Bob Gourley spent fourteen years in operational intelligence before anyone told him about John Boyd. His regret is that nobody told him sooner.
Bob tracked Soviet naval movements and supported ships and submarines in fast-changing environments. He co-founded OODA LLC as a tribute to Boyd’s work, co-hosts OODAcast and produces the daily OODA Loop newsletter. Today Bob advises corporate boards on AI, cybersecurity and geopolitical risk. He also runs OODAcon, an annual event he describes as more about orientation than about OODA. The question behind it is what you need to know to survive the next twelve months.
The linear error
Mark McGrath and I asked Bob where Boyd shows up in intelligence work, a field Boyd never addressed directly. Bob calls the intelligence cycle a failed model, and he explains what it costs. He draws a line from the intelligence cycle of collect, process, analyze and disseminate to the linear version of the OODA loop taught in hotel ballrooms. Both assume phases. Neither assumes a moving adversary, and the adversary keeps moving while you are still in phase two. In Boyd’s real OODA loop, orientation sits at the center and shapes everything around it.
Bob also has a warning for anyone teaching the OODA loop as a sales process. He says they are going to suffer in life.
Where AI and supply chains go
Bob asks where want fits in every decision. The conversation ranges from consciousness and psychedelics to AI’s destruction and creation moment across the technology sector, and which companies survive it. Bob names what most executives miss: supply chains that depend on helium, chips that depend on radioactive decay, and bond markets nobody can manage into submission. He prefers scenario planning, which maps several possible futures, to prediction, and he argues for controlling AI through governance more than through guardrails. He closes with a proposal for fixing the academic OODA problem.
Which of your plans assumes the other side will wait for you?
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Written by Ponch Rivera with AI assistance in production. The full conversation is in the player below.