5GW, Netcentric Warfare, and What Every Citizen Should Know About the New Front

The NDAA, SOPA, more surviellence, less government transparency: these are the things we discuss here at ATS every day, and which have many of us wringing our hands. There's a rapid erosion of civil rights and privacy which is leaving us breathless and bewildered.

Yet we rarely ask why. Why is our government doing this? The general consensus on this site appears to be; because they're a bunch of control-crazy sociopaths. I hope that by the time we have gone into the 5GW paradigm in depth, you will consider the possibility that our government is scared #less, and doesn't want to be caught with it's pants down (again).

Rather than tackle security issues from the angle of increasing the resilience of our communities and infrastucture; they are taking the chicken with its head cut off approach of viciously pruning our Bill of Rights.

And we must get a grip on why they are panicking.

Warfare develops generationally in response to new economic, technological, and social factors. Fourth generational warfare was characterized by the Al-Qaeda model: small cells, loose networks, symbolic violence, highly mobile operatives, cheap and dirty tech.

We've come a long way since 2001. If Al-Qaeda was the first example of a "virtual state" engaging a nation-state in war, it certainly wasn't to be the last. In fact, "virtual states" of every stripe are springing up like nasty little toadstools all over the globe.

The 5GW mess can be succinctly boiled down to this: every citizen (or netizen) is either a potential casualty or a combatant on the New Front. That isn't state paranoia, that is a cold truth.

"What we are seeing is the empowerment of the individual to conduct war," says John Robb. "As events are making painfully clear," Robb says, "warfare is being transformed from a closed, state-sponsored affair to one where the means and the know-how to do battle are readily found on the Internet and at your local RadioShack. This open global access to increasingly powerful technological tools, he says, is in effect allowing small groups to declare war on nations."

Need a missile-guidance system? Buy yourself a Sony PlayStation 2. Need more capability? Just upgrade to a PS3. Need satellite photos? Download them from Google Earth or Microsoft's Virtual Earth. Need to know the current thinking on IED attacks? Watch the latest videos created by insurgents and posted on any one of hundreds of Web sites or log on to chat rooms where you can exchange technical details with like-minded folks.

Robb calls this new type of conflict "open-source warfare,â because the manner in which insurgent groups are organizing themselves, sharing information, and adapting their strategies bears a strong resemblance to the open-source movement in software development. Insurgent groups, like open-source software hackers, tend to form loose and nonhierarchical networks to pursue a common vision, Robb says. United by that vision, they exchange information and work collaboratively on tasks of mutual interest."

Welcome to the new war: innumerable small factions with diverse sources of funding and technological sophistication fighting wars on ever shifting battlegrounds toward mutually incompatible goals.

When the new CoD hit the market, it gave me the heebie-jeebies. Suburban warfare, huh? Where ever did they get that idea? Well, maybe the game developers have been reading a lot of the same material I have lately. If the measures being taken by the US prove to be ineffective (and, as I say, I feel we are taking the wrong approach), what can we expect a 5GW conflict on our native soil to look like?

From here:

globalguerrillas.typepad.com...

[How this works:

Over time, systems disruption will become the most effective method by which virtual states subvert or coerce target nation-states. It does this by:

*Leveraging external connections. Systems disruption uses the ties of globalization against the target state. By making it an unreliable business partner it hurts its ability to compete globally and retain relationships. These partners (often morally ambivalent markets), will put heavy pressure on the target state to resolve the crisis.

*Minimizing moral opposition. Symbolic or body count centric attacks increase the moral staying power of target states. In contrast, the blame for sustained systems disruption typically rebounds onto the state itself. Since almost all wars in the future will be over marginal objectives (external to the life and death of the state or the central well being of its populace), attacks that radically increase costs without a corresponding increase in moral commitment have a high likelihood of success.

*Riding urbanization. The growth of urbanization is a global megatrend. These urban centers are the economic lifeblood of a nation-state and typically the key points of connection to the world. Large cities, however, offer a green field of vulnerability to this method of attack. The larger the cities, the more reliant it is on key systems. Systems disruption can quickly collapse urban environments into disaster zones.

In the next installment, we'll drill down deeper into some of the central concepts of 5GW.

The lesson were supposed to be learning from all this is LOOSE YOUR FEAR!

A concept key to understanding the Five Gee Dubya is the corrosive effect on the integrity of the nation state by the pincer forces of emergent market states and hostile virtual states. We'll call it globalization, for short.

