out the net new, truly novel, most notable elements. Yesterday, I was telling you, it was a little bit inspired by the US military intelligence guideline that says, when you’re writing up a report about something, focus on what’s new in that situation—tell us what we don’t already know. That’s the first thing that What’s Up With That does. It says, “All right, here’s what’s new in this document relative to its field,” because we just drew a real-time map of the state of the art, and we say, “Okay, here’s what’s really novel there.” The second thing that it does is that toolbox full of all the different mental models and lenses, and it recommends a sequence. One of my favorite books I ever read was “On Grand Strategy,” about strategic thinkers throughout history, who talks about the significance of thinking in terms of sequences of actions. So now, What’s Up With That will say, “Here’s a sequence of analytical lenses we recommend that you subject this document to,” and with a click, it’ll go and do that for you—it’ll do that cognition for you and then just give you a report. The third thing that it does is probably—it, the shorthand for it is compound learning. You don’t have to remember all the things that you read anymore, because our system extracts the causal claims from everything you read, archives them, and then compares everything you read in the future that you analyze with our system to your library of causal connections in the past, to say, “Whoa, we just found a chain of claims that could surface a multi-step risk or opportunity that’s relevant to your work.” We do that both for your data exhaust—your history of things you’ve analyzed—and we do persistent monitoring of the web to detect anything that could be relevant to a project or chain by that same kind of symphonic synthesis and connection. So those are the categories that it has. Ross Dawson: Yeah, I think you’re only scratching the surface of what your tool actually does, and obviously, more generally, these are just pointing in wonderful ways to how you can go beyond saying, “Tell me about this, ChatGPT,” to some far more nuanced ways of getting AI to do it. Marshall Kirkpatrick: People have had the same challenge with Google, historically. Google has struggled with that, to figure out—”I’m feeling lucky” was probably the first intervention in a novice, beginner’s mind, coming to a hyper-complex opportunity space. Even still, now, 20 years since Google launched, I feel like you can tell people that they can search for “site:domain keyword” to find instances of that keyword not in the web at large, just inside that specific domain, and most people don’t know that. It’s a simple power, and there’s a bunch of things like that. So figuring out how to unlock—and I don’t know how much they’ve even worried about it, because they’ve got that cash cow of advertising—but people don’t even recognize, sometimes, whether they’re clicking on an ad or a search result. In polls, when people are asked, they say, “No,” even if they put the ads at the top or mark them as ads, or a bunch of stuff they do do, but nobody notices. So that interface of complexity and accessibility and scale—we’re in it again here now, in this generative AI era. There’s so much more that could be done than is immediately obvious. It’s a real challenge. So I’ve taken the approach that I have, which is to roll up a bunch of that and turn them into buttons and recommend them automatically and try to recommend them just in time, and stuff like that. But I’m sure lots of different people are going to try to respond to that gap of simplicity and complexity in different ways. Ross Dawson: Yeah, that’s—which comes back, I think, a little bit to, you know, I firmly believe that the heart of the future is interfaces. We have these extraordinary capabilities—against finite cognition and infinite capabilities, let’s call them. That’s very much to the individual. The adaptive interface, I think, is going to be absolutely critical. All right, well, it’s after lunch and I’m not feeling so—the interface adapts to you. Marshall Kirkpatrick: So I heard you say that. Ross Dawson: The interface adapts again. Marshall Kirkpatrick: Right? I heard you say that in a conversation with Ramez Naam some time ago. I was listening to that interview that the two of you did together while I was playing hacky sack out in front of my house. I grabbed my hacky sack and I said, “I’ve got to go inside and do something about this idea of Ross—yes, interface variability.” In that case, I did a little experiment that I didn’t implement because I decided not to, but the general idea I want to pursue further, and I’ll tell you what that experiment was. One of the capabilities inside of What’s Up With That is that you can get a reading review synthesized, so that instead of just a list of links, you can get a narrative document exploring the themes, weaving together the last ten articles that you’ve read, and it’s easier to remember and to think about. I decided to hit the Nanonets API and have an image put up at the top that illustrated the themes. Now, maybe it’s just because I read a lot of dystopian AI, authoritarian politics type of stuff, but the images were terrifying, and they’re kind of expensive and slow, and they also look kind of repetitive. I was like, “All right, Ross, I haven’t cracked that nut quite yet in the variable interface, but I think you’re really on to something there.” Ross Dawson: I’ll try to work on that too, a little bit. So coming back to this wonderful thing we laid out, alluding to some of the wonderful ways we can use for really rich investigation of ideas and how to think. It comes back to this frame of mental models. All of us get our mental models from the moment we’re born—we get this understanding of the world, which is hopefully useful. Sometimes, some people’s mental models are not very effective in guiding them in how they work. Our role is to continue evolving, getting better. I call it enriching mental models. Back in my first book, I talked about that, and of course, that’s in the context of the world changing, so mental models can’t be static anyway. In a way, what you’re pointing to is the many, many ways in which we can, at one point, improve our mental models. All right, I understand this linear lineage of thinking, and I can see the strands between that, and these neurons are connecting in my brain in some form. But how can we pull to that bigger picture of all of this lattice of things to be able to say, “All right, I am actually thinking better through these interactions”? Marshall Kirkpatrick: You know, I think that there is a visceral sense—a sense of safety that can come sometimes when a new mental model illuminates a risk that you hadn’t considered before, and you breathe a sigh of relief and say, “Oh, thank goodness, I can now account for that.” And there’s an excitement with opportunity. There is something about a collective greater-than-individual opportunity here, because it’s tempting to—I’m not sure what that looks like, but I feel like there’s some social and interpersonal and network-based. One of the other things I do is build systems for network self-awareness, to build metacognitive network monitoring kinds of systems. I feel like there are mental models on that level as well. Ross Dawson: So I’ve got to dig into that—metacognitive network monitoring. Explain Marshall Kirkpatrick: Yeah. So every one of us, and our organizations, exists in a network of customers, suppliers, competitors, regulators, thought leaders, with orbits that extend out. The signals are strongest in the closest ones, and perhaps they are weaker and harder to hear, but really significant coming from outer orbits—even from other industries or other topics. It is overwhelming. It is cognitively uncontainable for any of us to keep up with all the work being done, all the thoughts being shared, all the new