Historical outcomes are approximated with game theory and game simulations. However, games also have predictive values when a model is constructed. This is a conceptual framework of the geopolitical events in Ukraine and Russia.
he stated russians should not gain land and smth about see-saw, while in reality russians already gained 25% of ukraine and destroyed 4 ukrainian armies weaponized and trained by the whole NATO feeded with NATO survailance data. First ukrainian army was destroyed by russians at 3 to 1 disadvantage. This analysis is pure copium bullshit.
I was wondering when you would release a new video. Thanks for this. I really like sane analysis of the numbers. It helps keep the emotions down to focus on the problem/dilemma at hand.
This video can be divided into two parts: 1. Game theory analysis of frontline changes and explanation of the meaning and effects of army strength ratios in modern warfare 2. Ideological pronouncements about the evils of the Russian regime, the goodness of Ukraine and Western-style "Liberal Democracy", and grand whig-historical teleological narratives
TBF "the evils of the Russian regime" is just objective truth at this point..... only an evil fascist sympathiser would disagree on that after seeing what's been going on with Russia since Putin took control.
Before the invasion, Ukraine was frequently described by western media as being anti-democratic, anti-free speech, and unbelievably corrupt. None of that has changed, but the media has swapped out Russia for Ukraine when they run those stories. It all looks a bit silly to anyone that's been paying attention over the years
Just what my statistics professor kept saying, “you will find digression analysis quite useful”, my eyes rolled. Years later had to admit he was right on.
I haven't known where to even begin with helping others see how game theory plays into this war. Thank you for showing this. It is not easy to explain.
Not a genius. Just someone who knows what he is talking about. A rare sight nowadays unfortunately. None of the things said in the video are revolutionairy or groundvraking but still true. I agree that those old school games had more emphasis on the actual matter - game play and probability tabkes and tgat newer ones cobcentrate on broader appeal to the masses to compete with other spectacular visualy appealing action filled games.
Modern games have the goal of psychologically drawing you in and keeping you playing (and where applicable, manipulating you into buying). The old war games, the strategic simulation games Mark is talking about (from SSI) aren’t designed for player enjoyment. They’re designed for historical accuracy and accuracy of the model. This is why such games weren’t popular. They attracted a specific audience: people with plastic organizer boxes for organizing little square cardboard pieces that represented military units. I’m not disagreeing with you, just elaborating on what you said.
I played D-Day, Jutland, Tobruk, Squad Leader, Tactics II, Stalingrad, Russian Campaign. The list goes on and on. I did play 1776 a couple times. A friend had it.
Mark is an old war gaming nerd! You love to see it. I’m not nearly as optimistic about the “Great Reforming” as Mark. But he’s spot on about the usefulness of the framework he’s demonstrating.
Pretty sure it's a fascinating presentation behind the overlay :D Maybe next time use a plexiglass display and later mirror it, like some online courses do it. I forgot to subscribe, although I love your content. Done and thanks!
Possibly the most intelligent presentation of the conflict I have watched in two years of this war. I hope some of the other channels I watch will refer to this presentation because it is an excellent message. BYW when you have a new video, I always watch it first. It is clear you get satisfaction with each video and in my opinion each of your videos keeps getting better in my opinion. See you soon
I agree it's intelligent and empiric by American standards. If you like intelligent stronger on deep inside first-hand knowledge and philosophy rather than statistics, i suggest these three chanells: Silicon Curtain, Vlad Vexler and Inside Russia.
@@bjorntorlarsson, Gingus Kahn and the Sturips on the riding Pad (eventually became the Saddle, & Napoleon and his Personal God given Talent for aiming Smooth Bore Cannon
Please do more Game theory videos about this war. I actually had a model myself. It was essentially broken into three categories. Attacker wins, draw and defender eins which is the same setup as chess which has been modeled earlier. Since the defender consoders two out of the three a success the defender gets a coefficient of 2 and the defender gets a 1. Next two open variables one for each side that allows thenupdating of priors. Priors are based on open source databases like Oryx. Thus in an abstract world you'd need twice as many attackers as defenders to find the equilibrium. The thing got surprisingly accurate results if we go by the open source numbers well within the MOE.
