I named this blog after a term in Stanley McChrystal’s book A Team of Teams. I’ve pasted below an excerpt from his book where he describes what blink points are. He is describing them in terms of how he sped up the feedback loop on counterterrorism from days to hours.
…But it took a while to get there. The process started as a linear, relatively inefficient chain. Out of habit (and ignorance), each element gave the next group the minimum amount of information needed for it to be able to complete its task. Lacking sufficient shared purpose or situational awareness, each component contributed far less to the outcome than it could or should have.
This made us, in retrospect, painfully slow and uninformed. The linear process created what we called “blinks” — time delays and missed junctures where information was lost or slowed when filtered down the line. In the early days of the effort, we had multiple experiences where information we captured could not be exploited, analyzed, or reacted to quickly enough — giving enemy targets time to flee. A blink often meant a missed opportunity in an unforgiving fight.
The key was to reduce the blinks, and we did so by attempting to create a shared consciousness between each level of the counterterrorism teams. We started by sharing information: Video streamed by the drones was sent to all the participants — not just the reconnaissance and surveillance analysts controlling them. When an operation was set in motion, information was continuously communicated to and from the combat team, so that intelligence specialists miles away could alert the team on the ground about what they could expect to find of value at the scene and where it might be. Intelligence recovered on the spot was instantly pushed digitally from the target to analysts who could translate it into actionable data while the operators would still be clearing rooms and returning fire. This knowledge was immediately cycled back through the loop to our intelligence and surveillance forces following the results of the raid in real time.
I give this definition today because I think the Democrats completely fucked up this election due to misunderstanding the environment and running an organization full of blink points. They are a shining example of an organization out of touch with reality, and I think they let all of their supporters down tremendously. They would do well to assess where their blink points, then solve them fast.