Intelligence for the sixth generation warfighter

We seem to having found ourselves, by virtue of the most excellent work being done over at 5GW Theory Timeline and elsewhere, enmeshed more deeply in the continuing debate over the ongoing revolution(s) in military affairs. We enjoy the intellectual exercise of considering the implications of changing technologies, social structures, political arrangements, and economic factors on war in the next generations. After all, the matters of intelligence are often deeply intertwined with war, and we strong believe that the transformation of intelligence - away from an industrial age bureaucracy dedicated to counting things to an agile, knowledge worker driven enterprise focused on understanding and forecasting the subtle dynamics of complex systems – will require engagement to the very boundaries of current n generation theory.

That being said, we do think that there is distinct limit to the current foreseeability of future GW. The radical changes that will be introduced in even the near future – let alone on the distant horizon – will challenge even the best of minds. In this, we would crib Nassim Nicholas’ Taleb’s analogy that in order to predict current events in Mesopotamia from the perspective of the Neanderthal, one has to understand the invention of the wheel first, and every subsequent technological and social change after – an impossible task, given that if one has the knowledge to predict an innovation one usually has the concept required to build it sooner rather than later.

This limitation is essentially defined by the Singularity – the event horizon beyond which we cannot predict future technological or social changes, due to the inherently radical nature of the intermediate changes – and the accelerating effects of those shifts - that will bring society to that point.

Purpleslog and Shloky note that this becomes a useful upper boundary for the unknown n in the generations of warfare. 6th generation warfare is therefore post-singularity warfare, and essentially and entirely unpredictable from the perspective where we now stand.

It thus follows as a corollary that intelligence in 6GW would be similarly as difficult to predict. This gives those of us engaged in the continuing study of (and participation in) the revolution in intelligence affairs a useful upper boundary for our speculations.

This boundary also helps place perhaps the most enigmatic and promising element in the debates regarding the future of intelligence: the potential for intelligence collection and processing to be radically altered by developments in quantum science. These are developments that will occur both in the immediate future and deep out-years timeline, and offer the potential to create new sensors and entire new intelligence disciplines. Quantum intelligence, or QINT, might thus take its place in the pantheon among the earlier forms of technologically derived intelligence such as IMINT, SIGINT and MASINT. And based on what we believe regarding the future Singularity, QINT will be a late stage 4GW and full course 5GW discipline. It may also be the discipline that is most important in carrying forward into the event horizon of 6GW and beyond.

But those post-Singularity futures lie far beyond our humble perspective, and we content ourselves with having seen described this upper boundary – and find our sense of the discussion renewed to focus on those elements within the reach of where we currently stand.

In a generation

From tdaxp, we note with grim resonance the following:

“Within a generation of the enslavement of Europe and China to Stalinism, arrogant American liberals combined with comforatble American leftists to do their best to defeat American action in the Vietnam War, and make South-East Asia safe for Communism.

If history repeats itself, or at least rhymes, within a generation of 9/11 active support of al Qaeda inspired movements should be fashionable on college campuses.”

We fear we shall see that day sooner. That generation may well be on the timeline of Moore’s law.

And as the man once said, the future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.

The milestone regarding contractor deployments to Iraq exceeding total nation-state forces should also be noted, as the fulfillment of a long-standing prediction. This has occurred even in the face of the surge – despite many predicting that a privatized war would only come about in the wake of the US “retreat” they had so hoped for.

As the shooters go, so follows the privatization of the intelligence community. The fight for the future of the Long War might soon pass from the hands of government and into the hands of those who own the infrastructure, and the human capital, which must be defended against the depredations of terrorism and non-state violence. If new government administrations in the US and abroad choose to walk away from the fight, they will surrender the last vestiges of the fraying fiction which is the Westphalian monopoly on the use of force. Then privatization will be seen in full measure.

Remembering capabilities-centric models

Former Spook has an excellent piece commenting on the continuing debate over USAF ISR issues, from acquisition to employment. His points regarding the underutilization of non-traditional assets – from pods of various flavours to onboard sensor suites and especially the Mark I eyeball, brain attached – are well noted indeed.

