Read the full transcript of Simon Sinek’s talk titled “What Game Theory Teaches Us About War” at TEDTalksLive in 2015.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Mistake at the End of the Cold War
SIMON SINEK: At the end of the Cold War, the United States made a policy decision that may be one of the biggest mistakes of the 20th century. It contributed to chaos and uncertainty in this current day. And it’s not based on politics, it’s based on games.
In game theory, there are two types of games. There are finite games, and there are infinite games. A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules, and agreed-upon objective. Baseball, right? An infinite game is defined as known and unknown players, the rules are changeable, and the objective is to perpetuate the game.
When you pit a finite player versus a finite player, the system is stable. Baseball is stable. So is conventional war, for that matter. When you pit an infinite player versus an infinite player, the system is also stable.
The Cold War: An Infinite Game
The Cold War was stable. And that’s because in an infinite game, there are no winners and losers. We cannot lose the game. So we work to keep the game in play, right?
In fact, because there are no winners and losers, the only thing a player can do is drop out when they either run out of the resources or the will to play. Problems arise, however, when you pit a finite player versus an infinite player. It’s the finite player who then gets caught in quagmire. This happens in business all the time.
Business as an Infinite Game
The game of business is an infinite game. The concept of business has existed longer than every single company that exists right now, and it’ll exist long after all the companies that exist right now go away.
The funny thing about business is the number of companies that are playing finite. They’re playing to win.
They’re playing to be the best. They’re playing to beat the quarter or the year. And they’re always frustrated by that company that has an amazing vision, a long-term vision that seems to drive them crazy. And over the long term, that player will always win, and the other player will run out of resources or the will, and they’ll either go out of business or be bought or sold or merged or acquired or whatever it is.
Finite vs. Infinite in Warfare
This is also what happened to the United States in Vietnam. The United States was fighting to win. The Viet Cong were fighting for their lives. They would fight forever if necessary.
This is also what happened when the Soviet Union was in Afghanistan. The Soviets were fighting to beat the Mujahideen, and the Mujahideen were fighting to survive, fighting for their very, very lives.
Now when it comes to policy, you have to know what game you’re playing so you can play the right rules. And this became completely clear to me when the Soviets actually drove their tanks into Afghanistan and Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor for President Carter, was called into the President’s office, and the President asked him, “What is the policy of the United States?”
And Brzezinski said, “The policy of the United States is to eject the Soviets.” It’s a finite goal. And then almost as an offhanded comment, he says, “And if we can’t do that, we’ll make it as expensive as possible for them to stay.” In other words, the United States accidentally had an infinite strategy, which is not fixed in time, and we don’t know exactly what it looks like.
What we’re trying to do is drain the enemy of will and the resources to continue to play. And ten years later, the Soviets drove their tanks out of Afghanistan, running out of resources and the will.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall: A Misunderstanding
Now if you think about what happened when the Berlin Wall came down. We were in an infinite game, Soviets and the United States, and the Berlin Wall came down and the United States made again one of the greatest, perhaps one of the greatest blunders, policy blunders of the 20th century.
They announced that they had won the game, they had won the Cold War. No, they didn’t. The player dropped out because they ran out of the will or the resources to play. And the problem is, is because they thought they had won the war, they started acting like victors.
And the United States imposed their will on the world for about 11 years, and as it turns out, the world didn’t like that too much. And as what happens in all infinite contests, new players started to emerge.
The Three Tensions of the Cold War
If you consider how the Cold War existed, it really existed on three tensions. There was a nuclear tension, both states had nuclear weapons to end all life.
There was an ideological tension, one was an exporter of democracy and capitalism, the other one was an exporter of Soviet-style communism. And there was an economic tension. That’s what kept the Cold War alive and well. Not coincidentally, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The only three things for which we will bear any burden and pay any price and fight forever to defend.
The Cold War 2.0
Now the nuclear tension has been replaced by Pakistan and China, oh no, China was already there, Pakistan, North Korea, maybe Iran. The ideological tension, Soviet-style communism, has been replaced by Islamic extremism. And the economic tension, the Soviet Union, has been replaced by China.
We don’t fear nuclear war with China, but the point is that all three tensions are alive and well. And you see, the problem is, is they all know who their enemy is, but we don’t realize that the Cold War 2.0 is happening. And we are still trying to decide which one is more important, we’re trying to win and beat all of these things and not realize that the game is infinite, not finite.
Short-Term Policies and Their Consequences
And the United States’ policies these days have become shorter and shorter term, which creates turmoil and chaos in strategy and how we present ourselves to the world.
The easiest way to understand the game you’re in is when you have an opposing force, in other words, not that, right? So you want great leadership, you want somebody to say what we stand for, but if you don’t have that, you get to say not that. So it was really easy. The intelligence services, for example, during the Cold War, they fought like cats and dogs like they fight now, but they could all agree on one thing, not that.
And they worked really, really well to combine their forces to face the Soviet Union. We don’t have a singular not that anymore, and so we’re all over the place, but all of our enemies all have a singular not that, and it’s us.
Values and Interests in Decision-Making
Ideally, we want to run all of our decisions through our values. These are what make us enduring, our values are enduring, and this is what is the foundation of an infinite contest.
So you consider up here is where our values lie, what I call the why, our values, right? These things are infinite, they’re enduring, right? Down here you have what I call the what. These are our interests, and they are finite.
And ideally what you want to do is you want to run all decisions through our values and then through our interests. Let me show you what that looks like. Sometimes they go in our favor and sometimes they don’t.
Values in Action: A Military Example
So for example, when we go into a battlefield and we shoot a bad guy, we will take his injured body, we will bring him into our hospitals, and we will risk American lives to bring him into the hospitals, use American doctors, American beds, American medicines to nurse him back to health.
That’s not in our interests. But the reason we do it, because it’s kind of who we are, it’s kind of what we do, it’s our thing, right?
When we make a decision based solely on our interests, it looks like this, right? So should we torture people?
Now the reason we did it offshore is because everybody kind of knew that that wasn’t our thing, because if we had no problem with it, we’d just do it here. So we hid it away because we knew it was uncomfortable, because we know what our values are.
The Current State of U.S. Foreign Policy
So what’s been happening in the world is we’ve been evaluating all of the things that have been going on by ignoring our values, because we don’t realize we’re in an infinite contest, and we only look at our interests. So we think about what should we do in Syria, and we make a very, very good decision based on Syria, our interests in Syria, and we make a decision.
And what should we do in Crimea? And what should we do with regards to Putin? And what should we do with regards to Iraq and Afghanistan? And we’re all over the place.
And the problem is when you pull back and take a look, now nobody has any idea what we stand for. This is confusing for our allies, who no longer trust us, because we’re no longer predictable, and it’s fantastic for our enemies, because they can exploit it.
The Path Forward: Values-Based Decision Making
Ideally, what we do is we run all decisions through our values first. And though it may not always go our way, just like I said, we make decisions all the time that aren’t always in our interests, like bringing an injured bad guy and putting him in our hospitals, not our interests.
But what that does is it makes us predictable, and it makes our allies trust us because they know what we stand for, and they will either stand with us or they’ll stand against us. And together, we will go through the infinite contest for as long as it takes.
Conclusion
This is what we’re in right now. The Cold War is alive and well, and we will not help contribute to stabilizing the world until we start playing the game we’re in, rather than playing the game we’re not in.