You have some good points. Like you, i think wulith pencil and paper. Also, numbers dont lie. You can weight a computer program to say what you want to hear, but columns of numbers and simple math, though slow, is hard to fudge.
Thanks for this video. Great concept and information. The numbers you cite for attacking vs defending forces works here in Ukraine because both sides are somewhat evenly matched in equipment and technology. In fact, they are both drawing from the same original pool of equipment. This breaks down when there are technological advantages. Iraq is a great example. In their war with Iran, in the 1980s, that turned into a stalemate. Both sides had a similar number of forces. It was long and bloody, with no real strategic result in the end. The Gulf War was totally different. The west never did have an overwhelming number of troops. It was air power, intelligence and superiority of equipment that decided the issue. In the Iraq War of 2003, the US force that invaded and destroyed the Iraqi army and state was actually much smaller. Again, it was air power and technology that made the difference. The term often used is "force multiplier". This is actually possible to calculate. In both cases Iraq had plenty of time to create defensive obstacles and fortifications, which they did, in depth. The US side had plans and methods to overcome these, which it did. In Ukraine the Ukrainians do not have this capability. The missing element is air power to suppress the opposing forces while breaking through the defenses. This is the problem Ukraine has in the south. It is also the problem the Russians have in the Kharkiv assault. That said, if Ukraine finally gets F-16s into operation and is able to use long range fires to attack Russian troop concentrations in Russia itself, then the situation totally changes. This is starting to happen, and it changes the details of the equation, not the concept itself.
Interesting fact is that the Soviet and now Russian “professional” officer corps are probably more focused than any other military on breaking down all the factors into numbers to determine best strategies. The problem that they have been encountering is that they don’t have accurate numbers or anything close to an accurate picture, and they’re being tasked by leaders that are even less in possession of the facts.
@@MarcosElMalo2 At least they have Shovels that works and they use them goodddddddddddd :) So not too much of a problems with numbers for Russians :) What is happening around Kharkiv, now ?
Good analysis! This war is very atypical in the sense Russia never gained air superiority and UAF’s minimal Soviet air power was eliminated in 2022. UAF’s successes were superior use of drones, ATACMS, Javelins, ample artillery and shells from NATO, and daily intelligence reports from NATO. The UAF was the beneficiary of gaining secrets about the Russian operations in real time. Another factor was Russia losing generals and colonels in unprecedented shocking numbers. Early on there were Russian logistical lapses with sparse medical care and depleted food stockpiles. Early on the UAF bombed many logistical depots. Another interesting aspect of the war is that the Russians couldn’t stop the NATO transit of weapons into Ukraine. Lastly, NATO accomplished considerable high level training for the UAF army. What the UAF accomplished over the last 2 plus years is amazing given the presumed competence and ability of the Russian army.
Our small fleet of old Soviet airplanes wasn't eliminated in 2022: on the day of the invasion, the planes weren't where RuZZia expected them to be. Some airports got bombed, but the military planes were moved to other locations just before the full-scale invasion. This is one of the reasons why RuZZia failed to gain air superiority in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion.
@EconLessons you don't need to improve your editing. Your content is so good it doesn't matter whether you get fancy or not. Your content is awesome, and I'm glad that you're here on RU-vid.
Kamikaze drones have existed for a while now -- Switchblade is just one example. What Ukrainians did was they took a normal off-the-shelf commercial drone with a camera (or a bracket for mounting a camera) and attached a home-made release mechanism. This transformed a regular drone into a small bomber. That's what the Ukrainian innovation was: transforming a regular toy that costs a couple of $100 into either a small tactical "bomber" or/and a kamikaze drone.