Intelligence operations planning, in the sense of orchestrated and robust deployment of collection, processing, analysis, and fusion systems of systems, is a rarely taught skill within many organizations – particularly as current players emphasize turf over mission and everyone else assumes that the –INT collection owner will step up in the fight as part of doing business (something that is rarely the case on anything but the most visible of all accounts.)

Those tasked to use such skills are often drawn from very different parts of the community than those taught, and than may have been originally expected to inherit operational or theatre level responsibilities. Under the pressure of real-time environments they will rarely have the chance to learn from the theory, but rather forced to evolve under the brutal Darwinian pressures of warfare and of covert conflicts.

Those in the acquisition community have no such excuses. The long lead lifecycles of major components of the intelligence and warfighting architecture ensure that there is substantial time to consider the implications of the platform, its possible sensor payloads, and its integration into the whole of the operation. And moving away from the strict platform-based thinking, there is plenty of room and potential for innovative new solutions to be integrated in a capabilities-based fashion, rather than waiting for new platforms to be built around them.

In the same manner, we note a fascinating analysis of the recent real world “cyberwar” involving Estonia and Russia, compared to its fictionalized counterpart from the dawn of the networking era. We are fans of mining the creativity and insight of storytellers for potential insights into the future, and are always interested to look back on their successes (or otherwise) in formulating accurate predictions. (It is most fortunate for many an intelligence analyst that their assessments are not public domain, to be subject to such merciless scrutiny over time. That job waits for the historians in the long decades to come after declassification, and usually the unknown authors are long since dead or retired into obscurity.)

What strikes us most about this comparison is the difference between the fictional vision of an advanced state-owned, platform and shooter heavy special operations mission – against the reality of a distributed, commercial off the shelf capabilities-centric event for which attribution, let alone intent, is difficult to characterize effectively.

Call this among the clearest evidence of the clash of mindsets between generations of warfare – leaping what was a 3rd generation model (based on a World War II kinetic analogy) with the prediction of 4th generation technologies (yet to be developed, and famously written on an ancient manual typewriter with a vision inspired by a single advertisement for an early Macintosh computer); into true operationalized 4th generation technologies used in what may be the precursor of a 5th generation fashion.

What is scary is how many intelligence and information operations professionals just entering the field still believe in the fictional variant (or at least want very much for it to be true…); and how much the acquisitions community is structured to support the fantasy rather than the realities. Because after all, it is easy to have advertisements for the large, flashy and photogenic platforms plastered all over the Metro, but it is extremely difficult to market abstract concepts in which a few inches of circuit board and a few lines of code are the real engines of capabilities.

Lawfare and readiness

Via In From the Cold and Eagle Speak, we find two fascinating examples of the use of legal and political means to systematically degrade US military training and readiness through limiting exercises and other pre-operational activities.

The profit motive, both political and financial, is examined in depth in both cases by our esteemed (virtual) colleagues.

These are the tactical innovations that will be exploited in coming 5GW, whether a puppeteer emerges to orchestrate them, or even if only a part of the parasitic marketplace that is developing around the blunting of US influence.

Of puppeteers and 5GW

At Dreaming 5GW, Purpleslog has an interesting and evocative little post regarding the manipulation of 4th generation (and earlier) tactics by smaller groups of 5th generation warfare (5GW) actors. tdaxp has further comment.

We are intrigued by the idea, not least of all due to the applicability of the theory to certain types of proxy support problems. But we are also strongly reminded of the similarities between this theory and the Militant Shangri-La futures scenario developed during the original Proteus study. As their first paper summarizes:

"Militant Shangri-la is a frightening world of unexpected events and difficult-to-trace villains. The world in general, and the U.S. in particular, has continued into a third decade of a prosperous, information-driven economy. But the world is also continuing along the road to Complexity, with new structures of influence on the globe-some which hardly could have been imagined in the 1990s. The Newtonian diplomatic and military calculus of the past 400 years since nation states arose closing the Middle Ages seems to be giving way in turn to another New Age. In particular, the global man-in-the-street has endured a past century of 200 million deaths in war, dizzying and difficult technological change, and is listening sympathetically to the very Earth groan under the burden of pollution and extinction."
Familiar enough, but the key feature of the scenario lay in the deliberate construction of an “Alliance” in opposition to the United States. The composition of the Alliance was far less relevance than its connectivity, and the lack of apparent orchestration in those linkages that yet still allowed for synchronized events and strategic action. In this, we see the seeds of 5GW theory.

