Skilluminati Research

5GWhat? The Meaning of “Warfare” in 2008

Posted May 22, 2008 14 comments

A number of Skilluminati readers have voiced the concern that calling benevolent 5GW campaigns "warfare" is misleading or outright wrong. As Bruce Scanlon puts it:

WE have a great deal of choice about which scenario we will end up in, and WE have the power, within the scope of our own lives, to make significant contributions to these different scenarios.

I am not saying you can get the whole world to do what you want it to do, but I am saying that you can make your part of the world/find a part of the world a lot more to your liking-- and that you have a lot more power to do this than most people think.

This sizable power for change to me deserves more than to be categorized as “warfare,” 5th generation or not.

Is war merely overt violence? If you subdue your opponent using judo or aikido, is it still a fight? Bands of primates go to war, and I'm hoping humans can do better than the hunt-kill method. (Then again, maybe not: recently Israeli general Yossi Peled said "The only effect I know in warfare is to kill the enemy.") So first, let's take a look at my own cognitive biases...

Aikido Anarchism

My interest in warfare was awakened by the article Neocortical Warfare, which I immediately wrote a Brainsturbator article about. (I go into more depth about my vision for 5GW in a recent Wishtank interview.)

I suspect, but I cannot prove, that human beings can greatly amplify their personal power by aligning their goals and techniques with natural design. By fighting on the side of Life on Earth, we've opted for the most powerful available ally on the planet. Advances in human technology are based on principles decoded from nature, and nature remains vastly more sophisticated and robust than existing human technology.

So although my friendly local wikipedia has a detailed article on the history and theory of war, I find the "spectrum of conflict" and "measures short of war" drivel to be mostly intellectual apologies for the naked exercise of state power. We're all grown-ups, and we all know that power kills people every day. C'est la vie for better or worse, and it's obviously worse. Let's set academia aside and ask some questions instead.

Pointed Questions

Can you wage war without your opponent knowing it? Well, Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfield were both totally shocked by 9-11, weren't they? The concept of planes as weapons was utterly unthinkable, despite the fact they were both repeatedly briefed about exactly that. You can view that as proof of conspiracy, or just another example of how cognitive bias blinds all humans equally.

The concept of the secret war is not new to 5GW, and I refer the reader to earlier and excellent reads from dan tdaxp, dan tdaxp again , and Zenpundit.

Is blogging warfare? According to the Department of Defense, the answer is "Yes." See, us independent media types are engaged in Information Operations (IO), formerly known by the less friendly and ambiguous term "Psychological Warfare." As John Rendon so eloquently put it: "Information is an instrument of national power, just as military, economic and political. Like any weapon or tool, the United States Government needs to use it or cede the 'battlefield' to someone else."

Is activism warfare? According to the White House, absolutely. All you non-violent liberal types are engaged in "Low-Intensity Conflict."

Low intensity conflict a political-military confrontation between contending states or groups below conventional war and above the routine, peaceful competition among states. It frequently involves protracted struggles of competing principles and ideologies. Low-intensity conflict ranges from subversion to the use of the armed forces. It is waged by a combination of means, employing political, economic, informational, and military instruments. Low-intensity conflicts are often localized, generally in the Third World, but contain regional and global security implications

Are domestic law enforcement operations warfare? It's an armed conflict, there's casualties involved, and the parallels between domestic law enforcement and foreign counter-insurgency are striking. Lethal use of force by police is legally justified, but does that nescessarily make it legitimate? (Every non-civilian casualty of war is legally justified, too.)

If You Want My Opinion

Resource shortages are manufactured and wars are not nescessary. However, in 2008 there exists a global power elite -- probably less than 100,000 of them altogether -- who posess far too much power and abuse it at will. As a result, millions of human beings around the world are suffering on a daily basis. Is that something worth fighting against? Would you term that conflict a "war?"

That graffitti basically sums up my outlook for 2008-2012. Every single human community on Earth has expanded exponentially and bumped shoulders on an abruptly crowded planet. Communities need to rethink everything and rebuild for a global future -- anyone trying to force a top-down solution is either willfully evil or catastrophically stupid. This applies from Al Gore to Vladimir Putin to Hugo Chavez to George Bush: you need to stop looking up to your leaders and start looking around to your neighborhoods.

More Pointed Questions

When the peace of Western affluence is made possible by the violent opression of Third World countries, what is the "spectrum of conflict" useful for? The thing to remember about the whole humans species is that it's the whole human species and all the lines we draw beyond that are arbitrary, often misleading and occasionally very useful. When you grow up in a home that's financed by profits from Lockheed Martin, is that peace? Is "peace" the condition that exists within the fortress walls of the gated communities and Green Zones?

Is the city of Chicago at war? Wikipedia has an outstanding map of ongoing conflicts around the world that's worth considering here -- armed conflict with organized crime surely qualifies as warfare, right? As the supporting data notes, "major wars are those that cause at least 1000 battlefield deaths annually," and if you dig around, you might it's kind of hard to find crime reported in human terms.

The usual factoid is the "Homicide Rate" -- how many homicides are reported annually, per 100,000 local residents. This renders death into an abstract index instead of a distinct and specific number of dead human beings. Reporting the numbers honestly is a body count, and body counts are alarming. Homicide Rate is like humidity, which is why you'll find most FBI/DoJ statistics published in that format.

In 1994, the city of New Orleans had 424 reported homicides. Drawing off data from Swivel's "Homicides in the US" spreadsheet, the Drug War in California is claiming more than enough lives every year to qualify as a "major war" -- a year before New Orleans peaked, Cali reported 4,096 homicides. From 1990 to 1994, the total number of US homicides floated between 23,000 and 24,000 annually -- then began a sharp decline. It's been stable at over 16,000 a year since 2001.

Last Word: Smitten Eagle

Smitten Eagle said "I’m not sure I necessarily buy into the 5GW frameworks yet. Trying to nail 4GW Jell-O to the wall is hard enough. 5GW is like nailing said Jell-O while it’s still liquid." His explanation of this is some of the best writing on 5GW I've found so far -- from a comment at Chicago Boyz:

As far as 5GW goes, I don’t think there is even a solid framework to rely on. Some have referred to 5GW as tactically being about changing the enemie’s Observation in the OODA loop to make him think he’s not even in conflict with the enemy. For me, this is too close to the political end of the Policy-War continuum of violence to be considered warfare.

Others have spoken about the role of the Super Empowered Individual (SEI) as a major actor in 5GW. I’m afraid that lone gunmen, in my conception of warfare, do not qualify as “organized violence.” For violence to be “organized,” it requires an Organization. An Organization of One is not an organization. I think there has to be more to organized violence than a single pissed-off dude with lots of cunning.

Finally, for 5GW to actually exist, it needs to have a strong track record of convincingly beating 4GW fighting forces. I’m afraid there really hasn’t been any evidence to support this. (Unless, of course, my denial of 5GW is evidence of it’s success…but if that’s the case, I think we’re getting a bit too close to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to speak anything authoritatively about 5GW, or any xGW for that matter.)

A great example of the circular reasoning and collapsing logic of Invisible War. My next post is what I've been working on this whole time -- a thinkpiece on how to wage war in a Universe that actually runs on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Since that's the Universe we happen to live in.

Filed in: 5GW Project 2008

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