Phillip Bobbit describes the market state:

The “market-state” is the latest constitutional order, one that is just emerging in a struggle for primacy with the dominant constitutional order of the 20th century, the nation-state. Whereas the nation-state based its legitimacy on a promise to better the material well-being of the nation, the market-state promises to maximize the opportunity of each individual citizen. The current conflict is one of several possible wars of the market-states as they seek to open up societies to trade in commerce, ideas, and immigration which excite hostility in those groups that want to use law to enforce religious or ethnic orthodoxy.

The definition of a virtual state in the context of 5GW is somewhat more fluid. As far as I can nail it down, the virtual state is characterized by an absence of borders or government affiliation, a unifying ideology, an (often black market) economic infrastructure, high mobility, infosec savvy, little to no hierarchical structure.

Here's your next stop.

dreaming5gw.com...

More to come...

Originally posted by zzombie
The lesson were supposed to be learning from all this is LOOSE YOUR FEAR!

Naw, keep it on the leash.

reply to post by mistermonculous


Right MM

I have been looking in to William S. Lind's 4GW theory.

I was thinking that I would put this up for those that are new to this. I am just going to snag it from WikiPedia as I don't think that I can be more clear than this and the Wiki authors are many of the same that create the blogs that we are referring to. So...

1st Generation Warfare:

tactics of line and column; which developed in the age of the smoothbore musket. Lind describes First Generation of warfare as beginning after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years’ War and establishing the state’s need to organize and conduct war.[3] 1GW consisted of tightly ordered soldiers with top-down discipline. These troops would fight in close order and advance slowly. This began to change as the battlefield changed. Old line and column tactics were now suicidal as the bow and arrow/sword morphed into the rifle and machine gun.
en.wikipedia.org...

2nd Generation Warfare:

tactics of linear fire and movement, with reliance on indirect fire. This type of warfare can be seen the early stages of WWI, where there was still strict adherence to drill and discipline of formation and uniform, but the dependence on artillery and firepower to break the stalemate and move towards a pitched battle.
en.wikipedia.org...

3rd Generation Warfare:

tactics of infiltration to bypass and collapse the enemy's combat forces rather than seeking to close with and destroy them; and defence in depth. The 3GW military seeks to bypass the enemy, and attack his rear forward, such as the tactics used by German Storm Troopers in WWI against the British and French in order to break the trench warfare stalemate (Lind 2004). These aspects of 3GW bleed into 4GW as it is also warfare of speed and initiative. However, it targets both military forces and home populations.
en.wikipedia.org...

I think that a lot of folks probably have not encountered 4GW theory before, I certainly had not until very recently.

Things are moving very fast in the world and it can be easy to get confused; even about really dangerous stuff that you would think would get our attention...

like the fact that the web playground is also a battlefield/ training ground for 4 and 5GW warriors and warfare and we are all legitimate actors in this field, whether we actually act or not.

This is the root also of Open Source Warfare.

Anyone can be an Effector*...

The term has a history of use in various scientific and technological contexts, as well as a generic meaning to describe "One who brings about a result or event; one who accomplishes a purpose,"2 but the term was adopted into 5GW discussion in order to distinguish between those fully aware of the 5GW being conducted and those whose actions cumulatively bring about a successful conclusion to the 5GW operations being waged but are merely co-opted players, pawns, or proxies unlikely to have more than a vague awareness of the existence of the 5GW campaign (if any).

*dreaming5gw.com...

reply to post by mistermonculous

The definition of a virtual state in the context of 5GW is somewhat more fluid. As far as I can nail it down, the virtual state is characterized by an absence of borders or government affiliation, a unifying ideology, an (often black market) economic infrastructure, high mobility, infosec savvy, little to no hierarchical structure.

Hey MM,

The convenient thing about the research of John Robb and things like the 5GW lexicon is that it can give us a way to contain and analyze a very complicated and fast moving area of world political interest. We gotta make it hold still so we can get the drift of its reason for being. Then we are able to recognize it and its influence when we see it.

That can be a valuable tool if it is true that 5GW makes all of us web dwellers potential casualties or combatants.

I am surprised that the 5GWLexicon does not contain two important terms; they kind of go together.

One is, "The Melted Map". John Robb uses this concept to his advantage when discussing his 'Global Guerillas" and the term was coined by researcher and columnist Moises Naim.

The Melted Map concept is not hard to understand, it really just refers to how the map of the world has been smeared and rewritten by globalization.

