We are living in a time when information is manipulated in ways most people are unprepared or uninterested in defending against. Economic competition and conflict are blurred concepts. Asymmetrical warfare is actively targeting our military with low-cost, low-production time threats that we have to respond to with million-dollar missiles that have multi-year replacement times. Every topic has a social or political position attached, and many people fear taking a stance or stating a position on anything because of the possible social and financial repercussions.
There are many definitions and interpretations of Gray Zone or 5th Generation Warfare. But here is a working definition to at least give us a starting point:
“We are no longer fighting a defined adversary in a defined battle space for a defined period of time. Instead, the 5th Generation mission space is a continuous global battle of narratives that will play out over both virtual and physical space and encompass a range of violent and nonviolent actions and effects”
That somehow seems sufficiently vague and all-encompassing. The six main domains we will focus on here are Information Warfare, Economic Warfare, Psychological Warfare, Political Warfare, Cyber Warfare, and Kinetic Warfare.
The first three domains, Information, Economic, and Psychological, set the stage to encourage us to take action for the adversary in one or more of the three other domains: Cyber, Political, or Kinetic. For our purposes here, we will define an adversary as an entity that seeks to influence us to weaken our position or social fabric in a way that benefits the adversary.
Fifth-generation or Gray Zone Warfare is not just between countries or governments. It may be between elements in a government towards their own citizens. It is being conducted against populations by foreign governments. It is being conducted on some scale worldwide by political groups, corporations, and non-governmental organizations.
As you look through these examples, I encourage you to keep two maxims in mind:
Never attribute to malice what can be accounted for by incompetence.
And
Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.
Singular events can easily be discounted, but when you look at the several examples presented, you may start to see a pattern emerge. Keep in mind that the examples provided are in no way the entire scope of how a strategy may be or has been applied. Instead, the examples are just a single frame in the continuum to give you an idea of what to look for and how we know they have been applied in the past.
Information Warfare
Information Warfare is controlling information in a way that causes us to support and implement actions on behalf of an adversary without realizing we are engaged in our own destruction. Misinformation, disinformation, and the omission of information are ever present and meant to support the agenda of an outside agency. Our individual interests leave us in information silos so that even within our own family we are fed different versions of events to put us in conflict with one another. Then our social media, entertainment, and marketing algorithms keep us in echo chambers reinforcing our singular viewpoint.
In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the news in the United States. Since 2011, only 6 corporations control 95% of all media in the United States, including newspapers, magazines, broadcast television, subscription TV services, and the associated internet resources.
One of the best examples of this was the coverage of COVID-19 in the United States. Depending on the news source, it was no big deal or the end of the world. Now that it is mostly over and we can compare outcomes, we have seen that from a health perspective, the states that had the most restrictive measures and the states with the least restrictive measures had virtually the same health outcomes overall.
Consider the death rate. Looking at the raw unadjusted numbers, Florida, one of the least restrictive states, had a higher per capita death rate than California, one of the most restrictive states. But when adjusted for age and obesity, two major factors affecting COVID-19 death rates, Florida had a 34% lower death rate than California. It is the same piece of information; however, depending on the news source, they may omit one aspect of the results, painting very different pictures for their respective viewers.
One study found that Republicans consistently underestimated the risks of COVID-19, while Democrats consistently overestimated them. Same issue, different sources of information resulting in different views on the same topic.
As a means of control, the 2020 pandemic response was the largest social experiment ever conducted and showed governments just how far they could go before meeting resistance, how much resistance, and what parts of society were most likely to resist.
All media is produced to sway our opinion. If for no other reason than eliciting an emotional response to keep our attention and drive up the value of advertising. However, most of the time, there are additional factors driving us toward specific conclusions. Even the left versus right answers provided in the media discount other solutions, and even the question being asked is often a distraction.
The next time you see a pop culture story dominating the headlines, go to foreign news agencies and see what they are talking about. See what may be an actually important news event that domestic media is drawing your attention away from.
On February 4, 2014 an audio clip was leaked on Youtube in which the top US diplomat for European and Eurasian Affairs said “Fuck the EU” to the US Ambassador to Ukraine. The US State Department issued an apology. Neither the statement, the context, nor the apology is what is important here. What is important is that this was a headline story around the world but never made the domestic media.
