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🎖️ **Royal Marine Commando Ben Ford** (software engineer, Haskell/category theory) joins *No Way Out* to expose the **OODA loop myth** most AI devs still believe.

  🔥 **Agentic AI runs John Boyd’s *real* OODA** — not the linear "observe-orient-decide-act" cartoon.  
  🔴 **LLMs are evolutionary dead-ends**: text-in, text-out, no destruction & creation, no real-time model updates.  
  🟢 **Active inference AI = fractal OODA**: destroys old models, creates new ones *every cycle* — at 1/1000th the energy.

  ---
  🧠 **KEY BREAKDOWNS**
  • **Orientation = the entire loop** (neuroscience + category theory proof)  
  • **Unfolding circumstances = affordances in 4D space-time** (Wardley Maps + spatial web)  
  • **Destruction & Creation = Active Inference** (FEP, Markov blankets, low-energy dominance)  
  • **Why Scrum fails, exploration wins** (knowledge *of* vs. knowledge *about*)  
  • **2026 AI forecast**: edge-device FEP agents, Verses AI, LLMs obsolete. 

💬 **QUOTE**
  > “LLMs are linear OODA. Active inference is *fractal* OODA. The difference? Real-time destruction and creation.” — **Ben Ford**

  ---
  🚀 **No Way Out Podcast** – Where Marines, AI devs, and systems thinkers decode dominance.  

  #OODA #AgenticAI #JohnBoyd #ActiveInference #FreeEnergyPrinciple
💬 **QUOTE**
  > “LLMs are linear OODA. Active inference is *fractal* OODA. The difference? Real-time destruction and creation.” — **Ben Ford**

 

Ben Ford (LinkedIn)

NWO Intro with Boyd

March 25, 2025

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Momentum favors those who move first. We sit down with Lou Hayes to trace how real-time crime centers (RTCC) rooftop drones, and secure collaboration tools are compressing response times from minutes to seconds—and what that means on the street where handcuffs still close the loop. Lou explains how small suburbs in Chicagoland connect with city, county, state, and federal partners to build a shared picture, crowdsourcing intelligence from 911 centers, analysts, air units, and even organized retail teams. The result is faster orientation and clearer guidance, but also a new dilemma: how much transparency helps the public understand the tools without giving criminals the countermeasures they need.

The conversation goes beyond gadgets. We examine the human cost of screen fixation, the quiet erosion of interview craft, and why de-escalation and calm radio work keep the frontal cortex in the fight. Lou walks through how strategy must evolve when new sensors come online, why canine and overhead assets change ground tactics, and how criminals adapt—ghost plates, tree canopies, tunnels—faster than policy can catch up. We talk scams targeting older adults with fake dashboards and urgency scripts, the role of facial recognition in challenging ID cases, and the harsh realities of human trafficking where victims are coerced into other crimes.

Recruiting and retention surface as critical constraints: smaller talent pools, vocational drift, and the continued value of military veterans. Lou argues for systems thinking over silos, connecting wellness to use-of-force, intel to action, and strategy to recruitment. His closing challenge is a detective mentality: hold your theories loosely, hunt for disconfirming evidence, and keep refining reality. If you care about public safety that privileges outcomes over optics, and technology that serves people instead of replacing them, this is your field guide to what actually works.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway. Your feedback helps more curious listeners find conversations like this.

Lou Hayes on LinkedIn

NWO Intro with Boyd

March 25, 2025

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Ponch and Moose connect with Brent Sadler, a retired U.S. Navy Captain and Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, discussing maritime strategy, U.S.-China relations, and naval power in the Indo-Pacific. 

Sadler reflects on his collaboration with Ponch at PACOM (now INDOPACOM) from 2012-2015, where they shifted from linear, phase-based planning to non-linear, adaptive approaches like complex adaptive systems and a "spectrum of rivalry" to counter China's hybrid threats. 

The conversation covers the ongoing "new Cold War" with China, which Sadler argues began post-Tiananmen Square in 1989 and encompasses economic, diplomatic, informational, and societal warfare rather than just kinetic conflict. Key examples include China's maritime insurgency in the South China Sea, the West Capella incident as a model of "naval statecraft," and historical influences like unrestricted warfare, the 100 Years of Humiliation, and WWII collaborations. Sadler critiques U.S. shipbuilding deficiencies, advocates for reforms like a Naval Act and unmanned systems, and addresses topics such as Force Design 2030, the 2027 Taiwan threat timeline, the Fat Leonard scandal, Panama Canal security, and Tomahawk transfers to Ukraine. He emphasizes non-linear thinking, cultural understanding, and building industrial capacity to deter China, drawing from his personal background growing up in Asia and professional experiences.

Naval Power in Action 

U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century: A New Strategy for Facing the Chinese and Russian Threat 

NWO Intro with Boyd

March 25, 2025

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 🌐 **Spatial Web + Active Inference = Intelligent Planet**  
  Dan Mapes (Versus AI, Spatial Web Foundation) joins *No Way Out* to **destroy LLM myths** and reveal **FEP-powered 3D web**

What if the web didn’t just host pages—it hosted intelligence? We sit down with Dan Mapes, director of the Spatial Web Foundation and co-founder of Verses AI, to unpack how a shared protocol, digital twins, and Active Inference could turn today’s internet into a living, learning fabric that understands space, time, and context. Instead of one giant model, imagine thousands of expert AIs—cardiology, ports, power grids—each built by domain leaders, all interoperable and discoverable like websites. That’s not hype; it’s a shift from a 2D information web to a 3D web of intelligence.

