The Thomas Crown Affair, a 5GW Primer
by tdaxp ~ April 21st, 2008
My friends at Dreaming 5GW should definitely check out The Thomas Crown Affair, staring Pierce Brosnan. Not only a description of 5GW (Observation Warfare) on many layers, also props potential 5GW v. 3GW (Manuever Warfare) and 5GW v. 1GW (Massed Formation) styles.
Really clever all around. Much cleverer than any of the awful James Bond movies that Brosnan starred in.
I won’t say that The Thomas Crown Affair is to 5GW what Lawrence of Arabia is to 3GW… but it’s close.
[1]...
April 21st, 2008 at 8:05 pm
… the Thomas Crown affair is not about war. It is about a burglary.
This is why I never got into the whole 5GW thing. What possible definition of “war” could include burglary?
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:03 am
Adrian,
Perhaps you would find theories you disagree with to be more interesting and useful if you read them.
From both my application of OODA to the generations of war [1], and my post “Dreaming 5GW” [2]:
The analogy is between two sorts of purposeful violence, robbery and war. In both the Thomas Crown Affair, and in the example I provided, a “5th Generation” theft in which observation is manipulated analogizes to “5th Generation” war, which also manipulates observation.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2005/07/18/orientation-and-action-part-i-the-ooda-loop.html
[2] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2005/07/20/dreaming-5th-generation-war.html
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:38 am
Don’t worry, I read the 5GW stuff on your site, on Soob’s, and on Zenpundit. I still don’t see any distinction between 5GW and covert action or publicity campaigns. If one side ‘never knew’ there was a war, they’re probably right!
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:49 am
Covert action might be considered a tactical 5GW, but as long as the sponsoring actor was recognizedas a bargaining partner by the target, then it would not be a 5GW.
How do you consider publicity campaigns to be like 5GW?
Why?
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:55 am
Adrian’s flippant comment is actually pure cognitive bias poetry.
“If one side ‘never knew’ there was a war, they’re probably right!”
First of all, if you actually parse this grammatically, the sentence doesn’t work.
But he’s implying that if you run a successful 5GW campaign and your opponent never notices, then you didn’t do anything signifigant. This is a great example of what Robert Anton Wilson was talking about in Quantum Psychology: when a Moslem and a Baptist discuss God, they’re both right.
This is a perfect example of why OODA loops are a tricky concept. I have had to re-think Boyd about 8 times in the past year since I discovered him, he’s very subtle, but fortunately also very precise.
Adrian, you seem to have a mental definition of “warfare” that’s set upon being public, obvious, loud, violent, and involve casualties. The problem is not with this blog post, but with your mind.
At least, that’s how it appears to my mind.
Cheers.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:44 am
I love the Bronson-version Thomas Crown Affair (I am usually not into remakes). You should cross-post this to D5GW.
It definitely shows the manipulation part of 5GW. Crown is a SEI of a sort to.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:25 am
Adrian,
Let me give you an answer from a different direction and from a different framework than The generations of modern warfare or XGW, specifically the Toffler’s Waves framework.
5GW fits very nicely into the aspect of Third Wave warfare known as ‘anti-war’. In that context, 5GW is basically an expression of highly indirect knowledge-based competition, yet still as far as the Toffler’s are concerned part of the Third Wave’s version of warfare.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:26 pm
arherring…please go with idea…I want to read more!
I haven’t read that book in a long (very pre-5GW for me).
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Heh…Toffler has a MySpace page:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=277291013
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:46 am
Arherring, ‘War and Anti-War’ is still sitting unread on my bookshelf. Hopefully by the end of the summer…
37, I did not mean to imply that if your opponent doesn’t notice something, it means that nothing important happened. My point is, that while whatever happened might have been important, it is not a war because wars are indeed big loud obnoxious things full of death and destruction.
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:58 am
Thirtyseven,
Welcome to the tdaxp community. Your comment is most useful if you criticize someone’s ideas, rather than him personally.
Aherring & Purpleslog,
Interesting comments!
Adrian,
By this definition, volacnoes are wars, but late-stage counterinsurgencies are not.
A better criticism against 5GW being “war’ at all is that wars are bargaining situations, but in 5GW only one side is aware it is bargaining. Perhaps, but certainly violentlly running through Boyd’s PISRR stages [1] would constitute a war as we understand if, if not necessarily bargaining.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/02/13/ooda-pisrr-part-i-the-social-cognition-loop.html
April 24th, 2008 at 8:23 am
War and Anti-war is a good read if a bit dated (Imagine saying that about a book written just after the first Gulf war. I must be getting old), but still worthwhile. It is, if anything, useful reading to get your head out of the ‘box’ and take a look at your conceptual framework from a different perspective.
I found it very interesting while reading it to compare the different frameworks. It seemed to me that the Waves framework very efectively explained the role that society and technology play in the progression of warfare that is sometimes missing from XGW and Boyd’s frameworks which are geared more to address the theory behind warfare.
April 26th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
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