Results tagged “Co-optation”

(This is part of a series of posts exploring what I consider to be the essential principles of 5GW.)

Preliminary:   EBO?

Writing in Effects-based operations: A New Operational Model?¹, April 2002, then-LTC Allen Batschelet examined three differing concepts of EBO currently circulating.  Aspects of each may appear much like the concept of 5GW often discussed here:

(This is part of a series of posts exploring what I consider to be the essential principles of 5GW.)

I. Hands in the Field

Early Mentions

I think that my earliest use of the phrase "hands in the field" in conjunction with the theory of 5GW may have been in a Q & A response to an early criticism of the theory of 5GW:  "Where is the 'war' part?" (October 14, 2006):

If we really want to engage in 5GW, we shouldn't be talking about how 5GW is a manipulation of free will. We should be declaring that individual freedom is essential to victory.

No and yes. Do you want terrorists to have individual freedom? This talk of freedom -- platitudes, really -- may well be essential for 5GW, simply because a people that is being told, "We are manipulating you!" will prove less pliable. Make them believe they have absolute freedom to act: Yes, of course. Convince them they have the power to change the world...because changing the world will require a lot of hands in the field.

although the idea behind the phrase began to take form earlier.
 
Soon after, in a comment on the blog ZenPundit (13 November, 2006) I referenced an entry on my now-defunct blog Phatic Communion in which I'd found fault with President Bush's use of the terrorism threat.  Regardless of the actual number of active anti-American terrorists roaming the world,

For each terrorist, there is at least one American standing in opposition.

The problem is: GWB's rhetoric has been disempowering individual Americans; whereas, in 5GW, you gain hands in the field by empowering your (perhaps unwitting) agents. And we will probably need to move into the next generation of warfare if we are going to win this Long War -- before our enemies do (as you have already pointed out.)

In other words, at the time I meant:   no reason exists for believing Americans should live -- pragmatically -- in fear of the terrorists since -- pragmatically -- any given American could do what any given terrorist might do, or do better, and there are so many more Americans than there are anti-American terrorists.  That was a rough statement of an idea I'd been trying to work into usefulness.  This was a meme circulating at the time, particularly by critics of the GWB method of population mobilization.  ("Shop and we won't drop!")

Subsequent discussions expanded the idea.  At D5GW-contributor Dan tdaxp's blog, one commenter named Ron contributed a quote by T.E.Lawrence during a discussion of the OODA Loop (February 12, 2007):

“Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is.”

and I responded,

The quote from Lawrence is interesting. In fact, the idea can be used to better understand the 'hands in the field' dynamic of 5GW: Get others to do the work altering the perceptions in the necessary ways.

Under another tdaxp post, one exploring the issue of patriotism (March 15, 2007), I suggested that remaining patriotic in the jingoistic with-us-or-against-us manner would be ineffective for the 5GW operator, while incorporating two more ideas:

Now, of course you might say that we can love them while hating their nation, also while loving our own nation as patriots; but this in-depth loving that would seek to “embrace and extend” in order to co-opt so many hands in the field, working the system from multiple sides, might require that we embrace whatever national identity they have — even while we try to extend it into becoming something else.

I had been influenced by Dan's recent consideration of the "Embrace and Extend" tactic.  (March 13, 2007) -- and by Thomas P.M. Barnett, too, who frequently uses the idea of "co-opting" to win.

The Inefficiency of One Hand Clapping

A recent series of posts helped to inspire me to begin this series on the principles of 5GW with Hands in the Field.  In my first post on my new blog, I let off some steam concerning the "greening" of Twitter which is ostensibly meant to help the dissidents of Iran.  I labeled the effort 4GW.

Two other bloggers have added to the consideration.  In "Media Spectacles, Michael Jackson, and Iran,"  D5GW contributor Adam Elkus concludes that effective mobilization of the Iranian dissidents will depend much more on what happens in Iran and locally than on whether Americans are paying attention, and that any info-war effort will need to be aware of the possibilities of an MJ-type black swan squashing that effort.  Joseph Fouche, meanwhile, goes into some depth to understand the power structure of the "Twitter War: Now With Tasty Frosting":

Twitter is a dimension of power characterized by low resistance and low persistence. It is a target of power primarily because it’s a medium of power through which a war of influence could be waged. It is not the goal. Control of Twitter does not bring you into the zone of realization. Twitter is only a medium of power, a zone of application. The target of power, the zone of realization, is any force sufficient to bring kinetic power to bear on the regime. That didn’t happen because the medium was mistaken for the target.

These considerations returned me to an exploration of 5GW which predates my use of the term "hands in the field" but nonetheless laid the groundwork for it.  One of the seminal early considerations of 5GW, written by Dan tdaxp, introduced the idea of the importance of secrecy to a 5GW effort (indeed, this blog is named after that post), and that concept ultimately led me to write a series of posts in an effort to understand how, exactly, 5GW would be conducted.  To summarize:  1) no war effort would be worth the effort if the world was not actually changed by it, 2) every change to the world is an actual, physical change or it is not a change whatsoever, and 3) every actual concrete effect is observable, if not directly then through a type of forensics, or indirectly; and so 4) this concept of "secrecy" in 5GW needed an update.

