Possible 5GW Archetype: The Puppet Master 5GW

Usually, the Puppet Master 5GW will employ direct kinetic tactics however

You mean, whether they or those they influence employ kinetic tactics?

I think that with this point, you are building up for other types of 5GW organization that work differently; say, in business/tradewar or lawfare.

Targeted assassination may be used as a special skill of the small group) but it will be of the the type that appears to be Actor A attacked by Actor B (not the 5GW group), or of natural causes/accidents.

I wonder if we might postulate some potential 5GW assassinations. Rafik Hariri and Alexander Litvinenko come to mind; perhaps also Anna Polyanskaya. The Russians appear to be examples of attempted cover-up — of squelching information — but the Hariri case is interesting if we consider the possibility that some 5GW organization wanted to increase tensions between Syria and the U.S./West. (Al-Qaeda is the obvious suspect, in such a scenario, although the conspiracy theorists would have us believe it was Israel. I can even imagine China or Russia or both behind such a 5GW move; maybe even India. But that’s the whole point of hiding in the sea of conspiracy theory, eh?)

The Puppet Master 5GW is the small empowered group behind the scenes.

On this point, I wonder if we should be careful how we interpret “behind the scenes.” Take for example the possibility of Russia or China involved in 5GW: Large nations, generally large state apparatus, but much of the power in the hands of a few. That few could be a small 5GW org using the cover of legitimate (or at least, recognized) political roles. Same goes for groups like Hezbollah and al-Qaeda: most of those within the groups are sure to be 4GWarriors, but some of their leaders and/or strategists could be 5GWarriors using the rest of the group in the way 5GWers will use 4GW groups….

In retrospect, I think this type of 5GW will be the hardest to execute and the least likely to succeed.

….Thus, I’m not sure I agree with this. I think that long-term success may require broadening horizons — perhaps successfully influencing ever larger groups, in one way or another — and may therefore be quite difficult. Even if blowback doesn’t come directly at 5GWers manipulating actors behind the scenes, natural blowback, or what Dan tdaxp might call “immune system responses” might kick in as un-influenced actors continue to alter the environment in ways not according to the plans of the 5GW org.

Dan has left feedback on his blog: “Styles of 5GW”. He’s apparently unable to comment or login at D5GW.

He highlighted something I’d wanted to highlight but forgot: the incrementalism;

Where it different from the fictional portrayals, is that I think they will want to make many small actions instead of a big attention generating move.

“increment” is probably not the right word. This somehow ties in with Arherring’s consideration of the iterative design model of 5GW — especially, also, when considering constructive feedback and the ability to learn which buttons to push, and where.

Maybe I was hasty in listing Anna Polyanskaya… :0

“direct kinetic tactics”

Ack!!!!! I mant “non-kinetc”!

I have noticed in recent years, when I type late at noght I leave off negative words (“no”, “not”, “ever” instead of “never”). I wil lcorrect the text.

I can’t comment with my regular account either. Only with the OpenID can I make comments.

I agree that the “many small actions” approach is the next logical step in our model of “warfare generations”. The sentiment is echoed in Robb’s _BRAVE NEW WAR_ (where he says, “Nothing will ever top 9/11.”) and by many who have followed 4GW since the seminal Lind / Nightengale / Schmittzu / Sutton / Wilson article in the Oct. 1989 Marine Corps GAZETTE. At the risk of sounding too much like an underworked war college wonk, this is also consistent with the trends among the three elements of Clausewitz’s trinity (rationality of the state, probabilities of the military, rage of the people) that we’ve seen for the past 40 years: to wit, the increasing importance of the “rage of the people” in defining conflict.

The battlespace is no longer defined in terms of space, nor even time. Rather, it is quickly becoming defined by our *perception* of space and time. Rather than a chaotic, lawless world a la Mad Max (and a continuation of Mel Gibson movies that define the earlier generations of warfare: Braveheart to The Patriot to Gallipoli to We Were Soldiers), 5GW is more like The Matrix. Small, imperceptible shifts in “truth”, extrapolated over time, will lead to major shifts in public acceptance and the “popular rage”. I submit we are already seeing this in the Islamofascist world (particularly with the mental conditioning needed to recruit “suicide bombers”).

