Working Definition V. 2.0

I like this formulation, though it is broad. However, I might abridge it —

• An emergent theory of conflict premised upon manipulation of systems through influence in multiple domains to achieve a specific goal or set of circumstances.

I have, after all, recently argued that conducting 5GW while separating politics and warfare, etc., from one another, in our minds, would be limiting. But I do like the ‘multiple domains’ consideration; it’s just that, as with the Bill of Rights, once you list a definitive set of domains you also limit consideration to only those, as if it is an exhaustive list.

There are perhaps two different ‘types’ implied in the last part: one kind that seeks ‘a specific goal’ and another which seeks a ‘set of circumstances’. That muddies it a little for me. The definition might be abridged further:

• An emergent theory of conflict premised upon manipulation of systems through influence in multiple domains.

‘Systems’ is a little too vague; I wonder if we can really consider very small systems without also considering the larger system in which they belong: each affects the other. So the plural muddies it for me. I’d be tempted to abridge further:

• An emergent theory of conflict premised upon manipulation through influence in multiple domains.

Hmmm. Is that now too broad for a definition? I might be tempted to change ‘conflict’ to ‘warfare’ so that we’re not talking merely politics or business, etc. I like the use of ‘influence’ although it’s also vague; but I might also add a consideration of influence that is not bound to its own particular domain —

• An emergent theory of warfare premised upon manipulation through influence within and across multiple domains.

Still not sure about ‘influence.’ Maybe:

• An emergent theory of warfare premised upon manipulation within and across multiple domains.

—although it might as easily be worded thus:

• An emergent theory of warfare premised upon manipulation of multiple domains.

‘Manipulation’ is also vague; or, weak. What about:

• An emergent theory of warfare premised upon effecting changes within multiple domains.

For me, that’s very close. As a lark, I might add one word:

• An emergent theory of total warfare premised upon effecting changes within multiple domains.

— although to keep standard understandings of ‘total warfare’ from creeping in, I might change the wording and add single quotes:

• An emergent theory of ‘total war’ premised upon effecting changes within multiple domains.

Thanks for the feedback Curtis!

1) The domains and conflict instead of warfare.

This is the key difference that led me to call this v. 2.0 instead 1.X. It seems to me that the further up we go on the G continuum the more we are talking about conflict rather than warfare.

2) Goals and requirements.

There are perhaps two different ‘types’ implied in the last part: one kind that seeks ‘a specific goal’ and another which seeks a ‘set of circumstances’.

As this is a ‘working definition’ I am still exploring some of its aspects. This is the one I am working on right now (it will in fact be the ‘Part 1’ I have previewed here) and it still isn’t clear to me. My ‘fingertip feel’ is that 5GW is goal oriented, but I included the set of requirements because I still feel it has bearing.

The rest of your comments make a lot of sense to me and I will keep them in mind for future versions of the definition.

“An emergent theory of economic, social, political and military conflict…”

Is the theory emergent or rather the conflict? A theory of emergent conflict… It seems to me that this kind of warfare would be emergent by nature.

“I might be tempted to change ‘conflict’ to ‘warfare’ so that we’re not talking merely politics or business, etc.”

I think this kind of “warfare” would transcend these categories, blur their distinctions. It is entirely possible that what we would normally perceive as business, politics, religion, entertainment etc, become in 5GW a means to an end that would be by intent a form of warfare, even if it appeared to us as normal business or politics etc.

A delayed response, Phil:

Many Paths to Victory

Aherring,

I like this a lot. It emphasizes the interpersonal nature of war, “manipulation of systems” is a good way of describing how a 5GWarriors acts indirectly. The focus on “mulitple domains” is very promising, I think.

How about:

“Fifth Generation Warfare (5GW): An emerging theory of social conflict premised upon manipulation of systems through influence in multiple domains to achieve certain changes in multiple domains.”

I like that a lot Dan.

It seems to me that the further up we go on the G continuum the more we are talking about conflict rather than warfare.

