JOURNAL: On Superempowerment and 5th Generation Warfare

The question: How does the concept of individual superempowerment apply to warfare?

Bill Lind (the "father of 4GW"), in a recent article, defines a superempowered individual as a lone gunman. He cites recent examples of this:

Between February 8 and February 14, four American schools suffered attacks by lone gunmen. The most recent, at Northern Illinois University on February 14, saw five killed (plus the gunman) and 16 wounded. Similar attacks have occurred elsewhere, including shopping malls.

He follows this definition with critique of the argument that superempowered individuals may form the basis of a fifth generation of warfare. His main line of attack? That these individuals in comparison to the guerrilla/terrorist groups we see globally:

• share a similar motivational source (isolation, alienation and the decline of the state)
• offer no qualitative improvement in warfare (the lone gunman only operates on a smaller scale)
• technology is merely a facilitator of alienation/isolation.

In short, Bill decries the use of superempowerment (mainly from me, and recently Hammes), or any similar attempt, as a means to define a fifth generation of warfare. 'It's just too early to call,' he claims. I don't disagree that it may be too early, however I do disagree strongly with Bill's definition of a superempowered individual.

Superempowerment is a much richer and more complex phenomenon than a mere reduction in scale (down to a single attacker). Instead, superempowerment describes the process by which individuals and small groups are using;

• rapidly improving tools (the doubling rate of Moore's law applied to technologies accessible to the average individual),
• connectivity to a global community and its resources (how to use those tools from MIT courseware to Jihadi "how to" sites),
• and newly accessible forms of economic activity that transcend state control,

to radically improve their productivity in warfare. This is definitely a qualitative change in the conduct of warfare, although it is still early. It will become transformational as the technologies of self-replication begin to reach their full potential.

NOTE: Read self-replication as the ability to "manufacture" millions/billions of daemons/bots/virii/bacteria with increasingly complex behavior at nearly zero cost (take a look at Storm). These "manufactured armies" will become exceedingly dangerous as superempowered designers begin to introduce processor/software combos into their creations that exceed equivalent levels of biological intelligence we see in the natural environment (insects, small mammals, etc.).

Comments

[mittelwerk]

isn't "superempowerment" better conceived as a political designation, with the potential for war intensity?

also, surprised you haven't connected this topic to the wikileaks phenomenon (currently enjoying a much-needed recognition boost due to the idiocy of a federal judge). no classical liberal could possibly have imagined a better tool for rupturing oligarchies. it's essentially an open-source superego -- a tribunal for superempowered morality. on a wide-enough scale, one could envision such a tool changing not only the behavior or the size of corporate and governmental entities -- but their essential character, their reason for being.

[Gunnar Peterson]

Agree, it is technological advancements that creates superempowerment. How is this example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jérôme_Kerviel

"His employers say they uncovered unauthorized trading traced to Kerviel on January 19, 2008. The bank then closed out these positions over three days of trading beginning January 21, 2008, a period in which the market was experiencing a large drop in equity indices, and losses attributed are estimated at €4.9 billion."

[Duncan Kinder]

As I noted in direct response to Lind, the traditional Chinese novel, _Monkey_ or _Journey to the West_, which describes the exploits of the magically empowered Stone Monkey King, serves as a model for 5th generation warfare.

http://www.amazon.com/Monkey-Novel-China-Wu-Cheng-en/dp/0802130860/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203519439&sr=8-1

_Monkey_ is a Buddhist folktale. For all of its pacifist reputation, Buddhism has been associated with many martial arts. For example, in China, the Shaolin Monastery was a center of Kung Fu while in Japan, Zen was the Samurai ideology.

Perhaps, in response to the Buddhist economics of E. F. Schumacher's _Small is Beautiful_, we also should note that, perhaps, small can also pack a punch. If so, it would be contrary to the consistent trend toward centralization which has been the hallmark of Western society since the Industrial Revolution.

[John Robb]

mittelwork, it's generic. Applies to economics, politics, as well as warfare.

Gunnar. Right on! I use Jerome as an example too.

Duncan, thanks. Which of the MK's exploits apply?

[mittelwerk]

technology definitely defines it down, but superempowerment is an old notion -- the individual who is able to universalize his will through objectification. alexander the great is perhaps the first in the modern world, maybe napoleon was the last ...

[Duncan Kinder]

"Duncan, thanks. Which of the MK's exploits apply?"

After acquiring his magical powers, Monkey goes to heaven and raises a rukus.