Ironically, I believe the continued evolution of thought in 5GW might unify the Net-Centric Warfare and 4GW camps into a unified theory. As I’ve commented on other ‘blogs (e.g., Zenpundit and tdaxp), this underscores the need for a far more disciplined approach to strategic communications than we have seen of late from western security establishments.

sf/ shane

Shane,

Welcome to D5GW! I’m glad to see you are able to comment despite the problems we’ve been having with the commenting system. For some reason, your comment was held over for moderation; but I’ve set your account so that your comments should appear automatically now.

The battlespace is no longer defined in terms of space, nor even time. Rather, it is quickly becoming defined by our *perception* of space and time.

I think that this might be a result of increasing levels of static due to the growing complexity. When multiple sources may have extended “reach” to affect diverse areas, and more areas, effects are no longer isolated and easily defined in cause & effect chains/paradigms. In a way, this skews perceptions from depending upon concrete observation to depending on analytical and cognitive abilities: thinking “horizontally” or creatively, in order to understand the cross-domain paradigms. On the street level, this has so far produced greater volume for 4GWish politics and fanaticism.

Ironically, I believe the continued evolution of thought in 5GW might unify the Net-Centric Warfare and 4GW camps into a unified theory.

This is very interesting. I’ve had something like this in the back of my mind since I addressed Hammes’ thoughts, at the Blorum. In The Sling and The Stone, his concept for “fighting” 4GW opponents involved references to “netwar” but without drawing the line to 5GW; he did this while attempting to describe two types of 4GW: one our foes use and one we may use which he called “netwar.”

However the consideration develops past this point, I think we might begin by looking at the known type of networks/networking while trying to also see all the gaps in the nets, in order to see a more perfect whole.

One alibi: I’d like to give credit to Mark at Zenpundit for the synaptic connection to reconciliation between the NCW and 4GW communities:

http://zenpundit.blogspot.com/2007/05/hammes-on-5gw-colonel-thomas-x.html

As my “Philosophy of Mind” prof. John Searle, used to tell me, “You need to squirt more phenylcholate on your motor neurons!”

sf/ shane

I check Zenpundit daily…and not just because its is one of the three blogs I can still read at work that (the rest are blocked).

I first read of 5GW there. It got me reading on 4GW stuff in more detail. Pre-purpleslog, it was one of the first blogs I actually commented on (anonymously). From there I found TDAXP, Phatic Communion, Coming Anarchy…and off I went!

This is directly related to Shane’s reference to the importance of perception in 5GW. Lately I’ve been trying to think about how 5GW is really a war of perceptions, and in fact this war is waged everyday in all human societies, but it works in an unconscious and subliminal manner (there are obvious parallels here in Tdaxp’s concept of SecretWar). One way I’ve conceptualized this is with Social Constructivism a la Alexander Wendt, which emphasizes how ideational structures determine how individuals perceive and interact with the world. I haven’t followed D5GW for too long, and I’m wondering, has anyone else explored these ideas? Constructivism as a theory of International Relations could be ripe for a synthesis with 5GW.

Steve,

Great correlation! It’s been 20 years since my Phil. of Mind classes with Searle, but your post brought back a flood of memories. Searle (who was very anti-A.I. — imploring us that computers, no matter how many FLOPS they have, will never be sentient) spoke of social reality as “ontologically subjective but epistemologically objective”. How we classify things is entirely up to us (and our cultural and social upbringing). But the foundational knowledge and effect is (generally) universally agreed upon.

The genius of Dan at tdaxp and PurpleSlog’s “SecretWar” / “Puppeteer” are that, in this age of rampant interconnectedness, the subjective ontologies trump the objective epistemologies. Many of us, in need of research facts, rely on Wikipedia or some other web-based tool — making us vulnerable to misrepresentations (deliberate or not) and therefore mis- (or dis-) information. To wit, yesterday I looked up “benzene” on Wikipedia; the opening line read “Benzene, also known as Chris Andrews, …”. Though the humorous reference has since been removed (without any indication of if they were referring to the Australian wrestler or some other Chris Andrews), it shows just how precarious our grasp of truth is in the blogosphere.

