A marine ecologist who draws upon the adaptive techniques of the octopus to explain what’s wrong with America’s national security policy. It’s certainly a refreshing angle.
Octopuses dot not have a protective shell, nor any internal skeleton. Therefore they have developed several defence strategies that they can employ in response to different kinds of threats. “The octopus doesn’t just change color,” Sagarin writes, “it has many more adaptation tricks up its eight sleeves. It can jet away fast in a cloud of ink, squeeze its huge body through the neck of a discarded beer bottle for an instant shelter.”
What us humans can learn from this, is that a reactionary strategy to tackle terrorism does not work. Forcing people to take off their shoes at the airport because one individual carried a shoe bomb inside a plane, is not efficient. “The enemy” will simply adapt and try something new. Therefore we shouldn’t expect one central power to make decisions about our safety policy, but rather all be on the look-out. “[…] Trying to eliminate a threat like terrorism is like trying to eliminate predation, and trying to minimize it with a single, centralized plan is the direct opposite of adaptability. Well-adapted organisms do not try to eliminate risk—they learn to live with it.”
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