Arherring,

I suppose it’s a choice between trying to redefine warfare or trying to more fully appreciate conflict. I’m fine with conflict…although I think we run into problems there as well, since some of this ‘conflict’ may in fact not be conflict but codependency and interdependency and so forth. I picture the two L.A. tornadoes in the movie The Day After Tomorrow merging…while still being in conflict with the surrounding matter, heh. But I also wonder about forms of 5GW which may be more creative than destructive, or which seek to change systems by means other than by introducing conflict — say, by introducing forms of resiliency, consilience, interdependence and mutual growth, and so forth. Do we need to redefine conflict?

Dan,

I like that too, although given the above response to Arherring…

Hey all. Something I wanted to bring up — are any of you aware of the current definitions and/or concepts of Unconventional Warfare and Foreign Internal Defense and Internal Defense and Development? There is a similar debate going on in USSOCOM right now that is leading everyone down a very misleading path. I think your discussion of definitions and concept here would benefit greatly.

MDE,

Sounds interesting. I’m not quite sure if you mean we would benefit greatly by their discussions or the other way around, but if you have any further information or links I would very interested in taking a look.

Arherring:
There are no open-source links to it, but here is their “working” definition of what they are calling Irregular Warfare, or IW:

“A form of warfare that has as its objective the credibility and/or the legitimacy of the relevant political authority with the goal of undermining or supporting that authority. Irregular warfare favors indirect approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities to seek asymmetric advantages, in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence and will.”

In short, I can not go into details of the methodology (in the future it will probably be classified), but lets say that the thinking is very near parallel to yours here. There are some fatal flaws in it, however, from the military doctrine side: the doctrine already exists and is taught at some special warfare centers of learning. If you can locate any of the old 31-series Army field manuals, you’ll see what I mean. Now, the latest version of all that is indeed classified, but there are archival versions of nearly everything, some available at Amazon.com and some are available at sites like fas.org.

Sorry, to actually answer your question, I meant the discussion would be mutually beneficial. I’m not in a position to facilitate that sort of cross-talk, but I believe each line of thought would improve somewhat.

All that said, there is a fundamental premise inthe whole 4GW thing (and its progeny, your 5GW concept) which is wrong: “4GW” as described and experienced by TX Hammes and his group-thinkers, is not the fourth generation of warfare development and evolution, it is the

original

There has always (well, always meaning in the last hundred years) been a capability of the US military and other agencies to wage what is now termed “4GW” and, now “5GW” but is is one of those things that just doesn’t get discussed (mostly out of ignorance, but also out of pride). The USMC conducted it in all of our colonial wars (Philippines, the Banana Wars, etc.), the US Army had a manual for it in the 1920s, though it was not termed “4GW”, and US Special Forces (aka Green Berets) have taught and trained it since its inception after the OSS split into USSF and the CIA.

Conventional military commanders — and the public — do not appreciate special capabilities because it is commonly viewed as “illegal” or “immoral” or “unfair.” Well, now that it is being used against us in terms we can comprehend, albeit after the fact, it is suddenly center-stage and everyone is talking about it. What we do in this realm (simultaneous, parallel, multi-system attack for common, coherent, measurable and desireable effects) is so classified that most people who are doing it only know their piece of the pie. They have no visibility of the rest of it, but they assume that the rest is happening. Of course, we do it best in the technological domain because our lead is so great, but we suck (culturally speaking) in the human domain, because of two main factors: 1) we do not engage in warfare in our own culture, so therefore, we do not know most of the rules to other people’s games, and 2) there is such a small number of people engaged in this domain, that there is no Operation Enduring Freedom-style overhaul of enemy systems in all domains.

USSOCOM only has about 50,000 people in it in total, and 80% of those do not engage in anything close to useful engagement — they are support functionaries — and other agencies are similiarly disposed. So, in our grand-strategic view of the WOT, we have around 20,000 people engaging about 150-200 million Islamists in our weakest arena: using the human mind as a weapon. That is why we suddenly perceive a need which has given rise to all these theories and why so much of our senior civilian and military leadership perceive it as “new.”

