Insurgent basketball: Gladwell on sports and asymmetric conflict

I was all girded up to write a couple thousand words on Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece “How David Beats Goliath: When underdogs break the rules.” I even made notes. And then I left them at work. 

So as part of my new commitment to try to write something every day (increase frequency of posts, decrease frequency of “excuses” tag), I’m just going to direct you to the article and the thread on Abu Muqawama where I got scooped in the middle of the work day. Hopefully I’ll get back to this tomorrow, because I think there’s really a lot of interesting stuff to say about this. Gladwell has really only just nibbled at the edge of this subject, but his conclusion that “effort > skill” is noteworthy.

I should go ahead and say that you’re going to be interested in this article, whether you give a damn about the full-court press, or insurgency, or Phillistines, or OODA loops, or Ivan Arreguin-Toft (who, in addition to the work cited in the article, has done really interesting stuff on the [in]effectiveness of violence against noncombatants as a means to shorten wars or aid in their prosecution) or theories of asymmetric conflict. (Duh, that’s probably why Gladwell sells so many books.) So read it!

And so I leave you to it, and to digest the early thoughts of the counterinsurgency crowd (or at least the ones who have the time to read ten pages in the middle of the work day). I’m away from the office at a conference tomorrow, so no notes before tomorrow night, but we’ll get back to this. And in the meantime, hopefully I’ll come up with something else worth talking about.