This episode of the IWI podcast dives into the concept of competition between states in other places – specifically Russia, China, and Iran.
Here’s the question that had me listening more closely:
“What are the skill-sets and capabilities needed to implement integrated deterrence in the CENTCOM area of responsibility given the character of these threats?”
The answer? Language and culture.
If you don’t understand the language of the people you’re dealing with, if you don’t understand their culture, then you’re going to have a really hard time appreciating how a particular action plays out in that culture, or doesn’t play out.
Rear Admiral Mitch Bradley, ~44:15
The conversation goes on from there stressing the importance of education in developing leaders who can truly understand their environments and the implications of their actions or inactions.
This, of course, is refreshing to hear.
The challenge is two-fold. First, to truly develop the skills that we’re talking about (language proficiency beyond building rapport and cultural understanding beyond the surface level) we are talking about an immense investment of time. A short course on language or culture isn’t going to do it. This stuff takes years – decades even.
Which brings me to the second challenge: incentives. If we are saying that what we want is the above, are we incentivizing this? Are we promoting and rewarding those who have put in the work?
It goes back to the infinite competition episode and another great question: “Do you think the system is promoting the right types of leaders and talent to engage in political warfare or great power competition?”
The desire is there. The need is there. Now it’s about aligning incentives to meet it.
Lastly, I love it anytime senior leaders talk about the need to develop our own “Lawrence of Arabia.”
“…not only a Lawrence of Arabia, but a Lawrence of Africa… and I would say, a Lawrence of southern Arabia, and all of these other places where the Chinese and the Iranians and the Russians are trying to compete…”
I appreciate the further parsing – knowledge that is useful has to be extremely granular. And developing that granular knowledge takes time.
Lawrence’s education began well before he stepped foot in Arabia as a military man.
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Three things struck me from the most recent IWI podcast episode – all came towards the end.
“While we exist in the physical environment, where we find our relevance is in the cyber environment. And that is only going to increase as time goes on.”
You likely already know this. Think about a great organization you are a part of or have some affiliation with that has a terrible online presence – or no presence at all.
It can feel a little embarrassing.
Now think of the opposite – think of that organization that has a terrific online identity but might not even have a building or office in “real life.”
That distinction is becoming less and less relevant.
To a point, of course.
At the end of the day, all of that internet showcasing won’t stop an army from breaking down the door.
Tywin Lannister: “You really think the crown gives you power?”
Tyrion Lannister: “No. I think armies give you power.”
Here’s the second thing – on failure, reporting, and incentives:
“If you have a zero-defect reporting culture where – if one of your soldiers loses a rifle – the idea that any step that you make is wrong, it’s going to torpedo your promotion chances. Then, the temptation to juke the stats about how many of your vehicles are working – I just bang this drum, ‘it’s the incentives, the incentives, the incentives.”
That short paragraph captures it all right there. What are we incentivized to report? Is it only good news?
Finally, special operations and too much secrecy:
“Talking about special operations forces… I do think we have an issue in the UK that special operations forces are too secret. I think we cover them in a level of secrecy that is ultimately counter-productive.”
He goes on to say that this (often) needless culture of secrecry actually hinders SOF’s ability to get things done across the spectrum – from recruiting to military operations.
While he is speaking about the UK, this cuts across to the US as well. There is a time and a place for secrecy, but for the most part, there’s no secret about what is going on. Pretending there is – whether it’s due to archaic rules or maintaining mythology – does us no favors.
Things are changing. Things have aleady changed.
The sooner we embrace this and start showing up in reality the quicker we’ll start seeing the needle inch the way we want it.
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It’s timely given the recent rhetoric. The article discusses the fact that we don’t like talking about the reality of what a war over Taiwan would look like.
I agree with that.
It’s a good article that lays out many of the grim realities, without acknowledging the potential – and likey costlier – mission creep, however.
There are a couple of assumptions in the piece that deserve a closer look.
First, that “a majority of the American public supports defending Taiwan in the case of a Chinese invasion.” The cited poll suggests that 52% of Americans would support the use of US troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
Wars are often popular before they start.
And in this case, when asked if the US should commit troops to defending Taiwan in the event of a Chinese “attack” or “invasion” (both words were used), 52% responded favorably.
Interestingly, a smaller number (46%) support committing to defending Taiwan before the fact. The polling suggests less an interest in Taiwan and more of an interest in China.
And that resonates – I don’t think most Americans spend much time thinking about Taiwan in the same way they didn’t spend much time thinking about Afghanistan.
Until we were there of course. And even then…
Still, the author is right to raise a flag here. If we are going to commit US troops somewhere we ought to know the costs. And the costs would likely be significant in terms of both American lives and expenditure.
How popular would it be then? And does that matter?
Second, the author writes that the Army is in the midst of an “identity crisis.”