When you take a position on a topic and feel that no rational, thinking person could possibly take an opposing position, you must ask, “Have I been manipulated?” And, “How have I been manipulated?” Chances are people holding an opposing view have also been manipulated. This brings up the question, “Who is benefitting?”
Economic Warfare
Historically countries have used taxes, tariffs, and import/export restrictions to influence or protect certain industries or markets under their control. This has largely been in the realm of competition, not conflict.
When we think of economic warfare we usually think of economic sanctions on a country, a trade embargo, or a shipping blockade. However, economic warfare can also include debt, inflation, interest, and access.
In his book Confessions of an Economic Hitman, John Perkins details a history of economic warfare conducted by the United States starting in the 1950s, including his role in Latin American and Middle Eastern countries. He describes a system of loaning money to a country for a large infrastructure project. However, the money goes to the American companies that are building the project. The loan has terms that are impossible to repay, and the debt is held by the citizens of the country receiving the infrastructure project, giving the lending country political leverage over them.
The specific tools used include currency devaluation so a country’s exports are sold at costs favorable to the debt holder. The lender pressures the debtor to cut social programs such as education and health to leave the native population vulnerable to exploitation. They force the privatization of State-owned enterprises such as power and water, which are eventually sold to entities from the lender country. They create free-trade agreements to remove barriers, allow foreign companies to exploit resources, and flood local markets with foreign-made goods collapsing local production.
In 2013, China started a similar program called the Belt and Road Initiative. Over the last ten years, China has spent over a trillion dollars financing projects in developing countries worldwide, most heavily in Africa.
In 1944, following the devastation of World War II, 44 nations pegged their currencies to the U.S. dollar, which was pegged to gold. This made the dollar the currency for international trade and commodities pricing such as gold, oil, and coffee
A banking system called the Society For Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) was created in 1973 to facilitate international trade. It is headquartered in Belgium and controlled by the G10 country’s banks. Over 11,000 banks are part of the SWIFT system. However, not every bank has a direct relationship with every other bank. In order to make a transfer the information goes through intermediary banks, many of which are in the United States.
In 2015, China created its own electronic clearing house, the Cross-Border Interbank Payments System (CIPS), which it uses to receive payments from its Belt and Road Initiative loans.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian banks were excluded from the SWIFT system. This significantly reduced their ability to trade internationally and froze the funds they held in reserve to facilitate international transactions. Before this action, North Korea and Iran were the only countries to have their banks barred from the system. But now, countries have realized they are at risk of being cut out and are considering membership in the alternate system owned by China.
BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) formed an economic alliance in 2009 to counter the influence of the G-7 (United States, United Kingdom, European Union (non-enumerated member), Japan, Italy, France, Germany, and Canada). Following the barring of Russia from the SWIFT system, many more countries have expressed interest in joining BRICS. In 2023, BRICS expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Additionally, BRICS has formed the New Development Bank as an alternative to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
These are all examples of Economic Warfare on a global scale, but other factors exist nationally or locally. For example, when new education requirements for an occupation are instituted, increased regulations such as occupational safety or environmental, or increased fees and taxes to operate are created, they all support large established corporations by raising barriers to entry or the overall cost to stay in business. A large established business will not even notice a $ 10,000-a-year cost, which may be a big enough additional cost to keep a new business from getting off the ground. These are all tactics corporations utilize to influence government policies that suppress new competition and put small businesses out of business. In the long run, it removes all those smaller competitors who collectively own a portion of the market share.
The individual is feeling the effects of Economic Warfare, among other financial influences, such as limited availability of goods, inflation, and price fluctuations. The best ways to insulate yourself are to establish an emergency fund, reduce debt, establish multiple income streams, and at least investigate alternate forms of payment such as Bitcoin.
Psychological Warfare
The goal of Psychological Warfare is to erode national, community, or social values and to fracture a population into as many small groups as possible to minimize the chances that they will stand together on any single issue.
The current conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas have proved to be practically impossible to know what is actually happening because there have been so many examples of propaganda. We have seen staged footage, artificial intelligence-generated photographs, the same videos posted by both sides claiming victory, and photos from other wars being reused.
However, Psychological Warfare does not have to involve overt propaganda. It can be the circulation or magnification of any organic fissure in a population to maximize the effect. No matter the source of the following events and movements, the result has been a fracturing of American society:
Occupy Wall Street, 2011, was an economic social fissure. It was a populist movement about economic inequality that spread around the world and inspired a new generation of political activists.
