Peter Ho's Menagerie

The following sections are included:

• FOREWORD: SENIOR MINISTER AND COORDINATING MINISTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
• PREFATORY APPRECIATION: ON PETER HO: SCHOLAR, SAILOR, STRATEGIST PAR EXCELLENCE
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• ABOUT THE EDITORS
• ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Introducing Change
• Part I: The Players: Basic Tensions and Internal Conflicts
• An Interim Summary: Basic Obstacles and Remedies
• Part II: Some Test Cases (Different Ecosystem Models)
• The American Model
• The Rest of the World
• The Israeli Model
• Part III: Israeli Technology Ecosystem Structure
• Operations/Technology Integration
• Part IV: A Guide for the Perplexed: A Very Short Summary and Some Recommendations
• Acknowledgment
• Endnotes

The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) has evolved and transformed many times in its history since it was established in 1965, with each change driven by some large external or internal factor. Behind each incarnation, there was always a leader or a group of persons who were central to the change. During his tenure as Permanent Secretary (Defence Development) and then as Permanent Secretary (Defence), Peter, supported by a group of like-minded lieutenants, made transformation a rallying cry, fostering an environment of disruption and technology breakthroughs. I would like in what follows to share my memories about the trail of transformation which Peter helped lay. The trail was not blazed by Peter alone, nor will it end with Peter. But the segment of this transformation path which he reinforced was paved richly with numerous deep insights, creative initiatives, impactful projects, and long-term mindset and organisational changes. These are signposts that will guide and support future leaders traversing the path…

Peter played a pivotal role in shaping and transforming the defence technology ecosystem in MINDEF. I had the privilege of working with him up close during his term as Permanent Secretary (Defence Development), First Permanent Secretary (Defence) and then Permanent Secretary (Defence) from the late 1990s to early 2000s. During that period, I was involved in the task force looking into the corporatisation of the Defence Science Organisation, the formation of the Directorate of Research and Development (DRD), and the transformation of the Defence Technology Group (DTG) comprising various departments in MINDEF into the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), as well as working closely with him in establishing international defence technology cooperation…

Peter Ho was in Washington DC when 9/11 happened. His immediate reaction — and by now it has entered into our national security folklore — was a simple yet profound utterance: “9/11 has changed everything“. On his return to Singapore, he immediately did something about it.

Systematically, Peter set to work. First, he used an existing Ops Group to review the security measures we had in place then. Peter made the point quite strongly to the economic agencies that they now had to invest in security, and that in this post-9/11 world, such investments would indeed be a competitive advantage. The government led by example: we paid for the checkpoint and provided the SAF troops to protect Jurong Island. We implemented similar measures for Changi Airport and Sembawang wharves…

‘Black elephant’ is such a clever phrase that it is hard not to see it as an example of what it describes. Like other kinds of beasts, vivid and witty metaphors can be under our noses for years, awaiting the rare individuals who can sniff them out. I don’t know whether Peter Ho was prime sniffer for ‘black elephant’, or merely an early adopter, but I am indebted to him for the term, either way…

As a Professor in the War Studies Department at King’s College London over the last 15 years I have specialised in the history and study of intelligence analysis and its part in helping decision-takers make sounder decisions by reducing their ignorance of what they actually face. Before I came to academic life, I had spent a full career working in the worlds of UK defence, security and intelligence. The same questions kept recurring. Can intelligence, policy and scientific analysis identify and describe, sufficiently far in advance, the major disruptions and potential crises likely to face government, and identify how events may play out given different governmental responses? How do those fields of objective rational enquiry interact with the passions of democratic politics and the cognitive biases to which all humans are subject? How would a wise government organise itself to benefit from analytic insights and promote a culture in which policymakers and analysts alike learn from the experiences of the past, and apply those lessons in today’s digitised world of the Internet, cyber threats, big data and AI?…

These thoughts are written in acknowledgment of my long-standing colleague and friend, Peter Ho, with whom I have worked over the past 20 years. I have many memories over that time. One that stands out in particular is a conversation at a joint business meeting about the ability of colleagues to identify and to understand “Black Swans”, whatever that expression might mean. Peter came in straight away with the explanation that “Black Swan” was an unnecessarily complicated concept. He always thought of the “Black Elephant”, in particular the “Black Elephant in the Room”. In brief, the elephant was there and you should certainly see it. But for some reason people just refused to see it. (At least, that was my interpretation of his remark)…

The following sections are included:

• Saturday Morning, Some Time Ago
• Linearity to Complexity
• Prediction to Strategic Futures
• Efficiency to Resilience
• Quantitative to Mixed Methods
• Harnessing Psychology
• Synergy, Fractals and Other Beginnings

If a visitor to Singapore, interested in policy planning and strategy, were to walk into the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), comprising seven agencies and two statutory boards that support and advise the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, he would meet many civil servants speaking fluently of scenario planning, future proofing, future -ready, future-thinking. This is especially with the economic, trade, technology and urban planning ministries. This language is prevalent currency and there is a shared vocabulary in all ministries of reading trends and future planning. This reflex has a strong tradition and history developed in the new nation and could be described as the DNA of the Singapore political and administrative leaders…

