I am enjoying and learning from your posts about political warfare, a topic that concerns me greatly. As you know, I am also concerned about “netwar” as a spreading reality. John Arquilla and I have tried to call attention to it for years. Just to clarify: Netwar is not so much an alternative to or variant on political warfare, as an updated type of it attuned to the information age.
Plenty of examples exist, and many criss-cross all sorts of domestic, transnational, and foreign boundaries, complicating if not defying efforts to assign a lead agency. I tend to agree that State seems a good option. But if a key concern is the political warfare or netwar currently being waged by militant far-right actors organized into a mesh of domestic, transnational, and foreign networks, I doubt DOS would be (much less want to be) where a lead agency is located.
FWIW, I asked ChatGPT’s Open AI, “What are the differences between "political warfare" and "netwar”?”
It answered okay, but not entirely accurately. It noticed correctly that political warfare tends to be more state-centric and centralized than netwar. But OpenAI over-defined netwar with “the use of networked communications and information technologies …”
As I noted at your prior post, Arquilla’s and my definition defines netwar as an emerging mode of conflict at societal levels involving measures short of traditional war, in which protagonists use network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies attuned to the information age.
As I see matters, classic political warfare is mainly about fights between hierarchical institutions (states, governments, as in Kennan’s time). Netwar is about fights where “Hierarchies have a difficult time fighting networks” and “It takes networks to fight networks.” So far, there’s no USG office or agency for that, though I wish there were (and efforts to combat terrorism and crime have moved in that direction.
Since the related concept “cognitive warfare” has been around for a while, and since I’d wish to advance “noopolitical warfare” as a new concept derived from the ongoing emergence of our world’s long-forecast noosphere (globe-circling “realm of the mind”) atop its geosphere and biosphere, I also asked OpenAI, “What are the differences between "cognitive warfare" and "noopolitical warfare"?
Though I cannot find anyone else using the term “noopolitical warfare” yet, OpenAI didn’t blink, and answered correctly that the terms are almost interchangeable, then added: “In summary, while both cognitive warfare and noopolitical warfare involve the use of information and psychological tactics, cognitive warfare tends to focus more broadly on influencing behavior and perceptions, while noopolitical warfare specifically emphasizes the strategic competition over ideas and knowledge.” Pretty good, esp. the “strategic” aspect, and I’m relieved it did not question the latter concept.
The key concern about political warfare – or netwar, or psychological warfare, or "political communication" to use a term without "war/warfare" proposed by one insider in 1959 – is, for the purpose of my focus, its relationship to our foreign policy interests and objectives. A domestic angle could be beyond the expertise or capacity (versus capability) of the foreign ministry, but not guaranteed to be beyond the capacity or capability of State. (State has and does engage and affect change within the US, though often this is unknown, ignored, or marginal, and certainly not raised by State, for many decades. Here I'm thinking of the domestic intelligence operations in the 1910s run or fed into State as well as State's work to convince various establishments around DC to not discriminate against Black people, or at least not against Black African diplomats in the 1960s.) Domestic actors can have relations with foreign actors or cause effects in foreign affairs, which then brings in the foreign ministry (State) in a role that is more than merely being kept in the loop. My point being that there is a lead for foreign affairs (State) which may also result in a domestic role (which could be merely to observe), none of which prevents a different specialized agency from having a more significant role, like the FBI for domestic anti-/counter- political warfare, terrorism (which is an act of influence, a PSYOP), etc.
Regarding ChatGPT and the others, I found the capabilities there for informed review or feedback to be wanting, at best. Perhaps it's garbage in / garbage out, but it's also probably a lack of data and argument regarding political warfare. In my research, the best sources of deeply informed and relevant discussion are from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. What authors write reflect their era, of course, and it's a separate and longer discussion to review how the late 1960s onward, with detente and the marginalization of PW to the literal periphery and "proxy" fights, distorted the discussion and writings for decades to come. There's a similar defectiveness in a lot Post-9/11 analysis that is framed by an ossified view of international affairs, terrorism, and projection. It was hard for noopolitik / netwar etc to break through this as uniforms in DC were given the reigns and then complained about asymmetry, as if our whole military strategy from every angle wasn't based on asymmetry. (That complaining remains stunning to me.)