A form of warfare that has as its objective the credibility and/or the legitimacy of the relevant political authority with the goal of undermining or supporting that authority. Irregular warfare favors indirect approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities to seek asymmetric advantages, in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence and will.

MDE,

This sounds like what we at D5GW would call 4GW. In 5GW, the enemy’s will is not so much undermined in the sense of sapping it or eroding it, but preempted: situations are created which will lead to the adversary’s acting under the full authority of his own will — He believes he is entirely self-directed. In fact, buttressing that impression will be a major tactic in 5GW.

There have been a lot of discussions among regulars of D5GW concerning the applicability of a generational warfare model, with some saying that such a model is silly because most of the strategies and tactics of any one ‘generation’ have always been available and utilized. I approach the subject with two things in particular in mind:

1. That though multifarious tactics and strategies have probably always been around, changing ground realities have pushed some to the forefront — realities such as the social and technological complexity, various types of social and geopolitical organization, etc. So there is the issue of refinement of these old methods, along with a greater utility than perhaps existed before (at least, utility vis-a-vis the most frequent and likely types of conflict.) Some tactics and strategies which were supplemental in previous eras might now be primary methods.
2. The generational model is just that: a model, useful for understanding what has and what is and what will be occurring. Unlike, say, the periodic table, which is also a model, the individual taxonomy relies greatly on a confluence of complex, dynamic social influences; i.e., gold is gold is AU, and will remain gold regardless of whether it is found in a totalitarian society, a society shaped by interstate commerce, a society with advanced technology — or primitive technology — and so forth. When I use the generational warfare model to say “4GW” or “2GW”, I am necessarily also referring to these other influences, or attempting to isolate a complex dynamic rather than a unique entity or concrete elemental singularity. There is no clean cut, in time and space, for separating the generations, as if they were entirely unique from one another and have exclusive tactics and strategies. (Hope that makes sense!)

[Some previous posts on topic of generational models:
• ”The Thunder Pig Thunders”
• ”Lind, Robb, Dan, PurpleSlog, CGW”
• ”Observing the Maturing World” ]

Mark Safranski of ZenPundit has speculated that Nazi Germany may have utilize 4GW organizational structures, that thinking of 4GW as a relatively new dynamic would be unwise, and that we may be woefully behind on recognizing the advent of a dialectal shift into 5GW — brought on by a changing battlespace.

Ohhhh…you’re talking about subversion via an underground — a shadow government, of sorts. It is one of the three branches of an insurgency (the guerrillas and auxiliary being the other two). Sure, you are including a whole host of other vectors of attack/influence — strategic information dissemination (to inform and to deceive), diplomatic maneuvering, alliance-building, military and paramilitary positioning/operations, infrastructure manipulation and disruption, technological interruption, disruption and degradation of threat homeland signals and transmissions, disruption or influence of social systems, etc. But the surest way to clandestinely get an enemy to do what you want is to have a man on the inside in deep cover in a key position of information awareness and influence. “Clandestine” is defined as conduct of an operation in which the very operation itself — not just the sponsor — is concealed from discovery.

Yes, I’m speaking metaphorically — it would be several individuals to several hundred people all working independently but very loosely connected by very few, but strong trust ties in an information-flow network with the handle bars in a friendly country and the working ends of all the fingers in all vital aspects of government (the four aspects of national power, adding what we westerners would label religious, when applicable).

No, you do not have to have a full-up fighting insurgency to have an underground. We in America have several overlapping layers of influence networks (underground movements) — political parties, PACs, foreign governments’ political and intelligence operations, religous groups, student activism, etc.: groups who act on the overt side of things (advertisements, campaigns, etc.) and on the underside of things (bribes, secret meetings, etc.)

MDE,

“Clandestine” is defined as conduct of an operation in which the very operation itself — not just the sponsor — is concealed from discovery.

