William F. Lawless

A quantum metric of organizational performance: Terrorism and counterterrorism

Political terrorism and insurgency have become the primary means of global war among states. Lacking comparable military and political means to compete directly with Western civilization, many failed states and tribes have honed the art of asymmetric warfare. But traditional models of organizations do not work under normal or these extreme circumstances, precluding realistic models of terrorism and a fruitful search among alternatives for potential solutions. In contrast to traditional models, we have made substantial progress with a quantum model of organizations, which we further develop in this study with the introduction of a case study of a normal organization in the process of being restructured. We apply preliminary results from our model to terrorist organizations and counter terrorism.

Virtual knowledge: bistable reality and the solution of ill-defined problems

Dynamic behavior is enacted from static observations, but as experience is reconstructed with concepts, mutual exclusivity replaces correspondence between the factors of action and observation. This bistable reality generates incommensurable world views between groups, which constrain measurement and give rise to a tension that enables change but also results in misleading accounts, as if behavior were in response to virtual knowledge. In the form of independent scientific peer reviews at a Department of Energy site, tension was applied to improve practices of science in the field. Implications for a physics of interaction are addressed.

A Quantum Perturbation Model (QPM) of Knowledge Fusion and Organizational Mergers

Future multiple agent system (MAS) missions are at risk whenever agent interactions occur faster than humans can intervene. Yet, no first principles exist that can be applied to improve mission success, solve ill-defined problems (idp‘s), or increase autonomy. To address this issue, agent mediated knowledge management (AMKM) must determine the fundamentals of information, I, and knowledge, K, generation plus their fundamental relations with agent organizations, decision-making, trust, cooperation, and competition. With the discovery of a group process rate equation, an ab initio approach to a new rational perspective of organization formation based on first principles was linked with K fusion and organizational mergers. Coupled Kolmogorov equations for I and K required distinguishing stable procedural-algorithmic K from unstable interaction-belief-expectations K (K χ ). Results suggest organizations use endogenous feedback from perturbations to control, ”tune”, or defend against competition; conversely, exogenous I modifies competitive attacks against an organization. The quicker to respond survives.

Public consent for the geologic disposal of highly radioactive wastes and spent nuclear fuel

Global agreement exists for the policy of the geological disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive wastes, provided that there is public consent. To gain consent, social scientists recommend the less competitive approach of consensus rather than the majority rule (MR) of democracies. But, we hypothesize, competition for public consent from MR best improves the quality and stability of choice.

A New Approach to Organizations: Stability and Transformation in Dark Social Networks

Uncovering information from well-defined organizations for social network analysis is straightforward, but such analyses of social networks have not led to valid predictions about their actions or stability. For dark social networks, which comprise illicit drug gangs or terrorists, uncovering information to compute a social network analysis is more difficult to solve. The authors used a new theory that is based on the conservation of information to assess organizations and dark social networks, concluding that social network analyses that are properly constrained should be invaluable for bookkeeping (storing information recovered from neighborhood canvasses such as with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agencys Tactical Ground Reporting); for theory (e.g., angiogenesis, in which a tumor takes over the infrastructure of a body; a criminal street gang such as MS-13 takes control of its territory from city authorities); and for benchmarking (e.g., comparing operational performance of models with case studies or random graphs to assure equivalence between models). The results outline a path forward to advance the theory of organizations for enterprise change and continuity.

Conflict as a heuristic in the development of an interaction mechanics

The prevailing belief that the replacement of conflict with cooperation among artificial or human agents improves performance was supported in the field for the solution of well-defined problems (wdp’s), but ironically, only when the underlying hypothesis that logic concepts and reality correspond is no longer true. In contrast, our theory, based on the bistable information derived from action-observation complementarity, predicts that resolving conflict between autonomous agents reduces the available information, I, into skills which solve wdp’s, but that conflict or social tension increases the I available to discover optimal paths for the solution of ill-defined problems (idp’s). Earlier we confirmed both predictions; first, in an experiment with USAF combat pilots in simulated air-combat, we found that observations in extreme environments produce I that converges to form knowledge independent of reality, R; second, convergence underdetermines R, promoting multiple, independent worldviews of R and a tension between them which we enhanced at a DOE military nuclear facility to significantly improve its environmental remediation decisions. We extend our theory to model the transition from social statics to dynamics by combining action-observation complementarity with a model of feedback resonance. It indicates that cooperation to solve wdp’s in social systems enhances acculturation and stasis, but that competition to solve idp’s at the level of macroeconomics powers the evolution of new social structures to manage human interaction.

