READER REFLECTIONS AND QUESTIONS ON 5th GENERATION WARFARE
Jeremiah of Organic Warfare ( great strategy blog, check it out !) and Steve made some observations and asked some excellent questions. Dan of tdaxp helpfully answered some in the comments section of the previous post but I thought I’d add to the discussion as well. My comments will be in regular text.
Jeremiah wrote:
“It’s worth mentioning that 5GW is not limited to governments at all, or even to transnational groups. So-called “lone wolf actions” have become part of the lexicon of white supremacist groups, and I suspect that the concept will be spreading. No network to analyze, no cell structure to surveill and roll up.”
Agreed. ” Leaderless resistance” was a concept of Louis Beam, a brilliant, eccentric and dangerous guru of the extreme racist right underground and this modality of terrorism in the actions of Timothy McVeigh were responsible for the second worst terror attack in American history. Lone Wolves like the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski ( who actually served time with McVeigh and Ramzi Youzef) and the DC Sniper John Muhammed were far less destructive but that was due primarily to lack of imagination and overriding personal obsessions. They did however succeed in spreading a climate of fear and diverting considerable law enforcement and media attention from other matters.
“* More highly connected networks create group loyalty transcending national boundaries
* Greater empowerment of the individual through information and technology allows one person or a small group to do immense damage: the depths have not yet begun to be plumbed
* Highly concentrated information, energy and economic hubs allow small attacks to produce faliure cascades, often capitalizing on stored “work” in the form of fuel or otherwise to produce catastrophically greater damage “
Again I am in full agreement here with Jeremiah. My first post on 5GW touched on superempowerment while my series on Dr. Barnett’s PNM deleted scenes discussed the effects of System Perturbations and vulnerabilities to such attacks.
Steve wrote:
“Is Network-Centric Warfare considered as refinement (or optional add-on) to 3GW, or is it a complete alternative to 3GW4GW5GW?”
Network-centric Warfare is the theory of Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, the former head of the Pentagon’s Office of Defense Transformation, an adviser to Donald Rumsfeld, a mentor to Dr. Barnett and an organizational genius. To use a religious analogy, Network-centric Warfare is an alternative to 4GW theory in the same sense that Protestantism is an alternative and rival to Catholism. Both schools of strategic thought are influenced by the ideas of John Boyd and see networks as a central variable to understanding and dominating warfare. Right now the two sides are as chummy in the halls of the Defense Department as the Protestants and Catholics once were in Germany during the Thirty Year’s War. Perhaps a Westphalia is coming ?
Cebrowski on Network-centric Warfare
“Also the “Global Guerillas” idea: Is that a refinement (or optional add-on to 4GW), or is a something complete alternative to 3GW/4GW/5GW/NCW?”
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