Complexity, COVID, and the Failure 

of Strategic Incrementalism

Josh Kerbel

The speed, scope, and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on both 

the real and—even more so—virtual world underline how today’s

complexity is truly unprecedented. Nonetheless, evidence suggests the 

national security community remains ambivalent about the magnitude 

of the change. This ambivalence is problematic because it breeds 

incremental measures that are inadequate to the fundamentally new

and different nature of the challenge.

RESEARCH SHORT

October 1, 2020

What this is:

This report is the product 

of academic research. As the 

IC’s university, NIU is uniquely 

positioned to use academic 

approaches to research—and 

report on—subjects of interest 

to the community.

What this is not:

This is not finished intelligence. 

The opinions expressed in this 

report are solely the author’s 

and not those of the National 

Intelligence University, 

Defense Intelligence Agency, 

Department of Defense, or 

any other U.S. Government 

agency.

IMAGE FROM SHUTTERSTOCK

CATALYST Sparking constructive conversations 

about the future of intelligence
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If the COVID-19 pandemic proves anything, it is that the U.S. national security community is 

correct when it says that today’s world (i.e., post-Cold War and multipolar) is complex. 

And say it, it does. Take a look, for example, at three of the 

most recent strategy documents the community has produced. 

The 2017 National Security Strategy? Three times.2 The 2018 

National Defense Strategy (summary)? Four times. 3 The 

2019 National Intelligence Strategy (NIS)? Six times.4 And 

those are only the explicit mentions—the above counts do not 

include the many descriptive mentions of complexity that do 

not use the exact term.

However, these documents do not just say that today’s world

is complex. Almost all of these instances at least imply (and 

many are explicit) that the nature of today’s complexity is fundamentally different from the 

complexity of the past. Is that true? Moreover, does the national security community writ large 

really believe it? The answer to the first question is undoubtedly yes. The answer to the second 

question is—unfortunately—much less certain.

Extraordinary Complexity ...

The nature of today’s complexity is revolutionary, as the COVID-19 pandemic makes clear. 

Never in history has a pandemic been able to emerge and spread with the speed, global scope, 

and impact of COVID-19. Due largely to comprehensive modern transportation links and 

commerce patterns, there are few parts of the world and few people that are not physically 

accessible within 20 hours.5 Most conspicuously, the post-Cold War world has not only seen 

the largest piece of previously disconnected territory—Russia—connect and integrate, but it 

has also seen, in China, the largest previously disconnected population do the same. 

Given this growth in interconnectivity and interdependence, it is no wonder that COVID-19 

has been able to emerge and spread around the world in the exponential way it has. That 

emergent behavior—which would have been impossible during the Cold War because there 

just was not enough physical interconnectivity and interdependence—makes it hard to argue 

that the complexity of the post-Cold War era is not really different.

But even if one still somehow insists that the above does not represent anything fundamentally

different, what about the virtual world’s complexity? COVID-19’s physical impact has been 

matched and maybe exceeded by its virtual reach. This is largely due to the fact that only in 

the past 30 years has it become possible for anyone—not just governments, corporations, 

and/or the supremely wealthy—to effectively broadcast. Today, the World Wide Web (born 

only in 19896) permits anyone’s ideas, fears, hopes, information, lies—you name it—to rapidly 

and widely propagate. Is it any wonder then that COVID-19 could be perceived in so many, 

often conflicting, ways in the public health sphere? Not to mention the pandemic’s having such 

immediate and extraordinary impact in domains beyond public health?

A complex system is composed of a large 

number of interacting and interdependent 

components, without central control, 

whose emergent (i.e., nonlinear) behavior 

cannot be explained or predicted from 

understanding the sum of the behaviors of 

the individual components.1
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To illustrate this latter point, consider how quickly the COVID-19 pandemic has been able to 

bring the global economy to its knees. It took the Great Depression several years to reach its 

nadir. It took COVID-19 mere weeks to inflict similar economic damage.7 And because global 

Internet penetration is only at around 53.6 percent, that capability for emergent phenomena to 

virtually appear, propagate, and disrupt is only going to grow.8 All told, virtual interconnectivity 

and interdependence, as exemplified by COVID-19’s virtual transmission and amplification, 

give entirely new meaning and relevance to the expression “to go viral.” 

... Wait, Maybe Not

Despite the seemingly incontrovertible nature of the change described above, the national 

security community’s belief in the magnitude and significance of the change seems much less 

certain. A die-hard group of so-called complexity adherents—myself included—have been 

writing passionately and prolifically for decades now about the growing relevance of complexity 

science and perspectives to the post-Cold War national security environment. Indeed, collectively, 

we are probably the ones most responsible for the many mentions of complexity referenced above 

(as well as countless similar mentions in previous strategic documents and analyses). 

But looking beyond these various mentions/references to complexity in the midst of the 

COVID-19 pandemic, it has become clear that we have failed to make our point. To be blunt, 

the larger national security community does not really believe in the importance or significance 

of what we have been saying. While the community may have thrown us some bones, the truth 

is that we have been met with the response that Indiana Jones got at the end of Raiders of the 

Lost Ark: “... and it will be [studied], I assure you, Dr. Jones ... we have top men working on it 

right now.” Cue the ark being boxed up and buried deep in an immense government 

warehouse—the cinematic equivalent of a mention in a strategy document. 