developments and opportunities from all the different entities that we’re interconnected with. One of the other offerings that I build for organizations is a system where I go out and map as many of those as possible with people. Those might be your target accounts you’re wanting to sell to, or your peers in a community of practice. Then I set up systems, basically using RSS, email newsletters, web page change notification—the technical underpinnings—to say, especially when organizations are—there are some forms of communication that organizations do naturally by default, and those tend to be speaking to their own customers. If you can listen to what organizations are saying to their own customers at scale, you can pull in a large quantity of signal, and then the challenge is to winnow that down into just the filtered signals that are most relevant to your priorities. I’ve got a system that uses AI to do that. Then there are combinatorial possibilities as well. I’ve started merging that in with What’s Up With That now, for example, where when we’re watching your broader network and a signal gets picked up on the back end, we’re generating hundreds of possible scenarios for that signal to intersect with your work and projects and priorities, and then we’re filtering to say, “Yeah, but tell me just the subset of these that are most significant and imminent and actionable and interesting.” If there’s something, then we will alert you and tell you what’s going on. Otherwise, you never hear from us, and you just go about your business. But a couple times a day, I get alerts. Yesterday I got an alert that said, “Hey, one of the founders of Manus, the AI platform that Meta just acquired for $2 billion, just got detained in China trying to go back to Singapore. Given your interests in AI and anti-authoritarian politics and the infrastructure battles around AI, we thought you might want to know about this.” I said, “Thanks, What’s Up With That, I really appreciate it.” That’s an example of the sort of thing—so that’s how I do it. Other customers will take that and use it to populate a podcast or a newsletter, and do both an intake and an output as a conduit of that kind of network self-awareness. Ross Dawson: Yeah, well, as you know, my kind of—my metacognition is my mantra. I think one of the key points is this simple question: How can AI assist me in getting to a point of metacognition? I would argue, if we use AI even vaguely well, it’s already doing that, because you’re saying, “Okay, well, let me think about what I can do and what the AI can do,” and you’re starting to think of that system. The only thing that enables this humans plus AI is metacognition, because you can actually see above and see your role and the AI’s role. I think this broader question of saying, many of the things you’ve been talking about are how AI is helping us to get to a point in metacognition. Marshall Kirkpatrick: Ross, can I ask you a question adjacent to that? I think I am not the only one who wants to know, perhaps—and maybe this is a trade secret, I don’t know—but how you think about your analysis and sharing of scientific research papers online? You’re so good at that, and you do a lot of it, and it’s really valuable. It comes to my mind when you talk about metacognition—what role does that function, what are you doing there, what role do you see that playing in this bigger conversation? Ross Dawson: Well, I’ll just tell you the mechanics of it, which might partly answer your question. I go into, often, three or four of the AI engines, including Grok, actually, because it’s very good at search. I say, “Tell me the most interesting research papers in the last few weeks,” whatever—on, I might say, human-AI collaboration or AI and strategy, whatever it might be, just different frames. Then I go and look at them. To be frank, I probably should do some more filtering with AI and tell them, “Only from reputable authors,” etc., because I have to just look at a lot of stuff, but that’s useful in its own right. Then I start to see, okay, this is a paper which is not only interesting, but actually would be useful to summarize for other people. I do a lot of surfacing—a lot. I’m very quick at scanning, so that’s just a mental process. At that point, when I found the paper, I’ve got a Gemini gem and an OpenAI GPT, both of which I call Insight Distiller. Basically, I stick the paper in there, it comes out, and I always rewrite it. I will either prompt the AI to improve it in various ways, and then always just rewrite or choose which of the points I put in, and so on. So there’s actually a fairly manual process, but very, very AI-assisted. To your point, there’s so much extraordinary research going on, and people don’t look at it. The function, I think, is what you’re alluding to—it’s just like saying, “This is the essence of a paper, and you can read it in a few minutes and get some really good insights, and hopefully that will inspire you to go have a proper look at the paper, because there’s a lot more in there.” To myself, of course, going through all that is enormous and valuable to me, but it’s useful to others too. Marshall Kirkpatrick: Absolutely, wow. That is a high-touch. That’s great. I bet you really have a lot of compounding learning as a result of it. Ross Dawson: Yeah, it’s kind of this thing where, just the nature of how my brain works and my immersion in stuff, I think it somehow gets me to some decent understanding of what’s going on. So to round out, what’s the next phase? I think this is an extraordinary time, but in the frame of what we’re talking about—AI and cognition—from your perspective, or just the world’s perspective, where do we go from here? Marshall Kirkpatrick: Well, I think that it comes down, in part, to values. I can’t help but think about this K-shaped future that we risk moving towards, where some people are using all kinds of augmented capabilities and building on top of past experience and education and what have you, and income inequality just gets more and more intense. The gap between people who are excited about this stuff and can use it, and everyone else, just gets all the bigger. That’s not good for anybody. I really hope that isn’t the case. I’d love to get the J of exponential change without too much of the K of increasing inequality. I think that’s the direction we’re pointed in, but I do hope that we can democratize access to a lot of these capabilities and figure out how to use them in partnership with other ways of thinking—like Azeem and his team, writing on paper, like some of the indigenous traditional knowledge practices around the world that are very place-based and around ecosystem balance and recognizing humans as a part of nature, working with AI and technologies. I’d love to see this be an additive experience, more than a destructive experience for humanity and the rest of the planet. Ross Dawson: Yeah and that’s why you and I both working on is doing whatever we can to nudge things in those directions. So where can people go to find out more about your wonderful work? Marshall Kirkpatrick: Well, these days, I am pointing people mostly to whatsupwiththat.app. That’s kind of my home these days for all the different work. Ross Dawson: I’ll recommend it. Marshall Kirkpatrick: Oh, thank you so much, Ross. Ross Dawson: Very useful, and I’ve only just begun to use it so— Marshall Kirkpatrick: Awesome, well, let’s stick some of those papers in there and red team it and hit “Find Science” and get other scientific reviews of the claims in the paper, etc. Thanks—it’s so great to be back in touch with you here and not just watch from a distance, but to get to put our heads together like this is a real pleasure. Ross Dawson: Thanks so much, Marshall. The post Marshall Kirkpatrick on cognitive levers, combinatorial possibilities, symphonic thinking, and compound learning (AC Ep39) appeared first on Humans + AI.