We explore Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle and Active Inference with real-world stakes: energy efficiency closer to brains than data centers, autonomous decisions that don’t break when the world changes, and robotics that adapt without million-dollar pre-training. Dan explains how world models evolve through sensing and action, why protocols matter more than monoliths, and how decentralization enables hyper‑local solutions that still plug into a global network. From OODA to flow, meditation to geometry, we connect the mental models behind invention with the engineering that makes it durable.

The implications are huge: smart cities that coordinate in real time, supply chains that sense and respond, and a path from LLM content tools to embodied, autonomous systems. We also talk culture and economics—why abundance eases control, how institutions adapt like they did after the printing press, and why this next era could make us more human, not less. If you’re a founder, policymaker, or systems leader, this is a blueprint for building actionable intelligence—starting with small, truthful models that learn every day.

If this conversation sparks ideas, follow and share the show, leave a review, and tell us where you want intelligence to plug int

NWO Intro with Boyd

March 25, 2025

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The story starts with a hard correction: observation isn’t enough—orientation wins. 

A Marine who grew up in Pakistan and rose through the Corps brings a view you do not get in a briefing book. LtCol Asad “Genghis” Khan, USMC (ret) talks straight about war, culture, and the cost of bad decisions. No polish. No excuses. Orientation wins, always.

He walks us through the real OODA fight, the one where context beats checklists and judgment beats slogans. He shows how cultural understanding is not a side quest, it is the ground you stand on. He lays out why leaders who skip the deckplates lose the plot, and why the people closest to contact often see the truth first. We talk warrior ethos, accountability, and the pressure of command when the plan meets a living adversary.

Khan breaks down Afghanistan with a clear eye. The Taliban’s advantages were time, terrain, and tight social fabric. Ours were power and technology, often blunted by cultural blindness and shallow engagement. He explains how local respect and plain talk open doors that armor cannot. He tells the hard parts of combat, the weight of sending people forward, and the duty to come back and face them eye to eye.

He does not spare senior leadership. Promotion games, safe consensus, and distance from ground truth reward the wrong habits. Strategy that ignores economics and social reality creates debts someone else must pay. We talk about reform that starts with contact, listening, and accountability, not new slogans.

NWO Intro with Boyd

March 25, 2025

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The myths are seductive: a Top Gun fighter pilot invents the OODA loop from the cockpit of his F-86 and spends the rest of his life proving it. The truth is better—and far more useful. We sit down with Ian Brown to explore Snowmobiles and Grand Ideals, a new Marine Corps University Press publication that explores John Boyd’s recorded presentations and pairs them with contextual essays by Frans P. B. Osinga. For the first time, you can hear Boyd’s voice on the page: the questions he fields, the slides he barely touches, the ones he can’t leave alone, and the jokes that make the hard parts stick.

What emerges is a living flow. Orientation—not raw speed—sits at the center. Surprise is an outcome, not a lever. Implicit guidance and trust, not slogans, generate tempo. We trace Boyd’s ideas from Destruction and Creation through Patterns of Conflict, Organic Design for Command and Control, The Strategic Game of Interaction and Isolation, and The Conceptual Spiral, showing how the 1995 OODA sketch lands late as a synthesis, not a starting point. Along the way we connect flow and team science to cohesive action, revisit Vietnam’s CAP program to understand tempo, and dig into narrative, messaging, and the danger when words don’t match deeds in a world where every person is a sensor.

This is Boyd without the folklore—no shortcuts, no decontextualized slides—just primary sources, carefully transcribed and annotated so leaders in business, education, policy, and the military can apply the real mechanics: build better world models, test them against reality, and keep them provisional. If you’ve ever been told to “go faster,” this conversation explains why you should get oriented first. Listen, share with a friend who cares about natural intelligence and if it challenges your priors, leave a review and tell us what changed.

Ian Brown on LinkedIn

MCUP Snowmobiles and Grand Ideals

NWO Intro with Boyd

March 25, 2025

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What if everything you thought you knew about human behavior was backward? Imagine discovering that we don't actually control our behavior at all—instead, our behavior is merely the observable side effect of our brains controlling what we perceive.

Professor Warren Mansell, a clinical psychologist and expert in Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), takes us on a mind-expanding journey through this revolutionary framework developed by physicist William Powers. Drawing from control systems engineering, Powers recognized that living organisms operate fundamentally differently than most psychological theories suggest—we're not stimulus-response machines or prediction engines, but sophisticated control systems organizing our behavior to make our perceptions match our desired states.

The implications are profound. Psychological conflicts arise when different control systems within us fight over the same variable—like wanting to both remember and forget a traumatic memory. Consciousness itself emerges as a spotlight moving through our hierarchical control systems, helping resolve these conflicts through reorganization. This explains why activities that temporarily downregulate our habitual control patterns—from deep conversations to meditation to psychedelics—can lead to transformative insights.

