A great piece tying together many threads. I like the 5GW concept because it wraps up what we've all been noticing — the melding of "peaceful" political contests and "violent" military ones into a nonstop meta conflict in which there are no clearly deliniated sides and borders, few declarations of war, and only fluid ideologies. States are not unified, but a heavy mass of ideologies uncomfortably stitched together by geography and constitutions. The world is getting less understandable and we must be humble to thrive in it.
I do wonder if we should see this evolution as a new level of complexity or a disintegration/entropic movement. I'm tempted to see a thousand statlets competing and coexisting where once a monolithic empire reigned as added complexity, but their squabbles may create disorder and loss along some avenues. When the Roman empire fell, its successor states first declined before competition and divergence drove increasing complexity.
Another aspect is that all this is taking place against a background of an aging planet. The demographics of once-dynamic civilizations like Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, and China are already declined and seem unlikely to recover. The old are less dynamic. They consume less, create less, are more settled in their views, and as their economies and opportunities slow, further opportunities for radicalism will appear among them.
But then again, even this is uncertain. The trifecta of AI/automation, and impressive anti-aging treatments may throw all in a loop.
I am trying to wrap my head around the population question as well. I am wondering if we'll depopulate as fast as we populated- from 1 to 8 billion in such a short length of time. So in 200 years, will there be just 1-2 billion humans wandering around a world full of empty cities?
It would be quite the sight if it did. Perhaps there will remain high fertility bubbles that are socially isolated, like the Amish, who will fill in the emptiness as the rest of humanity declines.
As for the empty cities...Ever been to St. Louis? I was just there for a wedding. Beautiful city, but it's lost 67% of its population, which is a number I find staggering. Yet it's a surprisingly functional city, far more functional than I'd expect it to be after that kind of population decline.
Adam, you've given me a lot to contemplate here; I will be coming back to re-read this. I appreciate very much the navigation guidelines near the end of this essay, for moving through the dangerous and complex online territories we so naively encounter/inhabit. And the critical importance of epistemic humility.
My "ideal" break down of the obsolete nation-state configutation-paradigm, is to a bioregional native earth state, where our human-nature relations are paramount. Intead of natural resources, to exploit we have the sustaining capacity of the land, to guide our economics.
Today we operate out of a Biosphere economic pattern. In future we need to move into an Ecoregional economics. The transformation, globally speaking would be tantamount to living on Gaia in our human niche mosaics as part of the Dream of the Earth: a mutual forever giving relationship verses the shrot-term dominate one-way extratrating patterns we live by today.
Use them? It’s about understanding them, and that each may offer humans a valuable lens to understand reality, and we may need different parts in different contexts.
Fascinating… the fact that we’re all in this information battlefield, and even if you don’t care about it, it cares about you, is a fact worth reflecting on. Will be passing this link on to a number of friends
I read “Unrestricted Warfare” several years ago and found it incisively analytical. Then a book about Thucydides trap by (Graham Allison?) that (I cannot remember the title) was prescient. And “Sandworm” by Andy Greenberg, former editor of WIRED magazine I highly recommend. And yes, hybrid warfare on all fronts.
I definitely need to reread this a few times, as you have summed up a host of contradictory ideas,
and integrated many.
Physically counting World Wars, I count at least 3 already, counting the Napoleonic ones as the First World War, since both sides had an amalgam of alliances, some unlikely, some likely.
Thank you. As a pleb, I find this so comforting to known their are thinkers out there analyzing this shit show from a micro level and making sense of it. That maybe there are answers (or options is the better word) and a hope for society.
How do you get these kind of ideas out to the masses and grow awareness? Do you utalise the methods you mentioned?
Or do we just sit back with popcorn and wait for population decline and hope we'll swing full circle one day to small tribes that revere the earth again and have a spiritual connection to it. That's my fantasy.
Less dystopian mad max and more Becky chambers monk and robot.
I'm hoping that the answer to much of this is the rise in the value of indigenous groups. Their knowlwge and practice. A quiet micro revolution that happens within, led by those least suspected, as a spiritual Awakening and rebellion to where the world has gone and what is has become.
I've been studying these concepts as an ORSA for years and I never quite liked how there was just too much overlap. Take for instance the Mele, Mass, Manuever, Swarm concept from RAND. The challenge is, a swarm is merely the overmatch of an enemy's defensive capability. You can achieve that with mele, mass, manuever, and a combination thereof.
This is where the idea of 5G warfare also collapses because it's less about the tactics and more about the scope of the engagement. Right now, warfare is occuring on Substack Notes and to a much greater extent, Twitter... even the extra-tribe/state concepts start to fall as we've always had demagouges who were individually powerful outside of a political structure (hell, Jesus Christ himself!)