Mark this is your best video ever 😮. I need your help understanding Tony Seba and Rethink X. As an economist and an entrepreneur I have been recreating cost curves for new technologies and looking at the geo-political landscape. Either my numbers are way off or we’re in for a hell of a ride in the next 3 to 5 years.
My dad always spoke of the importance of math as it relates to what invariably happens in life....your work clearly defines that principle....yes your channel deserves far more views....👍
This depends on arbitrary input of firepower of different weapon system and availability of their ammunition etc. If the numbers are tuned to past battles do we have solid conversion of firepower numbers to today's realities or not? Because it is basically the variable that determines results here and de facto conflates all the strong variables that are not mentioned. So is this actually impartial analysis tool or rather a method for self-delusion where we input arbitrary data to to match our wish, e.g. the ending words of this presentation?
Thanks for the videos you make. You bring refreshing new perspectives to solving things. And so true, the actions of all human beings in the human race have, in the big picture, a purpose in this universe.
geopolitical and economic go hand in hand. As Clausewitz said paraphrasing through James Coburn in Cross of Iron(not said by him), War is continuation of state policy by other means.
Thank you for this perspective, woule love to see current data in one of these models to see how it measures up.....fog of war can make getting accurate/equivalent data on troop numbers/comparable levels of fire power tricky. Maybe NASA FiRMS data would be useful. Also, there is some incredible osint work by a chap called Andrew Perpetetua and his team who have been geolocating/cataloguing/reporitng daily on the Ukrainian and Russian equipment losses - i wonder if this data could be be used to imply fire power based on what has been destroyed / lost. Woulr love to see some more videos about this! Thank-you for making it!
Interesting, but I wonder how it is possible to insert more nebulous components such as morale, charisma of commanders or sense of justice or revenge etc. For instance, would be interesting to see how this would work in the battle of Gaugamela or Issus, or Austerlitz; essentially in any battle where the odds appear to be in favour of the side but which actually lost severely.
It’s surprisingly hard a good gametheory analysis of the war today. Please create a much longer video of you making a table like this. I will watch it all.
Yes, old school is best. You have to focus on what matters and you can’t prerend you have a good model by using effects like sound and sleak graphics. I have never heard about that company, I need to check it out. Ideally, I think you should be able to save the framework and inputs as a text or excel file if that makes sense. Then you can tweak or extend the model if you find something wanting. I like it when thingd are made ”by hand” which I think means that Excel is Ok because it doesn’t hide anything
I have been wondering today what the optimal level of hierarchy is for societal and economic flourishing. Is there an optimal level of hierarchy, or are dynamism and porosity of hierarchies more important and relevant?
I think the more decentralized the better generally by today's standards, however, it is complex problem because obviously life is not fair and does not work like a college microeconomics text book.
@@EconLessons Jonathan Pageau has said that hierarchy requires emergence and emanation in equal measure to be maximally real and effective, but I wonder if purely emergent hierarchy is a viable option. And if so, would it be a form of emanation if the basic substrate from which hierarchy emerged was formulated to disincentivize authoritarianism? I guess it remains to be seen.
You mention a set of technologies, Project-R and SPSS, for doing statistics. These are just tools. I did lots of statistics, primarily for simulations, in fields ranging from rom High Energy Physics to economics, using a basic programming language, FORTRAN. That was early in my career. I later used the tools you mention, among others.
This video forced me to recall the second grade of university and how far ago it was. Warm saturday, exams are near, I'm looking in the window thinking about how it's freaking boring and how it's useless, full of dreams about a bright future, and didn't even realize that future may be so evil as I would recall this knowledge to understand how do the war consumes people.
Instead of a superimposed post it note which is meaningless to most essentially, and cut off partially from view, why not draw on a white board? I’m having trouble following, yet im interested.
