No Mercy / No Malice: Asymmetry

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Scott Galloway (1:28)

I'm Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice. The silver lining of the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the opportunity to reduce America's defense budget by 50%.

Asymmetry, as read by George Hahn.

George Hahn (1:56)

Half a million years ago in Southern Africa, a human ancestor fixed a sharpened stone to a wooden shaft, creating the world's first weapons system, the composite spear.

Warfare and technology have been siblings ever since, but technological superiority doesn't guarantee victory. See the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviets, or the North Vietnamese and Vietcong against the US. Throughout history, weaker forces have defeated stronger ones by eschewing conventional combat in favor of asymmetrical warfare. One famous term for this was coined by the Spanish irregulars who harassed Napoleon's occupying army. Guerrilla or little war. Put another way, don't fight on your enemy's terms.

This week, the Air Force withdrew a dozen B-1 bombers from a base in the UK after British authorities foiled an Iranian plot that threatened US military operations. According to David Dunn, a professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham, the unprecedented withdrawal reveals the vulnerability of American military installations abroad and represents a setback for the US in its war with Iran. Fairford is normally the place during a crisis where America sends bombers to beef up America's military capability. Dunn told Time.

Rather than relying on bombers or other conventional means, Iran forced the withdrawal with a drone threat. Furthermore, Iranian operators aren't even military, as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has become adept at deploying violence as a service, an asymmetrical tactic that involves hiring untrained, on-demand combatants who, like gig workers, are cheap and disposable. Meanwhile, closer to the front, the asymmetrical drone war has depleted the high-tech US interceptor arsenal, catalyzed a $95 billion multi-year munitions replenishment request from the Trump administration, and rendered an American victory a mathematical impossibility. The interceptor math doesn't even touch the strategic heart of the Iran War. Iran's control over the global economic artery that is the Strait of Hormuz, wrote national security journalist Spencer Ackerman, the math merely shows how overwhelmingly far the US is from being able to force the Strait of Hormuz open, and keep it that way. Math is a modern warrior's most important skill, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Ukraine's four-year war against Russia is a case study in asymmetrical warfare. Ukraine is now the world's leading drone innovator, shifting the enemy casualty rate from 2 to 1 at the war start to 8 to 1 in the first half of this year. Russian casualties are around 30,000 per month, exceeding the 27,000 recruits it takes in each month. A hard truth for Americans? In war, strength isn't what you can afford to spend, but what you're willing to lose. Last week, I spoke with historian Timothy Snyder who just returned from Ukraine. On the front lines, Ukraine is winning, he explained, but over its cities, Russia is exploiting an interceptor shortage, our fault, to extract a terrible price on Ukraine's economy and society. The Ukrainians innovate, the Russians copy, Snyder told me. Everything the Ukrainians do, the Russians are able to do a few months later, but at scale. In business, this is called the second mover advantage. Netscape commercialized the web browser, Microsoft scaled it, Diners Club introduced the credit card, Visa turned it into a financial empire, MySpace pioneered social networking, Facebook perfected it, and Apple is the ultimate second mouse. Asymmetry gives an army a lead, not a moat. David wins one round with a new slingshot, but in the second, Goliath has a factory in Yelabuga, manufacturing thousands of slingshots at a lower unit cost. In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned that the influence of America's growing military-industrial complex endangered our liberties and democracy. He also highlighted the connection between debt and national security, although few Americans remember that part of the speech. As we peer into society's future, we, you and I and our government, must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow, Ike said. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. Spoiler alert, we didn't listen.