Users of
Internet Explorer 6.x
or before should be aware
that this site works best in
Firefox (best choice) or
Internet Explorer 7.x.
Some helpful links:
 |
| IE 7 at Microsoft |
Disclaimers
Site
The Weaponization of the Media
I’ve spent some hours digging around the cyber-sphere in an effort to find and define the many references to the fifth generation of warfare. The cause of this being Curtis’s newest online endeavor, the 5GW Timeline. A wiki like initiative that seeks to chronologically map online references to 5GW.
In my travels across the vast expanse (vast beyond what I’d expected, certainly) that entails the online sources mentioning 5GW, this latest bit that struck me via The Patriot Post:
“In fact, the media has effectively become an altogether different sort of “non-state actor” on the world stage. The fact that the media can even entertain the notion of affecting political outcomes because it wields that much power, leads to the next concept: The weaponization of the media. This is a dangerous tool and one that our adversaries have mastered. Conceptually, this includes — but is different from — aspects of psychological operations; and includes — but is separate from — aspects of information warfare. There are times when it is difficult to distinguish between honest disagreement, and disloyalty; a different vision, and sedition. Indeed, our Founding Fathers well understood the value of the press, and used it to their purposes. Hitler’s propagandists were at least as skilled as our current adversaries. Yet government involvement with the media for the express purpose of controlling a known center of gravity — the hearts and minds of the people — is inherently and extremely dangerous, if one wishes to preserve free speech. Yet this is something with which we must soon contend, because our adversaries have no such constraints.”
Follow the link and at least skim the writings. You’ll find that the author writes this in an effort to explore or espouse his own vision of what might well be into the 5th Generation of warfare.
In essence, this fellow is an intellectual kindred spirit as we both have delved into the mastery of the media and the importance of the media regarding a 5GW campaign.
“Mastering the media means subverting and collecting it’s will, tossing it into your virtual ideological corner and then exacting your cause through it in an effort that ends in the general populace, or mainstream, conforming to and accepting your cause as “reality.”
This bit of research is arduous but also rewarding and fun.
Posted by subadei on Sep 4, 2007 08:02 PM
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: The Weaponization of the Media.
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://dreaming5gw.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/188.
3 Comments
Here is the link to the Patriot Post 5GW article.
The Patriot Post guys are looking at the changing nature of conflict. The author(s) modified the xGW to be broader historically. Much of their criticism is interesting and right on. Their historical-based alternative is just as valid as Lind’s. It might even be a better historical model. I also think that it wasn’t worth the effort.
I have dropped the history/emerges part of the xGW in my own thinking.
I think of each xGW “generation” as a conflict mode to be used given the nature/intentions/capabilities of competing/cooperating actors and whatever is the state of the world at that particular time and place. Globalization is just making it so that now the place for our current particular time is the entire earth for the most part.
Notice I say actors. I assume while states are (and will continue to be actors) that other actors can be involved: Kin-based networks aka KBN (people driven by familiar or tribal ties), super empowered individuals aka SEI(or networks of SEIs), meme-based networks aka MBN(people driven by shared beliefs such as religion, culture, poitical ideology), purpose-driven networks aka PDN(e.g. business enterprises, media outlets, NGOs, social entrepreneurial organization, charities, PMC/PSC/PIC), mashups/overlaps of any of the preceding s, and most likely things I haven’t thought of. For clarity I will refer to State-based networks aka SBN to refer to states or super-state organizations (like the EU or NATO)
It looks like the article has been edited. Some of the best lines about “Mastering the media means subverting and collecting it’s will” are no longer in it. That’s too bad, those were great lines.
This is a great turn of phrase though: “The weaponization of the media”.
This is so 4GW and 5GW. 4GW and 5GW move beyond traditional weapons. It is about the importance of the non-kinetic (aka dispersed kinetics)
5GW is dispersed kinetics to a greater degree and manipulation of things (e.g. SBNs, KBNs, SEIs, PDNs, MBNs) to achieve result desired by the 5GW actors. The weaponization of things not thought to be weapons leaves the opponent who is fixed on attacking/defending what are obvious weapons distracted/confused/unprepared and even unaware about the action taking place against them.
Heh. A tad embarrassed here. For whatever reason the translation from Soob to D5GW lost it’s links, hence the lack of a link to the excellent source article. Furthermore the “deleted” portions of the article that PurpleSlog refers to are actually my own ruminations on 5GW. Apologies for my lapse.
That aside: I too enjoyed the broadened definition of the xGW framework that the authors described. I’ve always found the restrictions placed on the xGW framework by it’s “founders” to be too constrictive and not at all realistic.
As for the 5GW element of the above post, another bit that struck me was:
“What we are now seeing is the emergence of fifth generation warfare. Unlike the preceding generations, there is no single or simple demarcation point, no single invention. And though we may see “as though through a glass, darkly,” the following aspects can be discerned:”
Which plays well into the idea that 5GW quite effectively transcends all other generations of war. Further:
” A. The technological advances represented by the Internet;
B. Scalability of impact;
C. Information as an empowering and leveling force;
D. The media as an independent organ that is stronger, more pervasive, and more independent than ever before;
E. Borders no longer impede data flow. “
Given this paradigm does 5GW extend beyond it’s previous generational cousins in that it quite effectively is a “new” generation of warfare? In other words does 5GW defy the general opinion here at D5GW regarding the first 4 generations in terms of the chronological evolution? Is 5GW truly “new?”