How does strategy factor into the mindsets of presidents like Lincoln and Reagan on both a micro and macro level? What parts of grand strategy are at play when new countries enter NATO due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict?John Lewis Gaddis is a professor of history at Yale University and also the author of several books on history and strategy. His latest books include The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, On Grand Strategy, and The Cold War: A New History.Greg and John discuss the concept of historical consciousness and its relation to strategic thinking. John goes over the teaching of strategy from a historical perspective, comparing it to evolutionary sciences and emphasizing the importance of common sense in strategic decisions. They also explore the use of metaphors in understanding history and strategy, the role of theory, and the necessity of adaptability in leadership. The conversation touches on various historical and contemporary examples to illustrate these ideas, including the strategic mindsets of figures like Lincoln and the implications of NATO expansion and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Are we failing to preserve common sense in business schools?36:38: This whole thing about preserving common sense at all altitudes, it seems to me, is something that's often missing in business schools and also in businesses, as we've seen in various cases. So, if reading some history can create that kind of attitude, then I think it's worthwhile. And the reason I think it can work gets back to the sports metaphor because, okay, maybe your business guy is not interested in reading history, but they're probably watching the March Madness or the Super Bowl, and they're probably talking about coaches and why are certain coaches better than other coaches and so on. And when they're doing that, they're talking about what I'm talking about, which is just drawing these lessons from the past, looking at the objective, operating within the rules but understanding that the application of the rules is going to be different in every situation, every moment of the game.The optimal grand strategists know when to adapt and when to steer27:518: I think the optimal grand strategist would be someone who is agile and situationally aware, but also retains a sense of direction.Big ambitions fail without this one principle01:57: It seems to me that there's a kind of logic of strategy, which transcends time and place and culture. And when you set it out, when you give examples of what you mean by that, it sounds like a platitude. So if, for example, I were to tell you that aspirations can be infinite but capabilities must be finite, you would say, I knew that all along. You would say that's a platitude. You can get strategy on that? Well, yes, I think you can build a strategy on that because history is full of people who lost track of that insight, who let their aspirations exceed their capabilities to the point of complete overstretch and self-defeat. [02:50] History is littered with people who forgot that aphorism. And the aphorism is just plain common sense.Why naive questions matter more than you think30:56: You have to realize naive questions are always good to ask. Because one of the problems with theorists is that they don't like naive questions because they're inconvenient. And they're much more interested in the purity of the theory, the rigorousness of the theory, if it's a laboratory sense of replicability, of the theory. But for somebody to come along and just ask a naive question, sometimes they're not prepared for that.Show Links:Recommended Resources:George F. KennanNapoleonMark AntonyMurder BoardJohn NegroponteLeo TolstoyPainting As a PastimePresentismIsaiah BerlinAugustine of HippoJohn C. CalhounVladimir PutinGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Yale UniversityWikipedia ProfileHis Work:Amazon Author PageOn Grand StrategyThe Cold War: A New HistoryGeorge F. Kennan: An American LifeThe Landscape of History: How Historians Map the PastStrategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold WarThe United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, ProvocationsThe Age Of Terror: America And The World After September 11

