Notes Towards a Theory of Asymmetric Conflict. 

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

 Lots of great food for thought here that resonates well with XGW theory, specifically the concepts of perception (4GW) and context (5GW).

From Russia Policy; Trying to Make a Virue Out of Having Ceded the Initiative at Zenpundit in a comment by Seerov.

“This war is the result of the old Soviet policy of demographic engineering.  The Soviets (Especially Stalin) would “dilute” its bordering States with ethnic Russians.  This gave the Soviet leadership some “good guys” in every surrounding country.  Sometimes this demographic engineering would entail removing an ethnic group and “replanting” it somewhere in Siberia or the Caucuses.  China has similar policies towards Tibet and other breakaway regions.  They’ve relocated millions of Han-Chinese into Tibet in order to have “goodguys” there.  There’s some who accuse the US government of doing the same thing.  A working/middle class ethnic coalition of European Americans in the US is a threat to the US elite. In order to “dilute this threat,” the elites had to push by forced diversity initiatives, and remove the freedom of association from people.  The US government also uses psychological and economic warfare to make sure that the White middle/working classes accept forced diversity. 
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This policy may have worked while the Soviet apparatus was in place, but once it fell, these groups then started pursuing their own ethnic interests, instead of “Soviet Interests.”  Of course, as the old Nation State Order gives-way to Hyper-Globalization, I’m pretty sure that more and more ethnic groups will be asking “is it good for the _Fill_IN_THE_Blank_, when making a policy decisions. 
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Today’s Russia uses ethnic Russians in a way that constitutes some sort of Warfare(5GW?)?  I think we can call it demographic warfare?  The Soviets conducted “demographic engineering,” as these actions were for the “health” of the State.  The US and China conduct “demographic engineering.” Modern Russia conduct’s “demographic warfare” to help control territory past its borders.  Russia can use the excuse that its “preventing genocide” in almost all of its bordering nations.”

 
I think the idea of Demographic Warfare is interesting but I don’t think it really qualifies as 5GW, rather more along the lines of ethic gerrymandering.

The 5GW approach, to my mind, would be more along the line of triggering a specific identity in a targeted individual, group or organization. We all carry around many, many identities, they come from our familes and our professions, where we went to school, the country we are a citizen of, as well as what country our ancestors came from. To be able to cause a target to think of something through the lens of a specific identity is, as far as I am concerned, is the most subtle and effective manipulation of context possible, and therefore 5GW.

(Major hat tip to Stephen Pampinella)

Halting State

by Charles Stross

 

Halting State is set in the near furure and centers initially around a bank robbery. That in itself isn’t especially SciFi or even 5GWish except that this particular bank robbery was carried out against a bank in an MMORPG virtual world by a band of Orcs backed up by a Dragon. As the investigation starts to gain a clear picture of what actually happened this has very serious national security implications.

 

Much like Daemon, the 5GWish aspect of Halting State involves how communications technology, MMORPGs, Augmented Reality (AR) and other concepts that people now use for, or look to be the next wave in, entertainment and work, can be easily and invisibly turned into platforms for warfare. Especially warfare by proxy.

 

Not to spoil any plot aspects of the story but those interested in 5GW should pay very close attention to SPOOKS, an espionage game played by two of the main characters and STEAMING, a game that is under development at the beginning of the book.

An Interesting puzzle for 5GW thinking. (Hat tip: Zenpundit)

Blog Tank: National Strategy for a Few Nuclear Weapons - Expanded

by Cheryl Rofer

“Andy at Nuclear Mangoes reminded me over the weekend of my irritation that nobody has addressed the strategy of one to a few nuclear weapons. That’s a different problem than something in the range of 5-10, which is a different problem from a higher number. None of these have been addressed systematically for today’s world.

So let’s have a blog tank. Anyone who wants to participate should post a scenario (or scenarios) on their blog or, if you don’t have a blog, in the comments to this post. Here is the problem I want to address:

What strategies are available to a country with fissionable material sufficient for 1-5 nuclear weapons, some of which may be assembled? Take into account probable responses, and assume some sort of rationality on the holders of these weapons and material. You may specifically refer to Iran and North Korea, or any other nation, or make the scenario(s) more general. Flesh out the scenario with some support.”

 

My thinking is that it really isn’t very cost effective for a country to build a nuclear program that provided only a few useable weapons, Once the infrastructure is in place an arsenal of a few dozen weapons would likely be possible as a country plays for time, betting that the program will reach maturity before international sanctions could ruin the country. From there it just becomes a question of the range of the possible delivery vehicles. In the event of military preemption before the program reaches its production goal, the existing weapons, if used, would most likely be used tactically, a situation that already has a well developed doctrine.