How can we not be dealing with complexity within the national security community when 

references to complexity seem to be everywhere? Well, let’s start with the aforementioned 

strategy documents. Despite the specific complexity mentions referenced above, the bulk of 

the strategies themselves seem largely evolutionary in nature. That is to say, while the 

obligatory language of “innovation” is present throughout, the prescribed measures seem to be 

mostly about improvement and not so much about stopping something old and starting 

something new. 

For a particular example of this, consider the concept of “anticipatory intelligence” as most 

recently articulated in the 2019 NIS. The idea for what would eventually become the distinct 

intelligence discipline of anticipatory intelligence was originally conceived with 

unprecedented complexity in mind.9 The underlying notion was that in a complex world where 

phenomena—like pandemics—can suddenly emerge and propagate unconstrained, it is simply 

too late to respond once an issue has emerged. The description of anticipatory intelligence in 

the NIS explicitly acknowledges this stark reality but then quickly devolves into a mishmash 

of “improve,” “increase,” “expand,” and “reinforce.” That is to say, just enhancement (another 
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favored word throughout the document) of existing capabilities. In implementation, anticipatory 

intelligence has been watered down; it is no longer about doing something new and different, 

which was, of course, the original point. 

This seemingly reflexive tendency to quickly start 

discounting, downplaying, and/or dismissing the 

very complexity that was just acknowledged also 

tends to be the case as soon as one moves beyond 

the documents and starts to actually engage with 

national security practitioners. I speak to countless 

groups, classes, symposia, and meetings across the 

national security establishment every year, and in 

these assorted discussions the community’s 

enduring ambivalence regarding the magnitude of 

the change is often highlighted. It usually does not 

take long before someone, almost inevitably, will 

give voice to what many in the room really seem to 

be thinking: Well, the world has always been 

complex, hasn't it? (Heads nod.) After all, pandemics have happened forever. (Murmurs of 

assent.) Things aren’t really quite so different, are they? (Questioning looks aimed at me and 

sighs of relief.) 

The Cold War’s Complicated Legacy: Ambivalence 

and Unpreparedness

It is true that the world has always been complex on some level. No one seriously disputes that 

fact. Nor is it disputable that the national security community’s formative experience—even 

today—remains the Cold War. But the Cold War was not particularly complex; it was, in 

systems parlance, complicated.11 That is to say, it was essentially a two-body problem, and 

therefore it lacked the highly interconnected and interdependent conditions that spawn 

nonlinear (emergent) phenomena. All told, the Cold War’s primacy in the eyes of the national 

security community basically eclipsed the complexity of the larger world. But, even so, the 

complexity that did exist in the background—remember this was pre-World Wide Web—was 

simply lesser than that of today. 

This enduring prevalence of the Cold War’s complicated notions and the ambivalence with 

regard to complexity that those notions have bequeathed can be seen in how stunningly 

unprepared the national security community is for the complexity that it now confronts. For 

evidence, one again need only look at COVID-19. COVID-19 renders irrelevant most of the

traditional security assumptions—military, intelligence, diplomatic—upon which the national 

security community stands. COVID-19 has no central head to be decapitated, shocked, or awed. 

It has no ships, tanks, planes, or satellites. It has no classified plans to be stolen. And it cannot 

be bargained with, threatened, or persuaded to stand down. 

The textbook example for how an organization needs 

to change so as to be able to cope with extreme

complexity can be found in Team of Teams, coauthored 

by General Stanley McChrystal.10 In the book, he

examines the various cognitive, organizational, 

behavioral, and evaluative (feedback) changes, as well 

as other changes, that an organization must undertake 

to maintain its effectiveness and relevance in the new 

security environment. However, if you look around the 

national security community you will, unfortunately, 

still be hard pressed to find organizations that embody 

those characteristics.
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At the time of this writing, COVID-19 has killed more than 60 times the number of Americans 

killed on 9/11 and more than 75 times the number killed at Pearl Harbor. Moreover, many 

aspects of our society have been profoundly—and probably permanently—disrupted. When it 

comes to national security in today’s world, things truly are very different.

Globalization Is Reshaping Itself, Not Receding

Given the above, it is no wonder that the national security community would look for reasons to 

question this reality. The latest form this doubt takes is the argument that increasing complexity—

as manifested in globalization—has now probably crested and that developments like onshoring 

(sometimes called reshoring), 3-D printing, the increasing availability of viable local energy 

sources (e.g., fracking, wind, etc.), resurgent nationalism, the United States-China trade war, and 

the like will now start unwinding the world's interconnectivity and interdependence.12 This line of 

argumentation has been misleadingly bolstered by COVID-19 and the associated restrictions or 

constraints on physical movement that the pandemic has, at least temporarily, imparted. 