Essentially, yes. However, much activity might appear to be in the open, although not easily connected. In fact, a lot of activity would be easily observable, but different players would be seen — proxies, dupes, meme-advocates, etc. — and different motivations discerned, with the general impression that these figures and organizations are following their own self-directed will (which they are) for their own particular reasons.

Your points about having “a man on the inside in deep cover” remind me of the latter half of my post on “Initiating 5GW”, my first real stab at visualizing how a 5GW campaign would be conducted. I postulated a loose network of individuals placed in key positions, although most of those key positions would be very close to meme-advocates (such as politicians, celebrities, journalists, etc.) or policy makers and policy implementers. “Whispers in the ear” manipulation. However, I do not think that a consideration of only a secret cabal working these folks like puppets would be adequate for describing the full scope of 5GW. It’s not only an inside-out direction, but also an outside-in direction of activity. I.e., not only would up-close, embedded effectors influence key players, but quite public events also would be used to inspire a willful response in key players — terrorist attack, power grid failure, ‘natural disaster’, a new movie or a new book, and so forth. Some of these ‘public’ events might be relatively private, if the target is an individual person: something he sees on the television while scanning cable channels searching for a night’s simple entertainment; or an article in a journal to which he subscribes. Sometimes, the best way to get a key power broker to move is to work through the general populace: a broad-scale building and reinforcement of understandings, etc. But rather than directly act to put the major events in the public domain, other proxies would be influenced to do so — Effector A influencing Journalist A or Terrorist A may be doing so in order to ultimately influence an entire populace or only some other key player several domains to the East and North! I think that deep embedding close to the major power nodes might be extraordinarily effective, but it’s certainly not the only way to go about it and in many cases might be quite difficult.

Your final paragraph points at one of my underlying observations: that democratic and bureaucratic societies already operate in a 5GWish sort of way, especially given the complexity of media and channels for influencing others (which include the forces of capitalism and other mechanisms besides media.) It’s just that much of this occurs in a disorganized manner or with limited focus by special interest groups — who are often being thwarted or at least limited by others beyond their scope of influence or even beyond their observational range.

The secrecy or clandestine aspect causes many to doubt such an approach, because it sounds a little too James Bond or Aliens-are-controlling-us-as-an-experiment, etc.! In fact, many operations will be in the open, some will be accidentally-on-pupose discovered, many players will be working openly, and pundits as well as sociologists and others will be analyzing the various players, social developments, etc. — but these open players are not the 5GW organization. In fact, when a 5GW campaign is finished, ideally no one will ever know that it occurred, most of the time. Whatever happened in those years during the campaign will be written off as another bit of history, or the emergence of changed dynamics resulting from so many diverse events and personalities.

MDE,

Many aspects of 5GW may be clandestine because they are intentionally kept secret, or even because they work at a level where the effect just isn’t noticed.

I’ll give you a scenario.

One of the problems right now with the war in Iraq as it relates to the American people is the Vietnam syndrome. In other words, the American people are not willing to accept casualties on a scale that would have been acceptable in conflicts previous to Vietnam. Assume a 5GW organization came together to change that particular aspect of the American psyche.

One operation they engage in runs through Hollywood. Through influence and leverage they cause a big-budget blockbuster movie to be made that depicts our soldiers dying for their country out of a deep sense of duty. They give their lives willingly in service to a greater cause. Most of the people involved in this would be part of the operation completely because it makes them famous, or makes them money or from some other reason. All the 5GW organization wants is to disseminate their meme. That this is the reason is kept secret, everthing else may be completely out in the open.

Now imagine replicating that meme in a dozen other domains and at the same time attacking the Vietnam syndrome in an equal number of domains. Through the news media, through the education process of our schools, through some sort of economic avenue. Again and again and again. Building as well as destroying is essential, perhaps even more so.

Eventually there should come a change in the American attitude toward casualties. Will the American people see it as a campaign to change them? I doubt it. They probably would laugh it off as a conspiracy theory. It will just have happened, and probably many people will claim to have always thought that way.

Perhaps a poor example but possibly an informative one.