OpenAI, broadly speaking, isn't helpful for this discussion. I recently asked it for some information, hoping it would surface a forgotten discussion that might be helpful to me. The answer it provided was apparently made up, or, more precisely, assembled from bits. The title of the work was real, the author was completely wrong, the medium was also wrong. The real thing was a journal article by a different person rather than a book. (FWIW, I haven't been able to find a relevant book or journal article written by the author ChatGPT gave in the example above, and I just tried finding something again.)
Sir, I’ve read with much interest your articles and shared them with colleagues. I keep coming back to the same conclusion about political warfare and what agency should be responsible for U.S. efforts, namely the State Department. When the OSS was disbanded, the subsequent missions were farmed out to the CIA, State and military. INR at State, in my opinion should be the lead of our intelligence understanding of political warfare and the conduit to decision makers. This would of course require a massive investment at State and a mission update, which I’m sure will not be easy to do. Curious to your thoughts on what agency should lead our efforts.
Thank you for your continuous efforts to bring this to the forefront of national conversation.
Thank you for the comment. On the intelligence role, State had been the central intelligence agency for decades. In fact, it was functionally both a domestic and foreign intelligence agency in the early part of the prior century. State's intelligence bureau was fed information from police agencies of major cities while State's foreign posts functioned as intelligence gathering operations. Just before WWI, the Secretary of State sought President Wilson's approval for a greatly expanded and formal role as the nation's chief domestic intelligence agency. Wilson wasn't enthusiastic about the idea. (I wouldn't describe the President's resistance as some kind of moral objection as Wilson held the Secretary in low regard.)
In the almost- and then post-war politics, State, as Dean Acheson wrote in his autobiography, "muffed its intelligence role." That's not to say the CIA shouldn't exist, but as you infere, there is much State abrogated that leaves the modern INR and the department's overall capabilities wanting.
State should be the lead for political warfare, though that doesn't necessarily mean it owns the capabilities. Political warfare is an extension of international politics, just as war is. However, if we pull back a bit and consider the less controversial world of what is often called "public diplomacy," that is, engagement of foreign audiences through information (which includes culture... which is an informational medium... and education... which is an informational medium) is a role State has been asked to take on, by my count, five times in the past 107 years, and only once did State accept the role, but it soon rejected it. The first time led to the creation of the Committee for Public Information. State believed all public information, whether to Congress or to audiences at home or abroad was a risk and placed the function, accordingly, under the department's chief of counterintelligence. The second time was in the late 1930s through early 1941 and led to the creation of the eventually named Office of Inter-American Affairs. State also dragged its feet on engagement in Latin America to address the increasing success, and perceived success, of Nazi Germany (and allegedly also of Imperial Japan) trying to foster greater relations with the Reich and degraded relations with the US. The third, and only success, was State's push for and support for the vast information, educational, cultural, and technical programs that were authorized by what we call the Smith-Mundt Act to counter disinformation, misinformation, and the absence of information abroad (that the legislation is perceived today as an anti-domestic propaganda law is a fantastic irony, but thank Sen Fulbright for that). However, State as a bureaucracy began fighting that role. Then a new Secretary of State came in (Dulles, under Ike) and the department eagerly ejected the main role into the much smaller and less integrated USIA, which I could as a fourth "opportunity" to take on the role. The fifth was in 1999 when USIA was abolished and much of its operations were re-absorbed into State into an office with vastly less authorities by every conceivable measure than the USIA Director (who, incidentally, had vastly fewer authorities by every conceivable measure than that its predecessor organization/position). So while I have and continue to argue State is the right place, I readily admit that trajectory of history is not on the side of my argument. There used to be calls for a "Goldwater-Nichols" for State, but there is **not a single Member of Congress** let alone the Congress itself, willing or capable of pushing the necessary changes, and the Secretaries of State of the past two decades have similarly shown zero willingness for change. (Look at the short-lived and functionally vacuous, at least as it relates to this topic, Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, State's mimic of the Defense Department's QDR. There were two QDDR's 2010 and... 2015... so much for quad.)
