Musings of an Analyst

Churchill’s writing style is one that is particularly approachable and engaging for me. His books on the Second World War, in my opinion, are an incredibly interesting perspective on that arc of history. I have always been fascinated by the contrast in strategic philosophies between Churchill and Eisenhower.

I don’t recall ever coming across anything that talked about Churchill’s interest (or not) in game theory, but reading Churchill, particularly his thoughts early in the Second World War, always prompts me to think of Colonel Blotto and a potential variant of the Blotto game where the players have the opportunity to reshape the game by changing the number of battlefields. The thought experiment reminds me of the impact of being able to change the rules of the game. Churchill was never going to win at a Colonel Blotto style game early in the war. If I could go back in time, I would be curious to explore if he gave any thought to the potential for changing the nature of the game and how that might introduce the indication of momentum and being ahead in a Colonel Blotto style game as means towards shifting the tide and pulling in allies. Churchill’s approach to allocating resources and risks looks like it was successful in retrospect, but I am still reflecting on how I might better apply his ideas, the lessons from Colonel Blotto style game, or the potential learnings to be had from systematically changing the rules in Colonel Blotto style game.

It does seem to me that Churchill intrinsically understood that the power to achieve his big goals lay in reshaping the landscape and the rules of “the game” to a state in which his ends could be achieved. Deming famously said “a bad system will beat a good person every time.” Maybe Churchill knew that the way to win was to change the system rather than fight within it.

Today, I am very much pondering what that means for me. Is the better path to make the most progress possible within the constraints of the day? Or, is the better path to seek to get the rules changed such that more progress could be possible. But, being a novice at game theory, it could be that I am applying the ideas of Colonel Blotto all wrong.