Laying the Foundations Part 4: The Fourth Wall
Previous forms of generational warfare are only very rarely deceptive on the strategic level. Even 4GW, as shadowy and elusive as its insurgent practitioners attempt to make it, is essentially very direct and very blatant. A 4GW attack on the will of an opponent must be direct in order to cause the target to respond in the manner desired by the 4GW organization. It is essentially blackmail; I will keep doing this until you give up and there isn’t anything you can do to stop me. The side that blinks first loses.
Here is where I think that 5GW will take off in a different direction from its XGW predecessors. 5GW is all about deception on every level, especially strategic. This is what lends it an inherent secrecy as it either actively conceals its actions or operates on a level of influence that the great majority of people aren’t consciously aware of.
I’ve thought for a long time about drawing an analogy between stage magic or illusion and Fifth Generation Warfare. Recently, discussion (Hat Tip: Soob, and PurpleSlog) has popped up about 5GW and theater and upon further reflection, theater offers an even better possibility as an example of the thought that goes into shaping the process and operationalization of a 5GW campaign. In stage magic, the audience knows that the illusionist is attempting to deceive them. They know that when the magician holds up his right hand the left is probably busy doing something else. People will sit for hours attempting to figure out the ‘trick’ that allows the magician to appear and disappear. After all, once you know how the illusion is performed it ceases to be magic and just becomes a ‘trick’, a deception. It is all part of the game played between the magician and the audience. In a sense, the deception, the secrecy, is tactical and operational and very rarely strategic. Theater, on the other hand, is a different story.
The Fourth Wall (from Wikipedia):
“The fourth wall is part of the suspention of disbelief between a fictional work and an audience. The audience will usually passively accept the presence of the fourth wall without giving it any direct thought, allowing them to enjoy the fiction as if they were observing real events.”
An audience watching a play, a movie or television is separated from the action by what is known as “the fourth wall” and that fourth wall provides the line where the reality ends and the fiction begins. The audience, looking through the fourth wall, are, in a sense, allowing themselves to be deceived on all levels including the strategic.
Want an example? Ever go to a horror movie and have to listen to a young woman three rows back scream every time the monster jumps out at its victims? She knows that nobody is actually getting killed. She knows the monster is the product of make-up, CGI and/or camera tricks. She knows everything before her is a carefully contrived fiction and yet she has suspended her disbelief of what is happening on the screen to the point that she reacts to the events there as if she were a part of the group being preyed upon by the monster. That is, from my point of view, a strategic deception.
With a 5GW campaign the strategic deception is slightly different but still similar enough to draw a strong comparison. The main difference is that fourth wall. In 5GW the fourth wall becomes very hard to discern or disappears altogether. As the 5GW organization operates it very consciously blurs that line between fiction and reality, presenting a situation or set of circumstances in a manner designed to elicit a specific response from its target (or audience). The audience, not knowing where reality ends and fiction begins, responds as if the events before them were reality. They are, in effect, unconsciously deceiving themselves rather than consciously allowing themselves to be deceived. Their rationalization of events in order for those events to fit inside of their preexisting paradigms allows the 5GW organization to influence and manipulate their actions. It even allows the 5GW to, over time, alter those very paradigms in a more direct way. After all, as the cliche goes, actions speak louder than words.
Filed in The Vault and tagged Laying the Foundations, Secrecy, Theater
A lot of the similarity between 5GW and both theater and stage magic involves indirection. To some degree, 4GW also relies on indirection, to the extent that individual terrorist acts or system disruptions aren't necessarily meant to destroy the opponent utterly, in themselves; but you are right in drawing the distinction between 4GW and 5GW indirection. I like the idea of The Fourth Wall. Because 5GW involves the real rather than a play or movie, most people will not be aware of the Fourth Wall. The format makes a difference, since a play or movie occurs within a limited environment -- a theater, for instance, with a stage or silver screen -- where the Fourth Wall is obvious.
Though I, for instance, come from The Show-Me State, I also know that many of my MO neighbors take the literalist interpretation: If I see it before me, then I know it is real. But you don't have to originate in MO to have such an operational standard! Indirection -- enabled by the criss-crossing interconnections and inter-operability of our high-tech, globalizing world, as well as by static -- makes tracing direct lines and paths (cause & effect) more difficult than ever before. Localized viewing will tend to miss the reality of indirection and stop at understanding which is only partial and perhaps quite wrong.
A very interesting post.
I think most people will "respond as if the events before them were reality" because in most cases it will be reality. The personal economic calculation made by individuals will be to just assume it is reality and to not look for something deeper (fingtertip feeling, yes?) and then move on to the next bit of information to process or act upon.
Unless something really stand out to somebody to make them look deeper, it easier to just go with the fingertip feel.
5GW as secret deliberative manipulation of actors, networks, and or states to achieve a goal or set of goals across a combination of socio, economic, and political domains while attempting to avoid or minimize the action/reaction of 2GW, 3GW and 4GW powered actors, networks and/or states.