Software Friction

As a Dutch ex-Navy officer, we just called this "friction" as everyone had read Von Clausewitz during officer training and was familiar with the nuances of the term. Militaries overwhelmingly address this problem by increasing redundancy, so that there are as few single points of failures as possible. It is very rare to encounter a role that can only be filled by a single person, a well designed military organization will always have a plan for replacing any single individual should they accidentally die.

But it is not "oh, we have solved friction". It trades the "combat" friction of having to wait for orders (possibly compounded by the weather, comms jamming, your courrier stepping on a mine, etc.) and turns it into "strategy" friction of having subordinates taking initiatives they shouldn't have taken. But I'd argue (like modern armies do) the tradeoff is worth it, and the strategic level has more resources to overcome their friction than combat troops engaged in a fight. But it wasn't always the case (cue the famous tale of a Roman consul, Manlius [0], who executed his own son for disobeying, even though he was victorious ).

[0] https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-613 https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=haa...