"But things are never what they seem in a complex world. Political, military, and economic actions yield unpredictable reactions in dimensions of policy - as the West was to learn in the decade from 2010-2020 when the Alliance was teaching it new tricks. For the Alliance operated both legitimately as a block of aligned nation-states and illegitimately as criminal cartels, and the twain often met. What was good for business was good.
"For the first time since the rise of the British Empire, the Alliance had created a genuinely effective Grand Strategy. It would keep the world on the edge of chaos; simply that and no more. And from that chaos-it would profit, never letting the Americans and their allies settle the world down into a single "balance of power." It was enough to make Henry Kissinger roll over in his grave. More, the Alliance saw with clarity what the West's bureaucratic governments refused to see: there were now no longer "spheres of influence" so familiar to Whitehall and Foggy Bottom. Now, the means for multiple planes of influence - new instruments of power, involving global media, new weapons, and profitable criminal enterprises had arisen. The Alliance was in space, on the seas, in the media and working into the hearts and minds of the world to kill the idea of personal liberty. With religion, nationalism, ethnicism, media, philosophy, art, music, the Alliance was harnessing the New Age yearning of the common man for its own use. One for all-and all for the Alliance. To the dismay of the West, many a man was ready to be domesticated."
It is a compelling scenario that has stayed with us for years – not for the direct prescriptive applicability as an actual future, but rather as a lens by which new events and indicators can be viewed. (This was, and remains, the core purpose of the Proteus Insights.)

If ever a 5GW puppeteer were to develop in actuality, we suspect the effects would look very much like what was gamed through MSL, as would the responses (and lack thereof) of the major Western powers. Of course, in scenario-building – as in most futurism - it is common to see exaggeration for effect to get certain points across. An MSL style 5GW puppeteer need not be a world-spanning conglomerate of all forms evil – rather, one could small groups, alternatively competing and cooperating, across a range of tactical and operational effects. In this, we see also parallels to John Robb’s Global Guerrilla theory outlining the concept of the “bazaar of violence”, but taken into the full range of 5GW through the inclusion of other actors and other means apart from direct conflict engagements.

Perhaps what interests us most in this discussion is the sense that it is more a matter of sideways applications (of the future that is already here, but not evenly distributed) than forecasting. In this, we not only quote William Gibson, but also take to heart his recent comment that “Glancing sideways is becoming more generally recognized as about the best way of doing what we used to call futurism.”

War in the Parallel World

When is a war a war? When has a war gone “mainstream”, coming out of the shadows of deniable engagements and hidden casualties? What does sustained information warfare truly look like – not in the sterile academic settings of the university lecture, or the exercise conference table – but in the real world of humans and their systems?

If there was ever an answer to the question of threshold, it appears the ongoing cyber conflict involving Russia and Estonia has crossed it. See now Instapundit and Belmont Club, based on the Washington Post.

We have commented on this new conflict before, but a European state on state crisis in the 21st century is more than worth a second glance - if indeed it is truly state on state, for which we have not yet seen definitive attribution.

Wretchard in particular applies an apt name: the Wizard War. This captures, in succinct form, the alienation the typical man on the street might feel in the event of such a war. To be sure, Everyman knows all about the interwebs, and the tubes, and the magic motion picture music box thing that exists to feed their iPods and cameraphones. But the technical understanding of higher level cyber environment dependencies exists at about the same level of comforting abstraction (the legions of Slashdot and the rest of the technical blogsphere aside.) So when more than one banks computers go down, and the panic begins to set in, Everyman will be facing a shattering of illusions for which he is mentally unprepared. The loss of confidence will have a far greater effect than any mere temporary disruption, however mass.