It is certainly true that globalization has been evolving for some time, and that process will 

surely be influenced in various ways by COVID-19. However, the old, physical measures of 

how much stuff is shipped around the world are no longer the best barometer of globalization.13

Today, the global economy is increasingly digital (i.e., virtual), and consequently the traditional 

metrics of trade (value of shipped goods) no longer capture the, well, complexity of the modern 

supply chain.14

Furthermore, for whatever crimp on physical interconnectivity and interdependence the COVID19 pandemic may have helped impose, its effect has been the exact opposite in virtual/digital terms. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen virtual interconnectivity and interdependence spike as 

impeded physical links have been compensated for and/or overcome by virtual ones.15 People will 

eventually go back to the office and school. But teleworking, online education, and other growing 

virtual connections are unlikely to shrink back to pre-pandemic levels.16

All told, the world’s interconnectivity and interdependence are not so much going to unwind 

as take on new forms and patterns—especially virtual. And these new manifestations must 

become primary drivers for how the national security community conceives of itself, its roles, 

and its responsibilities. Nation-states and traditional military threats still matter. However, 

short of outright war (and maybe even then), their power will probably be determined more by 

their ability to manipulate the world’s interconnectivity and interdependence—networks: 

political, economic, social, and military—than by traditional military power.

Unprecedented Complexity Demands Unprecedented Strategies 

At the end of the day, the essential question that still needs to be asked is: why does it matter

if the national security community truly believes in the fundamental nature of the change that 
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today’s complexity represents? Well, the answer is not that complex—it is actually quite 

simple: fundamental change demands fundamental changes. 

Unfortunately, to look at the national security community’s changes—both proposed in 

assorted strategies and concrete in implementation—is to see mostly incremental initiatives 

aimed at improving, enhancing, upgrading, reinforcing, and the like. Oftentimes these 

incremental changes get characterized in “powerful” terms—better!, stronger!, faster!, 

smarter!—that are practically Orwellian in that they aim to “give an appearance of solidity to 

pure wind.”17 As good as they sound (who does not want to be better, stronger, faster, and 

smarter?), what these characterizations too often really mean is that the national security 

community is just going to keep on doing more of what it has been doing. But just doing more 

of the same in this vastly more complex strategic landscape is not going to cut it. What is 

needed is something truly different.

It is often said that the first step in any effort to change is to acknowledge you have a problem. 

Perhaps, if there is a positive to be found in the tragedy that is the COVID-19 pandemic, it will 

be the acknowledgement—for real—by the national security community that the world’s 

complexity represents a strategic challenge that is fundamentally different. And in turn, 

hopefully it will recognize just how unprepared its incremental strategies have undeniably 

left it.

Josh Kerbel is a member of the research faculty at the National Intelligence University. He writes 

frequently about complexity and its implications for the U.S. Government in general and the IC

in particular.

If you have comments, questions, or a suggestion for a Research Short topic or article, please contact 

the NIU Office of Research at NIU_OOR@dodiis.mil.
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Endnotes

1 Adapted from: https://www.complexityexplorer.org/explore/glossary/391-complex-system.

2 National Security Strategy of the United States of America, The White House, December 2017, 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.

3 Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, Department of Defense, 

https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf.

4 National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of America 2019, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/National_Intelligence_Strategy_2019.pdf.

5 Bryan Walsh, “COVID-19: The History of Pandemics,” BBC Future, March 25, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/

future/article/20200325-covid-19-the-history-of-pandemics

6 “A Short History of the Web,” CERN, https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web/short-history-web.

7 Nouriel Roubini, “The Coronavirus Has Delivered the Fastest, Deepest Economic Shock in History,” Guardian, 

March 25, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/25/coronavirus-pandemic-has-delivered-thefastest-deepest-economic-shock-in-history.

8 “Percentage of Global Population Accessing the Internet from 2005 to 2019, by Market Maturity,” Statista, 

November 2019, https://www.statista.com/statistics/209096/share-of-internet-users-in-the-total-world-populationsince-2006/.

9 The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of America, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 

October 2005, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/NISOctober2005.pdf.

10 General Stanley McChrystal et al., Team of Teams: New Rules for Engagement for a Complex World (New York: 

Penguin Publishing Group, 2015).

11 John M. Kamensky, Managing the Complicated vs. the Complex, Business of Government, http://www.business

ofgovernment.org/sites/default/files/JohnKamensky.pdf. 

12 Sara Silverstein, “Ian Bremmer Breaks Down Trump’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis,” Business Insider, 

https://www.businessinsider.com/ian-bremmer-breaks-down-trump-response-coronavirus-crisis-china-gzero-2020-3.

13 Shawn Donnan and Lauren Leatherby, “Globalization Isn’t Dying, It’s Just Evolving,” Bloomberg, July 23, 2019, 

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-globalization/.

14 Donnan and Leatherby, “Globalization Isn’t Dying.”

15 Adam Clark Estes, “Why the Internet (Probably) Won’t Break During the Coronavirus Pandemic,” Vox, March 25, 

2020, https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/25/21188391/internet-surge-traffic-coronavirus-pandemic.

16 Derek Thompson, “The Workforce Is About To Change Dramatically: Three Predictions for What the Future Might 

Look Like,” The Atlantic, August 6, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/just-small-shiftremote-work-could-change-everything/614980/.

17 George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/72/30.pdf.