Me Too, 2017, workplace social fissure between men and women. The movement raised awareness around sexual harassment and sexual abuse of women in the workplace. A friend of mine is a female engineer. What she experienced was that none of the senior male engineers were willing to mentor her because they were afraid of sexual harassment charges.
George Floyd, 2020, law enforcement social fissure. Protests around the death of George Floyd and policing practices in the United States. It resulted in the Defund the Police Movement and the largest one-year percentage jump in homicides on record.
Defund the Police, 2020, law enforcement social fissure. A movement to reduce funding, and in many cases close units within the police departments or to transfer some duties to non-police entities such as Departments of Transportation or Social Services. The cities that defunded their police have experienced increased property and violent crime. Officers who could retire did so; many others transferred out, and most of these cities’ police are chronically understaffed.
Critical Race Theory, 1989, racial fissure. A theory that race is a socially constructed category to oppress people of color. It comes from the Marxist-oriented Critical Legal Studies. Opponents of the theory claim it supports racism by classifying all people as “oppressors” or “oppressed.” They also claim it places equity, or equal outcomes, over equality, or equal opportunity. Critical Race Theory moved into the public discussion in 2020.
Race Based Dorms and Graduations, 2020, racial fissure. Several colleges and universities have introduced “Black Affinity” dormitories and Affinity Graduations. Echos of 1960s segregation.
Child Gender Expression, 2020. parent-child fissure, parent education system fissure. This is when a child chooses to express themselves as a gender other than their birth sex. The issue arises when schools assist with medical procedures, such as puberty blockers, without the consent of the parents.
It does not matter which side you choose on any given issue. What is important to note is the number of topics and the degree of division creating fissures in our culture. What topics are you reluctant to speak about in public? What topics are tugging at our social fabric? What topics make us more united? And what topics make us more divided?
Political Warfare
Political competition is as old as politics themselves. One side has always tried to convince the people that their side is right, or at least that the other side is wrong.
But before we jump into full-on Political Warfare, let’s take a look at a gray zone between competition and warfare. Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica was a British political consulting firm that used Facebook data from millions of Americans to develop political profiles for targeting in the 2016 Presidential Election. But what made this new was their strategy. They determined what states needed to win and then what counties needed to win the state. Then, using Facebook data, they targeted the specific individuals in those counties whose votes were needed. They ran a similar campaign concerning Brexit, the U.K. exit from the European Union in the United Kingdom. Both countries investigated Cambridge Analytica and concluded they didn’t actually break the laws, rather the laws were inadequate for new technologies.
Political Warfare is when the means of change moves into the realm of rigging elections and jailing or assassinating political opponents. Information Warfare, Economic Warfare, and Psychological Warfare are all means of preparing a population for Political Warfare.
The United States has a history of states, counties, and political parties putting laws and practices in place to discourage or make it inconvenient for one group or another to cast their votes. There are also practices of harvesting votes. This is when a group “assists” someone in filling out their ballots or collecting them to turn them in, maybe. But I could not find a conviction of widespread voter fraud or ballot counting.
The United States has had two presidents assassinated. Abraham Lincoln in 1865, and John F. Kennedy in 1963. Overall, 57 American politicians have been assassinated.
National-level Political Warfare seems to have taken a turn into new territory. At least 35 states challenged former president Trump’s ability to be on the state ballot. The grounds for prohibiting him were based on insurrection charges for which he was not convicted. The Supreme Court intervened, and he was reinstated. But this was a new tactic to remove an opponent from an election.
Cyber Warfare
The United States Department of Defense defines Cyber Warfare as the malicious use of the internet. Some of the forms this can take include espionage, sabotage, propaganda, and manipulation. We have already addressed propaganda and manipulation, of which the cyber component is a main delivery system. However, there are two forms that are uniquely in the realm of Cyber Warfare; Cyber Espionage and Cyber Sabotage.
Cyber Sabotage is intentional actions that harm physical or virtual infrastructure. Any infrastructure that touches the Internet is vulnerable, including power, water, medical, agricultural, food processing, and communication systems. If you use “smart” technologies in your home, add your home to the list. Recently, a man was locked out of his home by the Amazon-controlled locking system based on a mistaken complaint by a delivery driver.