5GW will increasingly be a fight over memes with one or multiple sides actively trying to push and shape memes that drives humans.

So, I think bringing up the Vietnam syndrome” meme is proper. If you on the US/West side and want them to more effectively fight in the future, you want to minimize or destroy the Vietnam syndrome meme.

On the other hand, if you are against the US/West, you want to emphasize causalities as much as possible, and suggests that the US leaders are just throwing their lives away. Now how this differs from what most of the US media and entertainment industry does…ummm…I will have to think about that.

ok, so with this 5GW idea, can an actor create a meme or should one already have to exist (maybe an undercurrent, dormant or initially unpopular issue) that the actor then — via whatever mechanism — invests resources to cause the meme to become more inlfuential? The Vietnam Syndrome thing is a home-grown, left-wing and media fed phenomenon. No one has to remind us to be risk-averse. If so, how does an actor accomplish that?

I say that because in current Special Warfare doctrine, we do not create a resistance movement — one must already exist (at least in status as an Opposition Group, but prefereable as a Resistance Group) in order to have a vehicle to exploit and drive in a mutually beneficial direction as far as is necessary and morally appropriate. Without that — and this is specifically why we do not work this way — you are talking about creating a national movement, a popular idea or cemementing otherwise disparate groups and key individuals in another culture in another language. In cross-cultural warfare, trying to “create” is nearly impossible, “co-opt” or “preempt” (your word) is much more feasible.

I re-read CGW’s 10 Dec entry and that is a partial answer. But, the paragraph reading:

Effector A influencing Journalist A or Terrorist A may be doing so in order to ultimately influence an entire populace or only some other key player several domains to the East and North!

This is lives in the same house as impossible. First, Social Network Theory (if you buy into that) describes influence across more than three degrees of separation as nullified by the diffusion of emphasis, loss of common terms/language, diverging goals or priorities and varying degrees of common knowledge (what may be considered common knowledge to one guy, it may not be so to another guy from another neighborhood — clan, tribe, nation, nation-state).

Second, you can never predict the end-sentiment of a group. You may know the way a group may react to the initial stimulus (called the first order effect, but his reaction will spark reactions (called second-order effects), counter-actions (third-order effects), etc. that can not be predicted. While the first order effects are usually superficial, human reactions in accordance with the local culture and modes of expression (and psychologically predicatable), the second order is never easy to predict and is almost never spelled out by historical data (because of the evolving dynamism of the human terrain). Anything beyond that? I suspect that even God has fun with that one (after throwing up His arms, laughing out of giddy late-night frustration) and it is quite beyond our comprehension. We teach influencing the 3rd order as a goal, but we also stress to our students that to control it is a dream.

Already exist. Long term organic growth is what its all about.

ok, so with this 5GW idea, can an actor create a meme or should one already have to exist (maybe an undercurrent, dormant or initially unpopular issue)

As far as the meme is concerned it may or may not already exist. All the 5GW cares about is if it helps it accomplish its goal.

in current Special Warfare doctrine, we do not create a resistance movement — one must already exist (at least in status as an Opposition Group, but prefereable as a Resistance Group) in order to have a vehicle to exploit and drive in a mutually beneficial direction as far as is necessary and morally appropriate.

This is fine for a Special Warfare force. To create such a movement is beyond the abilities of such an organization. It just doesn’t have the resources. However, an existing organization may be influenced by the Special Warfare force (as is currently part of the doctrine of training and assisting) as a part of a larger 5GW strategy in shaping a battlespace. At the operational and tactical levels the organization may in fact use the thinking of previous generations of warfare. This is especially true in more kenetic situations where 4GW and 3GW are better suited to success. The overall strategy, however, would be pure 5GW. The resistance movement may be a proxy or even a dupe in the larger 5GW strategy.

First, Social Network Theory (if you buy into that) describes influence across more than three degrees of separation as nullified by the diffusion of emphasis…

That also is fine for 5GW. Since 5GW is spread across a multiplicity of domains its reach comes in from multiple directions. If the 5GW campaign is sound it will reach its target three degrees or less from somewhere, hopefully more than once.