When I think of Peter Ho I think of innovation, effective execution, and service. His many initiatives blend together in the broad area of “governance in a complex world”, but within this are components such as foresight, horizon scanning and strategic futures; complexity, wicked problems, and transformation; planning and governance; plus smart and resilient communities, not to mention unusual zoology (“black elephants”). Besides being part of the broader governance area, these also have parts that link directly to my own experiences in the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), academia at the U.S. National Defense University (NDU) in Washington DC and George Mason University (GMU) in Northern Virginia, and a series of non-governmental initiatives with diverse organisations…

There is a fundamental tension intrinsic to scenario planning as a craft, and which reaches into the very character of the scenario practitioner. It is a tension which the scenario practitioner may try to address in various ways. But it is a tension which will never go away, and that cannot be resolved. It is the tension of the Janus Dilemma, the Roman god, who is two-faced because he is compelled to look two ways simultaneously…

Strategic foresight, sense-making and complexity are often conflated in the context of our need to manage uncertain futures. The words are often used without knowing their background or, more particularly, their implications. One recently published Government handbook sees sense-making as a process of gathering, analysing and interpreting information with an implied assumption of rationality (Policy Horizons Canada, 2021). This way of thinking has dominated North Atlantic thinking since the Enlightenment and tends to see any failure as one of data capture, interpretation or capability of the decision-maker. ‘North Atlantic’ is used here as an alternative to ‘Western’ as it more accurately portrays the northern European and North American focus on the individual as the primary determinant of social meaning and agency. That contrasts with the Celtic fringe of the British Isles, Southern Europe and most of the world, which sees the individual as defined by evolving communities in a process of being-as-becoming. The dominance of North Atlantic thinking is linked to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and capitalism. As such, its assumptions can be found in much academic and practitioner work on governance in general and foresight in particular…

The following sections are included:

• Good Old Times and the Future
• Complexity as a Science
• Complexity as a Natural Way of Our World
• Complementarity
• Epilogue – 1
• Epilogue – 2
• Endnotes

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Urban Planning and Development in Singapore
• Complexity Science and Cities
• Education and Research: NUS Cities
• Going Forward
• Endnotes

Every great state needs a great navigator to help the captain, their officers and even the crew navigate turbulent waters of the future. The navigator sees the possible paths ahead to get to their desired destinations or even possible new destinations. The navigator has to see the storms, the rocks and other surprising threats ahead. The navigator has to see the new capabilities that provide the opportunity to give the ship of state new ways of doing things. What makes Peter a great navigator is measured not only in the success of Singapore but in the reality that he built the institutions and means of navigation for the state. Peter Ho is the great navigator of the great state of Singapore. And I consider it an honour to have him as a collaborator and friend of forty years…

The following sections are included:

• The Paradox of Governance
• A Detour: The Basic Problem of Complex Systems
• From Homeostasis to Development
• Adaptation, Growth, and Disruption
• Governing Singapore as a Complex System
• Endnotes

Among Peter’s many outstanding qualities has been committed attention to diverse perspectives in the world and to lifelong learning, all exercised in the service of developing Singapore into the world-leading city, state and society it has become.

This has expressed itself in multiple ways, and one of these has been the championing of the scenario mindset in government planning…

My theme in this chapter is that humanity’s future will depend crucially on how science develops, whether it’s applied wisely or dangerously, and how scientists relate to politics and the wider public.

I suspect it’s a theme that Peter Ho would resonate with — indeed, through his distinguished and wide-ranging career, he has been an exemplary ‘citizen scientist’, promoting these goals, and helping to create, in Singapore, an educational research and high-tech ‘ecosystem’ that is admired worldwide…

It is more common in history books and novels than in everyday life to encounter someone closely associated with an ideal. But the many who know and admire him would likely make that association for Peter Ho. He has devoted a lifetime to practising, reflecting upon, and preaching the virtues of rationality. Passionate about being dispassionate, he is a modern mandarin…

My regular visits to Singapore provided a unique angle on how societies embrace digitalisation and gave me a very special opportunity to follow a digitally and economically advanced country in action. I gathered insights into Singapore’s much vaunted educational system and the performance of its universities. I could observe the high standards of its public administration and its reliance on digital technologies but also how it deployed them to maintain the high levels of trust in government. What impressed me most, however, was the delicate balance between a widely shared sense of vulnerability of a young country — small, without natural resources and surrounded by large and powerful neighbours — and the equally widely shared determination to be well prepared for the future. Here was a country that perceived itself as still being a young nation, drawing much of its energy from its remarkable economic wealth and the social well-being it had achieved. This energy now had to be channeled into a future that it was determined to shape. Nowhere else did I encounter so many debates, foresight exercises, workshops, reports, and policy measures focused on a future that, despite remaining uncertain and open, was to be deliberated and carefully planned for, taking in the many contingencies that would arise. Obviously, it would be a future that would take advantage of the many new opportunities that digital technologies offer. The necessary skills were to be cultivated and all available digital tools put to practical use…