I am enjoying and learning from your posts about political warfare, a topic that concerns me greatly. As you know, I am also concerned about “netwar” as a spreading reality. John Arquilla and I have tried to call attention to it for years. Just to clarify: Netwar is not so much an alternative to or variant on political warfare, as an updated type of it attuned to the information age.
Plenty of examples exist, and many criss-cross all sorts of domestic, transnational, and foreign boundaries, complicating if not defying efforts to assign a lead agency. I tend to agree that State seems a good option. But if a key concern is the political warfare or netwar currently being waged by militant far-right actors organized into a mesh of domestic, transnational, and foreign networks, I doubt DOS would be (much less want to be) where a lead agency is located.
FWIW, I asked ChatGPT’s Open AI, “What are the differences between "political warfare" and "netwar”?”
It answered okay, but not entirely accurately. It noticed correctly that political warfare tends to be more state-centric and centralized than netwar. But OpenAI over-defined netwar with “the use of networked communications and information technologies …”
As I noted at your prior post, Arquilla’s and my definition defines netwar as an emerging mode of conflict at societal levels involving measures short of traditional war, in which protagonists use network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies attuned to the information age.
As I see matters, classic political warfare is mainly about fights between hierarchical institutions (states, governments, as in Kennan’s time). Netwar is about fights where “Hierarchies have a difficult time fighting networks” and “It takes networks to fight networks.” So far, there’s no USG office or agency for that, though I wish there were (and efforts to combat terrorism and crime have moved in that direction.
Since the related concept “cognitive warfare” has been around for a while, and since I’d wish to advance “noopolitical warfare” as a new concept derived from the ongoing emergence of our world’s long-forecast noosphere (globe-circling “realm of the mind”) atop its geosphere and biosphere, I also asked OpenAI, “What are the differences between "cognitive warfare" and "noopolitical warfare"?
Though I cannot find anyone else using the term “noopolitical warfare” yet, OpenAI didn’t blink, and answered correctly that the terms are almost interchangeable, then added: “In summary, while both cognitive warfare and noopolitical warfare involve the use of information and psychological tactics, cognitive warfare tends to focus more broadly on influencing behavior and perceptions, while noopolitical warfare specifically emphasizes the strategic competition over ideas and knowledge.” Pretty good, esp. the “strategic” aspect, and I’m relieved it did not question the latter concept.
The key concern about political warfare – or netwar, or psychological warfare, or "political communication" to use a term without "war/warfare" proposed by one insider in 1959 – is, for the purpose of my focus, its relationship to our foreign policy interests and objectives. A domestic angle could be beyond the expertise or capacity (versus capability) of the foreign ministry, but not guaranteed to be beyond the capacity or capability of State. (State has and does engage and affect change within the US, though often this is unknown, ignored, or marginal, and certainly not raised by State, for many decades. Here I'm thinking of the domestic intelligence operations in the 1910s run or fed into State as well as State's work to convince various establishments around DC to not discriminate against Black people, or at least not against Black African diplomats in the 1960s.) Domestic actors can have relations with foreign actors or cause effects in foreign affairs, which then brings in the foreign ministry (State) in a role that is more than merely being kept in the loop. My point being that there is a lead for foreign affairs (State) which may also result in a domestic role (which could be merely to observe), none of which prevents a different specialized agency from having a more significant role, like the FBI for domestic anti-/counter- political warfare, terrorism (which is an act of influence, a PSYOP), etc.
Regarding ChatGPT and the others, I found the capabilities there for informed review or feedback to be wanting, at best. Perhaps it's garbage in / garbage out, but it's also probably a lack of data and argument regarding political warfare. In my research, the best sources of deeply informed and relevant discussion are from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. What authors write reflect their era, of course, and it's a separate and longer discussion to review how the late 1960s onward, with detente and the marginalization of PW to the literal periphery and "proxy" fights, distorted the discussion and writings for decades to come. There's a similar defectiveness in a lot Post-9/11 analysis that is framed by an ossified view of international affairs, terrorism, and projection. It was hard for noopolitik / netwar etc to break through this as uniforms in DC were given the reigns and then complained about asymmetry, as if our whole military strategy from every angle wasn't based on asymmetry. (That complaining remains stunning to me.)
