We reached our ideas of being disappointed with the full Senate, which is amazing to see the mark of Maria.
Also, the subject hopes and I know have a sort of full exhibition of various biography exhibits.
She's very nicely captured, right? But she manages to blend both a sort of private sector wrong with being a researcher,
so we could probably all try this at some stage resurfacing research right here CCW.
She has fought long and hard to become a busy research fellow, and here she is.
I think is the subject of reflexive job is what is what we will carry with.
It is founded around quite a bit. It's not very well understood. It's possibly exaggerated.
It's possibly just good looking in the wrong place. And who better to help us take us through that concept of why it matters to you?
Thank you. So thank you all for being here. It's really nice to be able to give a talk like this in person.
It's been quite a while, and it's really nice to to do that here that I've really enjoyed my time so far since October, and it's been fantastic.
And so this seminar will be about reflexive control, and it will be about what the theory is about because, as Rob mentioned,
that's not actually as straightforward as one might hope or think an interwoven in me explaining what this theory is about.
I have done a bit of cybernetic theory because cybernetic theory is at the root of what reflexive control theory is about,
because the theory is really, really rather theorised in the West.
We can't really call it a theory yet. It's more like a concept that we want to theorise.
I also really want to make sure that we take a little bit of time to tell you about what we don't know about this yet.
Just to make sure that you have a realistic idea of what it is and what it is
and what we can use it for and what really needs a bit of development time.
So what is reflexive, you know, and what is it about?
The theory was first written about the early sixties in Soviet Russia by mathematical psycho psychologist Vladimir Lefevre,
and it all originates and said from cybernetic theory.
This cybernetic theory has a lot of overlap with what we more commonly known as complex systems theory, which might ring a little bit more of a bell.
So as it says here, reflexive control is a means of conveying to partner or an opponent,
specifically especially prepared information to incline him to voluntarily make the predetermined decision.
And the idea is the theory that you can make someone make a decision which they think is in their best interest.
Whilst actually the situation or information was specifically prepared in such a way that they make the
decision that was predetermined by you and is actually probably in your best interest and not theirs.
And if reflexive control would be done well, it would mean that actually the other party was controlled wouldn't necessarily mean that they
have fallen into into a trap or that they made a decision that was predetermined by someone else.
So that's very cool. I would say it reflects control is about changing someone's perceptions about
their utility says make them misperceive what they think their best choices are.
And so I think it's good to know that those in the west and in the east,
where this theory has developed a little bit in parallel the nature of of what
reflexive control is and ideas about how it works have been evolving over the years.
And actually few people have been researching this agree on what it is exactly and what it is not.
There's various definitions, and I actually really like the work of a very recent work by a Finnish analyst
from the Finnish Defence Academy Defence University Sorry Antiperspirant,
who uses quite a wide definition, which I'll explain a little bit. And the reason I liked this wider definition is because I think it gives us a bit
more opportunity to see how we can use this theory and how we can learn from it,
because I think that there's really a lot that we can learn from this theory.
So if we look at the literature both written in Russian and in English, there are two types of reflexive control,
and they're divided into constructive, reflexive control and destructive.
The constructive control can be used in slow paced situations, but there's time to conduct in-depth analysis of the situation,
how the situation is perceived, what the goals are of the other.
And in this form of reflexive control, the other will be influenced in such a way that they would voluntarily make a decision.
There's no disruption or anything. Quite it looks like quite an organic process.
And indeed, here the decision will be made voluntarily,
and the decision would serve your interest without necessarily the other people realising that it serves your interest.
So if we very, very carefully, because I really want to be very careful about this, very carefully link this to Western concepts.
I would say that this is almost something like a systems theory approach to perception management on steroids with a lot of maths.
And I think this sort of reflects control will be more common in longer term situations like diplomacy, economic statecraft,
situations that linger on for quite some time and doesn't require a specific timestamp of which something needs to happen right now.
So that's different from destructive, reflexive control, which actually can be used in fast paced situations,
and this is very much focussed on disrupting decision making processes.
And again, to link this carefully to a Western concept, I think this is really quite similar to deception.
It will still have the reflexive crisis involved. But if you think about what it practically means, I think we can compare this to deception.
And I think this is this is a lot less subtle.
People would normally probably quite quickly realise that they've been, that they've been trapped into a decision that they didn't want to make.
So I think this you would more commonly see in situations like either battlefield kinetic situation that wasn't necessarily planned or expected or,
for example, something like an unexpected negotiation.
So according again to literature, there are four broad steps that would have to be taken for a reflexive control operation.
And the first one would be to build an understanding of the perception of the situation.
