Pacifica | A Tale of Data Centers, Clean Water, and the Purpose of Government

Every organization exists for a reason. It has some purpose, something it’s supposed to achieve. And if we can’t measure whether we’re making progress toward that purpose, how do we know whether we’re doing a good job? We can measure how much money an organization spends. We can measure how many people it employs. We can measure whether its paperwork is turned in on time. But none of those things tells us whether the organization is achieving the reason it exists. A measurable objective tells us what success looks like. It allows us to turn intent into accountability. That doesn’t mean everything important can be reduced to a number. But when we’re spending other people’s money, we owe them some way to judge whether the effort is working. If you aren’t readily familiar, the United States has six goals, as outlined in the Constitution Preamble: union, justice, domestic tranquility, defense, general welfare, and liberty. Let’s think about how we get from those very broad goals to the things our government actually does every day. To get there, let’s start in a fictional region called Pacifica. In Pacifica there are two cities, Sonora and Mojave. They share a river. Sonora sits upstream. Mojave downstream. Sonora has been building data centers. Its economy benefits from them, and the facilities consume substantial quantities of electricity and water. Sonora is doing a poor job regulating what happens to the water. They are contaminating the river, and Mojave depends on clean water to grow food. Mojave has tried talking to Sonora. Its leaders have complained, negotiated, and asked for better controls. Sonora hasn’t responded in any meaningful way. As conditions deteriorate, Mojave begins to view Sonora’s disregard for its water supply as a hostile act. Mojave would rather solve the problem diplomatically. But its leadership also asks its Department of Defense to develop options if diplomacy fails. The obvious military answer might be to destroy the data centers. After all, if the data centers are the problem, why not remove them? But Mojave’s planners are cunning. They know that destroying them would be a terrible way to achieve what Mojave wants. It could require a great deal of force, consume resources Mojave may need later, and create enough resentment to spark a much larger war. And there is no guarantee that destroying the facilities would restore the river. Depending on what is damaged, it could make the contamination worse. Then, having spent so much on the first attempt, Mojave might have little options left if it fails. So they think of alternatives. Sonora’s data centers need electricity, and they get it from multiple sources: a solar field, a coal-fired power plant, and wind turbines. The planners consider whether electricity to the data centers might be interrupted without destroying the facilities themselves. The idea isn’t to devastate Sonora. It is to demonstrate that continuing to disregard the river carries a cost, while leaving some way back to negotiation. Even a limited option is dangerous. Infrastructure may serve civilians as well as data centers. Sonora could retaliate. A threat intended to end a dispute could make it worse. Military planners don’t get to know in advance whether the assumptions on which their plan rests will hold. And this is where the objective matters. Mojave’s objective isn’t to destroy data centers, power plants, or transmission lines. Its objective is clean water for its intended agricultural use, today and tomorrow. There are different ways to get there. Some involve military force. Some don’t. Mojave could achieve the objective through negotiation without firing a shot. Its military could execute every assigned action perfectly and still fail to restore the water. Now imagine the commander assigned to develop and conduct those operations. While the commander works on the conflict, higher headquarters is also asking about personnel records, maintenance records, training documentation, and late performance reports. Maybe a quarter of the annual personnel reports are overdue. The headquarters wants that paperwork fixed. Those requirements aren’t imaginary, and some matter directly to operations. A broken maintenance process can cost lives. But reducing overdue personnel reports from 25 percent to zero would never tell us whether the river has gotten any cleaner. A unit can be busy. A unit can be compliant. A unit can have beautiful spreadsheets showing all the things it did. None of those things, by themselves, prove it achieved its mission. Pacifica is only an illustration. We don’t need to know whether Mojave attacks, or whether Sonora eventually cooperates. The question is what they’re trying to achieve, and whether the things they measure tell them they’re getting there. Pacifica is fictional. The distinction between an operational objective and the administration of a military unit is not. Inside the Department of Defense, strategic planning guidance connects what military organizations do to what the nation is trying to achieve. This isn’t a theoretical exercise. There’s a hierarchy of guidance. The President issues a National Security Strategy. The Secretary of Defense develops a National Defense Strategy. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff develops a National Military Strategy to describe how military power supports those higher objectives. There is also the Guidance for Employment of the Force, which military planners use as they develop plans for specific regions and problems. From there the guidance flows through combatant commands, campaign plans, contingency plans, and down to the units that execute missions. The point isn’t that every pilot sits down each morning and reads the National Security Strategy before climbing into an airplane. The point is that there is a reason for the mission. It connects to an operational objective, which connects to a larger strategic objective, which ultimately connects to something the United States is trying to achieve. And once we know the objective, we can ask whether we’re making progress. A measure of performance might tell us whether an aircraft flew its assigned sortie or completed a particular task. A measure of effectiveness asks a harder question: did that activity produce the result we wanted? Of course, that same military unit also has to administer itself. Maintenance records, training records, operational reports, inspections, evaluations of its people. Every year, the military produces personnel performance reports much like any employee evaluation. An operational unit has to do both jobs: accomplish its assigned mission and keep the organization running. This administration is necessary. If an aircraft isn’t maintained, no one flies it. If nobody knows who is qualified to perform a task, that’s an operational problem. But let’s not confuse everything we can track with everything that deserves equal priority. A late performance report matters to a person’s career. It doesn’t tell you whether the unit can achieve its wartime objective. There are two systems of measurement living inside the same organization. One asks whether the unit is making progress toward the mission. The other asks whether the unit is managing itself. We need both, but the first tells us why the unit exists. The second ought to help it do that work, not become the work. This isn’t just a military problem. It’s a government problem. Consider the United States Department of Agriculture. The Department administers programs for agriculture, research, conservation, rural development, and housing, among other responsibilities. USDA’s Small Business Innovation Research program includes a topic called Rural and Community Development. Its stated objective is to improve quality of life in rural America through the development and commercialization of technologies addressing economic and social challenges. USDA also has a Rural Housing Service. It provides loans, grants, and lo… Get full access to I Believe at joelkdouglas.substack.com/subscribe