OpenAI, broadly speaking, isn't helpful for this discussion. I recently asked it for some information, hoping it would surface a forgotten discussion that might be helpful to me. The answer it provided was apparently made up, or, more precisely, assembled from bits. The title of the work was real, the author was completely wrong, the medium was also wrong. The real thing was a journal article by a different person rather than a book. (FWIW, I haven't been able to find a relevant book or journal article written by the author ChatGPT gave in the example above, and I just tried finding something again.)
Sir, I’ve read with much interest your articles and shared them with colleagues. I keep coming back to the same conclusion about political warfare and what agency should be responsible for U.S. efforts, namely the State Department. When the OSS was disbanded, the subsequent missions were farmed out to the CIA, State and military. INR at State, in my opinion should be the lead of our intelligence understanding of political warfare and the conduit to decision makers. This would of course require a massive investment at State and a mission update, which I’m sure will not be easy to do. Curious to your thoughts on what agency should lead our efforts.
Thank you for your continuous efforts to bring this to the forefront of national conversation.
Thank you for the comment. On the intelligence role, State had been the central intelligence agency for decades. In fact, it was functionally both a domestic and foreign intelligence agency in the early part of the prior century. State's intelligence bureau was fed information from police agencies of major cities while State's foreign posts functioned as intelligence gathering operations. Just before WWI, the Secretary of State sought President Wilson's approval for a greatly expanded and formal role as the nation's chief domestic intelligence agency. Wilson wasn't enthusiastic about the idea. (I wouldn't describe the President's resistance as some kind of moral objection as Wilson held the Secretary in low regard.)
In the almost- and then post-war politics, State, as Dean Acheson wrote in his autobiography, "muffed its intelligence role." That's not to say the CIA shouldn't exist, but as you infere, there is much State abrogated that leaves the modern INR and the department's overall capabilities wanting.
State should be the lead for political warfare, though that doesn't necessarily mean it owns the capabilities. Political warfare is an extension of international politics, just as war is. However, if we pull back a bit and consider the less controversial world of what is often called "public diplomacy," that is, engagement of foreign audiences through information (which includes culture... which is an informational medium... and education... which is an informational medium) is a role State has been asked to take on, by my count, five times in the past 107 years, and only once did State accept the role, but it soon rejected it. The first time led to the creation of the Committee for Public Information. State believed all public information, whether to Congress or to audiences at home or abroad was a risk and placed the function, accordingly, under the department's chief of counterintelligence. The second time was in the late 1930s through early 1941 and led to the creation of the eventually named Office of Inter-American Affairs. State also dragged its feet on engagement in Latin America to address the increasing success, and perceived success, of Nazi Germany (and allegedly also of Imperial Japan) trying to foster greater relations with the Reich and degraded relations with the US. The third, and only success, was State's push for and support for the vast information, educational, cultural, and technical programs that were authorized by what we call the Smith-Mundt Act to counter disinformation, misinformation, and the absence of information abroad (that the legislation is perceived today as an anti-domestic propaganda law is a fantastic irony, but thank Sen Fulbright for that). However, State as a bureaucracy began fighting that role. Then a new Secretary of State came in (Dulles, under Ike) and the department eagerly ejected the main role into the much smaller and less integrated USIA, which I could as a fourth "opportunity" to take on the role. The fifth was in 1999 when USIA was abolished and much of its operations were re-absorbed into State into an office with vastly less authorities by every conceivable measure than the USIA Director (who, incidentally, had vastly fewer authorities by every conceivable measure than that its predecessor organization/position). So while I have and continue to argue State is the right place, I readily admit that trajectory of history is not on the side of my argument. There used to be calls for a "Goldwater-Nichols" for State, but there is **not a single Member of Congress** let alone the Congress itself, willing or capable of pushing the necessary changes, and the Secretaries of State of the past two decades have similarly shown zero willingness for change. (Look at the short-lived and functionally vacuous, at least as it relates to this topic, Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, State's mimic of the Defense Department's QDR. There were two QDDR's 2010 and... 2015... so much for quad.)
Yeah. Wow. Maybe we need a Billy Mitchell for State (I’m retired out of the Air Force)