VICTOR AND ELON

VICTOR AND ELON

By Andy Weddington

Monday, 08 January 2024

You ask what the aim is? I tell you it is victory - total victory.  - Winston Churchill

This morning while reading my mother 'The Daily Chronicle' - a two pages gouge sheet about interesting topics related to today - I learned the late comedian Soupy Sales was born this date in 1926. He had two sons - Tony and Hunt. 

Mom, familiar with the slapstick antics of Sales, asked, "I wonder what became of his boys?"

"I don't know, mom. Let's look them up." 

So I grabbed my phone.

Professional musicians. Tony plays bass, Hunt a drummer. They've done rather well for themselves. Dad would be proud.

Bass and drum beats a good lead in for a few words about Victor and Elon.

During the past ten days I read Victor Davis Hanson's terrific 'The Second World Wars' and Walter Isaacson's page-turner 'Elon Musk.'

At first blush one might conclude entirely different subjects.

And that assumption would be wrong. 

Though I've read much about World War II, both theaters, an authority I am not. Dr. Hanson's superb book addresses the wars from macro to micro - contrasting to previous and post wars - giving the reader a better than basic understanding of who, what, where, when, why, and how. 

The how. 

How did the Axis - Germany, Italy, Japan - lose?

They lost for sundry reasons but the bottom line was they were out produced. 

The United States overwhelmed the enemy with stuff - platforms (land and sea), weapons, ammo, food, medicine, et al. 

And competent senior officer leadership.

That oceans safeguarded our factories from enemy air while theirs were being bombed well you do the math. 

Errol Musk was born the year after the wars ended. 

Son Elon came along 25 years later.

It so happens Elon is a student of history and war. 

Elon produces.

His companies invent and make and deliver things - rockets and cars and communications, for example.

He's the brilliant and competent demanding general atop the marketplace battlefield. 

He's a human concerned about human created things threatening humanity. 

That threat is closer than not. 

As escape, Mars his objective.

He is driving his team to build cheap, reliable rockets for routine nine months journeys to Mars. 

Before reading Isaacson's book the idea seemed more comic book to me. 

Not now. 

Elon told his young toddler son, "Someday you will live on Mars."

Too young to understand but not too young to dream.

As to not spoil the book I'll not recap Elon's space accomplishments to date. 

If applying an exponential factor to what he's achieved to date even money says he reaches Mars before his time on Earth up. 

Hanson and Musk are brilliant men and seemingly as far apart on the personality spectrum as humans could be. I'd sure like to eavesdrop on a conversation. 

I've read Hanson for decades and do not recall him purporting an algorithm. Though I suspect if pressed he could easily outline one. 

Musk's algorithm struck a chord ...

1. Question every requirement;

2. Delete parts and processes;

3. Simplify and optimize (if necessary to return a part/process do it);

4. Accelerate cycle time;

5. Automate. 

The algorithm sequential. He teaches it to his workforce and applies it to every business venture.

As I have tried through the years to implore upon Marines and nephews and nieces and any who will listen, complexity is nothing more than humans mucking up simplicity. 

As applied to painting, why 32 strokes when five will do?

As applied to music, why six chords when two or three will do?

From melding the big picture takeaways from both books, it struck me the Musk algorithm was in play during World War II. Perhaps studying war is how he settled on his five steps. It's how stuff - ships to shovels to shirts - got made so fast and delivered to where needed. 

Imagine a formation of 328 B-29s on a low-level bombing mission over Japan. 

The United States did that - General Curtis LeMay led.

Could that feat be equalled today? 

Uh, no. Nor anything comparable. 

What 's gone wrong?

Why the bureaucratic, bumbling mess today?

Simple.

Failure to instill patriotism, dismissal of the algorithm, corruption, pathetic senior leadership, cowardice, and the list goes on. 

How to fix it?

Return to the Constitution; a masterpiece for freedom.  

There's one candidate for President vowing to do just that. 

And like Elon he embraces the algorithm (not that he's stated outright but success assures) and has prevailed on the marketplace battlefield. 

Those my first impressions. Still digesting and figuring out the interlacing of the books. Other books, too. 

Urge reading both. 

No joke, war drums beat. 

Victory the only option. 

Ready sword!