“This blog looks at an intersection of decision-making, technology, high performance teams and government. It sketches some ideas of physicist Michael Nielsen about cognitive technologies and of computer visionary Bret Victor about the creation of dynamic tools to help understand complex systems and ‘argue with evidence’, such as ‘tools for authoring dynamic documents’, and ‘Seeing Rooms’ for decision-makers — i.e rooms designed to support decisions in complex environments. It compares normal Cabinet rooms, such as that used in summer 1914 or October 1962, with state-of-the-art Seeing Rooms. There is very powerful feedback between: a) creating dynamic tools to see complex systems deeper (to see inside, see across time, and see across possibilities), thus making it easier to work with reliable knowledge and interactive quantitative models, semi-automating error-correction etc, and b) the potential for big improvements in the performance of political and government decision-making.”

So reads the introduction to the most recent blogpost of Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s chief advisor, who dramatically delayed a major operation in order to take up his role, which he will carry out until 31st October.

Cummings, who famously ran the Vote Leave campaign, was under fire this week for sacking an advisor employed by fellow egg-scalp Sajid Javid, something the civil servants’ union insists raises ‘serious concerns.’

Aside from scraps like this, there is a more general siege laid on Cummings. Arch-remainers’ chief accusations against him, both justifiable, are that he won a democratic referendum by jingoism and dishonesty, and that he is winning the battle to implement Brexit with jingoism and dishonesty.

Certain that they must be dealing with someone really evil, some have scoured Cummings writings for evidence of this. They have concluded that Cummings is a eugenicist, lending support to Godwin’s law.

Though it risks slipping down one hell of a rabbit hole, it would be ludicrous in an analysis of the man calling the shots on our Prime Minister’s strategy not to address this most striking of charges.

In his ‘Private Thesis’ on education, Cummings states that genetic variation has some role in shaping the nature of intelligence; that the evidence suggests this variation is not population specific, and has nothing to do with race; that our scientific understanding of the role of this variation is expanding; and that it is expanding quickly enough that it may soon, or may already, be a source of useful insights for policy-makers wishing, say, to identify and cater to different ways of learning.

Cummings gives an example of why he cares about this question. He states that ‘the education world generally resists fiercely the idea that a large fraction of children can or should be introduced to advanced ideas.’ But, Cummings laments, no research has been done into whether this is indeed the case, into what proportion of children are capable of understanding a relatively advanced idea such as mathematical integration. Cummings is convinced that research such as this ‘obviously should be taken into consideration’ by supposedly ill-informed, snobbish educators.

First, these do not seem to be the ramblings of a eugenicist. Cummings thinks genetics has a role in determining outcomes, but he still wants to see each child educated as best he or she may be educated.

No, Cummings’ writings are the complaints of a man disillusioned with the status quo, a man convinced, whether rightly or wrongly, that he is up to date, that he has good ideas, and that he knows best how to make things better.

It is Cummings’ aggressive certainty, which borders on arrogance, that has irked many civil servants. This certainty has a paradoxical quality to it, as Cummings combines it with a sort of intellectualised humility-with-caveats. “I don't know very much about very much,” he told cameras recently. He claims deep knowledge alone is overrated and insufficient. He likes ’T-shaped’ students, who have a polymathic understanding of many things, and a deep understanding in one area.

His passion appears to be (or was) education policy. In his ‘Private Thesis’, he imagined Britain becoming the Great Library of the 21st century, a global hub for education and research. But for all its grandness of vision, there is something akin to the low-quality university courses Cummings so maligns in his own analysis and proposals. Every section of his ‘Thesis’ and every blog post starts with an array of quotations deriving from a strange cast of scientists, generals, philosophers and novelists. Bullet points, alphabetised and numbered lists, bold and italic fonts jostle frantically for attention. There is an almost advertising quality to some of his jittery endorsements:

“I have used Anki since reading Nielsen’s blog and I can feel it making a big difference to my mind/thoughts — how often is this true of things you read? DOWNLOAD ANKI NOW AND USE IT!”

But what is the vertical of Cummings’ ’T’ now? He truly does not seem to have, even when he writes of genetics, the Nazi-like evil-genius aspirations that some blithely accuse him of. What obsession, then, does lie beneath his obsession with Brexit?

Cummings’ self-help advice, his vision for societal and governmental change, and his Brexit strategy share something. This is ambition. The man is driven. He is very interested in such figures as Bismarck, whom he describes thus:

“Bismarck contained an extremely tyrannical ego and an even more extreme epistemological caution about the unpredictability of a complex world and a demonic practical adaptability. He knew events could suddenly throw his calculations into chaos. He was always ready to ditch his own ideas and commitments that suddenly seemed shaky. He was interested in winning, not consistency. He had a small number of fundamental goals — such as strengthening the monarchy’s power against Parliament and strengthening Prussia as a serious Great Power — which he pursued with constantly changing tactics. He was always feinting and fluid, pushing one line openly and others privately, pushing and pulling the other Powers in endless different combinations. He was the Grand Master of Cheng/Ch’i operations.”

Does this ring any bells? It also forms the question more succinctly, and in Cummings’ own terms: what are Cummings’ ‘fundamental goals’?

Cummings himself admitted in July 2017 that ‘in some possible branches of the future leaving will be an error’… This was a convenient soundbite for his opponents at the time, but taken literally is really only a very humble admission, and one as vague as any misty-eyed seer’s. It sheds no light on what ‘fundamental goals’ the word ‘error’ can be defined against.

Chaos rages in the Commons, some await a(nother) Cummings masterstroke. Others, certain that leaving is an error, are battling to prevent disaster. A Pandora’s box of mutual resentment has been opened, and far from pushing Britain forwards it may prove paralytic - be that the fault of arch-leavers or arch-remainers.

Cummings, I suspect, is fully aware that he may have overplayed his hand; that he may have made an ‘error’. Yet recent weeks’ gambles for power still show no clue as to what long game this solipsist thinks he is playing. The only certainty is that a man who writes so much of Bismarck, of China and of Russia and of every grand -ism in the book… this man intends to play his game on the biggest stage of all.

Never mind this Uncivil War - as the man who ended our Civil War put it, “No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.”

Whether Cummings’ rise is of the stuff of the NASA space launches he so admires, or maintained merely by hot air - this has yet to be seen.

