“British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced the possibility of Chinese forces joining the multinational coalition in Afghanistan”

Interesting, if true.

China needs to step up. The US-China relationship will be one of the Big 5 Challenges for the US Foreign policy-wise for the next decade. 

Video – Free Tibet NYC Protest

Since Slashdot reports that the YouTube (owned by “Don’t Do Evil” Google) yanked the video, here is the video from Vimeo:

Interesting Podcast on Chinese Hackers – “The Dark Visitor #1″…

…is here.

The blog is interesting too.

Book Notes: John Poole’s Dragon Days: Time for “Unconventional” Tactics

John Poole‘s Dragon Days is mostly about 4GW and a little bit about what I call 5GW (aka SecretWar).

The Interesting points to me where:

– US light infantry should add criminal investigative techniques

– US light infantry should all add real SERE capability so they don’t need 2GW-ish bombardment (with its 4GW blowback) if they get into a fix.

– China seems to be the PuppetMaster behind lots of the conflict and enemies the US is facing – so China is sort of engaged in a non-kinetic 4GW and maybe a 5GW (though he doesn’t use that term) against the US

– Poole thinks that the release of the book Unrestricted Warfare was a deception operation to get the US focused on hi-tech warfare (which makes me think he really didn’t read it)

Getting China to Help in Afganistan

Hidden Unities makes a good case for the US interest in getting China involved in Afghanistan.

What is China’s interest here though? Why should they help?

A US that is bogged down with unreliable allies (aka NATO) is a US that is lesser impediment to other PRC goals.

How can China be nudged successively to join in? My mind is blank.

123 Meme

I was tagged by Shane/Deichmans with the 123 Meme.

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

I won’t tag anybody since I am about month behind on this, but here is my result otherwise:

The book is Dragon Days by H. John Poole.

The violent dispersal of public prayer services in Baaren led to local citizens taking over the town and government forces taking it back by aerial bombardment and ground assault. In 1995, the province experienced sabotage of railroad tacks and oil fields. The following year, approximately 5,000 Uighurs were arrested after a series of attacks on Chinese interests.

The book is partially on what I would call 5GW or near-5GW, 4GW tactical forces (as light infantry based on SERE coupled with criminal investigation capability).

“Chinese premier Wen Jiabao is ‘gravely concerned’ by allegations that hackers…”

From Dark Reading:

Chinese premier Wen Jiabao is ‘gravely concerned’ by allegations that hackers in his country have attacked German government systems, according to a report from the two countries’ diplomatic meeting earlier today.

I don’t think Germany should worry. The Chinese/PLA hackers were just practicing to for cyberway against somebody else.

“It’s better for the U.S. to shut up”

(via REDDIT) Yahoo News reports:

Sha Zukang, China’s ambassador to the
United Nations in Geneva, told British Broadcasting Corp. radio that American concerns about his country’s growing military might were misguided.

“It’s better for the U.S. to shut up,” Sha said. “Keep quiet. It’s much, much better.”

Sha said the world need not worry about China’s growing economic and military might because “China basically is a peace-loving nation.”

“China’s military buildup is not threatening anyone,” Sha said. “This is a legitimate defense.”

China’s 2.3 million-member People’s Liberation Army is the world’s largest fighting force, and Beijing has alarmed its neighbors with double-digit percentage increases in military spending nearly every year for a decade.

I want to think that China wants to join the larger community of Core nations.

The US leviathan force capability is not going away any time soon. The US needs to continue to engage China and prod/shame them into doing the right thing.

How about a a US/UN request for a division of PRC Light Infantry/Engineers for a Peacekeeper/Sysadmin Force in Lebanon with Turkish language/cultural advisers?

Update: More at BlogCritcs

Future China: You Might Be a Superpower if…

The Futurist has an interesting post entitled: Why the US Will Still be the Only Superpower in 2030.

