Patterns of Conflict: New Conception
There have been times I felt as though I was observing John Boyd’s Maneuver Conflict used against our society. Take a look at these slides from his Patterns of Conflict presentation.
Essence of Maneuver Conflict
The times these effects have been observable, I can’t know if they were wittingly generated. But I think I’ve taken away a lesson. When a society faces a novel threat, there’s an opportunity for bad actors to seize upon. Online Maneuver Warfare. Rapid launches of contradictory impressions of events – disrupting our orientation & maneuvering us beyond our capacity to adapt. Disorientation. Disruption. Overload.
Grand Tactics
I often see people suggest it’s going to take a big event to unify Americans (such as an attack on our country), but I believe it is more likely all such events would serve as opportunities to apply the tactics John Boyd outlined.
The reality is we cannot even agree on any of the facts of events which happened years ago with all the time we’ve had for analysis/synthesis.
The Essence of Moral Conflict
The grand tactics above incorporate the moral with the physical (attrition) and the mental (maneuver). The Essence of Moral Conflict:
Moral Leverage
In The Strategic Game of Interaction and Isolation, Boyd described how to utilize moral leverage against an adversary,
Reveal those mismatches in terms of what adversaries profess to be, what they are, and the world they have to deal with in order to surface to the world, to their citizens, and to ourselves the ineptness and corruption as well as the sub-rosa designs that they have upon their citizens, ourselves, and the world at large.
Contradictory framing of current and historical events is generating distrust and discord. The ineptness and corruption of our institutions are being surfaced. Our institutions can’t resist the impulse to react in ways which only amplify distrust – trying to control and regulate information. Boyd provided an alternate counter.
For more on how bad governance can be a critical and overlooked source of destabilizing tension in society: https://contrareport.com/bob-jones-strategic-influence/
Amplifying the Disruption
In modern warfare, any sophisticated threat actor would likely integrate physical events with information maneuvers and moral warfare. These elements act as force multipliers and can be as disruptive as the physical attacks themselves. Creative minds will weave the mental and moral effects into their strategic script.
During Congressional testimony in 1991, John Boyd spoke of a deficiency in military academies.
in some sense, they’ve really not come to grips in a very positive sense with the mental and moral effects that you can produce.
In other words, how can you set it up ahead of time? In other words, instead of having it happen accidentally to generate these mental/moral effects where you can just literally pull your adversary apart so he can’t even function as an integrated organism. And there are ways that that can be done, and I would say that part hasn’t been stressed. And if you’re going to talk about future warfare, or future conflict, whether you’re going to talk about conventional forces, unconventional forces, surrogate, whatever you want to talk about, you are going to have to get more and more into that. Because if you don’t, your adversary is. And we could have some very serious consequences.
Individuals within a targeted population can unwittingly become vehicles for broader strategic aims. We fill in unknowns with narratives, seeking comfort in false certainties to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty. (John Boyd notes the counterweight to uncertainty is adaptability.1) We often place unearned trust in those we perceive as part of our in-group, outsourcing our sense-making and thereby surrendering our cognitive sovereignty. We are susceptible to influence by unconscious forces, which those adept in manipulation know how to exploit. These inherent human vulnerabilities make us easy targets for manipulation.
What is the counter at the individual level?
“…we must continue the whirl of reorientation, [identifying] mismatches, analyses/synthesis over and over again ad infinitum as a basis to comprehend, shape, and adapt to an unfolding, evolving reality that remains uncertain, ever-changing, unpredictable.” – John Boyd, Conceptual Spiral
If we don’t, we can serve as conduits in our own destruction.
“Shadow wars are armed conflicts in which plausible deniability, not firepower, forms the center of gravity. This dynamic makes war epistemological: telling what is real from fake will decide the winners and losers. … In a shadow war, cloaking is a form of power, and information is weaponized. If you twist your enemy’s perception of reality, you can manipulate him into strategic blunders that can be exploited for victory.” – Sean McFate, ‘The New Rules of War’
- Boyd: “In dealing with uncertainty, you can’t say we’re going to have certainty. All you have to do is you have to be adaptable, that’s the only way you can deal with uncertainty. You have to be adaptable, build adaptability and flexibility into the organization to deal with it. Life is inherently uncertain. Don’t say, well, we’re just going to have certainty. That’s bullshit. You’re not going to get it. You may think you are, but you aren’t.” ↩︎