For leaders and organizations, PCT offers a powerful lens for understanding human dynamics. By recognizing that people are controlling for different variables and experiencing different conflicts, we can create environments that help people explore what truly matters to them while aligning with collective goals.

Whether you're fascinated by psychology, leadership, conflict resolution, or simply understanding yourself better, this conversation will transform how you view human behavior and interaction. Ready to see the world through the lens of control?

Warren Mansell on Linkedin

X: @warrenmansell

NWO Intro with Boyd

March 25, 2025

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What if the key to unlocking human consciousness lies not in neurotypical experiences, but in the unique ways non-speaking autistic individuals perceive and interact with reality? In this captivating episode of No Way Out, host Brian "Ponch" Rivera welcomes cognitive neuroscientist, researcher, and spiritual seeker Julia Mossbridge, PhD, and special co-host Sarah Kernion, a mother of two non-speaking autistic children, for a profound exploration of awareness, precognition, and expanded human potential.

Dr. Mossbridge shares insights from her pioneering research on precognition, demonstrating how scientific studies reveal that human physiology can anticipate future random events before they occur. She introduces the "informational substrate"—a foundational layer of reality rooted in information rather than matter—that may underpin phenomena like telepathy and non-local consciousness. Drawing on the intelligence community's Stargate program on remote viewing, she explains how these abilities tap into a universal information field, challenging conventional notions of time and space.

Sarah Kernion offers heartfelt insights from raising her non-speaking autistic son and daughter, who exhibit remarkable abilities to process multiple streams of information simultaneously—such as absorbing podcasts, TV shows, and reading materials all at once—despite motor challenges, like difficulty opening a door. She recounts instances where her children demonstrated knowledge acquired through unexplained means, including apparent telepathic connections.  These observations align with Dr. Mossbridge's findings, and Kernion emphasizes how unconditional love and maternal intuition nurture their growth. 

Julia Mossbridge, PhD

Stimson Center

Sarah Kernion

Helios Rising 

The Telepathy Tapes

NWO Intro with Boyd

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In this episode of No Way Out , Captain Dan "Yank" Pederson, the "Godfather" of TOPGUN, shares the origin story of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, established in 1969 during the Vietnam War to address a 2:1 kill ratio that exposed deficiencies in aerial combat. 

Pederson recounts how he selected eight experienced pilots and RIOs who, with limited resources, created a PhD-level curriculum in just 60 days by emphasizing the human element over technology. This focus challenged John Boyd’s Energy-Maneuverability (E-M) theory, prioritizing pilot skill, heart, and adaptability, leading to a remarkable 24:1 kill ratio by the war’s end. 

Key innovations included vertical fighting tactics and a culture of psychological safety in debriefs, fostering a brotherhood that drove excellence. Pederson’s insights extend beyond aviation, offering lessons for organizations on building high-performing teams through mentorship, experiential learning, and human-centric leadership. As AI and automation reshape industries, he warns against over-relying on technology, advocating for human capability as the decisive factor. The episode connects TOPGUN’s principles to modern challenges, including AI’s role in human-agent teaming and the OODA loop’s relevance in cognitive warfare, urging organizations to prioritize people over systems.

Dan Pederson Wiki
TOPGUN: An American Story

NWO Intro with Boyd

March 25, 2025

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What if we've been thinking about AI all wrong? What if endless scaling isn't the answer, but instead we need systems that understand context, embody knowledge, and grasp causal relationships like living organisms do?

In this mind-expanding conversation with Mahault Albarracin, PhD, VERSES AI Director of Research Strategy – recorded on the 49th anniversary of John Boyd's seminal paper "Destruction and Creation" – we journey through the fascinating landscape where neuroscience meets artificial intelligence. Mahault shares how her background in social sciences led her to active inference, a framework that models intelligence after natural cognitive systems rather than linear engineering approaches, echoing Boyd's emphasis on breaking down outdated mental models to create adaptive new ones.

The parallels between Karl Friston's active inference and Boyd's OODA loop emerge vividly, as both frameworks highlight prediction, orientation in complex environments, and harmonizing changing tactical actions with evolving strategic intentions. We explore why current AI systems struggle with tasks humans find intuitive – they lack embodiment within spatial-temporal reality and fail to grasp how context shifts meaning, much like the limitations Boyd critiqued in rigid, backwards-planning strategies.

Perhaps most provocatively, we challenge the dominant AI doom narratives, tracing them to biases rooted in defense funding, colonial hierarchies, and adversarial worldviews. Could our fears of malevolent artificial intelligence simply reflect our own projections? What if, instead of building systems expecting friction, we created AI capable of empathy, resonance, and connection? As Mahault suggests, "The condition for AI alignment is to give it the ability to love us, to have empathy, to see us as kin rather than just objectives."

The conversation ranges from the technical details of the spatial web (creating interoperable standards for meaningful, privacy-respecting data connectivity) to philosophical questions about consciousness, harmony in multi-agent systems, and

NWO Intro with Boyd

March 25, 2025

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