He states that it is unlikely that China will reach superpower status by 2030. The superpower status criterion listed are:

1. Have an economy near the size of the US economy.
2. Create original consumer brands that are household names everywhere in the world
3. Have a military capable of waging wars anywhere in the globe.
4. Have major universities that are household names, that many of the worlds top students aspire to attend.
5. Attract the best and brightest to immigrate into China, where they can expect to live a good life in Chinese society.
6. Be the leader in entertainment and culture.
7. Be the nation expected to thanklessly use its own resources to solve many of the world's problems.
8. Adapt to the under-appreciated burden of superpowerdom – the huge double standards that a benign superpower must withstand in that role.

With each criteria he discusses were China will fall short.

The criteria is very USA-centric, but I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I think the criteria really just describes a benevolent superpower. A Totalitarian Superpower (more of a classical Empire) would care little about things like, thanklessly using its own resources, being unappreciated, and would be more control focused.

Read the article and the excellent comments (and look over other posts at the site) – it is worth the time.

I especially like these other post from The Futurist:

• The Psychology of Economic Progress
• An Easy Way to expose concealed Anti-Americanism
• What are the Real Reasons Some People Oppose the Patriot Act? 

How to Engage China

I have a rather lengthy comment in a Phatic Communion post on China on some ideas on engaging China to nudge them toward a mutual beneficial future with the USA. Among other things, I said:

I think the US should insist upon China’s participation in peace-keeping/sysadmin type operations with the US / UK / Aussies / India (them too) and mildly chastise them when they don’t step up to there obligations. The US should look to form a NATO like organization for Asia (Asia Pacific Treaty Organization) with US / Canada / India / China / Japan / Taiwan (yes, Taiwan) / Aussies, and NZ to perform sysadmin / peacekeeping / disaster & emergency response. The US state department should open up many little mission across china (both large, medium and small communities) as goodwill ambassadors getting out shaking hands, providing local assistance, partaking in the cultural/social life, handing study-abroad scholarships, hosting parties on American holidays, and the like. They need to show a friendly US face across China.

I think we to proactively move China in the direction we want. Maybe a peaceful 4G strategic plan is needed.

Coming Anarcy’s Neo-Medievalism, Ungoverned Spaces, PNM Theory, and Network Science

Coming Anarchy has an interesting PNM Theory related post entitled Neo-Medievalism II that used historical examples and the idea of ungoverned spaces:

The nexus thereof, ungoverned space, creates a network of internationally connected fiefdoms which engage in smuggling, trafficking, terrorism and other forms of organized crime. The Coming Anarchy meets Global Guerillas.

I think the idea of ungoverned spaces (or little mini-gaps) throughout the world is a better description of the world then the macro level old-core/new-core/gap description with standard PNM Theory.

Recently TDAXP published a series of articles testing how well the core/gap and other common geographic models describe the world based on: poverty, nastiness, shortness, brutality, and solitariness. The results were is bit surprising. Barnett oldcore-newcore-gap wasn't the best fit. One problem may have been that the geographic units used in the models are too large.

A better description of the world may be networks of mini-cores and mini-gaps that also have some inter-connectivity.

For instance China-as-new-core is too broad. Parts of China are old-core (Hong Kong), parts are new-core and parts are gap. The distinction between new-core nodes and old-core nodes is just how strongly they are connected to other core nodes. New-core nodes are not as strongly connected (they are still transitioning, and they have lots of connectivity with the mini-gap networks they are transitioning from).

None of this invalidates the prescriptive parts of PNM Theory – Shrinking the Gap ("The GAP" as a network on mini-gaps or ungoverned spaces) is still the goal.

The Core-networks/Gap-networks idea also transitions nicely to domestic applications of PNM theory. Lesson from Network Science could also be added to expanding PNM Theory.