Stuxnet is the first known virtual attack on a physical target. Developed by the United States and Israel, it attacked Iranian centrifuges setting back their nuclear program. Duqu and Flame are similar worm-style attack programs that have been identified in the wild and are believed to be developed by the same source as Stuxnet.
The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in 2021 shut down gas supplies to the eastern United States. In coordination with the FBI, the company paid the ransom and was provided a means to restart the system. A regional emergency declaration affected 17 states.
Cyber Espionage is the act or practice of obtaining secrets and information without the knowledge or permission of the holder of the information. These attacks happen every day by both state and non-state actors.
PRISM is a system used by the United States Government to monitor internet searches, emails, conversations, and file transfers. It was made public when an Intelligence Contractor named Edward Snowden stole files and published them in 2013.
Titan Rain was a series of operations starting in 2003 that was the first publicly acknowledged state-sponsored cyber operation from China. It was successful against the United States Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Energy. It was also successful against the United Kingdom Defense and Foreign Ministries.
Since 2017 U.S. Defense agencies have warned that probably any smart-home device touching the internet is collecting and reporting on you to China. Everything from smart coffee pots and thermostats to your phone and car. Once a device is given access to your wifi or phone, it may pull data from all the other devices on your network. This is what has been happening with smart TVs. However, China is not the only collector of data. Probably every electronic you own and every app on your phone is likely collecting data about you. It may also pull other information stored on your phone, not just the information related to the app.
All this data has the potential to end up at a data broker. Data brokers compile data and sell it in packages. The package could be “people who like ice cream and live in Cleveland,” or the package could be “everything known about John Doe.” Examples of data brokers include Microsoft Azure, Data Market, Salesforce.com, Data.com, and Datamarket.com. Often customers such as grocery stores get discounts or other arrangements for sharing their own data with the service.
Last year car manufacturers came under fire for pulling the following data off your phone when you pair it to the vehicle, “sensitive personal information, including driver’s license number, national or state identification number, citizenship status, immigration status, race, national origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, sexual activity, precise geolocation, health diagnosis data, and genetic information.” Sexual activity information is gathered from fitness trackers and smart watches. Partners are determined/assumed by phones or smart devices in the same location.
However, there are also data markets that cater to government customers. These allow government agencies to pull a complete data package on a person, group, or organization that would otherwise require a court order. The Grist Mill Exchange is one such provider.
Limit smart tech in the home, and choose very carefully which devices you connect to your home network.
Kinetic Warfare
When we say kinetic warfare, in the sense of 5th Generation warfare, they are violent actions that take place with physical consequences. The range of these activities can be quite broad.
Conventional Warfare, in the sense that most people would think of it, with planes, tanks, and ships, is the largest scale of Kinetic Warfare. At the time of this writing, Russia and Ukraine are two years into a conventional war, which itself can be looked at as a proxy war with China, Iran, and North Korea supplying the Russians and NATO supplying the Ukrainians.
Israel and Hamas are also at war, even though Israel is a nation-state and Hamas is a terror organization. Already we can see there are varying degrees of conventional warfare.
Low-intensity conflicts may be smaller in scale or duration, including terrorism, civil unrest, organized crime, and irregular warfare.
Terrorism
On July 13, 2019, Willem van Spronsen firebombed the U.S. Immigration and Customs detention facility in Tacoma, Washington. When police arrived they reported he was carrying a rifle and flares and was throwing lit objects at the building and cars. They shot him when he attempted to light a large propane tank.
Van Spronsen was a Dutch-born immigrant who participated in the Occupy Wall Street movement, was a long-time member of the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club, and identified as a member of Antifa. In his manifesto, he wrote about semantics and people in cages. The Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club is an armed left-wing antifascist group active in Seattle, Washington. Antifa is a decentralized left-wing antifascist movement. It uses protests, community organizing, doxing, digital activism, harassment, physical violence, and property damage.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies examined U.S. domestic violence from 1994 through 2021. They identified 1040 incidents that met their criteria as terror events. Until 2019, only 2% of events took place during demonstrations; in 2020, it was 47%, and in 2021, it was 53%. Government, military, and law enforcement were the primary targets of violence in 2021. They were the target group in 48% of far-left and 37% of far-right attacks. Right-wing extremists made up 49% of the violence in 2020, but left-wing extremist violence increased from 23% in 2020 to 40% in 2021.
