13 Responses to The Thomas Crown Affair, a 5GW Primer

1. Adrian
   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?

2. Dan tdaxp
   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 4th Generation of War redshifts deeper into the OODA loop. It slides into the “Observation” realm. If traditional war centered on an enemy’s physical strength, and 4GW on his moral strength, the 5th Generation of War would focus on his intellectual strength. A 5th Generation War might be fought with one side not knowing who it is fighting. Or even, a brilliantly executed 5GW might involve one side being completely ignorant that there ever was a war. It’s like the old question of what was the perfect robbery: we will never know, because in a perfect robbery the bank would not know that it was robbed.

   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

3. Adrian
   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!

4. Dan tdaxp
   April 22nd, 2008 at 5:49 am

   I still don’t see any distinction between 5GW and covert action or publicity campaigns.

   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?

   If one side ‘never knew’ there was a war, they’re probably right!

   Why?

5. Thirtyseven
   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.

6. purpleslog
   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.

7. arherring
   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.

8. purpleslog
   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).

9. purpleslog
   April 22nd, 2008 at 11:40 pm

   Heh…Toffler has a MySpace page:

   http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=277291013

10. Adrian
    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.

11. Dan tdaxp
    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,

    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.

    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

12. arherring
    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.

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    April 26th, 2008 at 9:12 pm

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