Power to the Sourpoints!

Anybody who works in the corporate world or government will most likely appreciate this piece from the Wall Street Journal Taste page. It's entitled "Speaking truth to PowerPoint". Of all the items in the arsenal of the United States' military, PowerPoint has to be the most under appreciated in terms of lethality and destructiveness. Want to simultaneously sow confusion in the minds of your enemy while sapping their physical strength? Hit them with a PowerPoint presentation.

I am convinced that the key to defeating Al Qaeda is to infiltrate their command and training camp network with specially trained teams of briefers highly skilled in the use of PowerPoint. The concept is similar to a virus in that the mission is two fold. Not only do the teams masquerade as jihadists and use PowerPoint to present their ideas, more importantly they train the real jihadists in how to use PowerPoint. As the jihadist start to master PowerPoint, the first symptoms of the virus appear. The organization becomes sluggish and confused. Because the structure of Al Qaeda resembles a network of cells and affiliated organizations, each cell or group will do their slides differently. The Taliban may use a green background, the color of Islam. Egyptian Islamic Jihad may opt for a template that resembles old parchment in order to get that "original Quran" look. Dissention sets in as each group argues over who's slides are more Islamic.

At the lower level, more and more IED attacks are less successful. This is because in the training camps, rather than learn how to build and emplace an IED by actually doing it, Johnny Jihad gets the instructions in bullet point format with serious gaps in information. When he tries to figure out why the IED didn't work, he can't because his instructors didn't give him an actual training manual. Instead, they gave him a packet of printed slides with the same bullet points from the presentation. When Johnny Jihad tries to recall what the instructor said during the period of instruction, he realizes all the instructor did was read the bullet points out loud and ask if there were any questions. Of course there were no questions because: a.) The students didn't know there was a gap in the information and b.) It was Thursday night so all the students wanted was to get released for the day so Johnny Jihad could hook up with Joey Jihad.

At the same time, the logistics system starts to strain both physically and financially. More money has to be budgeted for laptops, network servers, printers, power backups, ink cartridges, printer paper, binding machines, staples, staplers, staple removers, clear plastic covers for the slide packets, spiral combs for the binding and so on. Not only do all these supplies have to be purchased, they also have to be transported from, for example, Pakistan over the mountains into Afghanistan. This is in addition to/ competition with bullets, food, explosives and personnel. Because there is a shortage of donkeys and Toyota pick ups in theater, the supply chain becomes clogged, slowing down the conduct of operations. The highest level of command notices what is going on and sets out to remedy the situation. Osama Bin Laden dispatches subordinates on a fact finding tour to figure out what the problem is. Their task will be to identify the problem, develop a solution and then brief the seniors on that solution. The brief will of course be presented in PowerPoint because Osama's schedule is packed with other breifings and he doesn't have all day to read a report.

The solution the subordinates devise, and brief in PowerPoint, seems simple and is designed to streamline communications, planning and logistics. An SOP on formatting slides is established.

• All slides will be written in a size 12 Arabic font, white background, black lettering.
• All slides will have a header consisting of the Al Qaeda symbol in the upper left corner, the subordinate organizations symbol in the upper right corner, the phrase "Allahu Akbar" directly centered on the page with a thick green line beneath separating the header from the content.
• No complete sentences are allowed. Only brief, concise bullet points will be used.
• The last slide will have the same header but no bullet points. In place will be one word in size 30 Arabic font; QUESTIONS?

For example, rather than communicate a plan like this: The suicide bomber will detonate his charge precisely at 1200 hrs in front of the checkpoint. Immediately after the blast, supporting forces will will engage surviving enemy forces with precise direct fires until enemy capabilities have been reduced to ineffectiveness due to high casualties.

The plan will be communicated like this:

• At noon he go BOOM!
• Everybody else shoot.
• Enemy Dead.

Of course this Standard Operating Procedure is only a guideline. In order to maintain Esprit De Corp, in addition to developing creative thought in juniors, subordinate commanders are given flexibility in developing slide formatting SOPs for briefings within their organization. However, those slides will have to be reformatted in accordance to the higher level commands SOP when briefed to the higher level command. Someone will forget to change the font size on one of the slides which will lead to 15 minutes of lecture about how the slide is not formatted correctly. That 15 minutes will eat up much of the briefing causing a whole slew of slides to be skipped and information lost.

On the logistics side, the subordinates solution for supply and support functions is to contract out those functions. This is deemed more cost effective as it frees up manpower for suicide bombings. Because the Jihad is already ongoing, the decision is made to bypass the bidding process and directly contract the most capable company in the region. That company turns out to be The Bin Laden Group. This spurs Muslim conspiracy theorist film makers to produce documentaries pointing out the connection between Bin Laden, the Saudi government and former President Bush thus concluding the whole Jihad is all about oil and profit, not about establishing a new Caliphate.

The benefits of this strategy for the United States war effort are huge. First off, this plan has been tried, tested and successful under various conditions already by the U.S. military on a global scale. The strategy does not require any additional funding or personnel increases as we already have a large cadre fully trained at all echelons. The third order of effects in terms of breaking enemy morale thus their will to fight are guaranteed. For example, prior to deployment, I had to attend Counter IED classes. The class was several hours long and the instructors gave it using a combination of audio-visual techniques. After the introductory slides, I was subjected to about 30 minutes of web videos showing IED's blowing apart Humvees and fellow soldiers. This was followed by three hours of PowerPoint slides covering enemy tactics, how we counter those tactics, how they counter our countering, various pieces of equipment we use to disrupt IEDs that work fine alone but cancel each other out if too close and then more web videos of Humvees blowing up. It was a great presentation but when I walked out of the class, I was sweating, heart beating fast and thinking "OH SHIT! I'm gonna die!". It's a 100% surefire guarantee that if given PowerPoint, some Jihadist in a training camp will do the exact same thing to their guys. I'm not saying that by using this plan Al Qaeda will fall overnight. But over time the organization will definitely lose it's ability to accomplish much. The best part of this plan is that we can define victory. The day Osama appears on Al Jazeera in one of his videos and after the first few words he says "next slide", we know we won.

The basis for this plan is what I call the Anti-Boyd's Law or Reverse OODA Loop. It goes like this:

1. I observe my own organizations actions and inadequacies.
2. I orient my enemy to those same actions and inadequacies.
3. He decides to adopt them.
4. His actions mimic mine.

The principle is sound. If it doesn't work for me, it won't work for him either. The reason this plan hasn't been put into effect is that I would have to brief my chain of command with a PowerPoint presentation. I suck at PowerPoint.