In today's episode, the Creator of Zero Trust, John Kindervag, joins Matt on the show to discuss implementing Zero Trust in your organization. While at Forrester Research in 2010, John developed Zero Trust, promising adequate and effective protection of an organization's most valuable assets.Today, John talks about the driving force behind Zero Trust, the concept of the Protect Surface, and Kipling Method Policies. Why is trust a vulnerability? Hear about Zero Trust, Shadow IT, and get John's recommended resources. Timestamp Segments·       [02:20] About John.·       [05:29] How does John define Zero Trust?·       [07:45] Why is trust a vulnerability?·       [09:56] The Protect Surface.·       [12:32] Kipling Method Policies.·       [17:22] The roadmap to Zero Trust at scale.·       [22:56] It's the inspection that matters.·       [28:26] Zero Trust in the Cloud.·       [31:33] Shadow IT.·       [38:54] Tracking specific metrics.·       [40:58] John's resource recommendations. Notable Quote"We can never stop cyber attacks from happening, but we can stop them from being successful.”Relevant LinksRecommended Reading:       The Zero Trust Learning Curve.Antifragile, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. On Grand Strategy, by John Gaddis.Winning in FastTime, by John Warden.LinkedIn:         https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-kindervag-40572b1ISMG:              https://ismg.ioComprehensive, full-stack cloud security Secure infrastructure, apps and data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with Prisma Cloud.