Beyond that, in the first part of the novel, he is sort of a guerrilla ( gorilla? ) threat to the cosmic order.

Later on, in the bulk of the novel, after he has been subdued and punished, he and some other magical creatures become guardians to a Buddhist monk on a pilgrimage to obtain sacred scriptures. At that time, he often battles other magical creatures who are as he once was.

[gmoke]

Superempowerment may simply consist in picking the most crucial targets. Amory Lovins and others have pointed out that one person with a rifle might take out the Alaska oil pipeline. See _Brittle Power_ circa 1980 which pointed out energy choke points that have yet to be fixed.

Superempowerment can also consist in the reaction of society to attack. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo with their sniping terrorized a multi-state area for weeks using a rifle or two and a Chevy Caprice. Our own fear and terror can magnify human monsters into towering figures.

The Monkey King had a magic cudgel that he kept behind his ear and would expand into a fearsome staff when he wished. In this networked world, superempowerment may be woven into our social fabric for a "smart" global guerrilla. We can all get our hands on a magic cudgel if we wish. [Climbing the Small Goose Pagoda in Xian, the place to which Xuánzàng delivered the Buddhist sutras, I can assure the energy of Monkey is definitely still around.]

To paraphrase the poet Lew Welch, we live lives that the richest sultan in the Arabian Nights couldn't even dream of. Welch wrote that sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Imagine what he might think of our 21st century world today.

[Azr@el]

Again this shoots to the heart of the concept of "generations" of warfare. I believe it was Lind who originally framed them as being defined the first three generations as being massed manpower, massed firepower and then maneuver. And i've never been comfortable with this scheme of classification since then. It seems dislocated from reality, surely these are all tactical aspects of warfare and fail as being the be all and end all of war.

If there are "generations" of war then following clausvitts, we must assume they are expressions of politics by other means. And since political systems are defined by their socio-technological environment then should we not assume that these "generations" are also outgrowths of their socio-technological environments.

Then shouldn't the first generation of warfare belong to part time warriors of the tribal hunter gatherers? And therefore the second generation of warfare be assigned to the agrarian age seasonal fudeal musterings, city militas and religious armies? Thus bequeathing the third generation of warfare to the industrial age soldiers, commissars and bureaucrats. That leaves us in the fourth "generation of warfare, the age of post-industrial virtual armies.

This age of war belongs to the savvy PR fellows, the scientist and engineers, and the idea guys. This is a generation of war run by super empowered entrepreneurs, funded by venture capitalist, using a combination of cheap labour and top notch professionals brought together by a networked globalized job market of violence. The entry barrier to violence has never been lower, the weakness of the nation state system and pax americana has never been greater in our life times.

This seems fascinating enough without recourse to jumping ahead to the next generation of warfare, which after all won't come along until the next major revolution in economics, politics and society. Does anyone see anything on the level of change wrought by the agrarian, industrial or post-industrial eras on the horizon? I didn't think so. Let the fourth "generation" continue.

[Jason Matheny]

John, great post. I think you’re right that self-replication is key: it allows very low marginal costs per weapon, significantly expanding the production (destruction) frontier of groups and individuals. We’ve had self-replicating threats since prehistory: warriors self-replicate and fecundity was an important strategic asset. But with a doubling time of a dozen or more years, replicating warriors is less efficient than replicating anthrax, with a doubling time of 30 minutes. Aggressive memes have short doubling times and continue to be destructive. But now we also have computer viruses and biological weapons; soon, efficient self-replicating fab labs for rapid (macro) weapons production; and perhaps in the next few decades, self-replicating (non-bio) nano and recursively self-improving cognition, enabling faster innovation in weapon design. Genetic algorithms already outperform human engineers across some design domains. How long before physics and biology simulations are accurate enough to allow reliable weapon design-test-redesign in silico?

[Duncan Kinder]

Note the following LA Times article, to the effect that microloans are becoming an effective development tool in Iraq:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fi-loans22feb22,1,3266777.story

Despite superficial differences, microloans and 5th Generation Warfare are consistent, since both allow smaller scale inputs to generate effective outputs.

Crudely, regarding Iraqi development we might want to assert: Microloans , good ; Haliburton, bad.

Of course, this idea is indeed crude. Doutbtlessly a more refined approach would reveal instances in which Haliburton nevertheless prevails or in which 5th Generation warfare is inconsistent with it.

We should note that this concept also risks being co-opted by political correctness and degenerating into "The People, United, Can Never Be Defeated" - type twaddle.