I say it as Ukrainian. Your formula misses the capacities. Human resources, economy, support (that reduces), political system strength, social capacity, buget issues, migration, state efficiency. I They all low in Ukraine. I can't put in the formula, but the feeling and play of those mechanics produce in my head only negative outcomes. Max 1-2 years and collapse under the pressure of bunch of issues.
Thanks, Mark! I am familiar with the system having played it for years. I still have many of the games! I believe that this is helpful in understanding the lack of progress over the last 6 months. When the Russians broke through, and could attack a Ukrainian unit form 2 or 3 sides, they advanced as they had the advantage. Without an advantage, the Russians haven't gained any significant ground. Now that the Ukrainians are receiving more ammunition, they may be presented with opportunities, where they may have the advantage.
The lesson in war gaming is very interesting, thank you! (Spock may have said that but Stalin did say "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.")
Prior to Montgomery beating Rommel at the Battle of Alamein, Montgomery fell out with Churchill for almost constant demands of armaments. I can’t remember exactly the numerical advantage Montgomery had, and it’s worth noting that Rommel’s supply lines were also being hit, but it was something in the order of 6 to 1.
My newest favorite channel or at least among the current top 10. I have yet to catch up on the important videos, which appear to have deep enough inferences as not to age, even though timely events are being discussed. In this video, the reference to democracy v. autocracy, which is the global turning point, the current global, indicated to me that Mr BeerNot (I will need to check spelling.) is grasping the big picture, which gives me confidence in the future analysis I will be consuming from him.
At the start of the war we were hearing pundits say that Russia had 10x the resources of Ukraine. During the assaults by Russia, we were hearing a 5 to 7 kill ratio. Fifth grade math says that even a 7 to 1 ratio is not enough for Ukraine, if the pundits were right in the first days of invasion. It was a political move to attempt the idiot offensive last summer, rather than fortifying the defenses and adding lines beyond the normal 3, while hollowing out the Russians and the supply lines, which was how they retook Kherson, and that should have been the map and model for pushing out Russia. The Russians are using chemical weapons and gas masks will need to be purchased to fortify the trenches. The purpose of the war is to destabilize Putin and topple Russian confidence in Derhava, Russian as the Second Rome and the chosen nation of God and right to expand to become the greatest nation on Earth. 400 years of bad Russian writings, with recent psychological trauma from the collapse of the Soviet union, is what we are dealing with. If Russia prevails, this will reinforce these old Russian ideas of superiority and the need to dominate rather than contribute things of value to its own citizens and the World. If Russia fails, they will need to focus on their own internal economy and government restructuring that doesn't include invading it's neighborhood to fulfill its manifest destiny as the greatest nation on the planet.... Yes, this is real Hitler 2.0 Russian ideas we in the west are facing. But it's really a mix of ideas and psychology trauma and history rewriting for the Tsar--the legacy, which fuels the Russian desire of empire, build on mass graves of its own and the conquered.
The above is why the West and free East supports its own style of government and it own sons'lives, by continuing to send aid to Ukraine. It is about hollowing out Putin and defanging the tyrant, modern tzar, usurper of the Russian democracy.
Speaking of games .. has anyone else noticed how seldom (more like never) Russians factor US material aid into their boasting about WW2 victory? I ask this because not too long ago I read the book, "Stalin's War" by Sean McMeekin. The amount of stuff we sent to the Soviets was absolutely stupendous. There are products still on the market today that we designed for the taste and battlefield nutritional needs of Soviet soldiers, such as Spam. We sent weapons, ammo, propellants, explosives, vehicles of many kinds, boats, ship, aircraft of many kinds, trucks by the thousands, oil, lubricants, fuels of different kinds. So while they may boast that it was their mass charging of enemy positions while screaming "Hurrah" that made all the difference, it remains a buried, unpatriotic, and unmentioned truth in the neo-USSR that American stuff (and sht tons of it) is what made their victory possible. Whole generations have been raised on the myth of the invincible red army. You see now how the war goes for them when limited amounts of western material aid are available to Ukraine - and what we give Ukraine presently is nothing like the amounts or variety we gave to the USSR back in the day.