Welcome to the 15th episode of the American Social Fabric! This week we discuss the second installment in the series of anti-federalist letters known as the "Letters from the Federal Farmer to The Republican". In this episode, the author sets forth what he sees as essential for a free and fair society, and the social compact required for that society to operate. You can find a copy of this letter at the following link: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/federal-farmer-ii/. If you want to follow along in the book I am using as a primary source, it is called "The Essential Debate on the Constitution" and is edited by Robert J. Allison and Bernard Bailyn. Finally, we begin our discussion by following up on a few points made last week as they relate to some ideas of John Lewis Gaddis in his excellent book, "On Grand Strategy". Thank you for checking out the podcast and I hope you find some value in it!

The Greek poet Archilochus said “a fox knows many things, a hedgehog knows one big thing.” This phrase inspired a famous essay by a 20th century philosopher named Isaiah Berlin, who said that pretty much all people can be categorized as either “foxes” or “hedgehogs”. Foxes tend to be agile and perceptive, whereas hedgehogs tend to be resolute and hyper-focused on their end goal. Historian John Lewis Gaddis took Berlin's framework one step further. In his book On Grand Strategy, Dr. Gaddis categorizes great political leaders as landing somewhere on the fox-hedgehog spectrum: Xerxes I, Philip II, Ronald Reagan are all classic hedgehogs. Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, and Hillary Clinton are all examples of foxes. And Gaddis says if you're lucky, you'll sometimes have a leader who embodies both, as was the case with Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Will Bourell interviews Dr. Gaddis about the traits that make for effective and ineffective leaders.Book: On Grand StrategyGuest: John Lewis Gaddis, Professor of history at Yale UniversityProducer: Will BourellMusic: Silas Bohen and Coleman HamiltonEditors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

主持人：陳鳳馨 來賓：聯經出版公司總編輯 涂豐恩 主題：聯經出版公司《大戰略 On Grand Strategy 耶魯大學長紅 20 年大師課程，從歷史提煉的領導決策心法》 節目時間：週一至週五 7:00-9:00am 本集播出日期：2021.06.11 #陳鳳馨​​ #OnGrandStrategy #精萃20年耶魯戰略大師課

Yale history professor John Lewis Gaddis is considered the Dean of Cold War Historians. He’s best known for his 2018 book “On Grand Strategy,” which the Wall Street Journal argued “should be read by every American leader or would-be leader.” He’s also written the definitive biography on George F. Kennan, the architect of the American Cold War strategy. Dr. Gaddis joined the 18th Airborne Corps podcast to talk about the philosophical underpinnings of the Cold War, the vision behind the Iron curtain, and why Ronald Reagan is an underrated president. He also defines and described grand strategy and who army leaders should think about and develop it. This is an important podcast episode for any leader working in national security. Dr. Gaddis offers a lot of wisdom about geopolitics, about the world outside our borders, and about the ideas that shape national security strategy. The XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters releases new episodes of the 18th Airborne Corps podcast every Tuesday and Thursday. The show offers insight and wisdom for Army leaders from history, current events, or future technology.

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast, we talk with Dr. John Lewis Gaddis about his book “On Grand Strategy.” Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military & Naval History at Yale University and was the founding director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy.

Dane misses the high note on his SciFi-adjacent Song of the Day to Check Out, from a band that focuses a lot on technocratic dystopias, shares a lesson from the Yale course On Grand Strategy (that's the type of strategy you need to conquer the world), talks about Xerxes's big blunder in Ancient Greece and whether Donald Trump is a "Fox" or a "Hedgehog." With Laughs along the way! Enjoy!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/danecurley)

In this episode, I sit down with professor John Gaddis, author of NYT best seller On Grand Strategy. We talk about some of the themes within the book related to how to be a better leader and how to make better decisions.

A bit of a different episode today, I had a conversation with Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author Dr. John Gaddis about his book, "On Grand Strategy". Drawing on different leaders from Octavian to Abraham Lincoln, we talked about how different leaders were able to balance their ambition with their capabilities. Drawing on both triumphs and failures, we can see how history seems to repeat itself and how leaders with certain qualities tend to succeed while others fail. I would highly encourage you to read his book or listen to the whole episode because it is a great insight into historical leaders on how they succeed and fail in different times!