I think it's a useful model but I always found that when I start to poke, I find myself looking at an ancient example. It's one reason why I refer to Cyberwarfar as 'Traditional Tactics on Non Traditional Terrain.' When push comes to shove, a hacker doesn't look much different than a Seal Team penetrating a defense and laying a deontation charge before exfiltrating. For example, one of the best examples of a 'cyber' middleman attack comes from The Count of Monte Christo where Edmond Dantes injects a message in the signal towers between London and Paris that causes the French stock market to crash, vaporizing the finances of his nemesis.
Oh, BTW, the Romans were the ones who really did the uniforms, saluting, and other heraldry weren't they? (hey, if I'm going to poke, I'm going to poke 🤓)
On the Roman piece, this is industrial warfare and up, for first gen. That’s why it starts at Napoleon. Yes, many of these tactics have been around for a long time, swarming is different from the other modes in that you are disaggregated and aggregate for an attack, then disaggregate once more. That’s different than mass, melee, and maneuver. Yes 5GW is a contested concept, and but I find it helpful- you might not and that’s alright by me.
It's not that it isn't helpful per se. It's that when you look for patterns, you find shocking similarity throughout history to glean from. This makes what we call 5G warfare much less different which makes it much more actionable today. I don't have to redo TTPs or structures, I just have to flex them slightly.
I've used the example of how we renamed booby traps to IEDs and then treated them like a 'new' technology problem instead of an ancient tactical one. Namely, they are the mass casualty effector of a classic ambush. We allowed thousands of soldiers to drive straight into classic ambushes because we treated them as new. That's my main critique with 5G Warfare is I see that same problem cropping up.
Hmmmm. I'm not sure if I see the same issue with 5GW-I think emphasizing the importance of perception/attention/framing/narrative is more helpful than not right now.
I don’t disagree that we need to highlight it. My only contest is that the need to highlight that isn’t new because the problem we are highlighting isn’t new. We absolutly need to highlight it.
A great piece tying together many threads. I like the 5GW concept because it wraps up what we've all been noticing — the melding of "peaceful" political contests and "violent" military ones into a nonstop meta conflict in which there are no clearly deliniated sides and borders, few declarations of war, and only fluid ideologies. States are not unified, but a heavy mass of ideologies uncomfortably stitched together by geography and constitutions. The world is getting less understandable and we must be humble to thrive in it.
I do wonder if we should see this evolution as a new level of complexity or a disintegration/entropic movement. I'm tempted to see a thousand statlets competing and coexisting where once a monolithic empire reigned as added complexity, but their squabbles may create disorder and loss along some avenues. When the Roman empire fell, its successor states first declined before competition and divergence drove increasing complexity.
Another aspect is that all this is taking place against a background of an aging planet. The demographics of once-dynamic civilizations like Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, and China are already declined and seem unlikely to recover. The old are less dynamic. They consume less, create less, are more settled in their views, and as their economies and opportunities slow, further opportunities for radicalism will appear among them.
But then again, even this is uncertain. The trifecta of AI/automation, and impressive anti-aging treatments may throw all in a loop.
Nice work.
I am trying to wrap my head around the population question as well. I am wondering if we'll depopulate as fast as we populated- from 1 to 8 billion in such a short length of time. So in 200 years, will there be just 1-2 billion humans wandering around a world full of empty cities?
It would be quite the sight if it did. Perhaps there will remain high fertility bubbles that are socially isolated, like the Amish, who will fill in the emptiness as the rest of humanity declines.
As for the empty cities...Ever been to St. Louis? I was just there for a wedding. Beautiful city, but it's lost 67% of its population, which is a number I find staggering. Yet it's a surprisingly functional city, far more functional than I'd expect it to be after that kind of population decline.
Might need to reread this a few times ; bravo mate.
I see the collected essays of AK on my bookshelf as being indispensable, interesting, important, oh shit I’ve caught the dis-ease
Flow well
This is the excellent. Many overlaps with my work, as you noted in my comments feed. I see follow up opportunities around the concept of 5GW.
Fascinating, thank you. I've always said Distraction is our modern disease, which it is, but now I see it and look at it as warfare - 5GW.
Adam, you've given me a lot to contemplate here; I will be coming back to re-read this. I appreciate very much the navigation guidelines near the end of this essay, for moving through the dangerous and complex online territories we so naively encounter/inhabit. And the critical importance of epistemic humility.
My "ideal" break down of the obsolete nation-state configutation-paradigm, is to a bioregional native earth state, where our human-nature relations are paramount. Intead of natural resources, to exploit we have the sustaining capacity of the land, to guide our economics.
Today we operate out of a Biosphere economic pattern. In future we need to move into an Ecoregional economics. The transformation, globally speaking would be tantamount to living on Gaia in our human niche mosaics as part of the Dream of the Earth: a mutual forever giving relationship verses the shrot-term dominate one-way extratrating patterns we live by today.