Update: An earlier Coming Anarchy post on Ungoverned Spaces

Update: Related at Phatic Communion

On “Unrestricted Warfare” and the Generations of War Framework

The book Unrestricted Warfare (or Total Warfare in some translations) written by PLA Colonles Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui covers a wide range of possible conflict methods. It is available at Amazon.com or free on the internet via as a PDF. I read the book in early 2004.

I started writing about this earlier in the day in this post, but I realized I was going off on a tangent. The Hacker/Botnet post got me thinking about the book some more.

What I got from the book was a broader thinking on the range of methods of conflict, and in the interesting ways that different methods can be combined.

The following methods are listed:

• Atomic warfare
• Diplomatic warfare
• Financial warfare
• Conventional warfare
• Network warfare aka Information Technology Infrastructure warfare (not to be confused with Netwar or Network-Centric warfare)
• Trade warfare
• Bio-chemical warfare
• Intelligence warfare
• Resources warfare aka Natural Resources warfare
• Ecological warfare
• Psychological warfare
• Economic aid warfare
• Space warfare
• Tactical warfare
• Regulatory warfare
• Electronic warfare
• Smuggling warfare
• Sanction warfare
• Guerrilla warfare
• Drug warfare
• Media warfare
• Terrorist warfare
• Virtual warfare (deterrence)
• Ideological warfare

This list should not be thought as of definitive and final.

Offhand it might be useful to add the following to the list:

• Culture warfare
• High Energy warfare
• Infrastructure Systems warfare (e.g. roads , power – think Russia turning off gas pipelines)
• Lawfare aka Legal Systems warfare (was implicitly stated)
• Meme warfare (kind of covered in Ideological warfare)
• Meteorological/Geophysics warfare
• Nanotech warfare (future)
• Netwar
• Network-Centric warfare
• Open Source warfare
• Population / Immigration Warfare
• Reputation warfare
• Robotic warfare

The authors suggest that different methods can be combined in interesting ways.

For instance, the John Robb's Global Guerrillas idea could be constructed as guerrilla warfare + infrastructure systems warfare + financial warfare + open source warfare.

Many of these conflict types resemble Nye's Soft Power ideas in that they are non-kinetic and indirect.

The conflict methods cut across the Generations of War categories.

For instance Atomic Warfare:

• 2GW: Strategic Nuclear Weapons
• 3GW: Tactical Nuclear weapons to take out, redirect, and neutralize large Soviet armored formations
• 4GW: The threat of nuclear terrorism and blackmail
• 5GW: Actor A convinces actor B that actor C is planning nuclear terrorist activity against actor B, so actor B needs to take out actor C before actor C has the capability ready; Or actor A does the nuclear terrorist attack but frames actor C for it (same result in both cases)

So I am picturing a conflict matrix:

Left to Right: Hard Power methods / Soft Power methods.

Top to Bottom: 0GW, 1GW, 2GW, 3GW, 4GW, 5GW

One thing that is very noticeable, most of these methods are outside that of what is normally though of as the national security establishment. Also, the time-frames often are longer then that of a two-term president.

Ok, I should write more now, but I have to pack for a trip. Future Purpleslog will followup sometime later.

Hacker Botnets and 4GW

Via DIGG

Report claims Chinese military operating hacker botnets

It is feared that the thousands of botnets controlled by gangs in China, may be a "military reserve" for the Chinese Cyber War organization. A lot of the online gang activity seems to come out of China, and the Chinese government has relationships with hacker groups, and perhaps some of the gangs as well.

read more

The article links to a Strategy Page entry.

The use off Botnets to disrupt an enemies rear (and help to un-focus and redirect the public, important influencers, and national decision makers) is a high-tech tactic of 4GW (Forth Generation Warfare). The tactics of 4GW are employed by a weaker opponents (perhaps a non-state actor) to defeat a "stronger" 2GW/3GW opponent. While normally 4GW is being thought of a combination of Asymmetric warfare+terrorism+media manipulation+Psych-outs, the range of possibilities is quite broad.