That is where an adversary can manipulate perceptions for their own gain. While most other mass media have high barriers to entry (e.g., TV commercial airtime or ads in print media), the Internet has extremely low barriers to entry — and our perceptions are increasingly influenced by its content.

Even more troubling is the fact that PurpleSlog’s “Puppeteer” need not exercise positive command and control of forces to achieve their ends. Simply exploiting a brand name (q.v. John Robb’s very insightful characterization of al Qa’ida as a brand) with very broad “Commander’s Intent”, coupled with easy access to the Internet, means that 5GW as a war of perceptions is one in which we in the West (with rigidly regulated access to ‘blogs and top-down review of website content) have surrendered the initiative. Our 5GW OODA loop is painfully slow…..

sf/ shane

Yes, but the speed of our OODA loop may come to be determined by the level and quality of uncertainty we experience in the world, which ultimately forces us into perceiving the world using certain subjective ontological perspectives that have specific solutions to the problems we face. For example, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the phrase “the only way to beat terrorists is to kill them.” This statement belies certain assumptions about the motivations of terrorism that are derived from our Manichean understanding of terrorism, which we fall into because we cannot make sense of the real motivations of terrorism, which are often localized.
However, since uncertainty is also our worst enemy, it can also be our best weapon. Following the invasion c. Apr. 2003, the level of uncertainty experienced by the Iraqi people regarding our intentions drove them to perceive their world through specific cultural or ontological lenses. As 5GWarriors, we should have then done everything possible to falsify the expectations of these ontological perspectives. Where Baathists and Sunnis see us as a threat, we should act in a purely non-threatening manner, creating new levels about uncertainty that their perspectives did not anticipate. We should act in as puppet masters to upset their preconceived notions of our identity and our actions to generate a new perspective of our identity. As this happens, we also subvert the identity they held as an enemy of ours.

Ok, that may seem a bit incoherent, but I’m trying to get at what Wendt talks about in the end of Social Theory of Int’l Relations, specifically about how identity and culture are interrelated and yield specific perscriptions about how to act in the world. If one’s culture tells them to attack their enemies, then that ‘target’ must do everything in his/her power to subvert their perception and their identity. After all, 5GW is all about making ‘the enemy’ realize you are not ‘the enemy.’ Enmity is reserved for 4GW, where the 4GWarrior clearly labels his/her enemy for all to see and tries to solidify his ‘enemy’ identity to convince all others that it is futile to attempt a change.

The speed of our OODA loop is not so much a factor of “uncertainty” as it is the trepidation of our most centralized institutions to embrace the inherent agility afforded by information technology. The rigid bureaucracy of my old command (U.S. Joint Forces Command) had centralized control over all publicly-accessible content on its website. When my department, in partnership with National Defense Univ., proposed the creation of an open source “requirements catalog” to stimulate technology transfer with industry & academia, we were held up for *months* while a mid-grade GS-12 cited all the reasons why such a website was not compliant with established policy.

The end result was, after nearly 14 months of haggling, the champion in NDU returned to Army S&T and I moved on to other tasks — and the catalog never went up. This is not an isolated case (though there are a few stories of enterprising and entrepreneurial visionaries who got their own webspaces — like Tom Barnett at the Naval War College; now if he just hadn’t written that NYTimes bestseller, he’d probably STILL be on their faculty… :-).

Extrapolate this penchant for lethargic publication in abeyance of established “policy”, then compare with the agility of an al-Qa’ida franchisee whose only limitation is their own imagination. Bottom line: we’re losing the 5GW fight, and the cavalry is nowhere in sight.

sf/ shane

I think we should be very careful when using terms like “our OODA loop.” Really, it’s multiple loops — one per individual — acting within partially shared environments. [1], [2].

The problem with thinking of a single national or state or military OODA is that it leads to just the sort of top-down, hierarchy-inspired lethargy you are decrying, Shane.

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