How does this act to think that the situation looks night, which, as we'll talk about later,
might be very much different from the question of what is the actual situation?
Well, we'll get back to that in a little bit.
Step number two would be to determine what the opponent's goals are and what these goals should be to meet those of the controlling party.
So how can we change the goals of the control party to something that we like?
And if you would use more gave theoretical terms, you would say, you know,
what are these persons utility sets and what do we need these utility sets to be?
So step number three would be, as they call it,
the introduction of a solution algorithm that requires a little bit of explanation because that I can imagine sounds really abstract.
So would it would be because of the cybernetics background of the theory?
It would be sort of the algorithmic modelling of behaviour and decision making.
And I think the best way to visualise this is to think of decision making trees, as you would sometimes see in in game theory.
And this would also this prices would also involve thinking about where the weak spots
are in this decision making process and and how these weak spots could be exploited.
And importantly for reflexive control, this step would also include thinking about the level of reflection that the other party could use.
So in essence, what you think about, could the other party be using reflexive control on you?
And should you take that into account?
When you think about decision making force, there is a feedback loop and those who know a little bit about cybernetics.
We get really excited maybe about this because that is one of the core ideas of cybernetic theory
because you need to understand what decision has been made and why this decision has been made.
And so as you probably think about, well, this is pretty close to how machine learning works is if you're wrong,
you adjust your algorithm and you do it again.
And so it becomes a continuous learning process.
And because I think that this process shows very well the origins of this theory in cybernetic theory,
I thought of just briefly mention the cybernetics and the while there are many definitions about what cybernetic theory is, and we have a couple of.
People here and on the call who are far better qualified to talk to you about it, which I suggest you do because it's a fascinating topic,
but for this specific lecture, I'd like to use the the definition of Gilmore Girls.
This is one of the earlier definitions, and it's a definition of sujet cybernetics, which is not necessarily the same as Western cybernetics,
because there was little communication until that until the 70s, especially after the Second World War.
So, according to Komarov, cybernetics is the study of systems of any nature.
So that could be humans, machines, animals, any system which are capable of receiving,
storing and processing information so as to use it for control and again, to emphasise.
It's good to mention that Soviet cybernetics developed in parallel to how it was developed
in the West because there was little communication between the two areas in the time.
And so those people who know a lot about Western cybernetics might disagree a little bit with this definition, and that's great.
That's that's a great ground for a lot of discussion.
If you are interested in Soviet cybernetics,
the author I just mentioned and wrote a really great chapter on it is the only work I know that is in English about Soviet cybernetics.
I can highly recommend it anyway.
I think a very important aspect of both cybernetics and thus reflects control is that it takes a systemic and holistic approach,
and it emphasises interconnectedness and behaviours of various systems.
And what I mean by that is that we're not looking at different systems or situations necessarily as separate on its own sending paths.
It's more like it's a whole consisting of different systems within systems.
And that sounds quite vague, but for understanding of the theory, that's quite useful to keep in mind.
And again, I want to emphasise about the parallel development of cybernetics and so get science in general because
I don't want anyone to get the idea that reflects control is anything completely new or that is,
if anything, it's really very old. And I'm I'm sure it happens in all parts of the world.
It's just probably not called that. And also, I think that parts of it will definitely have been developed in in Western science,
but it will be really nice to find out where they are in order so we can build this theory
in a way that it sort of fits the requirements of what we hear in the West at the moment,
see as a as a requirement for an academic theory.
And actually, I would like you to think about this now for when we get to the question and answers
and that if you have any theories that you think of whilst listening to this,
which you think might actually fit in quite well with this or might talk to a specific part of the theory,
let's talk about it, because that would be that would be great.
And this is ongoing research, and it'd be really nice to be able to build this theory as well as we can.
What we don't want to do is to reinvent the wheel and pretend like we are doing something that is completely new.
So if we think about the first three steps that are a couple of states ago,
we say there's quite a bit of analysis that is done within these three steps in the famous
work this these three steps are all done in what he calls the the model of the self.
And actually, I think you always need to make one model of self and one model also of the other.
And you really need both because only if you have both,
you are able to really put the two together and see what that interaction might look like and how one might perceive the other.
And also, you really need it in order to say something about, again, the probability that the other is using some sort of reflexive thinking on you.
So I think the model of the self is a really interesting concept, not because it's again, not because it's completely new or anything is in.
There has never been thought about before, but I think what this does,
it enables you to consciously think about your own perceptions, your own behaviour,
your own vulnerabilities and also how you are being perceived by the other, which as well again,
talk that might not necessarily be what the actual real, perfect information situation is.
