Modern concepts of warfare focus primarily around battles over ideas, information and perception, using non-kinetic military actions, “soft power,” social engineering, propaganda, cyberattacks and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) deployed from online/offline “bots” or mechanisms acting mostly outside of human control.

Curiously enough, most of these techniques, except perhaps for the AI bots, were originally used by civilians as part of the normal municipal, provincial and federal political process to choose leaders and set policy.

Those non-violent tools are now being defined by the military as “weapons of war.” Anyone using them risks being defined as an “enemy combatant” or a terrorist.

The reasons for this change are simple and easy to understand. There was once, as outlined in the July 14th, 2013 Financial Post article, “US Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News to Americans,” legislation on the books forbidding the US government from using at least some of these techniques on its own citizens.

That legislation didn’t forbid political parties or the private sector from using the techniques and giant advertising agencies grew up around the utilization of these concepts to sell soap and other retail products.

But western government were allowed to use them against their own citizens, at least until 2013 in the US.

Canada is somewhat different, although the end result is the same. Since 1993, the Canadian Armed Forces has also provided the country’s federal counter-terrorism forces, replacing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in that function, although its actions are officially subject to civilian oversight.

Posts like the June 24th, 2021 Global News post, “China, Russia exploiting high-tech in ‘hybrid warfare’ costs up to $100B per year in Canada: report,” suggest that, while Canada’s military would like to develop a capacity to compete in the battles over ideas, information and perception, it isn’t able to do so currently.

But, and like almost everyone else, the “stakeholders” of our current system know damn well that they possess “overwhelming force” in any conventional “kinetic military action” involving active warfare and lethal force, but also realize that they have often been thwarted over the last five decades by small groups of knowledgeable, savvy people with compelling ideas and an understanding of the new concepts.

So western militaries in both the US and Canada are now allowed to operate against their civilian populations, a situation traditionally considered anathema to the democratic process. The EU, Australia and other western nations have instituted similar processes over the last two decades which have also allowed their governments to use “non-kinetic concepts” to spy on and influence their domestic populace.

Curiously enough, those “non-kinetic concepts” have a lot in common with the ideas discussed in the book, “Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, An Introductory Programming Manual,” supposedly a “top secret manual” allegedly found by accident in 1986 in a surplus IBM copier sold for scrap parts to a Boeing employee.

According to the Amazon overview of the book:

The manual outlines a plan to control the masses through manipulation of industry, education and politics, and to divert the public’s attention from what is really going on.

Surprisingly, it is claimed that much of what is outlined has come to pass, and makes interesting reading for those exploring the deeper levels of our social structure and how it may be controlled or influenced.

A more recent and more official overview of this topic, is the undated “5th Generation Warfare; Understanding the 5th Generation Mission Space,” published by UK based 360iSR, a privately held company set up in 2013 by Ewen Stockbridge to focus on Western military intelligence support contracts related to unmanned aerial vehicles plus military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.

The 360iSR document begins with a discussion of past US intelligence failures:

Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy.

Having focused the overwhelming majority of its collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied forces operate and the people they seek to persuade.”

Some of the best recent work on non-kinetic warfare comes to us via the Indian subcontinent, where stories like the January 19th, 2022 Pakistan Politico post, “Mapping the Blurring Lines of Warfare and Diplomacy,” noted the blurring of traditional warfare concepts into the concept of “warfare by other means.”

That concept was also explored by author Peter Stiff in his 2001 book, “Warfare by Other Means: South Africa in the 1980’s and 1990’s,” which explored the highly unconventional warfare conducted by South Africa’s secret intelligence and covert warfare units during the final years of apartheid.

For more on this topic, check out:

• The March 8th, 2022 Fort Benning on YouTube post, “Peter Zeihan | The Changing Character of War | Maneuver Center of Excellence.”
• The March 30th, 2022 S2 Underground on YouTube post, “5th Generation Warfare: History, Modern Context, and (Some) Solutions“
• The Aug 2nd, 2022 Live From The Shed on YouTube post, “An overview of the Canadian information battlefield from @Veterans 4 Freedom.”