Conservation of Information: A New Approach to Organizing Human-Machine-Robotic Agents under Uncertainty

For many years, social scientists have struggled to make sense of the shift between individual and group perception, the difference between observation and action, and the meaning of interdependence. Interactions between these factors produce stable worldviews that contain more illusory than actual connections to reality. We attribute these struggles to scientists embedded in the social fabric, the lack of a measurement theory, and the difficulty of testing new theory with human subjects, groups and organizations. Our work includes field research with observations of citizen organizations advising the Department of Energy (DOE) on its environmental cleanup; laboratory simulations of DOE field results; stock market data; and computational modeling (coupled differential equations, control theory, AI, Gaussian distributions, uncertainty models, Fourier transform pairs, continuous and discrete wavelets). Results from laboratory experiments and stock markets agree with our theory, but many questions remain, forming a high-risk research plan. Our objective is to incorporate interdependent uncertainty into computational intelligence to better instantiate autonomy or decentralized control for mixed human-machine systems.

The Human Factor in Cybersecurity: Robust & Intelligent Defense

In this chapter, we review the pervasiveness of cyber threats and the roles of both attackers and cyber users (i.e. the targets of the attackers); the lack of awareness of cyber-threats by users; the complexity of the new cyber environment, including cyber risks; engineering approaches and tools to mitigate cyber threats; and current research to identify proactive steps that users and groups can take to reduce cyber-threats. In addition, we review the research needed on the psychology of users that poses risks to users from cyber-attacks. For the latter, we review the available theory at the individual and group levels that may help individual users, groups and organizations take actions against cyber threats. We end with future research needs and conclusions. In our discussion, we first agreed that cyber threats are making cyber environments more complex and uncomfortable for average users; second, we concluded that various factors are important (e.g., timely actions are often necessary in cyber space to counter the threats of the attacks that commonly occur at internet speeds, but also the ‘slow and low’ attacks that are difficult to detect, threats that occur only after pre-specified conditions have been satisfied that trigger an unsuspecting attack). Third, we concluded that advanced persistent threats (APTs) pose a risk to users but also to national security (viz., the persistent threats posed by other Nations). Fourth, we contend that using “red” teams to search cyber defenses for vulnerabilities encourages users and organizations to better defend themselves. Fifth, the current state of theory leaves many questions unanswered that researchers must pursue to mitigate or neutralize present and future threats. Lastly, we agree with the literature that cyber space has had a dramatic impact on American life and that the cyber domain is a breeding ground for disorder. However, we also believe that actions by users and researchers can be taken to stay safe and ahead of existing and future threats.

The university as decision center

We have developed a theory of interaction uncertainty relations between the conjugate variables of action and observation. From it, we have established that cooperation in training and education is best suited for the solution of well-developed problems (e.g. using existing techniques to build bridges), but that competition works best for the solution of ill-defined problems (e.g. developing new technology). However, cooperation and competition are incommensurable processes that, by definition, do not logically combine. One way to combine them is through the dynamic model of a decision center (DC) set within a broadly-based democracy such as exists at a university. A DC integrates the evidence for the different functions of a university and advances rational theory by predicting new relationships for autonomous agents. A DC reduces uncertainty in the conjugate or interdependent interaction variables of action and observation.

Bistability, Nash Equilibria, Relatively Dark Collectives, and Social Physics: Modeling the Social Behavior of Teams

To reduce costs and increase effectiveness, a new theory is being sought to transform teams, enterprises, and systems with computational approaches of complex social behavior that create “smart” systems. A new theory is necessary because, unlike the physical sciences, the economic, organizational, and, in general, social sciences have no overarching theory of fundamental principles that build from individuals to collectives. Instead, social science is mostly a-theoretical, derived primarily from ad hoc studies of individuals. Many of the “rational” results emerging from methodological individualism models at the collective level are misleading, such as collaboration, supposedly associated with increased trust and social well-being; instead, we have found that the more collaboration is isolated from competition, the more knowledge generation is reduced, illusions increased, and social welfare made dysfunctional. With our theory, still crude at this stage of development, using bi-stability, a simplified form of interdependence, we have constructed a theory of the dynamics of collectives that naturally arise from illusions along with natural measures for the metrics of organizational performance based on relative (entropy) darkness. However, at the unit level, unlike building a bridge or robot, while predictions about social behavior are possible, our theory of interdependent uncertainty indicates that traditional explanations of social behavior are both unavoidable and irreducibly incomplete. We discuss the implications for enterprise transformation. Our theory will be applied in a future companion article.