So yeah, and that might that sort of thing might sound like a like a basic thing, but it's it's really not.
It's really quite. Difficult because actually, if you look at this and you think again carefully about what Western theories
you could link this to would be a little bit like rational choice theory,
but with a very important addition, extra bit and need before rational choice theory gets dismissed because it lost quite a bit of popularity.
I think that many are quick to say that people don't make rational choices,
and I don't necessarily think that is correct, especially in light of this theory,
because on the basis I think is potentially not correct on the basis that rational and rational choice
theory does not necessarily mean that people always choose the best possible actual possible option.
It means that people choose the option they think is best for them based on their values.
So if you would add sort of an extra layer of perception on that,
you could think about making the statement that people choose the option they
perceive is the best one for them based on the information available to them,
their their information bubbles and also based on their value values.
So after having scanned through very many documents, I think and I'm sorry about this very bad font on the PowerPoint,
I think these are the aspects of what should be in the model of the self, and this is very much still in development.
So we would have in a hypothetical situation, we would have information about the information that the other has,
the information bubble that they're in and their value sets and their value sets would include,
for example, their ethical systems, what they think is good, what they think is bad, you know,
does the end justify the means or does it not very important one and it would include their goals.
What is it that they want to achieve and which timelines are they using to run in their thought processes?
So it would also include that week schools.
Where are they likely to be able to for their perception to be changed about what it is they think they want or they need?
And lastly, again,
the the level of reflection that they think that you think that others might have on you or that others might think you are doing for them.
So I just want to emphasise that in reflexive control,
decision making is the idea that decision making depends on the information that is received and how it is perceived,
rather than on what the actual situation is.
And this is a theory, not a concept from cybernetic theory.
And what this means is that where is it or is it acknowledged that there is such a thing as a as a factual truth based on perfect information?
It's up to you to recognise that that is there. There is a there is a truth out there.
It also acknowledges that actually, this is not normally the basis on which people base their decisions because often they don't have all the
information and they view this information through that lens that that changes how they make their decisions.
They behave according to the information they have and the information how the information is perceived.
And this doesn't necessarily is not necessarily the same as what the actual factual, perfect information situation looks like.
So this is actually not something that is completely unexplored in Western science.
You don't see very often because it's, I think, will be very difficult to to model or to to measure, but it's not completely unexplored.
So one, for example, five really interesting game theorists called Robert Axelrod.
You might have heard of him because he did.
He was looking at two strategies for cooperation with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and he's he's also been sought to.
And he's also thought to have been looking at reflexive control, which is, I think, an interesting little, little side note.
But in his book Evolution of Cooperation, he describes that the assumption of individuals pursuing self-interest is far less
restrictive than it sounds because he says he uses work from evolutionary biology,
and he cites the work of Robert Trivers and he says from amongst others.
He says, actually, it can be proven that there are long term benefits, for example, for from cooperation or altruism in in evolution.
And actually, altruism can definitely be used.
In your own interest, and it sort of takes the altruism out of altruism.
Another field in which this concept is explored is cognitive psychology.
For example, the work of Donald Hoffman, he did a lot of research about also doing theoretical simulations about whether in evolution,
perfect information or perceived information would give the best chance of survival.
And actually, in his modelling, he used a perceived situation gives us some quite useful pointers for where we can go with this research.
So just wanted to give to common misconceptions about what this theory is about, but it's it's actually a little bit harmful.
And that's because I think if you get these things wrong,
it makes it seem like the theory is much more narrow and unrealistic and unachievable than it really actually is.
And the first one, I think, is very important is reflex versus reflexive, right?
And people often think that with reflexive control, something needs to happen like it's a reflex,
which implies that you would always have exactly the same response to particular stimuli.
Like, for example, you if you touch something hot to you, you pull your hand back.
And that is almost a little bit like a scientific law.
And it almost means that if one thing happens, something else happens to you with almost the probability of one because you don't think about it.
It's a it's a nerve reaction and say that then means, again, that there's no that there would be no thinking involved in reflex control.
So if you then again, look at the literature on the effects control, what you see is that at the beginning in the 60s and early 70s,
people were indeed writing about reflex control in terms of it, a reflex.
And interestingly, when it sort of when reflexive game theory starts developing more and more,
we see actually that authors become quite more, quite a bit more happy to include thinking processes in it.
So I really don't think that reflexive control is solely about making someone reflects on something.
I think it really also involves making someone think about something and still making the wrong decision.
You just give them the wrong information. That brings me to the second misconception that's of control,
and this theory was first written about in Russian and in Russian is called the reflexive.
I apologise for that. My Russian is not good enough to be speaking any of it.