As a side note, yet a relevant example, Adam Elkus recently considered the Western impulse to love the SEI renegade -- just before squashing him. (RTJ)   In other words, open and direct activity invites retaliation.

From that chain of thought, then, sprang many other implications, all of which led back to the idea of "hands in the field."

Indirection, for instance, or operating at several degrees away from final outcomes, would help maintain secrecy; multiple domains would need to be shaped to create 4th, 5th, etc., order effects.  (Direct action is quite traceable.)

Such manipulation would require many actors; but many actors would not act, or would act contrary to the war effort, if they knew they were being manipulated.  Thus, the 5GW effort would be strengthened via co-option:  let self-interest motivate those being utilized as "hands in the field."

A winning 5GW would seek an outcome which is lasting, i.e. a strong and resilient system, and this would also require that those living within any newly created or newly modified system consciously or unconsciously continue to maintain that system -- rather than consciously or unconsciously form groups to bring it down.  (They must remain the 5GW effort's "hands in the field".)

In one variation of the argument, even enemies would be made hands in the field via co-option, simply because wiping them out would be impossible and leaving them to run wild would threaten the 5GW effort.

One might then ask why those participating in the greening of Twitter are not, after all, conducting 5GW, since so many are participating.

Joseph Fouche answered that question well:

Khamenei, in the words of Zenpundit, is a political valet interested in this life. He is interested in concrete power. The opposition would only ever triumph if they attracted government elements who could present a sufficient physical counter-force to Khamenei’s forces. As of yet, that has not happened. Twitter War would have to…

    * Trigger internal forces to side with the opposition.

Or.

    * Trigger external forces to intervene on the side of the opposition.

…in order to actually reach the zone of realization with any impact.

Khamenei has to date been more focused on the physical, actual world plane than have the Twit supporters who have managed to garner support from other Twit greeners or, in the case of those dissidents in Iran, from other dissidents in Iran or sympathizers abroad.  In other words, nothing has really changed.  Greeners, whether Iranian or Western users of Twitter, were already opposed to the Iranian Regime.

As I expressed in Skirting the Metaverse, the changing of an icon to green may seem like a great action of support -- the beating of paths into highways in the field -- but it is more appropriately the sound of multiple people clapping one hand in the effort to increase the volume of their outrage.  We should not presume to know all that is happening within Iran or in the West that will have an actual effect on the outcome -- I even mentioned a relatively ridiculous possible MJ-5GW-related interpretation of the Twitterverse -- and so I would admit the possibility that every Twit greener has been co-opted in some 5GW fashion. They would be the 5GW hands in the field, not the 5GW operators themselves, but only if the increase in volume/noise was the work -- action -- required by the 5GW operators. 

While some thought has been given to the possibility of stand-alone superempowered actors conducting a type of destructive, system-perturbing 5GW, one is hard-pressed to define success on the basis of outcomes.  System perturbation on the order of Armageddon (and some do like to see that far) would be psychopathy rather than a warfare effort; and anything less would invite extraordinary retribution upon the SEI actor or group.

For any warfare effort to be considered 5GW, the utilization of "hands in the field" -- i.e., massive co-option and not mere tribal bonding -- will be key.



I. Introduction
II. Principles of 5GW:  Hands in the Field
III. Principles of 5GW:  Evolved EBO

Lately I've been reconsidering the term offloading and finding great correspondence with other terms frequently used on Dreaming 5GW:

• cognition
• OODA
• co-optation
• freedom
• globalization
• resilience
• consilience
• open source
• static

This will be a very long post; so if you are reading this from the front page, I've put the rest below the fold......

Wiggins of Opposed Systems Design has a meaty post on "Info Militias and 21st Century People's War" -- on China's efforts to create Internet Brigades (really, a term relating to Russia) and other things: a new kind of "people's war", or really a new fashion of same.

For that matter, this sort of effort wouldn’t even need to be aligned with a state. Imagine an online campaign (like the movements to put red ribbon .gifs on blogs to show support for AIDS research or “click here to donate” links) where an explicit or a secret component of the movement was making each member’s computer a part of the movement’s personal zombie net. Explicit support might be a bad choice, since it would make members vulnerable to charges of supporting hacking with no offsetting benefit. A better strategy might be to have members download an “information orientation package” or some such material that would include the trojan. Members would then have deniability (”I’m just a victim of another nasty trojan!”) and the group would still get its zombie net. A small team of skilled hackers could then use these resources to further the group’s policy goals.

See also:

"Online 5GW?  Online 4GW" at Soob.

Version of a Wikipedia article on the Russian Internet Brigades -- also at Soob.

Current Wikipedia article on the Internet Brigades.

An odd romp which may be related, someday, at GayGamer.net: "PS3 Doubles Power of Folding@Home".