“After the withdrawal from Afghanistan and facing a U.S.-Chinese competition that seems to play out on anything but land, the Army is struggling with an identity crisis perhaps as dramatic as its reinvention after the Vietnam War.”
Two things here: that the Army is facing an “identity crisis” and the US-Chinese competition plays out on “anything but land.”
The first (identity crisis) is a major claim. I’m not refuting it, but I’m also not seeing it either.
Is the Army really in the midst of an identity crisis?
Maybe, but it doesn’t feel like it.
Certainly we’re all coming around to recognize a new reality. GWOT is over (right?) and we’re waking up after a twenty-year adventure trying to figure out what the next big thing is.
But it doesn’t feel like a crisis. It feels more like going back to work. It feels like doing what we’ve always done.
“I don’t think we need any more lines and arrows, I don’t think we need any more references to the NDS. I think everyone understands what the new threat is, and we just power it down to the companies and let the senior NCOs and Team Sergeants take charge of the training.“
That is what the Army is supposed to do.
Units have missions. Units train against those missions. And if called, units execute those missions.
That’s all there is.
Everything else is noise.
Second, the idea that US-Chinese competition plays out on “anything but land.”
Competition and conflict are often thought of and used interchangeably. Many make the assumption that because China is “over there” and we’re “over here” this is mostly a Navy/Air Force thing.
The reality is that competition is everywhere. Everywhere includes land. It also includes the digital world. And I don’t think the Army is spending much time navel-gazing wondering what its role is.
It’s too busy dealing with the reality of competition all over the world.
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Interesting article over at MWI on the role of the ‘human domain’ in strategy.
The US military flounders in the human domain of conflict, with respect to foes, friends, and bystanders alike. Failure to engage with the building blocks of humanity—culture, society, politics, economics, and religion—leaves our strategies and plans untethered to reality. The result has been on display to the world for decades. The Afghan collapse provided a final exclamation point.
There is a lot I agree with in this article – like the importance of understanding human dynamics in warfare. The authors don’t really talk about language – but I’m coming around to believing that you can’t call yourself a “regional expert” if you don’t have some language ability in the region in which you claim expertise.
However, I’m skeptical about the idea of building strategy on all of the granular human stuff.
It seems like the powers that be should set the goals, set the objectives, set the end states. And then it is the role of the rest of us to use what we can to achieve those.
I’m not sure it works any other way.
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Don’t get me wrong – they’re often entertaining, interesting, and educational.
And I do enjoy them.
But I don’t like them because they’re so ephemeral.
A lot of works goes into them, they’re fun to poke through, but then they’re gone. And there’s not really a good way to save them.
You can bookmark them, but then you’re stuck with a list of bookmarks. I tend to use bookmarks for things to check out later, and then I clear them out.
There is definitely a place for them, and I get their utility. And I understand how they are engaging.
But some of them are so engaging I want them to live somewhere that I can easily return to for reference.
You know, like a blog.
A few weeks ago I started building a thread on what ‘winning’ looks like in Great Power Competition. I had a good vision for it and I know it would be engaging. It was full of video clips, gifs, pictures, and smart copy.
I stopped building it because I knew that it would be a great thread that would quickly be pushed aside and forgotten.
Instead, I’ll turn it into an article where it can survive.
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Written by the PRC’s National Defense University (NDU) faculty, with assistance from the General Staff Operations Department and the Academy of Military Sciences, this text contains instructional material for NDU Commander’s Course, Staff Officer, and PLA-wide Information Operations Advanced Studies Courses. Forward looking, and deliberately very comprehensive on concepts of information operations at the campaign level in the joint form, the 2009 edition contains extensive review/revisions from its previous publications.
What a great project. This stuff is out there and available. This is professional development. It’s not necessarily going to be a “fun” read or one that you need to do.
But if you’re a professional, it’s one that you absolutely should do.
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Still catching up on the backlog of podcasts. I listened to episode 34 of the Irregular Warfare podcast weeks ago – and jotted down a few notes. This episode was on “China’s Strategically Irregular Approach.”
Before I even listened to it, I opined that there would be a discussion or comment about how “good” China is at irregular warfare and how “bad” we are at it.
The discussion was more nuanced than that, thankfully. But there is one area in which I think we (the US) continue to get a bad rap.
And that’s on the topic of the “whole of society” approach.
In any discussion on China’s approach to competition, their ability to marshal their entire society in lockstep towards their political goals is touted as a huge advantage. A top-down approach, where the CCP dictates the direction, and often the pace and style.
To the outside observer, it can appear as if they’re “doing it well” or “doing it better.”
Wolf-warrior diplomacy, banning video games, social credit systems. It’s all in the name of winning.
And what do we have to counter that?