The other term I had in mind was Black Globalization, a term coined by John Robb. It simply refers to the fact that the black market has also been globalized. Robb's statistics are staggering in terms of how this globalized black market is outpacing legitimate markets by trillions of dollars annually.

Most importantly this global black market is not structured upon a vertical 'mafioso' type model; these systems of black commerce are entirely horizontal in their structure and they operate in the gaps created by the globalized netcentric, melted-map world. They are here with us all, somewhere on the web as we go about our regular business, usually coordinating their efforts on compromised forum and chat servers all over the world.

And America is behind when it comes to being able to leverage and steer and control this new dynamic. Someone must have dropped the ball at strategy central and they dropped John Boyd from the curriculum. I want to get to him next, as he explained what to get good at if you want to survive and win and it is very applicable to 5GW.

reply to post by Frater210


Thanks, man. As you've pointed out, it's very difficult to get a handle on this stuff because it seems to be riding both market momentum as well as Moore's Law. In other words; these dynamics are very new, poorly understood, and mutating at light speed.

I'd like to revisit a few of the bullet points in the introductory post.

*Leveraging external connections. Systems disruption uses the ties of globalization against the target state. By making it an unreliable business partner it hurts its ability to compete globally and retain relationships. These partners (often morally ambivalent markets), will put heavy pressure on the target state to resolve the crisis.

What they're talking about here is industrial sabotage played out on the state level. You aim to eff with a nation's economy; and these days you have many means at your disposal. Market and currency fluctuations may be symptomatic of 5GW tactics at work.

*Minimizing moral opposition. Symbolic or body count centric attacks increase the moral staying power of target states. In contrast, the blame for sustained systems disruption typically rebounds onto the state itself. Since almost all wars in the future will be over marginal objectives (external to the life and death of the state or the central well being of its populace), attacks that radically increase costs without a corresponding increase in moral commitment have a high likelihood of success.

Bait your opponent into a losing war its citizens will feel disgruntled about being engaged in. Sound familiar?

*Riding urbanization. The growth of urbanization is a global megatrend. These urban centers are the economic lifeblood of a nation-state and typically the key points of connection to the world. Large cities, however, offer a green field of vulnerability to this method of attack. The larger the cities, the more reliant it is on key systems. Systems disruption can quickly collapse urban environments into disaster zones.

We have yet to start seeing this hit our streets in a big way, but it's a constant fixture of the mid-east fiascoes. It looks like the US is ramping up for this scenario to play out. CoD as a civilian training module?

reply to post by mistermonculous

These partners (often morally ambivalent markets), will put heavy pressure on the target state to resolve the crisis.

the blame for sustained systems disruption typically rebounds onto the state itself.

The stuff like this is what scares me the most. It is very difficult to defend against this sort of thing, even if one could define or even find what one (a state) is defending itself against. The world changed really fast and it is no longer a matter of, "Hey, you're America, let us help you out", it just is not as friendly an environment any more.

You know, as far as Call of Duty and games like it are concerned? I do think they are definitely part of some sort of PsyOp. I would never play them, ever, I am afraid I would get confused about the difference between cover and concealment.

It's all changing so quickly: the tech, the groups and factions, how they're structured, how they operate. It's hard to keep up. So you just bite down on civil liberties and hope for the best. Oh, and the military industrial complex gets a nice little boost from outfitting local law enforcement with military grade toys.

The crux of how to attain victory in a 5GW world has been distilled into a cute little flowchart.




That's an OODA loop. The art of OODA is sussing out your opponent before he can suss you out, and throwing a bunch of chaos his way to confound his attempts at ascertaining your weaknesses. And we have not been doing well in that area of late.

Which is understandable, the nation state enjoys few of the advantages afforded the virtual state. Beaurocracy, lack of inter-departmental transparency and communication and other factors all add up to some pretty slow response times.

reply to post by mistermonculous


So, is this what TPTB feel they have to protect us from or are they merely protecting themselves from us????

If the ability to wage war is being devolved deeper into society; who is to say that TPTB have not already been students of this trend and availed themselves to this open source war making capability and just want to keep it to themselves??

If by the TPTB you mean the US military/government (or any other nation-state, for that matter), I think they're just trying to keep up.

If by the TPTB you mean shadowy puppet masters who undermine our nation-states through various acts of well-targeted terrorism that makes the citizen look like the bad guy to the authorities, various psy-op campaigns aimed at atomizing the population and market sabotoge, uh, I dunno, maybe?