Civil Unrest
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing at least 1200 people. The Israeli military response has been ongoing. At the time of this writing, it had been just over 100 days. It has been interesting to see how the narrative has been framed. Hamas, a terror organization, started the conflict by attacking mostly civilians and hiding among the Palestinian population.
Since the attack, there have been continuous protests worldwide not supporting Israel or Hamas. But supporting Palestine. The rhetoric of which has been to annihilate the Jewish state, such as “from the river to the sea.”
In 1991 I was in Zakho, Iraq. In addition to our normal duties, everyone had to take shifts as part of the guard force. There was a local with a tractor we hired to drive around our Forward Operating Base each day, and we would throw our trash in his trailer and empty it at the dump. One day I was assigned to be his escort. I was surprised at how good his English was and really surprised to hear his worldview.
The conversation that started that day, when I was 20 years old, has reoccurred repeatedly in every Middle Eastern country I have been in. His view was that the Christian Crusades that started in 1096 have never ended. He believed that Islam and Christianity have been in a religious war ever since. He saw the British Empire, the State of Israel, and the presence of the United States in the Middle East as successive waves of the Crusades.
Waves of Muslims have moved to the United States and Europe since 2010, especially following the war in Syria. As a group, they are not assimilating into their new nations. This is a huge population with a common religious/cultural viewpoint that has the potential to turn into a cascading series of violent events. In the first 30 days after the Hamas-Israeli conflict started, there were approximately 4,200 demonstration events worldwide. In the United States, there were at least 600 events. Surprising few have turned violent so far.
Mass protests have increased steadily since 2009. France experienced riots nationwide in 2023 for several weeks following the death of an Algerian Muslim. Social media has made it easier to disseminate information, including misinformation and disinformation. Recent analysis has shown that people are most likely to share a story based on the headline without ever reading the story itself. And for the things they do read, the average attention span is 26 seconds.
We will most likely see civil unrest increase in frequency and violence leading up to the 2024 elections and spill over into various social issues.
Organized Crime
In this case, I am not talking about normal organized crime—not the typical criminals taking advantage of chaos—but state-supported organized crime.
The fentanyl crisis in the United States began around 2014, now killing over 200 Americans a day. The vast majority of the world’s fentanyl, or the precursors, is made in China. Fentanyl comes into the United States by mail from China, through Canada, where it is commonly pressed into pill form, but the vast majority comes through Mexico, where it is added to heroin, sold as heroin, added to prescription drugs, or sold as prescription drugs.
In 2020, the United States Department of Commerce added an institute under the People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of Public Security to the Entity List, subjecting the institute to export controls for its role in fentanyl exports. In 2022, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs formally suspended U.S.-China cooperation in counter-narcotics and legal assistance in criminal matters.
The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels are the principal importers and have distribution networks throughout the United States. Over the last decades, both cartels have increasingly made use of car bombs, improvised explosive devices, and explosives dropped from drones within Mexico. At the border, they have had shootouts and used drones to deliver narcotics, for surveillance of border patrol, and to guide people across the border.
There is no way to know if, or at what level, the Chinese and/or Mexican governments are orchestrating the sales, but at a minimum, they are aware and choosing to let it continue.
Irregular Warfare
The United States Joint Doctrine defines irregular warfare as “a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy over the relevant population.” This is a pretty broad definition, and according to it, most modern conflicts have some portion or aspect of Irregular Warfare.
But it was the best term available to describe what happened in Seattle, Washington, from June 8, 2020, to July 1, 2020. It was originally called Free Capital Hill, then the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), and then the Capital Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP). Starting with protests and riots from June 1 through June 7, eventually, the Seattle Police were directed to abandon their East Precinct. The protestors then placed barricades one block around the precinct, declaring it an autonomous zone.
Among the protestors were four city council members, a county council member, a senator, and a state representative. On June 11, the Governor of Washington called it an “unpermitted, but largely peaceful event”, and the Mayor described it as having a “block party atmosphere.”
However, the Police Chief said, “Rapes, robberies and all sorts of violent acts have been occurring in the area and we have not been able to get to it.” Businesses, residents, and property owners filed a class action lawsuit against the city in federal court, citing that it was an “unprecedented decision to abandon and close off an entire city neighborhood.”