A system that appears (to outsiders and insiders) to be falling apart, constantly at odds with itself, and seemingly incapable of coming together for a common purpose.
If you believe the above and swallow it whole, you’re missing the bigger picture.
The USA already does the whole of society approach – and does it incredibly well.
Here, we trust our people with free speech, to make decisions in their best interests and pursue what makes them happy. This is mission command at a societal level.
We don’t need to tell our people that they need to go out there and counter adversarial aggression. Instead, we provide the space and the means for people and organizations to thrive.
And they create things. Entertainment. Sports. Fashion. Philanthropy. Finance.
Hollywood. College sports. Non-profits. The iPhone.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe – an American media franchise – is worth billions of dollars worldwide, but more importantly, carries the power of American culture, creativity, innovation, and humor across the world.
If you’re on the outside looking in, American society, with all its cracks and fissures, is a behemoth. It is worth envying.
We don’t need to try to recreate something that “gets everyone on board.” We don’t need to force it.
Do the right thing, speak the truth, and trust your people.
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This is the second Cognitive Crucible episode I’ve heard that features Professor Jan Kallberg and COL Stephen Hamilton from the Army Cyber Institute. The first discussed the idea that service members are all very likely targets of foreign influence operations – regardless of whether or not there is active armed conflict.
In this recent episode, they go a step further and discuss the need to prepare for a future where our POWs (prisoners of war) will be further exploited through the use of enhanced deep-fake technology, deception, and instantaneous communication.
More importantly, they discuss how our own institutional structures can be exploited at home by the same.
During this episode, Prof. Jan Kallberg and COL Stephen Hamilton of the Army Cyber Institute return to the Cognitive Crucible and discuss prisoner of war (POW) considerations in the digital world. After Jan recaps his recent article, In Great Power Wars, Americans Could Again Become POWs, the conversation covers the will to fight, cognitive preparation of the battlefield, and ways the enemy might harvest information about service members in advance to identify exploitable information. Both Jan and Stephen give some policy suggestions, as well.
This is the type of warning that should scare you. It’s nightmare fuel.
Some things I found particularly interesting:
Our personal information is already out there
When social media started to emerge over a decade ago, general security guidance was to avoid putting personal information out there, be mindful of what you’re doing online, and increase your privacy settings.
Good advice, to be sure.
Further, some advised not having social media at all, while others warned that not having social media in an increasingly connected world seemed suspicious.
Well, now we’re at a place where whether you want your “stuff” to be out there or not, it’s out there. If an adversary (or a troll, or harasser) wants to scrape the internet for your stuff, it’s not hard to do.
And for the generation growing up in the shadow of all this, there will be even more “stuff” out there for the foreseeable future.
The genie is out of the bottle. It’s not going back in.
My take – this is over. We’re moving toward a society where the ability to maintain pure privacy is ending. There is little we can do at the individual level to protect ourselves completely. When you combine the growing digital ecosystem with nefarious cyber activities of state and non-state actors, our default position should be that “our information is going to get out there.”
Accept it, plan for it, and move on.
We’re really starting to put this thing together. Researchers and practitioners are weaving a quilt of what information warfare is likely to look like in the near future. It’s already happening, but we haven’t quite got it all figured out yet.
Personally, I think it’s important that we start talking – and implementing policy – that will defend us from this. We can’t just warn that it’s going to happen. We will be caught off guard if we are not prepared.
POWs have congressional representatives
This was very spooky. The guests discuss the fact that in future-war, there may no longer be a need to have a POW make a public statement disparaging the United States or the war effort. A hyper-realistic fake could be easily created and beamed out to the world.
That captured service member has a congressional representative somewhere back home. What happens when these POWs are exploited with the intent of influencing domestic politics? What happens when a reporter asks Congressman X what she is doing about the captured soldier who comes from her district?
What is her statement when a dramatic video is released of that servicemember begging his congressional representative – by name – to end the war?
What happens when public pressure is placed on that same congressional representative – from her constituents – to “do something” about this?
“Television is an instrument that can paralyze this country.” -General William Westmoreland
There was a quick discussion on how what we are seeing now in the information age is just an extension of what we started to experience during the Vietnam War. When there are pictures and images, we pay attention. As much as we like to think we are rational creatures, our decision-making process – even at the strategic level – is often guided by emotions, “optics,” and a burning desire to “control the narrative.” These are often not rational decisions, but decisions that seek to please some interest.
How would things be different if there were no dramatic images? No compelling video? If you had to read the results of overseas operations the next day in your local newspaper, splayed out dispassionately?
I think we would address things more rationally. But I’m not certain that our decisions would always be “better.”
Again, the genie is out of the bottle. There is a role for education. There is a very important role for leaders (at all levels) to be patient and take the longer view. But there is also the realization that words, images, and video matter.
” Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America – not on the battlefields of Vietnam.”