Hey, great read as always. How do you manaje to use those 'cultural codes' without the 'broad brush' issue you mensioned? Curious.
Use them? It’s about understanding them, and that each may offer humans a valuable lens to understand reality, and we may need different parts in different contexts.
Fascinating… the fact that we’re all in this information battlefield, and even if you don’t care about it, it cares about you, is a fact worth reflecting on. Will be passing this link on to a number of friends
I read “Unrestricted Warfare” several years ago and found it incisively analytical. Then a book about Thucydides trap by (Graham Allison?) that (I cannot remember the title) was prescient. And “Sandworm” by Andy Greenberg, former editor of WIRED magazine I highly recommend. And yes, hybrid warfare on all fronts.
I definitely need to reread this a few times, as you have summed up a host of contradictory ideas,
and integrated many.
Physically counting World Wars, I count at least 3 already, counting the Napoleonic ones as the First World War, since both sides had an amalgam of alliances, some unlikely, some likely.
I see Substack as a fortress in this war. It is so easy to find pieces that help you to think and feel well as a person (child of God).
Not to mention what we can tribute as writers.
Thank you. As a pleb, I find this so comforting to known their are thinkers out there analyzing this shit show from a micro level and making sense of it. That maybe there are answers (or options is the better word) and a hope for society.
How do you get these kind of ideas out to the masses and grow awareness? Do you utalise the methods you mentioned?
Or do we just sit back with popcorn and wait for population decline and hope we'll swing full circle one day to small tribes that revere the earth again and have a spiritual connection to it. That's my fantasy.
Less dystopian mad max and more Becky chambers monk and robot.
I'm hoping that the answer to much of this is the rise in the value of indigenous groups. Their knowlwge and practice. A quiet micro revolution that happens within, led by those least suspected, as a spiritual Awakening and rebellion to where the world has gone and what is has become.
Let a girl dream.
I've been studying these concepts as an ORSA for years and I never quite liked how there was just too much overlap. Take for instance the Mele, Mass, Manuever, Swarm concept from RAND. The challenge is, a swarm is merely the overmatch of an enemy's defensive capability. You can achieve that with mele, mass, manuever, and a combination thereof.
This is where the idea of 5G warfare also collapses because it's less about the tactics and more about the scope of the engagement. Right now, warfare is occuring on Substack Notes and to a much greater extent, Twitter... even the extra-tribe/state concepts start to fall as we've always had demagouges who were individually powerful outside of a political structure (hell, Jesus Christ himself!)
I think it's a useful model but I always found that when I start to poke, I find myself looking at an ancient example. It's one reason why I refer to Cyberwarfar as 'Traditional Tactics on Non Traditional Terrain.' When push comes to shove, a hacker doesn't look much different than a Seal Team penetrating a defense and laying a deontation charge before exfiltrating. For example, one of the best examples of a 'cyber' middleman attack comes from The Count of Monte Christo where Edmond Dantes injects a message in the signal towers between London and Paris that causes the French stock market to crash, vaporizing the finances of his nemesis.
Oh, BTW, the Romans were the ones who really did the uniforms, saluting, and other heraldry weren't they? (hey, if I'm going to poke, I'm going to poke 🤓)
On the Roman piece, this is industrial warfare and up, for first gen. That’s why it starts at Napoleon. Yes, many of these tactics have been around for a long time, swarming is different from the other modes in that you are disaggregated and aggregate for an attack, then disaggregate once more. That’s different than mass, melee, and maneuver. Yes 5GW is a contested concept, and but I find it helpful- you might not and that’s alright by me.
It's not that it isn't helpful per se. It's that when you look for patterns, you find shocking similarity throughout history to glean from. This makes what we call 5G warfare much less different which makes it much more actionable today. I don't have to redo TTPs or structures, I just have to flex them slightly.
I've used the example of how we renamed booby traps to IEDs and then treated them like a 'new' technology problem instead of an ancient tactical one. Namely, they are the mass casualty effector of a classic ambush. We allowed thousands of soldiers to drive straight into classic ambushes because we treated them as new. That's my main critique with 5G Warfare is I see that same problem cropping up.
Here's more info on the issue of IEDs: https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/the-enemys-gate-is-down#:~:text=Case%20Study%201%3A%20IED%E2%80%99s%20Are%20Not%20New
Hmmmm. I'm not sure if I see the same issue with 5GW-I think emphasizing the importance of perception/attention/framing/narrative is more helpful than not right now.
I don’t disagree that we need to highlight it. My only contest is that the need to highlight that isn’t new because the problem we are highlighting isn’t new. We absolutly need to highlight it.