Mostly I get the impression it's just a big messy ass-ache for everyone involved. But a lucrative ass-ache if you're working the wrong side of the fence.

reply to post by mistermonculous


See, the basic pattern is this:

Market forces put pressure on unintegrated cultures, many of whom have their religious beliefs codified into their laws, many of whom would like to make use of their own resources and find pop-cultural mores repugnant.

Also, in many of these areas, a black market economy is protected and reinforced by the state.

So, the capitalists call in the missionaries, and should that fail; the military.

It's gone that way for a while now, and it has proved a very good method for market expansion.

This open-source stuff is throwing a wrench in the works. Those groups who wish to maintain a rigid autonomy; whether it be ideological, economic, or religious now have some pretty heinous means at their disposal.

The hallmark of the 5GW combatant is a gift for choosing the precise target that will cause the maximum amount of systems disruption with the smallest number of operatives and resources expended.

Examples of 5GW operators:

Anonymous
Anders Breivik
The guys behind Stuxnet

Play along! Let's all name a few.

reply to post by mistermonculous

The art of OODA is sussing out your opponent before he can suss you out, and throw a bunch of chaos his way to confound his attempts to ascertain your weaknesses. And we have not been doing well in that area of late.

Yeah, so here we go with the John Boyd. I don't think a whole lot of people know who he was. I will drag a couple of quotes over from WikiPedia...

Colonel John (Richard) Boyd (January 23, 1927 – March 9, 1997) was a United States Air Force fighter pilot and Pentagon consultant of the late 20th century, whose theories have been highly influential in the military, sports, and business.

en.wikipedia.org...(military_strategist)

But the guy was not working...

During the early 1960s, Boyd, together with Thomas Christie, a civilian mathematician, created the Energy-Maneuverability, or E-M, theory of aerial combat. A legendary maverick by reputation, Boyd was said to have "stolen" the computer time to do the millions of calculations necessary to prove the theory, but it became the world standard for the design of fighter planes. At a time when the Air Force's FX project (subsequently the F-15) was foundering,

en.wikipedia.org...(military_strategist)

The guy reminds me a little of John Nash in the sense that he comes across as this asshole of a genius with a vicious sense of humour. I would like to get to Nash as well but Boyd is the guy that actually provided the framework upon which the experts we have been referring to tell us that American 5GW strategy is becoming based on. It has to if it wants to survive. So it was not just Boyd but three guys that were working it out.

Believe it or not Boyd left behind virtually nothing in terms of written work.

He left behind slide shows (no I'm not kidding) and one document that does not really qualify as a book but has an ominous title...

Destruction and Creation.


Boyd was known as '40 second Boyd' because he had a standing bet that he could out maneuver and defeat any other fighter pilot in 40 seconds. John Boyd considered that a person that had mastered the art of being very fast with the OODA loop would be able to actually get inside the opponents thinking process in order to dismantle them. Actually, the master of OODA would be simply waiting to drop the hammer when the enemy put themselves in to the proper position.

That is 5GW warfare.

reply to post by mistermonculous

Anonymous

Anders Breivik

The guys behind Stuxnet

You already got my three favorites. I would like to offer just for fun...

The Somali Pirates and,

The guys from Whale Wars.

Surely the failed field training exercise known as Anonymous will go down in history as the lamest and most transparent.

Oops, forgot to add the Tor Network, what a total pit of 5GW garbage.

John Boyd considered that a person that had mastered the art of being very fast with the OODA loop would be able to actually get inside the opponents thinking process in order to dismantle them. Actually, the master of OODA would be simply waiting to drop the hammer when the enemy put themselves in to the proper position.

That is 5GW warfare.

There's our nutshell. Way to put the team on your back, do.

And why is the field of battle a FUBAR'd fun house?

Because the amount of data you have to collect and collate in order to even Orient is vast these-a-days, and explodes at an exponential rate. Thus, the emphasis on surveillance and monitoring of social networking sites.

Oh man. Things I've been trying to tell people for a decade have names. You have no idea how pleased/relieved I am.

The Melted Map - yeah, exactly. What a good name for it. Maybe what I was missing was a nice easy to grasp term. Trying to explain over and over that your enemy doesn't live in a nation and only in the last year or so have I noticed any real traction that people might be starting to get that ink on maps isn't real.

I think the concept can be extended - the melting pot to the melted cultures.