But importantly, Oprah blaming it could be translated indeed as control,
but it could also be translated as management or command of command and control or governance.
And if you think about if you would only think about reflex control as needing
that element of control and thinking that through in terms of probabilities,
if you would model that, that would make the theory really incredibly narrow.
But to make scientific laws, if not impossible to make scientific laws about human behaviour in such a way.
And if you would then also include a thought process or reflexive process in that,
I think that would be unrealistic to think that you could really speak of control because control would mean,
again, that you would make something happen with the probability of almost one.
And then that's yeah, I don't think that that's realistic. Or at least it's probably not realistic enough for it to be used in a wider context.
And I think that this is something we should try to do to see if we can learn from this theory and see how we can use it in a in a practical context,
because I'm both an idealist and an academic, and I like things to actually be used if I work on something.
So maybe next time you hear reflex control, maybe having to in the back of your head,
something that says reflexive management or reflexive steering or something like that don't focus too much on the control element,
because that would make it really difficult to do anything with this theory so important as a set to spend
a little bit of time talking about what it is we do not know about or control because it's quite a lot.
As I said before, it's more like a concept rather than a theory.
Most important thing is it's completely on the theorised,
and nobody has built a practical model for a flex control and nobody has tested it, especially in the West.
There is hardly any literature on reflex control, and there are three notable exceptions.
One paper in the 80s, which I can recommend by Dan Choi article that early work in the 2000s done by Timothy Thomas.
And a recent paper which I already mentioned by Andy Serwer.
And again, these papers are really very good.
But what they are is either explorations of the philosophical or psychological
backgrounds of the theory or they are amazing and elaborate literature reviews,
which is incredibly useful, but it doesn't really help us in terms of what we can do with it practically.
So it's all very theoretical. So that brings me to the other thing that we don't know,
and I actually don't think that that is incredibly important, but it is important to to mention it.
And that is we do not know if Russia, for example, is officially in a doctrine using reflexive control or indeed,
if they have actually figured out formally how to how to do this,
or if it's maybe something that is a bit more subconscious, like a hunch is something that you just do.
And there has been a little bit of research on this.
Recently, Colonel John Bannister from the Dutch Army has done quite an extensive study on Musculos and how that works in terms of strategy,
tactical, but also in terms of doctrine.
And he says that actually all of this disinformation, active measures and reflexive control would fall under the umbrella of a master, of course.
And I think that he could be right.
But if so, I'd really like to add certain components, which would mean that actually, I think these things might not be completely separate.
I think if it is indeed like that, if they are indeed using it in a way that is written down in doctrine, then I think there's a bit of overlap.
So for example, if you would have an active measures operations, there would be aspects of the aspects of disinformation.
There would be aspects of reflexive control. And I think that a bit of overlap there.
But one possibility I'd really like to consider and I'd like you to think about is that maybe
the idea of reflexive control and the way of thinking might just be merged into active measures,
for example, it might be that there's not, you know, I have a closet. I haven't dived into the Soviet archives yet.
Might be that there's not such a thing as a doctrinally written down active measures.
That doesn't mean it's not useful, though, because actually, if I look at active measures,
I think yet there's quite a bit in there that really resonates with this way of thinking.
So I think that it doesn't really matter in practise where it's it's looked timely or fits.
It's anywhere doctrine. And because I see reflexive control as a way, we could look at risk and as an approach to a problem that we have.
When I say risk, I mean risk from any foreign government, not, you know, not just that of the of the government of Russia.
And I think we could really benefit from properly theorising this approach.
And more specifically, I think there are two concepts of reflexive control,
which I think could be of a high value right now, even if the theory is still a bit more like a concept.
The first concept I'd like to see if we can develop more formally and practically are the models of the self and the other,
because I think I think models like these can help us think about perception and interactions.
And I think these can help us define these perceived utility sets, S.A.C. says.
It's not something I've come across in in any Western literature.
If somebody has, please let me know because it would be great to to learn about it.
But I think really that could be explored further because if we can get a better,
more realistic idea of what these utility sets look like to us and also to our adversaries, that can really help us understand the situation better.
And then secondly, if we have indeed very consciously thought about these utility sets and and how how these things
work and how different actions are perceived and what is being perceived as good and what is that?
And what do you could then in terms of that, expect into what somebody is going to do?
This will really help us, I think,
to think more strategically about what our vulnerabilities are and which vulnerabilities could be used to exploit for others to get what they want.
And how they could be exploited and in what way?
Again, that the other would see that as appropriate, you know, would the end justify the means or not, things like that.