It is in the layers of these abstractions that 5th generation warfare (5GW) lurks and hides. Trying to unpack the complexity of the issues involved in facing a concerted series of attacks against what is our collective hallucination of cyberspace (in Gibson’s terms) begins to take on the character of a Jesuit debating society. We have taken part in our share of these debates throughout our careers, and have yet to find an acceptable set of answers to any of them – but regrettably, keep running into ever more numerous sets of lawyers that all claim they do, even though none of them agree with each other, as the years go by.

In the original Wizard War of World War II (so named by Churchill), these debates were equally as divorced from the prosaic realities of the day. However, it was the boffins of Bletchley Park, and the luminaries of the MI establishment such as R.V. Jones that set the stage for decisive victory – subtly in the European theatre and more brilliantly in the Pacific, illuminated by the impossible brightness of Paul Tibbett’s mission.

But then it was the heyday of the state military-industrial intelligence complexes. It was the time of control, and of massive resources spent towards national ends in a unity of purpose and a shroud of absolute secrecy. That it brought about victory is the lesson of history. But the question before us now stands: can victory be accomplished without reverting to those kinds of organizational and political structures? For today’s environment is far removed from sixty years ago, and some genies can never be put back in their bottles.

There is a good reason that the threshold of cyber war has not yet been fully crossed by state actors (as opposed to their non-state counterparts, whose effects to date have been more akin to terrorism, crime, and disorder than anything approximating a war). Once the triggers have been pulled, there are certain losses which have major systemic effects which ripple beyond borders and far outside of military or even strategic national target sets.

We continue to watch with interest.

Contrasting official lightness with private gravity

We are continually fascinated by the manner in which the private sector so far exceeds government capabilities in understanding the Parallel World. While it is one thing to know that the rapid development of IT and related innovations has been driven by the private sector for at least a generation, it is another thing entirely to realize what that means for organizations still struggling to come to terms with the implications of even the most basic of developments (such as email or even lightweight web publishing.)

To be sure, there are highly technical and very savvy individuals scattered throughout the intelligence community, dedicated to the study and analysis of such issues. But this is increasingly one area in which the open source realm may be dramatically outstripping what occurs in the vault.

By way of example, we reference recent coverage of the ongoing cyber conflict between Russia and Estonia. Again, we make no assertions regarding the incidents, their attribution, or implications beyond what others have already stated in public sources (whether accurately or not, time will tell.) But we are very interested in the increasing levels of technical sophistication and interest being applied to the analysis of current network disruption events.

While Global Guerrillas has a theory type think piece (worth examining in the overall context of John Robb’s contribution to the body of emerging 5GW theory), various Internet security shops are increasingly publishing open versions of analysis at a more technical, and tactical level. As an example of the latter we reference Arbor Network’s corporate blog posts on the subject.

We have seen enough of the failing cyber security report cards, and the constant shuffle of senior executives through the relevant government posts, to venture that the sort of quality of thought behind the focused attention paid to this incident (and others like it) would be simply alien to many otherwise nominally assigned to the responsibility of covering these key accounts. (For more background on the ongoing trials and tribulations of the federal cyber security sector, we can recommend no better and more consistent commentator than can be found at Haft of the Spear.)

Of all the areas in which public/private partnerships for enhanced analysis and intelligence production could be of value, we can see few potential accounts more clearly in need of such unique contributions. It does not take a major Beltway contractor, nor any sort of specialized access program, to accomplish significant aggregation, interpretation, and insight into these sorts of problems – and policymakers are likely to be better served by a more broadly based attempt to integrate more substantive experts into the community’s coverage of these accounts.

To be sure, this will require a culture shift, and a serious re-think of structures and processes by which intelligence is created in support of decision-maker needs to understand this new realm. But it is indeed something entirely new in form, shape, and outcomes. It simply makes no sense to continue to try to force fit industrial age organizations and Taylor inspired processes into a future where they have no place.

The unbearable lightness of the bench

We do not normally comment on active cases or current intelligence matters, but this news item from the United Kingdom simply beggars belief. Apparently, the judge which is responsible for perhaps the most significant trial testing the civilized world’s response to the proliferation of terrorism support activities in the Parallel World is completely unfamiliar with even the most basic features of the environment.