On June 7th, a driver attempted to move through the crowd. A protester grabbed his steering wheel, and the driver shot him. On June 20th, two people were shot in two separate events within the zone. Protestors prevented police response. Both men died. Wrongful death lawsuits were filed against the city. On June 21st, a man was shot in the arm. Another shooting occurred on June 23rd. On June 29th, two boys were shot, and one died.
A resident stated, “We are just sitting ducks all day. Now every criminal in the city knows they can come into this area and do anything they want as long as it isn’t life-threatening, and the police won’t come in to do anything about it.”
Many cities have areas that are ruled by gangs where police response is absent or so delayed it is ineffectual. I chose to highlight the Seattle CHOP because it was a unique situation that we may see more often in the near future.
Characteristics of 5th Generation Warfare
One of the characteristics of 5th Generation Warfare is that it occurs in a multidimensional battle space, which we have already examined. It is fluid, meaning it is a network of networks, making it highly adaptable to change. Super-empowerment and Autonomous Surrogates are two aspects we need to examine more in-depth.
Super-empowerment
“The range of effect of each individual soldier (or terrorist) will be vastly increased even as the economic costs are driven down by market forces and proliferation of dual-use technology to the civilian consumer.”
The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) was active from 1969 to 1997 and sought to end British control of Northern Ireland. It operated in individual cells, where members had a specific role and one-way communication and did not know the roles or identities of other members. One member might go to work every day and make reports on British positions or patrols. They would report their observations, never knowing if or when any action would be taken. If action was taken, they would report the results.
Another member might be responsible for maintaining and hiding a particular weapon. They may or may not ever be told to deliver the weapon to a certain place and time and when to retrieve it to be used again or disposed of.
Another member may be tasked with being ready to steal a vehicle, pick up a team, deliver them to a location, exfiltrate them shortly thereafter, and burn the vehicle.
A cell leader may have chosen to take action independently or receive direction to perform a specific or general task, which he would then notify the appropriate members to coordinate.
The Provisional IRA was successful in reigning terror through sniper operations against British patrols, car bombing operations against the British civilian population, and intimidation operations against the Irish population.
Fast forward to the United States war in Iraq from 2003 through 2011. The use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) was so prolific that the United States military responded by purchasing MRAP (mine-resistant ambush-protected) vehicles. The cost to make and place an IED may be a few hundred dollars, and the cost to defend against it has been reported at about one million dollars per vehicle.
In April 2013, near Silicon Valley, California, a team of snipers disabled 17 electrical transformers. Over 100 fingerprint-free shell cases and little piles of rocks marking firing positions were found. This was a coordinated effort involving a site reconnaissance, sniper teams that engaged their targets in under 19 minutes, and a successful exfil plan. It was not publicly acknowledged right away, and the effects of the action took a month to repair.
In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, commercial drone operators have successfully dropped grenades on enemy positions. They have also been used for surveillance, intelligence gathering, and propaganda.
In November 2023, cyber-attacks were conducted on US water facilities. The compromised systems were exposed to the Internet and were still using the manufacturer’s default passwords.
Advances in technology and interconnectivity are contributing to the super-empowerment of the individual operator. Fewer people and resources are required to gain ever-larger effects on the target and the targeted population. Look how many people were required for the IRA to carry out an operation compared to the effects achieved now by a few people or even an individual.
Autonomous Surrogates
“Active regular military forces are seconded by a variety of substitutes to carry some aspect of the warfighting load – private military contractors, non-governmental organizations, paramilitary and subnational networks, international peacekeeping missions and increasingly robotic agents.”
China
We often hear the phrase “one-China policy” in connection with Taiwan. But the cultural definition of one-China is that all people of Chinese heritage, anywhere in the world, and regardless of national citizenry, are subject to Chinese law.
In 2017, China established the National Intelligence Law, which requires all businesses operating in China to cooperate with Chinese intelligence agencies.
Article 7: All organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.
Article 10: As necessary for their work, national intelligence work institutions are to use the necessary means, tactics, and channels to carry out intelligence efforts, domestically and abroad.
“The Chinese regime, the current Chinese regime, will stop at nothing to steal what they can’t create and to silence the messages they don’t want to hear—all in an effort to surpass us as a global superpower and to shape a world order more friendly to their decidedly authoritarian vision.