And I think if you think about it like that,
a theory like this could help us identify risk areas what you might not have previously really considered as risks.
And so when I say identifying vulnerabilities, I really also mean vulnerabilities in our threat perception process.
And I think it'd be fair to say that this is likely to come down to our vulnerabilities and recognising non-kinetic risks because I'm quite
confident that we are much more skilled at identifying genetic risks because that is a really core component of what intelligence does,
for example. But non-kinetic risks.
We have a little bit of a bit of difficulty identifying that on a large scale, and we have even more difficulty doing something about it.
So one thing I think is really important with non-kinetic risks is, for example, our vulnerability to economic statecraft, economic statecraft.
You can basically define as the influence that a country can have over another country through through business.
And I think if we would use reflects control strategically as a as a model of thinking about things, you can really help us think more strategically,
for example, about about what is business and what is really conflict or what is maybe not conflict in itself, but what is going to prepare?
What's the preparation for conflict? And I think also, sadly, economic statecraft provide us,
especially at the moment with an interesting example of what I think is reflects
control and if not at all mysterious and does not involve any deception
and is actually really quite transparent because all the data is there in open source because in the past few weeks has become painfully apparent how,
for example, many of Germany's critical supply chains depends on businesses that are linked to the Kremlin,
and for the past few years, they have not reduce that dependence, but rather they have increased this for the longest time.
They really believed that that was in their best interest,
and it would be something that would save money and they could close their nuclear facilities.
There were opportunities with an art stream, too, and there might even have been have been a mention or two about normalising relations with Russia.
And it's that that sounds a bit ridiculous right now, doesn't it?
And it sounds very logical that that was a risk, but for years, it wasn't really something that anyone really was too worried about,
or at least not to the extent that they would do something about it. And it was also not something that they weren't warned about, either.
They were warned about it often by many people, and they made the decision that actually these dealings were their best or their best option.
These were the things that were in their best interest, and something like this makes sense if you get the gold completely wrong, right?
If you believe that the Kremlin's goal has been for Russia to develop a strong economy and to be a reliable trade partner, then it makes sense.
Exceptions, exceptions matter. So to conclude, I think we really need to start seeing conflict as a whole, something integrated to the system.
And this means that we have to force ourselves to think more long term and more strategically about the decisions that we make.
And it also means that we have to be realistic about what our vulnerabilities are.
For example, you are our critical supply chains vulnerable, making us vulnerable?
Can our reliance on this on a specific country for certain critical infrastructure?
And can that be used against us? Can that be used to to harm us or our supply chains, for example, financing something that can be used against us?
And I do believe that there is such a thing as a glass battlefield, but I do think we can and have to become better at understanding it.
And I think that reflects control theory can help us get better at this.
Thanks. And I just look, this is, you know, what you do is take a look at the theoretical framework.
Be absolutely clear about the architecture in which we are going to do the analysis.
It's quite clear there's been attempts to do analysis of some of these frameworks differ, which is made.
Things are difficult for some definitions that anyway. So it's like I say so hats off, Evans applauding say great.
Keep going at the framework, because that's important. One of the really nice insights you gave us, which I think will go away if is about risk.
Right. So there seems to be an inherent modelling of vulnerability risk that needs to be carried out.
So I think the if you think the opposite, some of us use the heck out of it.
Is this the opposite of that risk tolerance?
So how much leeway or elasticity is that in the systems either being used or for us to be resilient against them that we can start to think about?
I use one of the projects we have here at sea study is Minerva projects.
It's been a long standing five year project on social fragmentation of this in Europe states some great results produced so far.
It's all based on accurate modelling. So do under theorised question mark.
I'm not sure that everyone agrees with you. I think some people hope Syria, which is great historians would say.
I'll remember, Voltaire said about French approval to shoot one two seven Lebanon nine again.
Proportion, it is. All right. Make sure of it goes back into line.
I mean, that is a form of reflexive controls, so we shouldn't be minding the store.
Instinct was mentioned. You know, if you that's that's you're right. Market economics came in at the end, and I think it's absolutely going on.
These are really very important and lots of interesting questions about threat perception.
We know it's hugely important and we can make some judgements when we misperceive a threat by some investing huge,
massive sums of money into something which is not actually done.
We're not stretching right back, so we need to kind of be very careful what we're doing.
But I love sure the supply chains dependencies is also theoretical.
We'll strike you. Of course, if your further studies one other person's got away with here is if there was
an ethical version of what your framing could be applied to peacebuilding.
Could we take malpractice and hostile actors and do something on that perception on my mind,
which draws them in to making better judgements by business decisions which mean they lay down their arms right now that we need it?
Thanks so much for.