We find it amazing that in this day an age, a system can be so flawed as to assign the responsibility of objective and balanced discernment to an individual who lacks even a layman’s understanding of the substance of the issues at hand.

This however underscores even more clearly the abject failure of the legal approach in counter-terrorism operations. In the Long War, the network is just another element of the battlespace, and it is futile to attempt to use structures designed centuries ago to obtain victory in this new age. Moving forward, deeper into the 21st century evolution of 4th and 5th generation warfare, it will no longer be merely futile but, like this incident illustrates, entirely absurd.

The judge is a national embarrassment for a key US ally. Regrettably, it is equally likely had such a case been brought on this side of the pond that a similar clueless individual would have been the one to hear arguments.

Our enemies have no doubt taken note. It is precisely this sort of event which provokes "lawfare" and other 5GW attempts to use our most revered Western institutions against us.

h/t Slashdot, LGF

The illusion of negative proof in incomplete operational demonstrations

We have in the past cited John Robb’s earlier works with interest, as it was clear he was attempting to piece together an understanding of the complex dynamics within modern sub-state and non-state networks involved in many of the key conflict areas around the globe. For these contributions to the literature we are indebted to him, even as we may productively argue with specific points.

We have been less enamored of his recent writings, however, but have been willing to leave the task of debating “multi” generation warfare (4GW, 5GW, et al) to those among the many excellent writers specializing in such military theory - who also not coincidentally offer a better turn of phrase on matters which we consider to very nearly border on combat theology, but for whose efforts we remain grateful.

However, Robb’s recent writings on “negative proof” to evaluate the effectiveness of current surge counterinsurgency operations in Baghdad demand a response. The logical fallacy of seeking to establish indicators for the operational and even strategic picture from single tactical incidents is bad enough. Although we believe in the strategic corporal, and have seen repeatedly the effects of major “turning point” incidents in Iraq (such as the bombing of the Askariya Mosque in Samarra), we have also seen far too many events designated by the pundits as the karmic keystone of the entire conflict – and just as quickly forgotten.

We are particularly concerned by Robb’s selection of recent events which form the basis of his “proof”. The enemy gets a vote in operations, and the success or failure of an effort is not judged on the actions the OPFOR takes in casting that vote, but rather are weighed in the net assessment of both sides’ effects. The strategic estimate is not merely a first draft of history, but the Choosing specific symbolic incidents such as the April 2007 complex attack on the Iraqi Parliament, or random protests (many of which consist of paid agitators), as meeting some threshold defined as “significant enough”, is deeply problematic. This is the essence of satisficing, and carries with it both the weight of cognitive bias, and also in no small measure elements of an analyst perhaps over-attached to his personal theory – with attending loss of objectivity.

The enemy understands well the non-kinetic effects of specific tactical actions, and chooses to utilize those that have information operations aspects without regard to the longer term efficacy of the options. One has but to witness the emergence of the red-on-red incidents between AQI and Sunni insurgents in Al Anbar to identify strong evidence of a mixed scorecard in the longer term assessment from what were seen as early “significant” events, such as the temporary seizing of built up areas.

Analysts should always be mindful of the necessity to rely upon rigorous analytic tradecraft, and in particular robust counter-deception practices, in order to prevent their work from being tainted by adversary IO themes – particularly when those themes are pursued through a pattern of kinetic operations rather than mere rhetoric.

The success or failure of current strategies has yet to be weighed. Perhaps the effects will be better measured in another Friedman unit… but it is more likely that the political debate will have moved the goalposts for the assessment by that point in time, and the then current discussion will be dominated instead by another transient issue that fails to reflect the grand strategic picture.

Closely related to this discussion is the troubling lack of awareness of enemy IO and political warfare operations and tactics, and the effects of these behaviors on analysis. These issues are not limited to any one pundit or thinker, but rather broadly impact many of those otherwise bright minds attempting to tackle difficult problems.

Fortunately, the academy has responded with at least one individual’s effort to remedy this otherwise widespread ignorance. Dr. Michael Waller has authored an excellent overview, building upon his earlier work countering Soviet and insurgent aktivny mera operations in previous conflicts. We are fortunate to count the gentleman among our influences, and highly recommend his instruction at the Institute of World Politics.