A more interesting scenario to me is what would happen if a nation or organization without a nuclear arms program should happen to find itself in possession of one to five nuclear weapons, a few former Soviet nuclear artillery shells for example. Perhaps through some sort of logistical error a few of these rounds made it into circulation in the Caucasus. Several countries militarily active in the region, including Russia, have 2S7 Pion self-propelled guns and / or 2S4 Tulip self-propelled mortars capable of firing 203mm and 240mm nuclear shells respectively. The yield of a slightly larger US weapon, the W19,  was 15-20 kilotons. Reportedly, Russian weapons had higher yields than their U. S. counterparts so this range seems a good ballpark for comparison and places it in approximately the same range as Little Boy and Fat Man, the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This gives these devices a very respectable amount of potential destruction to compliment the greatest possible asset for these weapons, their portability and size. Yes, these weapons are intended to be used tactically, but is it possible to craft a scenario to use them strategically?

This situation also suggests four different types of players (aside from the pure terrorist).

Recent discussions of Operational Check (such as at tdaxp and WSJ) have talked about many aspects of the hostage rescue, but now from the perspective of xGW theory. Was the rescue an example of tactical 5GW operations?

Consider the Operative Actions of 5GW:

5GW Operative Action: Manipulation and influence in order to define and shape outcomes and effects.

5GW embodies an overwhelming focus on positional manipulation and shaping of the battlefield so that when kinetic action or the threat of kinetic action occurs the outcome is essentially predetermined. The opponent is, as a result, without resistance because the response is by the target’s own choice or follows a previously established pattern that is familiar to the target. This places 5GW far to the left of 3GW, 1GW and the Boom on the timeline.

While Operational: Check was subsumed under the larger Plan Colombia, Check still seems to be a tactical 5GW operation. The rescuers could have easily been killed if the FARC’s observations were better. Indeed, the rescuers impersonated a a nonexistent NGO (h/t tdaxp), hidingg in the static of the rise and fall of pro-FARC NGOs.

Operation: Check did not rely on killing the FARC (so not 0GW).
Operation: Check did not rely on overwhemling FARC with men (so not 1GW).
Operation: Check did not rely on overwhemling FARC with fire (so not 2GW)
Operation: Check did not rely on breaking through fluid lines (so not 3GW)
Operation: Check did not rely on collapsing FARC’s will to resist (4GW).

Rather, Operation: Check relied on manipulating FARC’s observations.

It was a 5GW operation.

As Snowden wrote:

I think the defining characteristic of 5GW operations will be surprise declarations of victory, without any indications hostilities had commenced.

We - and for that matter, the FARC - did not know about Operation: Check until it was over.

Close to a month ago, a deranged individual went on a stabbing spree in Tokyo. The incident might not have been big news here but it certainly shocked the Japanese. Now, however, it appears that the Internet is full of threats to commit similar—or more gruesome—crimes. The science behind copycat crimes has never been conclusive—no one really knows whether the individuals who tend to commit them are already screwed up or whether the media attention creates a tipping effect.

What is novel is how online anonymity creates an outlet for sociopathic urges—and how those in cases like these the transmission of those urges seems to follow an emergent path. Manipulating and channeling copycat clouds virally would be a source of great power. It’s already been done to some extent—many riots in the developing world are organized via text message. But it’s not just a “Gap” problem. In Cronulla Beach, Australia, a wave of anonymous calls and text messages calling on white Australians to attack immigrants provoked a vicious race riot. There is a certain Puppetmaster potential inherent in the mobilizing power of media that so far has been largely untapped.

Made the note on Twitter.

Here’s the review that particularly catches my eye: “The Dark Knight”, rated with an A by Emanuel Levy, who goes on for some length but writes this nugget:

Deception is 5GW’s central offensive weapon—the “secret war” equivalent of the combined arms strike. Some may say this is an overstatement. Can active deception really be classified as a weapon?

Our disbelief in the offensive power of deception springs from our limited—and static—conception of deception operations. Most Western strategists believe that deception operations are chiefly used to cloak military capabilities and confuse the enemy. When we think of military deception, we tend to imagine something like the successful cloaking of the Normandy invasion in World War II. But deception is more than just camouflage and strategic feints. A holistic conception of deception operations holds that deception can sway an opponent to act against his own interests and undermine his political and military organizations.

I propose utilizing the Soviet deception apparatus as a baseline model of deception operations. 

From NPR News: All Things Considered.

Study: Your Polling Place Affects How You Vote

“June 23, 2008 · A new study shows that where you vote affects how you vote. People who vote in schools, for example, are more likely to support a school funding initiative. The researchers suggest that the same sort of psychology might affect people who vote in churches.”