Second, you can never predict the end-sentiment of a group.

This is true but the end-sentiment can be influenced and as far as 5GW is concerned that may be all that is necessary in combination with the other effects it is seeking.

I think the most important thing to consider in applying 5GW to the Special Warfare commmunity is you don’t have to (and really shouldn’t) be doing it all. The operations you are specialized for will not change but they may be applied in different context. Hopefully making them more effective on a strategic scale. The bigger change between the way the special forces are used under current doctrine and a 5GW doctrine wouldn’t be how and where, but when and why.

can an actor create a meme or should one already have to exist [MDE]

The 5GW force, in order to be effective, will look for emergence in advance, and will create the memes that will lead to the desired emergence. “Emergence in advance” is potential, unformed, no-form. In order to be effective, the 5GW force will highlight inequalities and insufficiencies which are already present although perhaps largely ignored; they will be market creators… [“Initiating 5GW”]

The framework of ‘market creating’ is helpful for understanding how 5GW organizations will work. In the same way that product development is targeted, via advertising, at consumers who have never before considered using the new products that have been developed but already live within pre-existing conditions being tied to those products, 5GW memetic engineering may be targeted at a population or individuals. Existing conditions will be used, whether physical realities or generally abstract mental frameworks. (E.g., pharmaceutical companies have been creating ‘new conditions’ such as RLS — “restless leg syndrome” — in order to sell medications targeted at people suffering from that complex of conditions.) I’ve also speculated that pre-existing bigotries, fetishes, religious fanaticism, etc., can be used effectively.

You may know the way a group may react to the initial stimulus (called the first order effect, but his reaction will spark reactions (called second-order effects), counter-actions (third-order effects), etc. that can not be predicted. [MDE]

Perhaps; but why should the 5GWEffector-FinalTarget effect, if it is ‘direct’, be considered a “first order effect” but not the JournalistA-FinalTarget effect as well? I.e., “to control it is a dream” may be true if we only dream it into being, or believe that somehow a ‘meme’ has traveled from the Effector through an intermediary and then directly to a third party. But memes don’t travel — a common misconception; instead, they emerge within minds. The point is to create changes in the physical environment that lead to their emergence, and this requires a deep understanding of environments. If we know that Journalist A can create an effect that will cause the emergence of a meme in the mind of Final Target A, then we only need to look at how to cause the right meme (which might be somewhat different) to form in the mind of Journalist A that will lead to that proxy’s action that in turn stimulates the emergence of the desired meme in Final Target A.

Knowing that diffusion is a potential problem resulting from complexity, 5GW operations will require the ability to anticipate the diffusion and 1) limit it by reinforcing the emergence of memes in the mind of the final target, which means operating from different directions, in different domains (as suggested by Arherring), probably over an expanded time frame, 2) or else, being well enough aware of the pre-existing, operative environments, to be able to design operations in which potential divergence from the desired emergence of a meme (and the acts resulting from that change) are not significant enough to upset the overall game plan.

These operations require a deep understanding of pre-existing conditions, including cultural influences, social organization, personal histories (in the case of targeting specific individuals), etc. This will require much planning in advance. Because of this, I expect that 5GW will emerge rather sloppily at first, whether because of a mere failure to understand the pre-existing conditions or because current conditions require fairly immediate actions and do not allow the time to fill in existing gaps in intelligence. There will be many inept ones. A highly efficient 5GW campaign will likely require a longer duration, to include longer planning and design phases; or else, perhaps a fairly small-scale, localized operation will have some success although limited success and depend more on chance. (For an example of a small-scale operation, you might look at the 910 Group’s consideration of an anti-Hezbollah 5GW operation utilized by, in their words, the people on the street of Lebanon. They might have some success, but forces outside that environment — Syria, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the U.S. — could upset their plans at almost any time. This is why I tend to think on the larger scale, a global scale, when considering the most effective 5GW operations: more domains, more directions, available for operations; but a longer duration, and more complexity.)