Some of the tensions with ethnicity are being provoked through social engineering that is disrespectful, and packaged with economic agreements in such a way that I have to wonder if certain governments / super-governments are intentionally looking to cause a breakdown or if they are just that stupid. The things they are pushing happen naturally and particularly are driven naturally in a trade economy without need to directly tie them to social immigration policies that are not respectful and encourage cultural-less states. Cultural-less states are weak. People inherently know this, and fight back.

One more metaphor extension: When moving from bronze age to new metals, only some go together and make something better. Others do not. Some tools can be fit together of different types at boundaries, and make a tool which is more than the sum of its parts. The smelting of cultures is presumed to make something stronger. But in a strong useful alloy, an atom of one metal and an atom of another in a stronger alloy never give up being the atom they are.

Perhaps they are trying to create "virtual states," their policies virtually guarantee them. Stupid policies to feed breakdown.

Nations themselves, even first world ones, that know that they cannot fight traditionally against those whom they might come up against are training their military to act as guerrillas in the case of being taken over. Single or small cell operations against an occupying force with great resources. This is how far this is.

There is a reason why I recognized someone - I've thought of lots ways to disrupt the economy of my nation and cause mass havoc. Now I was doing it to assess how it could be done and why this doesn't seem apparent to people. I admit, I might just have havoc in my blood. How unprepared nations are astounds me.

Oslo proves the point - a one man army's costs were over a billion months ago, and they aren't anywhere near the full bill yet. The human lives are horrible. The resources spent on it are staggering. An object lesson that I hope every nation is watching.

I would say militarizing the populace might be effective, but Norway's populace is widely military trained and it apparently doesn't translate. Further, I don't think that most of first world nations' populations are currently in a place where they would. They haven't yet seen the reason to do it and would react with disdain.

I think that the answer doesn't lie solely in the state. I think that they answer lies in the atom of the state. The citizen. That entity that can move allegiances isn't just a source of weakness. It is the source of all strength.

Now I have to think about how to express the rest of how I think that it might work.

reply to post by Frater210


The Somali pirates are working off of the Code of the Barbary Pirates. Who ever is running that show is well educated and trained.

I think that the answer doesn't lie solely in the state. I think that they answer lies in the atom of the state. The citizen. That entity that can move allegiances isn't just a source of weakness. It is the source of all strength.

Now I have to think about how to express the rest of how I think that it might work.

There's a lot to address up there ^, but I had to take this first. How beautiful, Aeons. That was precisely what I as feinting at in the OP when I alluded to strengthening communites as a way to give resilience to a state. Decentralizing key resource nodes; maintaining rich, open-source web-communites; localized production; an empowered, well-educated citizen: these things offer a natural immunity to 5GW tactics.

An example of 5GW done slow and focused mainly on economics: China's foreign policies. Explicitly.

I think most of the guerrilla groups around the World are still on 4gw. FARC, LRA, etc. Perhaps this is an effect of their lack of access to the implements that lead to the application of Moore's Law.

There is an awful lot that I would like to get back to as well up there in the thread. Aeons, that was a great post.

It crossed my mind though that we might have a good example of something that really interests me; the ability to have patriotic 5GW soldiers sort of 'self create' and actualize themselves.

MM, you pointed out once that (I paraphrase heavily) you felt that the thumb was actually secondary to humanity's use of narrative when it comes to what's in the tool bag. I agree. We story our world and our lives and we trade stories and try them on for size as we find just the right one.

Narrative is of primary concern to aspiring states and effectors (actors) and weaponized narrative is a primary assault implement of 5GW warfare; used against individuals and populations.

Narrative needs a vector of infection; think of how it is when you have a song in your head that you cannot finish (of course, the key is to finish it). And also we should talk about the suspension of disbelief. It is key to allowing the vector to infect a target population. So learning to turn suspension of disbelief on and off at will is critical to 5GW warfare as well. ...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

And it is a proven fact that this is exactly what DARPA is spending our money on. Link above.

So that being said...

I hope this will speak for itself:



So what kind of premise/s is he trying to slip by us and why should we listen to or accept his particular story? And what story would we be substituting his story for?

See, ATS? Not so scary when we have a language with which we can describe what we are seeing. I for one don't buy it. I am presently telling myself a story based on the Arthurian cycle of legends and don't have room for his death camps and paranoia. Also I am more concerned about real threats that I could stumble into blundering about the web posting on conspiracy forums in the midst of possible 5GW training exercises.