A book called Unrestricted Warfare (or Total Warfare in some translations) written by PLA Colonles Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui covers a wide range of possible 4GW (and 5GW) tactics. It is available at Amazon.com or free on the internet via as a PDF.

Here is an interesting passage:

Corresponding to the "extended domain view" should be the new security concept of omnibearing inclusion of national interests. What it focuses on is certainly not limited to the issue of national security but rather brings the security needs in many areas including the political security, economic security, cultural security, and information security of the nation into one's own target range. This is a "large security view" which raises the traditional territorial domain concept to the view of the interest domain of the nation. The increased load of this type of large security view brings with it complications of the target as well as the means and methods for realizing the target. As a result, the national strategy for ensuring the realization of national security targets, namely, what is generally called grand strategy, also necessitates carrying out adjustments which go beyond military strategies and even political strategies. Such a strategy takes all things into consideration that are involved in each aspect of the security index of the interests of the entire nation, as well as superimposes political (national will, values, and cohesion) and military factors on the economy, culture, foreign relations, technology, environment, natural resources, nationalities, and other parameters before one can draw out a complete "extended domain" which superposes both national interests and national security – a large strategic situation map.

Elsehwer in the book, the authors lay out various vectors of conflict:

• Atomic warfare
• Diplomatic warfare
• Financial warfare
• Conventional warfare
• Network warfare (Note from Purpleslog: Think Information Technology Infrastructure warfare)
• Trade warfare
• Bio-chemical warfare
• Intelligence warfare
• Resources warfare
• Ecological warfare
• Psychological warfare
• Economic aid warfare
• Space warfare
• Tactical warfare
• Regulatory warfare
• Electronic warfare
• Smuggling warfare
• Sanction warfare
• Guerrilla warfare
• Drug warfare
• Media warfare
• Terrorist warfare
• Virtual warfare (deterrence)
• Ideological warfare

..and then they write:

Any of the above types of methods of operation can be combined with another of the above
methods of operation to form a completely new method of operation. [17] Regardless of whether it is intentional or unintentional, the carrying out of combined methods of operation using different methods of operation that go beyond domains and categories has already been applied by many nations in the practice of warfare.

For example, the countermeasure used by the Americans against bin Laden is national terrorist warfare + intelligence warfare + financial warfare + network warfare + regulatory warfare; another example is what the NATO nations used to deal with the Southern Alliance Kosovo crisis: deterrence with the use of force + diplomatic warfare (alliance) + regulatory warfare; prior to this, the United Nations under pressure mainly from the United States adopted the methods of operation against Iraq: conventional warfare + diplomatic warfare + sanction warfare + media warfare + psychological warfare + intelligence warfare, etc. We also noticed that the means adopted by the Hong Kong government during the financial security warfare in August of 1998 to deal with financial speculators were: financial warfare + regulatory warfare + psychological warfare + media warfare, and even though they paid a heavy price, yet the results of the war were very good. In addition, the methods for matters, such as the large quantity printing of counterfeit Renminbi in Taiwan, very easily became a warfare measure of financial warfare + smuggling warfare. We can see from these examples the miraculous effects of applying addition-combination in methods of operation. If it is said that, owing to the limitations of technical measures and conditions, those engaged in warfare in the past were still unable to freely combine all factors for winning wars, then today the great explosion of technology led by information technology has already provided us with this type of possibility. Only if we are willing and do not allow subjective intentions to depart from objective laws, will we then be able to arrange the cards in our hand into various types of hands based on need until finally winning the entire game. However, there is no one who can write a guaranteed winning prescription for all future wars.

The authors present a view point of conflict between international actors that is broader then simply kinetic warfare. The combining of vectors shows the complexity of modern offensive and defensive security operations. The authors did not write explicitly using the 2GW/3GW/4GW/5GW framework.

You know, I am charging the focus of this post too much from the original post. I will continue with thinking about unconventional warfare, total conflict, and 4GW, 5GW, in another post.