Marshall McLuhan
A picture is worth a thousand words
1st Lt. Anthony Aguilar wears the ballistic protective eyewear that prevented a bomb-fragment from possibly damaging his eyes when an IED detonated near his Stryker vehicle while on patrol in Mosul. (Photo by Company C, Task Force 2-1, Feb. 2006.)
COL Hamilton discussed an anecdote from a deployment where he witnessed the rapid purchase of a particular type of eye protection after one of the Generals was shown a picture with a piece of shrapnel lodged in the eye protection that would have almost certainly caused tremendous damage to the soldier’s vision. All of the statistics and lab reports in the world might not move someone to action. But a single image that demonstrates the effect might do the trick.
I don’t like it either – I wish we could be more Spock-like and make decisions based on the evidence.
This was a good episode – one that should have us thinking, and more importantly, moving towards crafting policies and procedures to prepare us for the kinds of deception and smear tactics we’re likely to see in both in the day-to-day operations of Great Power Competition and in the next shooting war.
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Chinese tourists take a ‘selfie’ at the Golden Temple in Amritsar on November 14, 2016, as Sikh devotees mark the 547th birth anniversary of Sri Guru Nanak Dev. Guru Nanak was the founder of the Sikh religion and the first of ten Sikh gurus. / AFP / NARINDER NANU Getty Images
Late last year, the Marine Corps released MCDP 1-4 ‘Competing.’ It’s a great pamphlet that captures the nature of the global competition we find ourselves in today. I would recommend it as a primer for anyone who wants to know more about what ‘great power competition’ looks like. It’s well-researched and well-written.
Over the summer, I plan on lifting a few things from Competing to explore a little further. The first of these is mentioned on page 4-10 as a part of the ‘common characteristics of our rivals approach to competition.’
‘Weaponization of benign activities.’
While a definition isn’t offered, if you have been paying attention, the concept is almost immediately apparent.
Competing provides a short vignette two pages later which discusses the idea in the context of tourism.
Weaponization of Benign Activities:Tourism in Targeted Countries
Palau is an island nation strategically located east of the Philippines, has only 20,000 citizens, and maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan. About 2014, China put Palau on its approved list for overseas tourism.
By 2015, Chinese tourists flooded Palau, created a Chinese- funded hotel construction boom, and bought up buildings and apartments. Chinese-owned restaurants and small businesses also started, displacing local enterprises. Chinese tour groups were typically self-contained, staying in Chinese-owned hotels and bringing their own tour guides, which froze out locally owned tourism businesses. The influx of Chinese tourism created divisions between Paulauans benefiting from the tourism and those threatened by the displaced businesses, increased living costs, and damage to the local environment brought by the tourism flood.
In late 2017, Beijing placed Palau off-limits for package tours, dramatically affecting Palau’s economy. The off-limits order was reportedly an effort to put pressure on Taiwan via their relationship with Palau. China used tourism to create an economic dependency and then manipulated it to help them achieve their aims.
Weaponization of benign activities. In conducting their political warfare operations, Russia and China have weaponized many normally benign activities. These include but are not limited to diplomatic discussions; conventional and unconventional media operations; tourism into targeted countries; flows of students; visit diplomacy; the establishment of “friendship societies” and similar front organizations; the purchase of well-located pieces of land, key infrastructure, and strategically important companies; accessing, often by stealing, protected intellectual property; managing trade and investment flows; exploiting education systems, and manipulating immigration arrangements.
The weaponization of benign activities will serve as the constant, slow-burn tactic of great power competition. These are events and processes that unfold over years and will be a nuisnance to military, diplomatic, and political leaders who will feel compelled to “do something” in response.
There is a related tactic that we already see every day – and that’s the weaponization of benign information. If you spend any amount of time on social media, you see this when someone includes a screenshot that provides ‘evidence’ of some transgression, however slight or implied. This is a tactic employed by provacateurs and trolls alike. Irrelevant personal details might be tossed on the fire to smear someone. Those details may not add anything useful, but they work as an accelerant with the target audience, carrying unseen weight.
You also see this tactic when headlines are contorted by different organizations to feed a certain narrative.
And of course, you see this when conspiracy theorists posit that some trite piece of information contains hidden meaning.
Words are already loaded with history and stories behind them. Arranged in the right way, they can convey the meaning you want to the right audience and they won’t even have to read the article. Important here, is that this technique is not likely to shift global opinion or ‘win the war.’ Rather, it might nudge the dial just a little bit over time.
More consequently, the weaponization of benign activities/informtation could result in an overreaction, which is why I argue we all need to be a little more patient and let the dust settle when there are bombastic information flare-ups.
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As we move further and further into this new thing – great power competition – I’m struck by how much more difficult this is going to be than anything we’ve done before.
Carrying the Gun 