@@surelyyoujokemeinfailure7531 I'm not sure about the McMeekin book but the Glantz/House book "When Titans Clashed: how the Red Army Stopped Hitler" is the seminal work on the topic.
@@ftboomer1 There's no doubt that Soviets did a lot of fighting. The amount of material aid is pretty substantial. They would have had a harder, longer struggle without it.
Thanks for the great video Mark. The prediction markets is what the CIA would use to predict the futue, though for some reason I only see political prediction markets on the internet anymore.
hahah Im still a big board wargame fan and player to this day, first started playing board wargames in 1980 with my first played games being Bundeswehr and Titan strike by SPI. Still continue to play and collect board wargames to this day. and I have even graduated to playtesting board wargames for Decision games board wargame magazine like strategy & tactics, modern war and world at war and various independent board wargame designers like Ben Madison, heck even wrote historical articles for those magzines and reviews on paper wars.as well as got a board wargame called Storm over Taierzhuang 1938 published for Against the Odds magazne.
@@EconLessons loved SPI however the majority of my games were from Avalon Hill. and yah SPI was massive but It was hard to get them outside the USA, I used to live in Manila , Philippines in the 70s to the early 90s and got my board wargames from Japan, Hong Kong and locally and at the time Avalon Hill was jsut all over the place like you can buy them in Hong Kong and Japnaese department stores while SPI games were rare. My first board wargame that I collected was Samurai from Avalon hill bought from a Daimaru dept store in Osaka Japan. The first hex CRT game I collected was Operation Konrad designed by Perry Moore published by Close Simulations bought from a Hong Kong book store in Kowloon back in 85.
I still don't understand why there is still a stigma on war games "simplifying human suffering into a children's play." Guess it's because of the word "game." But they are very important, even more so during wars, not only to understand a bit of what's going on, but to try and save lives. Thanks a lot for sharing this. I remember this book "How to make war" by James F. Dunnigan and it's incredible how accurate it still is, especially about attacking and defending, using tanks, etc. For instance, the book mentions that an attacker needs a 3:1 ratio at minimum to have any real chance of success, but also that a platoon level, the ratio can go as high as 10:1.
I grew up playing those hex-grid war games. One I remember, World War II, from England to Russia, took up a whole ping-pong table (and maybe a card table on the side). War as a matter of logistics is more evident in that type of board game. Morale is also very important--I remember one game where a leader like Julius Caesar increased local battle odds. Anders Nielsen, from Denmark, a military commentator, also speaks of "will" as an important factor. Who will persevere more, and when through politics, the people will overthrow Putin, as a possible example, because they've had enough suffering and see no positive outcome with the current regime. My teacher says, "It is a matter of the *greatest* present-time urgency that the prevailing global mood of political separatism, end-game competitiveness, and endlessly multiplied divisiveness be immediately and thoroughly and universally and permanently relinquished--such that the entire world-population of humankind becomes universally intelligent with the heart-positive mind of cooperation and tolerance." --from the essay: C+T=P: Formula For World Peace, from Not-Two *Is* Peace, The Ordinary People's Way of Global Cooperative Order, by the World-Friend, Adi Da
Good plan. Get absolutely everyone to agree on absolutely everything across the whole planet. Let's use western democracy, a system built entirely on dividing populations against themselves, to achieve this.
Russia knows this strategy and is trying to beat it by non-stop attacks, and if Russia army stalls, Ukraine takes advantage. Ps, I love the Spock quote. Thanks, Mark.
There are already a bunch of board wargames published on the current war In Ukraine and the 2014 Ukraine war. and for future reference also a bunch of wargames on a future Russian civil war.
Game theory is subjective and doesn't exactly copy non-materialistic behavior. Lol. If the russian regime, just focused on material gains, then it might work, as it sometimes works in economics.
