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Luke of the blog The Balance of Terror summarizes the concept of 5GW found within The Handbook of 5GW :

The entire premise of the 'Handbook strikes me as sound: namely, that there is such a thing as a fifth gradient of warfare (call it something else, if it pleases you) which targets the observe portion of a target's Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop. By successfully neutralizing a target's ability to accurately observe, the 5GW actor, by default, neutralizes the entirety of the remaining loop downstream from the observe portion, rendering it useless.

This ability to "[neutralize] the entirety of the remaining loop downstream" suggests three interlocking requirements of 5GW:

• "Useful idiots" [the target of "a 5GW way of warfare"] would be manipulated to act against an ulterior target.
• The use of these pawns would be secretive, undetectable by the "useful idiots" who have had their observation manipulated by those who are utilizing 5GW.
• The practice of 5GW would require patience, since operations targeting observation would be "lengthy shaping operations" preceding the ultimate actions of the pawns and the ultimate victory envisioned by those utilizing 5GW.  5GW would require "Generations, perhaps!"

Luke concludes his blog post by offering a thought experiment.  If a target is simply too strong to risk attacking directly -- he implies the U.S. -- then an opponent might utilize a third party such as Islamist extremists to destroy or at least weaken that target; or, housing bubbles could be created with the ultimate goal of weakening a financial system.  The book Unrestricted Warfare  is cited, and both China and Russia play a role in the thought experiment.

Mark Safranski's essay "5GW: Into the Heart of Darkness", from The Handbook of 5GW, is included in the "Examples of 5GW" section of that book.  In the essay, Safranski first examines the role of the state in our present day, projecting into the future a dire warning for states confronted by decentralized 4GW opposition:

This is a path of grave danger.  States will either successfully adapt or they will fail.  Many will fail, lacking sufficient political resilience to weather protracted civil conflict or an economic base from which to wage it.

Of those states that succeed in adapting to the changing environment, two scenarios are given as the most likely strategies employed:  a) by becoming complex and able to attack problems on a granular level -- attacking all points affected by or affecting the decentralized foe -- or b) by utilizing "sustained application of extreme violence" to disrupt networks which support the decentralized foe.

Safranski embellishes choice a above by describing a systemic application of COIN tactics (counterinsurgency) but remarks on the extreme sophistication required and the difficulty those states will face.

Much of the essay focuses instead on the likelihood of choice b.  The Stalinist purge of networks (via the purging of all leaders and their immediate associates and even families) is given as an example of manipulation of context and the creation of new rulesets:  those surviving the purges would have little institutional memory of the purged networks/paradigms.  The Khmer Rouge of Cambodia is offered as a second example; unlike Stalinist purges (and unlike the Nazi campaign of genocide), Pol Pot enlisted the average citizen in the genocide, which furthermore co-opted those survivors into a complex system of future guilt and compliance.  Finally, Mark Safranski utilizes the example of the Rwandan genocide, which operated similarly to Pol Pot's but was "perfected by the Interahamwe militias."

One might note, as Mark Safranski has noted in this essay, the increasing granularity of these genocidal efforts.  Similar to option a above, these examples of genocidal 5GW were granular in their focus;  also similarly, they had as their goal the systemic ruleset reset that would continue to operate long after the operations were completed.  Unlike option a however, these campaigns forsook sophisticated, complex endeavors in favor of direct kinetic operations meant to destroy old social networks in order to leave room for the new, desirable social framework -- desirable to the paranoid regimes initiating these endeavors.  

Arherring takes a look at "The Cognitive Dissonance of COIN: Right Doctrine, Wrong War ," by Jason Thomas at Small Wars Journal.  That article points out the inadequacies of COIN as it has been practiced in Afghanistan while also suggesting that entrenched theorists and practitioners of COIN are inflexible:  their conception of COIN is not only rigid, but various thinkers hold to particular, varying conceptions of COIN.

Jason Thomas offers six suggestions for improving COIN.  Arherring associates these suggestions with on-going discussion about 5GW, particularly highlighting similarities in:

• The triggering of rule-set revisions by utilizing a populace's "own prefered (sic) information channels"
• Broad, strategic preemption of conflict on a global scale
  
•  Adaptability in operations (linked to the general theory of xGW)
  

A lively back-and-forth discussion occurs in the comments section to Arherring's blog post, over whether noting similarities between 5GW and Thomas' suggestions for COIN might be either a) an attempt to co-opt a confused or vague doctrine (COIN as it stands) into 5GW/xGW doctrine, or b) an attempt to really broaden COIN beyond its current inadequacies by offering a potential variety of COIN doctrines, each informed by xGW.