Last week, I attended a Brookings Institute event, which focused on analogies between the human body, and how it reacts to disease and how nations react to insurgency.
The speakers were General Stanley McChrystal, formerly commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and now a senior fellow at Yale University, and Kristina Talbert-Slagle, an associate research scientist at Yale Global Health leadership Institute. The session was moderated by Brookings Senior Fellow, Michael O’Hanlon.
The Brookings blog entry, which discusses the panel, can be found here: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brookings-now/posts/2013/12/counterinsurgency-like-the-way-human-body-fights-disease#.
The audio recording of the session can be found here: http://www.brookings.edu/events/2013/12/19-counterinsurgency-mcchrystal
I found the discussion interesting; at a minimum, I would recommend taking a look at the blog entry. One major difference, at least to me, is that insurgents would I suspect turn the discussion around and claim that the current national leadership is the disease. It is not obvious to me that most diseases are trying to become the human body and run it (except those leading to Zombie creation), but rather just utilize the body to live off it (more parasitic than revolutionary).
The reason I went to listen but not as much about using the analogy to think through how to deal with counterinsurgencies on a national level, but to see whether the conversation related to system architecture and approaches to responding to cybersecurity. In my opinion at least, the presentation actually was pretty adaptable to IT security issues and it is there that it may in fact play a more consistently usable metaphor.
I have touched on this issue before:
- Using Biological Constructs As Metaphors for Developing System Architecture, https://www.ourownlittlecorner.com/2012/08/19/using-biological-constructs-as-metaphors-for-developing-system-architecture/
- My GWU Discussion – Part 3 – What to do About Cybersecurity, https://www.ourownlittlecorner.com/2011/05/30/my-gwu-discussion-%E2%80%93-part-3-%E2%80%93-what-to-do-about-cybersecurity/
- 90% of the Cells in the Human Body Are, In Fact, Non-Human, https://www.ourownlittlecorner.com/2013/12/16/90-of-the-cells-in-the-human-body-are-in-fact-non-human/
During the course of 2014, I plan to return to it in my attempt to pull all of these threads together.