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University, and was the founding director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. His book On Grand Strategy is what sparked Sean’s desire to feature him! Gaddis defines “grand strategy” as aligning “potentially unlimited aspirations with necessarily limited capabilities” and highlights the persistent error of focusing on the former while ignoring the latter. On this episode John draws on a range of thinkers, including Thucydides, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, and Tolstoy and how they used strategy to shape history. In addition,  Professor Gaddis teaches courses on Cold War history, grand strategy, biography, and historical methodology.  His George F. Kennan:  An American Life, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Biography. *Questions for the solo podcast email info@whatgotyouthere.com* Subscribe to the Newsletter- https://bit.ly/2RH3eaD http://whatgotyouthere.com/ NEW SPONSOR TEN THOUSAND- www.tenthousand.cc/wgyt 20% off with discount code "WGYT"  GlobeKick 10% off with discount code “WGYT” https://globekick.com/ MCTco Collagen Protein Bars www.mctco.com 20% off with code “WGYT” https://history.yale.edu/people/john-gaddis https://www.amazon.com/John-Lewis-Gaddis/e/B000APA95Q https://twitter.com/SeanDeLaney23 https://www.instagram.com/whatgotyoutherepodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/whatgotyouthere/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-delaney-00909190/   Intro/Outro music by Justin Great- http://justingreat.com/ Audio Engineer- Brian Lapres 

Based on his legendary Yale seminar on strategic thinking (co-taught by Paul Kennedy and Charles Hill), John Lewis Gaddis discusses his latest book, On Grand Strategy, which offers readers leadership insights by surveying great historical figures spanning from Herodotus to Franklin Roosevelt – exploring the wisdom and temperament that led them to success, along with the mistakes that could lead current and  future leaders to ruin.   

Sponsors: KendoUI Sentry use the code "devchat" for $100 credit TripleByte $1000 signing bonus Cachefly Panel: Nader Dabit Justin Bennett Charles Max Wood Special Guest:  Charlie Cheever Notes: This episode of React Round Up has the panelists talking to Charlie Cheever, a former Facebook employee, who currently works on Expo.  The panel discusses Charlies article called “Should we be using React Native?”,  Airbnb sunsetting their React Native app, and the nature of the Expo app. Charlie describes Expo as the easiest way to do React Native using just JavaScript, and making it as easy and powerful as possible. Expo works kind of like a web browser for JavaScript, and is available on iOS, Android, and and Google app stores. Expo CLI has replaced Create React Native CLI because Expo is more user friendly. Many features are already included in Expo, including OTA updates, dealing with fonts, video player, Facebook ad and Google ads, barcode scanner, Native maps, and much more. To get started on your computer, go to snack.expo.io or download the Expo app on your phone. The panelists chat about the success of Charlie’s company and how he has attracted so many great programmers to his company. Charlie gives a history of how Expo got started. Charlie gives advice on how to start a business around a free tool, and the goal of Expo to make every service available on the app before focusing on making money. The panel discusses sustainability in the software world, as making people pay for things can drive them to write their own stuff. They talk about the benefits of using Expo and its ability to cross platforms, and enterprise companies such as Youtube and Instagram shifting over to using React. Charlie attributes this shift to two things; the increase in software developer salaries driving down the number of available software engineers, which makes it difficult for smaller companies to hire engineers, thus pushing them to use things like React and Expo to make up for it. Last, the panelists talk about the possibility that the world is moving towards a future characterized by a “write once, run everywhere” and more uniform experiences across operating systems. Terms: React Native Expo Expo CLI VS Code Emacs Vim Xamarin Titanium Native Script AWS Picks: Nader: Video series on Egghead On Grand Strategy Justin: rePNG Dark Reader Charles: Pomodoro method Kanbonflow John Somnez video Charlie: React navigation React Native Gesture Handler React Native Reanimated Wiliam Candelon “Can It Be Done in React Native” videos