What makes China’s economic espionage program so insidious is that they’re set on using every tool at their disposal to steal American technology, undercut our businesses, and dominate the market.
They use human intelligence to target our most precious information, multiplying their efforts by working extensively through scores of “co-optees”—which are basically people who aren’t technically Chinese government officials but assist in intelligence operations—doing things like spotting and assessing sources to recruit, providing cover and communications, and helping steal secrets in other ways.”- Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI.
Over the past year, more than 24,000 Chinese military-age males were apprehended illegally crossing the border from Mexico. This is more than the previous 10 years combined. Over the last few years, there have been more than 100 incidents of Chinese nationals attempting or gaining access to U.S. military installations and other secure areas.
In 2024, a U.S. Navy Sailor was convicted of spying for China. Wenheng Zhou, a Chinese-born sailor who was encouraged to spy by his mother, was convicted of providing China with exercise plans and information about amphibious ships.
Open Society Foundation
Typically, when we see the term lawfare, it means to use the legal system to deny someone their rights or to delegitimize or damage an opponent. In the case of the Open Society Foundation, founded by George Soros, they have a more sophisticated approach. They finance campaigns to get people elected as District Attorneys and Judges who will selectively enforce the laws, often because of a criminal’s perceived economic or racial disadvantages or social or political beliefs.
The United States has at least 75 social justice prosecutors backed by a Soros organization. They affect more than 72 million American lives in more than half of the 50 most populous cities. George Soros has spent more than $40 million to elect these prosecutors.
For example, in 2017, Larry Krasner ran for District Attorney. Previously he had been a public defender, not a prosecutor, and he regularly sued the Philadelphia Police Department. Soros-funded groups contributed $1.7 million, 90% of his campaign contributions. For his reelection in 2021, Soros’ groups contributed $1.2 million.
Upon taking office, Krasner fired 31 prosecutors with experience in homicide and violent crime. He replaced them with defense lawyers, and murders went up by 63% and shootings by 78%.
Private Military Contractors
Once upon a time, we called these mercenaries. However, since the United States doesn’t hire mercenaries, we now call them private military contractors (PMCs).
Throughout Operation Iraqi Freedom I and II, I saw contractors used in various ways. When politicians wanted to look like we were reducing our forces in Iraq, they would replace some military duties with contractors. They were often used as base perimeter guards, escorting the Army Corps of Engineers on construction projects, or babysitting Defense and State Department tourists, um…. I mean official visits.
This allowed the Department of Defense to tell Congress that the number of U.S. service members had been reduced. They also didn’t count contractors in the death or injury rates, and they didn’t have to pay a lifetime of disability payments or retirement. Over the years, I saw these PMCs go from being staffed with ex-military personnel to American civilians who could complete a six-week course run by the PMC to American supervisors with African troops making $600 a month.
One of the best-known PMCs employed by the United States was Blackwater. In August 2003, Blackwater received its first contract in Iraq to provide Personal Security Detachments. In September 2007, the Iraqi government revoked Blackwater’s license to operate in the country following a firefight in which Blackwater was found negligent in the deaths of 17 Iraqis.
In the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, a Russian PMC called the Wagner Group has been in the news. PMCs are used for some of the same reasons, and they provide a degree of plausible deniability for the countries that use them.
The Wagner Group was involved in the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014-2015 and was a major maneuvering element in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. By 2019, they had offices in 20 African countries. Reportedly, they have provided state security in exchange for gold and diamond contracts given to Russia.
Threats
Depending on where you are in the world or your political ideology, any one of the following may be a threat. Your threats may also come from another entity, including the United States.
China
The following is the United States Department of Defense assessment of China in 2023:
“The 2022 National Security Strategy states that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the only competitor to the United States with the intent and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order.
The PRC’s national strategy is to achieve “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by 2049. The strategy is a determined pursuit of political, social, and military modernity to expand the PRC’s national power, perfect its governance, and revise the international order to support the PRC’s governance system and national interests.
In March 2023, Xi Jinping told delegates to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference that “Western countries led by the United States have implemented comprehensive containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development.”
The PRC pursues its Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) Development Strategy to “fuse” its security and development strategies into its Integrated National Strategic System and Capabilities in support of China’s national rejuvenation goals.” – U.S. Department of Defense.