And another here on D5GW, with a new question:  Will so-called Internet Brigades, or China's Info People's War, be able to utilize MMORGs?  (Kent's Imperative also pondered the reality of a new "Wizards War." Since we're talking zombies...and co-optation via zombies.)

What is the nature of the secrecy or invisibility of Fifth Generation Warfare?

I have been thinking lately about the idea that 5GW will be secret, or invisible because it is hard to distinguish what is 5GW and what is not. I have also considered, at length, the concept that a 5GW campaign will function at a strategic level that by nature will also be hard to observe, while operationally and tactically it will appear to be acting at a lower rung on the XGW ladder (if at all). I have seen this type of security described before as security through obscurity. Fundamentally speaking, I am not completely happy with that approach. While it may be effective in most cases security through obscurity is essentially a passive defense. Such passive defense is most similar to camouflage or mimicry and while blending into your surroundings, or resembling something you are not, may be effective at some level once that veil is pierced the organization is no longer able to operate. This is why I feel an active defense is something that should be an essential component of 5GW theory.

How it should work:

Fundamentally speaking the 5GW organization should operate by proxy at every possible opportunity. Ideally, there should also be one or more levels of cutouts between the proxies and 5GW organizations. At every opportunity the 5GW organization should be isolated from its operations with its directives and orders moving through highly specialized and designated channels that, brutally and bluntly speaking, when eliminated will leave nothing but dead ends for anyone seeking to unravel a 5GW campaign.

Why it needs to work this way:

An organization using fifth generation warfare undertakes operations in order to provoke a specific reaction or result. It does this best by influencing the opposing aspects of a situation. In short, it works on the offensive and defensive (perhaps also on the neutral) sides of a conflict and plays all ends against the middle. Remember, the result is the goal of the 5GW organization. To best accomplish this the various sides must never realize that they are being manipulated much less that there is an organization working on both sides of a conflict. They must believe they are acting of their own will. They must believe their responses are in their own best interest and must not realize that interest and the reaction to that interest has been carefully conditioned. Secrecy is essential to reach the most optimum conclusion.

Dan tdaxp has an interesting follow-up to my last post, and in my latest comments under both posts I wrote some things that have iterated in my head, in combination with both posts, to produce some other thought which I'd post simply as a question:

Despite the fact that a 5GW org would never "declare war" in the traditional sense, might we say that a 5GW declaration of war upon some entity -- group, nation-state -- is merely the choosing of that entity, or rather the choosing of individuals within that entity, to become the 5GW org's proxies?

Think carefully.  Not only does the question relate to the issue of co-optation, not only to the kinder, gentler concept of 5GW, but it involves a very peculiar understanding of the concept of 'proxy' and how 5GW will operate.  The question also involves the scale of 5GW and should not depend upon whether we are speaking of proxies 'elevated' by the 5GW org or proxies 'defeated' by the 5GW org.

Hmmmm....Definition subject to revision at any time, of course!

I'm bumping up a comment I left in another thread...

And this is where 5GW on a grand scale may diverge from the current Robb/Hammes approach, which emphasizes one superempowered individual as opposed to generating empowerment across an entire society.

[Steve, commenting on "Kilcullen on Narratives in Iraq."]

Yes. I once included a consideration of the two types of superempowerment when contrasting Barnett with Robb. It would seem that Barnett's approach (which we at D5GW have often labeled "5GWish") requires the general superempowerment of individuals across the spectrum, as an antidote to the Robbian one-man-killing-crew. With regard to some recent considerations on the idea of kinetics, this means creating more routes for the channeling of powers, not only as a distracting maneuver ("jobs" vs "guns") but also as a method of equalizing the kinetics across the system, or forcing kinetics into indirection. It is a kind of perpetual, systemic, mass deflection.

[CGW, responding]

This is a long post, so I'm putting the rest below the fold......

Recently on tdaxp, Dan highlighted a comment that his friend Aaron had left on a 5GW-related post at tdaxp:

I don't find patriotism some quality to aspire to. It's racism minus the pigmentary convenience.

[Aaron, from "Comment Upgrade: Patriotism and the Iraq War"]

As might be expected, the comment has created a controversy. Some patriots are wondering how their patriotism makes them racist.  Others wonder if the loose use of the concept of racism makes it meaningless.  The comment was made in the context of the Iraq war and politics -- so there we have another occasion for controversy, and a burgeoning debate over whether Democrats or Republicans are authentically patriotic, or liberals or conservatives.

Dan left a short comment wondering what was meant by the statement:

I'm interested in how patriotism is just racism without the skin color. Is it because both are forms of in-group favoritism?

[Dan tdaxp]

This comment, as well as the looser connection with the subject of 5GW in the original thread which ultimately threaded through various things to the issue of patriotism, led me to leave a comment relating the subject back to 5GW and away from the aforementioned controversies:

In a look at "4GW Christianity Around the Blogosphere" Dan recently highlighted some 5GW-related thoughts from Thomas P.M. Barnett's post "Why the yin disconnects from the yang" which are fertile ground for 5GW theorists.  I'm going to break apart the ideas and respond to each in turn with my own take.