Sponsors: KendoUI Sentry use the code "devchat" for $100 credit TripleByte $1000 signing bonus Cachefly Panel: Nader Dabit Justin Bennett Charles Max Wood Special Guest:  Charlie Cheever Notes: This episode of React Round Up has the panelists talking to Charlie Cheever, a former Facebook employee, who currently works on Expo.  The panel discusses Charlies article called “Should we be using React Native?”,  Airbnb sunsetting their React Native app, and the nature of the Expo app. Charlie describes Expo as the easiest way to do React Native using just JavaScript, and making it as easy and powerful as possible. Expo works kind of like a web browser for JavaScript, and is available on iOS, Android, and and Google app stores. Expo CLI has replaced Create React Native CLI because Expo is more user friendly. Many features are already included in Expo, including OTA updates, dealing with fonts, video player, Facebook ad and Google ads, barcode scanner, Native maps, and much more. To get started on your computer, go to snack.expo.io or download the Expo app on your phone. The panelists chat about the success of Charlie’s company and how he has attracted so many great programmers to his company. Charlie gives a history of how Expo got started. Charlie gives advice on how to start a business around a free tool, and the goal of Expo to make every service available on the app before focusing on making money. The panel discusses sustainability in the software world, as making people pay for things can drive them to write their own stuff. They talk about the benefits of using Expo and its ability to cross platforms, and enterprise companies such as Youtube and Instagram shifting over to using React. Charlie attributes this shift to two things; the increase in software developer salaries driving down the number of available software engineers, which makes it difficult for smaller companies to hire engineers, thus pushing them to use things like React and Expo to make up for it. Last, the panelists talk about the possibility that the world is moving towards a future characterized by a “write once, run everywhere” and more uniform experiences across operating systems. Terms: React Native Expo Expo CLI VS Code Emacs Vim Xamarin Titanium Native Script AWS Picks: Nader: Video series on Egghead On Grand Strategy Justin: rePNG Dark Reader Charles: Pomodoro method Kanbonflow John Somnez video Charlie: React navigation React Native Gesture Handler React Native Reanimated Wiliam Candelon “Can It Be Done in React Native” videos

I'm halfway though John Lewis Gaddis' amazing book, "On Grand Strategy" and I want to share something from the book that's made me think about my own approach to life.

On today's 'Global Exchange' Podcast, we continue our series on positioning Canada in a shifting international order. Today's episode, recorded during our May 8th foreign policy conference in Ottawa, has Rona Ambrose, Jean Charest, and Peter Donolo in conversation with CGAI Vice President Colin Robertson about Donald Trump, and how Canada should manage its relationship with the United States. Bios: Colin Robertson (host/moderator) - A former Canadian diplomat, Colin Robertson is Vice President of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. Rona Ambrose - CGAI Advisory Council Member and a Member of the Government of Canada's NAFTA Advisory Council Jean Charest - A Memeber of the CGAI Advisory Council and a Partner at McCarthy Tétrault LLP Peter Donolo - Vice Chair of Hill+Knowlton Strategies Canada Book Recommendations: Colin Robertson (moderator) - "At the Centre of Government: The Prime Minister and the Limits on Political Power" by Ian Brodie (https://www.amazon.ca/At-Centre-Government-Minister-Political/dp/0773552901/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1529960567&sr=8-1&keywords=Ian+Brodie) | "Master of Persuasion: Brian Mulroney's Global Legacy" by Fen Osler Hampson (https://www.amazon.ca/Master-Persuasion-Mulroneys-Global-Legacy/dp/0771039077/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1529960583&sr=8-1&keywords=fen+hampson) Rona Ambrose - "CGAI Policy Papers" (https://www.cgai.ca/) Jean Charest - "On Grand Strategy" by John Lewis Gaddis (https://www.amazon.ca/Grand-Strategy-John-Lewis-Gaddis/dp/1594203512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1529960535&sr=8-1&keywords=grand+strategy) Peter Donolo - "The Heart of the Matter" by Graham Greene (https://www.amazon.ca/Heart-Matter-Graham-Greene/dp/0099478420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1529960434&sr=8-1&keywords=the+heart+of+the+matter) Related Links: - "Positioning Canada in the Shifting International Order" [CGAI Conference Information] (https://www.cgai.ca/positioning_canada_in_the_shifting_international_order) Recording Date: May 8th, 2018 Follow the Canadian Global Affairs Institute on Facebook, Twitter (@CAGlobalAffairs), or on Linkedin. Head over to our website at cgai.ca for more commentary. Produced by Jared Maltais. Music credits to Drew Phillips.