There is no better explanation of China’s strategy than in their own words on Unrestricted Warfare from 1999:
“One ramification of advancing technology is using new, non-war technologies in warfare. Cyber warfare, economic warfare, and information warfare don’t meet the traditional definition of war but will increasingly be employed on traditional and non-traditional battlefields. “Unrestricted warfare” is defined as “non-war actions… constituting future warfare… which transcends all boundaries and limits.
Arriving at the pinnacle of killing, technological advances have now paved the way for “kinder” weapons, which are either non-kinetic or surgical. Non-kinetic weapons are used to control, not kill. They cause fear and erode an adversary’s will to fight, which is a kinder way of warfare. New concepts like computer viruses and “media weapons” could become the preferred way to win a war because they inflict the least lethal damage while still enabling martial victory. This revolution in military affairs will spur new weapons that can’t be imagined or predicted.
From the beginning of recorded history to now, victory in a battle all share a commonality: the militaries used the power of combined arms. Historical examples included artillery with infantry from the Napoleonic era and phalanx formations with flanking cavalry from Alexander the Great, amongst many others. The winner was always the one who could create the right combination of forces to use against an opponent. The thinking surrounding these combinations must shift from traditional schools of military thought. When fighting an enemy, thinking of combinations to attack their finances, economy, culture, infrastructure, etc., are all equally important.” – Translated from Peoples Liberation Army Documents in 1999
Russia
Yuri Bezmenov defected from the Soviet Union in 1970. He eventually published several anti-communist books. Watching his 1983 interview with G. Edward Griffin is well worth your time. The following points are taken from that interview:
“The main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. Only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage and such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, or active measures…. or psychological warfare.
To change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent, that despite the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their family, their community, and their country.”
Ideological Subversion has four stages; demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization.
Demoralization takes a minimum of three generations of students being taught Marxism-Lenninism. The first generation was the 1960s counter-culture who moved into positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, and educational systems.
“Demoralized citizens are programmed to think and act in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind regardless of the information presented.” He gave the example that they would not believe black is black or that white is white. It immediately made me think of some of the things people argue about today that would have seemed absurd not that long ago, such as men being able to get pregnant, which is an extension of not even being able to agree on the definition of a man or woman.
Three of the institutions targeted by the neo-Marxist movement in the United States are the psychology, legal, and education systems. This allows them to define or redefine the very language of the culture, altering what is politically or socially correct behavior. An example happening right now is the use of the words “youth-attracted” in lieu of “pedophile.”
Bezmenov noted that success in demoralization is when Americans perform the conditioning on Americans. He states it will take a minimum of 15-20 years of patriotism to reverse this process. If Bezmenov is correct that it takes 15-20 years per generation, and the first generation was the 1960s counterculture, then that would have put the third generation coming into power in the early 2000s. The attack on the World Trade Center happened on September 11, 2001, and resulted in a resurgence in American Patriotism that may have slowed or partially reversed the effects of the Marxist demoralization phase.
Destabilization takes two to five years to subvert the economy, foreign relations, and defense systems. A few years ago, I would have thought it was impossible to subvert these three systems in such a short time. However, the COVID-era demonstrated how quickly things can change.
Despite high inflation, the United States economy remains strong. And despite a few missteps following the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, foreign relations are challenged but not unstable.
However, the military has low personnel rates, low ammunition supplies due to support for Ukraine, and aging equipment and doctrine built around counterinsurgency, not a near-peer conflict with China.
“A crisis can be resolved in as little as six weeks. It is a singular event or series of events that violently change power, structure, and economy.”
Based on the rhetoric I see on both sides, the 2024 election has the greatest potential to set off a large-scale domestic crisis. Both sides assert that the opposition candidate is unfit, and this election will decide the future of democracy in this nation.
Normalization is the implementation of a new Socialist State.
So why educate you on 5th Generation/Gray Zone Warfare if the opponents are largely governments, corporations, and ideological movements? What can you do?
It is important to understand that the second and third-order effects of these collective actions will be increased civil unrest and disruptions to support systems.
The conditions affecting everything from the Introduction through Part Four of this book are likely to continue, increase in frequency and impact. But now you are better prepared to realize how a seemingly singular action may tie into a bigger picture that may have a cascading effect or greater cumulative effect now or in the future.