Bob Jones was a guest on ep 56 of the Cognitive Crucible. From the podcast description:
“During this thought provoking episode, Mr. Bob Jones asserts that governance is a critical and often overlooked source of destabilizing tensions within societies. Simultaneously, governance is the solution for managing irregular warfare.”
In the podcast, Jones explains: If a population doesn’t perceive itself to be well served and if there is distrust, there’s an exploitable energy for conflict. And there are internal groups that exploit that energy for purpose as well as external state actors. And he argues that when there are illegal political action groups conducting networked approaches to unconventional warfare, the strategic approach is:
“We need to challenge their strategies and disrupt their alliances – outcompete them for influence with these disenfranchised populations – as opposed to bundling disenfranchised populations with them and labeling them all as terrorists and trying to defeat them. It’s completely counterproductive to our end game.”
Jones says,
“Don’t blame the insurgent for exploiting the exploitable energy you put into a disenfranchised population.”
Check out my article on Moral Conflict in America for more on the exploitation of this energy.
