Pacifica | A Tale of Data Centers, Clean Water, and the Purpose of Government

From I Believe · 19:02

Show by Joel K. Douglas

Every organization exists for a reason. It has some purpose, something it’s supposed to achieve. And if we can’t measure whether we’re making progress toward that purpose, how do we know whether we’re doing a good job?We can measure how much money an organization spends. We can measure how many people it employs. We can measure whether its paperwork is turned in on time. But none of those things tells us whether the organization is achieving the reason it exists.A measurable objective tells us what success looks like. It allows us to turn intent into accountability. That doesn’t mean everything important can be reduced to a number. But when we’re spending other people’s money, we owe them some way to judge whether the effort is working.If you aren’t readily familiar, the United States has six goals, as outlined in the Constitution Preamble: union, justice, domestic tranquility, defense, general welfare, and liberty. Let’s think about how we get from those very broad goals to the things our government actually does every day.To get there, let’s start in a fictional region called Pacifica.In Pacifica there are two cities, Sonora and Mojave. They share a river. Sonora sits upstream. Mojave downstream.Sonora has been building data centers. Its economy benefits from them, and the facilities consume substantial quantities of electricity and water. Sonora is doing a poor job regulating what happens to the water. They are contaminating the river, and Mojave depends on clean water to grow food.Mojave has tried talking to Sonora. Its leaders have complained, negotiated, and asked for better controls. Sonora hasn’t responded in any meaningful way. As conditions deteriorate, Mojave begins to view Sonora’s disregard for its water supply as a hostile act.Mojave would rather solve the problem diplomatically. But its leadership also asks its Department of Defense to develop options if diplomacy fails.The obvious military answer might be to destroy the data centers. After all, if the data centers are the problem, why not remove them?But Mojave’s planners are cunning.They know that destroying them would be a terrible way to achieve what Mojave wants. It could require a great deal of force, consume resources Mojave may need later, and create enough resentment to spark a much larger war. And there is no guarantee that destroying the facilities would restore the river. Depending on what is damaged, it could make the contamination worse. Then, having spent so much on the first attempt, Mojave might have little options left if it fails.So they think of alternatives. Sonora’s data centers need electricity, and they get it from multiple sources: a solar field, a coal-fired power plant, and wind turbines. The planners consider whether electricity to the data centers might be interrupted without destroying the facilities themselves. The idea isn’t to devastate Sonora. It is to demonstrate that continuing to disregard the river carries a cost, while leaving some way back to negotiation.Even a limited option is dangerous. Infrastructure may serve civilians as well as data centers. Sonora could retaliate. A threat intended to end a dispute could make it worse. Military planners don’t get to know in advance whether the assumptions on which their plan rests will hold.And this is where the objective matters.Mojave’s objective isn’t to destroy data centers, power plants, or transmission lines. Its objective is clean water for its intended agricultural use, today and tomorrow.There are different ways to get there. Some involve military force. Some don’t. Mojave could achieve the objective through negotiation without firing a shot. Its military could execute every assigned action perfectly and still fail to restore the water.Now imagine the commander assigned to develop and conduct those operations. While the commander works on the conflict, higher headquarters is also asking about personnel records, maintenance records, training documentation, and late performance reports. Maybe a quarter of the annual personnel reports are overdue. The headquarters wants that paperwork fixed.Those requirements aren’t imaginary, and some matter directly to operations. A broken maintenance process can cost lives. But reducing overdue personnel reports from 25 percent to zero would never tell us whether the river has gotten any cleaner.A unit can be busy. A unit can be compliant. A unit can have beautiful spreadsheets showing all the things it did. None of those things, by themselves, prove it achieved its mission.Pacifica is only an illustration. We don’t need to know whether Mojave attacks, or whether Sonora eventually cooperates. The question is what they’re trying to achieve, and whether the things they measure tell them they’re getting there.Pacifica is fictional. The distinction between an operational objective and the administration of a military unit is not.Inside the Department of Defense, strategic planning guidance connects what military…

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