On today's 'Global Exchange' Podcast, we continue our series on positioning Canada in a shifting international order. Today's episode, recorded during our May 8th foreign policy conference in Ottawa, features the Ambassadors to Canada from Japan, France, Germany, and the EU alongside the British High Commissioner to Canada and the Minister Counsellor to the Ambassador of Italy to Canada. In a discussion, moderated by Kathleen Monk, the distinguished panel digs deep into what Canada's G7 partners want out of Charlevoix. Bios: Colin Robertson (host) - A former Canadian diplomat, Colin Robertson is Vice President of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. Kathleen Monk (moderator) - Principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group H.E. Kimihiro Ishikane - Ambassador of Japan to Canada. H.E. Susan le Jeune d'Allegeershecque - British High Commissioner to Canada H.E. Kareen Rispal - Ambassador of France to Canada H.E. Sabine Sparwasser - Ambassador of Germany to Canada Fabrizio Nava - Minister Counsellor at the Embassy of Italy in Canada H.E. Peteris Ustubs - Ambassador of the European Union to Canada Book Recommendations: Kathleen Monk (moderator) - "Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City" by Tanya Talaga (https://www.amazon.ca/Seven-Fallen-Feathers-Racism-Northern/dp/1487002262/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528236279&sr=8-1&keywords=seven+fallen+feathers) H.E. Kimihiro Ishikane - "Un selfie avec Justin Trudeau" par Jocelyn Coulon (https://www.quebec-amerique.com/livres/biographies-idees/dossiers-documents/un-selfie-avec-justin-trudeau-10121) | "On Grand Strategy" by John Lewis Gaddis (https://www.amazon.ca/Grand-Strategy-John-Lewis-Gaddis-ebook/dp/B073QZX7YX/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528236396&sr=8-1&keywords=En+Grande+Strategy) H.E. Susan le Jeune d'Allegeershecque - "Orwell's Nose: A Pathological Biography" by John Sutherland (https://www.amazon.ca/Orwells-Nose-Pathological-John-Sutherland/dp/1780236484/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528236498&sr=8-1&keywords=Orwell%27s+Nose) H.E. Kareen Rispal - "4 3 2 1" by Paul Auster (https://www.amazon.ca/4-3-2-Paul-Auster-ebook/dp/B01KE64Y5G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528236508&sr=8-1&keywords=4+3+2+1) H.E. Sabine Sparwasser - "The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914" by Christopher Clark (https://www.amazon.ca/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914/dp/0061146668/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1528236609&sr=8-6&keywords=The+Sleep+Walkers) Fabrizio Nava - "The Shawinigan Fox: How Jean Chrétien Defied the Elites and Reshaped Canada" by Bob Plamondon (https://www.amazon.ca/Shawinigan-Fox-Chr%C3%A9tien-Defied-Reshaped/dp/1775098117/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528236314&sr=8-1&keywords=shawinigan+fox ) H.E. Peteris Ustubs - "The Extreme Future: The Top Trends That Will Reshape the World in the Next 20 Years" by James Canton (https://www.amazon.ca/Extreme-Future-Trends-Reshape-World/dp/0452288665) Related Links: - "Positioning Canada in the Shifting International Order" [CGAI Conference Information] (https://www.cgai.ca/positioning_canada_in_the_shifting_international_order) - "2018 G7 Summit – Canada 2018 G7 Presidency – Charlevoix, Quebec" [Government of Canada] (g7.gc.ca/en/) Recording Date: May 8th, 2018 Follow the Canadian Global Affairs Institute on Facebook, Twitter (@CAGlobalAffairs), or on Linkedin. Head over to our website at cgai.ca for more commentary. Produced by Jared Maltais. Music credits to Drew Phillips.

In this episode, I explain the name of the podcast, and briefly go over the 1st chapter of “On Grand Strategy” by John Lewis Gaddis

John Lewis Gaddis, distinguished historian of the Cold War, has for almost two decades co-taught grand strategy at Yale University with his colleagues Charles Hill and Paul Kennedy. Now, in On Grand Strategy, Gaddis reflects on what he has learned. In chapters extending from the ancient world through World War II, Gaddis assesses grand strategic theory and practice in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Octavian/Augustus, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Philip II, the American Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Isaiah Berlin. On Grand Strategy applies the insights and wit readers have come to expect from Gaddis to times, places, and people he’s never written about before. On Grand Strategy offers a master class for anyone interested in the art of leadership. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John Lewis Gaddis, author of “On Grand Strategy”, assesses whether there is order in Mr Trump’s chaos, the balance of global power and whether the age of liberal interventionism is over. Anne McElvoy hosts. Music by Chris Zabriskie “Divider” (CC by 4.0 UK) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John Lewis Gaddis, author of “On Grand Strategy”, assesses whether there is order in Mr Trump’s chaos, the balance of global power and whether the age of liberal interventionism is over. Anne McElvoy hosts. Music by Chris Zabriskie “Divider” (CC by 4.0 UK) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.