This story caught my attention not only because it has to do with elections (see #3), but because as proto-5GW thinking (not secrecy-shrouded full-on 5GW) it is an observable manipulation of context. Granted, in this particular study the difference in the voting pattern is small, yet with only this one variable of context being affected there is a measurable difference in the effect. I would envision a true 5GW actor affecting multiple variables in order to achieve a desired context and an ultimate effect that has become compounded in the process.

Update:

“Contextual priming: Where people vote affects how they vote”
by Jonah Berger, Marc Meredith , and S. Christian Wheeler 
  

A Twitter “tweet” from @Selil earlier this evening roused a long-dormant post idea. Since Twitter is a “micro-blog”, its constraint of just 140 characters limits its utility to low-bandwidth, big-idea (or mundane-activity) broadcasting. Prof. Liles’s “big-idea” (in response to @mtanji of Haft of the Spear and CTLab fame) was:

“C4isr as the battle space. More than the Arquilla network centric warfare concept. Beyond hacking. Sun Tzu and Clausewitz”

I certainly agree with Prof. Liles that there is more to the information domain than John Arquilla and net-centric warfare (which always struck me as an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophesy — despite the fact that network superiority has no deterrent value). Where I differ is in the proposition that C4ISR is a “battle space”.

C4ISR, or (as ADM Giambastiani liked to refer to it during his tour as my boss at U.S. Joint Forces Command, “C2 + C2ISR”), is simply a tool. The technology only provides a medium by which information can be shared, the same way that Roman signal towers allowed information to be conveyed rapidly across great distances millennia ago.

Part of the Tanji-Liles dialog emphasized the lack of any truly “revolutionary” capabilities in recent decades. I’m inclined to agree — from a purely technological perspective. Our modern technology — though impressive — has not ushered in a unique “Information Age”. In fact, today’s technologies have not created wholly new capabilities; they have simply enriched capabilities that have existed for centuries. Rather than living in “The Information Age”, I believe we are actually living in the fifth “information age”:

1st: Verbal exchange of information (oral communication)
2nd: Physical representation of information (Sumerian writing)
3rd: Portability of information (papyrus)
4th: Mass-production of information (Gutenberg’s movable type press)
5th: Information freed from physical form (telegraph, telephone, Internet)

The most significant effect of proliferating information technology and communications capabilities has been to neuter the initiative and empowerment of subordinates — stunting the audacity that makes (or breaks) battles. Rigid hierarchies coupled with pervasive communications grids — with “Net-Centricity” — are demonstrably less effective than ones with “weak” links (q.v. Linked by Albert-László Barabási).

Consider the “Operational Level of War” — the level between “Tactics” and “Strategy”. Many organizations of the U.S. Department of Defense invest inordinate numbers of labor hours in developing an idea that peaked in Napoleon’s time (when it was called “Grand Tactics”).

Napoleon’s logic was simple: he commanded an army so vast that its interior lines could exceed the distance of daily information propagation. (Information in the late 18th/early 19th century could propagate at approximately 100 miles per day.) But when technology increased the bandwidth of information transfer (as well as the speed, thanks to decoupling it from physical form and allowing velocity=c), the intermediate layer that once served as a proxy for the Imperial edict (i.e., empowerment of the on-scene commander to act on behalf of the Emperor) has remain entrenched.

Modern C4ISR tools have served to perpetuate this folly, giving today’s commanders a beguiling sense of “Situational Awareness”.  MIL STD 2525, the military standard for unit symbology merged with theater-scale maps, can give a commander a “realtime snapshot” of the entire physical battlespace.  But as the scale increases (since warfare is not scale invariant), the trade off between “relevance” and “intelligibility” becomes akin to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: as one becomes more precise, the other becomes dangerously less so.

The temptation to treat warfare like a game of chess (with its ordinal moves and perfect battlefield intelligence) is fallacious.  ARHerring, a co-contributor at Dreaming5GW, recently opined about the nature of chess on multiple boards — a closer approximation to the adaptive and complex nature of war.  Clausewitz’s description of “Genius” in battle is the antithesis of a reductionist thinker who seeks the unique solution to a given problem.  Complex adaptive environments can have multiple solutions — but an even larger number of incorrect options.

Therefore, a better description of an effective military leader is not simply “charisma”, but “network fitness”: per Barabási, the ability to “attract” links in order to influence their perceptions.  This applies not only to COIN, but also to Information Warfare (h/t mtanji) and the renascent field of Public Diplomacy championed by Mountainrunner.


Update: Michael Tanji and Tyler Boudreau (h/t John Robb) sound off.


[Crossposted at Wizards of Oz]