About Me

I’m interested in, and intrigued by, many things. Most notably by aspects of cyber security but especially the strategic and decision making side; by wargaming as a practice and a methodology; by systems thinking and systems thinkers, and by the benefits of curation over collation.

I’m currently trying to answer the following questions, in no particular order1:

  • How can we measure the appropriateness of an analogy?
  • How can I help bring the benefits of professional wargaming to a wider audience?
  • What is the easiest and simplest way to create a platform for text and image based online games over existing services?
  • What is a strategy, and how do you separate it from doctrine, or tactics, or a plan, or a playbook?
  • Which variants of popular games make them useful and educational, or at least more fun?
  • What general strategies improve the likelihood of victory regardless of specific context?
  • How do I enable sidenotes on this blog, inspired by Danila Fedorin’s blog post: https://danilafe.com/blog/sidenotes/
  • How to make money from my generalist approach, and my predominent interest in the connections and similarities between fields, rather than specialisms.
  • How virtual or modelled representations of phenomenon, such as game economies, can help us understand their more complex counterparts.

Slightly more esoteric:

  • What is the offensive equivalent of DAMROD-C; and what are the differences in red team thinking against an adversary, and against an idea?
  • How can Zero Knowledge Proofs by useful in enabling players to exchange assumptions without exchanging knowledge in un-facillitated games?

My record of personal areas representing what people need, but not what they want:

  • Red Team Thinking or Adversarial Analysis - a “critical friend” approach to finding issues with plans or assumptions at the earliest possible stages.
  • Wargame based exploration of future plans and strategies to “fail fast” but with the absolute minimum cost and effort.
  • “Fuelled Coaching” - a consultancy/coaching approach based mainly on natural interest in other’s success, and fast iterative problem solving.

I intend to keep this site as simple as possible, for easy accessibility by people and programs alike, and also for my benefit.

My work website is here: https://www.pathdependence.co.uk/ , it isn’t updated and upgraded as often as it should be.

This blog will have no posting schedule.


  1. With a hat-tip to Meredith for putting this down so plainly, inspired by her list here: https://www.systempoetics.com/lists/questions↩︎