Is this moment 1968 or 1859?
Is it a radical moment that will pass or the prelude to a calamity? Is it even possible to know in advance? Extreme fringe people have always whispered about “the coming civil [/race] war”. We have all met ‘that guy’ and dismissed them outright. After all, America has endured plenty of tough times without imploding. The idea that we will return to the days of Ulysses S Grant v Robert E Lee is just absurd. We have got through worse events and we will again prevail. Some might even think that the big invisible powers will never let it get so bad that their lives will be impacted by terrible things happening all around them. Eventually even the billionaires have to leave the gated community.
This book explores the long term historical, cultural and technological drivers that have culminated in this unique moment. The news is not good. There is a crisis in society that is being manipulated by powerful monied forces, foreign and domestic, that are pushing the US deeper into a crisis.
In fact political and paramilitary operations have been underway for some time now and are making significant headway. The political strategy is Bannon’s VietCong shadow village operation. A ground up campaign to threaten and intimidate local officials to adopt the Qanon line. It is working. Local election officials are resigning in astonishing numbers. Likewise, Qanon friendly candidates are being seeded in local, state and federal campaigns. This is the infrastructure with which ‘alternate’ electoral slates will be created to override election results in favor of the preferred outcome.
This has all been made possible by twenty years of crises that have befallen America. Lost wars, pandemics, economic crises, and administrative incompetence have stirred up massive social dislocation and misery. The burden of all of this is distributed unequally. The masses are understandably furious at the elites. Given the right manipulation, that energy translates to political power.
As if on cue, the most perfect mass manipulation toolset every created has fully infiltrated every society on earth. Social media has completely changed commerce, labor, capital, and communications. Optimizing for attention in commerce becomes optimizing for extremism in politics. Abnormal and fringe people are no longer isolated from society or one another. Algorithms bring them together and provide a false sense of legitimacy and normalcy to their thoughts. Innocent passers by who may visit a tangental page, find themselves fed into extremist online communities where many get angry and stay. For example, YouTube recommended Alex Jones and InfoWars 15 billion times during the 2016 election.
In this sense, the crisis facing America is real but its intensity and norm-busting drivers of radical social change are completely manufactured.
Civil Wars II explains how this has happened.
About the author
Adam served as a Principal Strategist for USSOCOM where he was involved in designing clandestine war plans for special mission units. He is now Director General of Contexr, a national security upstart start-up based in Washington DC. Adam has lived, studied and worked all over the world including as a Special Director of Strategic Programs for an allied DoD in the Indo-Pacific. He earned a PhD under Sir Harry Hinsley (wartime codebreaker and official historian of British Intelligence in WWII) at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he researched the rise of non-state actors as challengers to the power of the state. Over the course of more than a decade he served with distinction as a professor of strategy at the United States Air War College, the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the United States Naval War College. At Newport, Adam was Director of a classified US Navy intel-planning-ops cell dedicated to assessing future enemy WMD concepts of operations and charged with devising innovative ways of deterring and defeating such threats. This organization was unique in the US Government in that it combined activities across the J2, J3, and J5, for US Strategic Command, US Special Operations Command and US Pacific Command (primarily), and worked closely with the IC and the NSC in assessing, developing and shaping America’s nuclear war plans. Contexr’s mission is helping US DOD (and related organizations) prepare for major great power conflict in Asia by providing much needed context to operational and strategic design.
"The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government."
How did you arrive at this topic?
Curiocity. I was completely clueless about any of this stuff, focusing my attention on the usual (to me) stuff: China, WMDs, SOF CONOPs, and a slate of national security issues that I track with varying degrees of focus. I was also researching a new book on WMDs and how the world of mutually assured destruction had essentially disappeared and no one had seemed to notice.
Then a man shoots up a pizza joint because he is certain that the leader of a major American political party is raping children and drinking their blood in the basement of a suburban pizza parlor. That was so patently insane I was fascinated to learn how on earth anyone could believe such a thing. So I started casually tracking the topic. Frankly, I could not make heads or tails of it. Then related events started to happen. These kept getting my attention. I struggled to understand how people could believe things that on their face were self evidentially just plain stupid. A steady side drum beat was the whole Russian interference issue. That I could understand perfectly well. It is in their interests to use unconventional capabilities to destabilize the domestic order of their chief adversary. But something about that also surprised me a little. That it was so effective. Once I realized these were two streams that interconnected I started to understand.
By Jan 1, 2021, as I was doing my predictions for the year, I wrote, inter alia,
Supporters of President so riled up by stolen election talk that risk of violence is medium and growing. On one side they will be seen as patriots, on the other, terrorists (is the VIED in TN portentous?) China and Russia, taking advantage of turmoil in the US, will use every means and opportunity to assert their increasingly virulent interests through cloaked-warfare. The big question for 2021 is will they cross the observable war threshold? New START, the last standing check on a nuclear insecurity spiral, is in the balance. Authoritarianism still grows in the west and anarchy elsewhere. But aside from that, I foresee rainbows and unicorns.
Bear in mind the Former President (FPOTUS) - had not agreed to transition power peacefully and had stated on a number of occasions he would only hand over power if he won. What I had in mind at the time was the following scenario. Come Inauguration Day FPOTUS refuses to leave. Armed ‘militia’ groups (like Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Boogaloo, etc) surround the White House perimeter. Tens of thousands of unarmed red hat wearing supporters swarming the entire zone from the Mall to the perimeter fence.
This would trigger a very complicated situation at the strategic and operational level. Strategic - Biden would be President but that would need to be enforced. Would they fight or form some kind of government in exile until the mob grew tired and ended the site House seize? Operationally it would be a nightmare - for the US Secret Service (USSS), and other related agencies and government departments. Who to support? A decision would be needed to be made on the spot. There would be no time for cases to go to courts and all the rest. The aggressors would design the crisis as a moment for decisive action. They would hold the initiative, energy and passion.
How would this unfold? Would the immediate FPOTUS USSS detail split and side with the protectee causing other elements of the USSS to have to go in and take down their colleagues? Would the entire USSS side with the protectee turning the White House into a bunker? Would it turn into ‘Waco’ with USSS/Proud Boys v FBI HRT/Tier 1 SOF? All the while with thousands of unarmed FPOTUS supporters swarming around the zone.
I didn’t publish that scenario because I did not want to give anyone any ideas.
Then Jan 6 happened.
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Hopefully this will not be necessary for substack. Nevertheless, I recognize this is a highly contentious subject and passions are raging. I come to this from a national security policy expert position.
So it might be worthwhile to set the ground rules up front.
Substantive, evidence based, well formulated discussion and disagreement are welcome.
Sources: If you make a point please include a quality source to help the reader check the facts claimed. A quality source is one the adheres to high journalistic standards, including multiple independent source verification, and a clear distinction between factual reporting and editorial/opinion. All media is biased to one degree or another. It is impossible to avoid. Being aware of these biases and the issue of quality is important.
Enlarge this fascinating media bias chart by ad fonts media.
Dismissing a point based on a source can be justified if it is an obviously poor source. However, I would prefer that a quality counter source is supplied to make a point and I endeavor to do this myself.
The New York Times cannot be equated to Infowars. “Doing your research” does not mean visiting your angry uncles blog or a Facebook group. If you disagree, this substack is not for you.
Partisanship. I have been highly critical of the current and past administrations. Criticizing one side does not automatically equate to support for the other.
An argument is a connected series of evidence-based statements to establish a definite proposition. This may form the basis of a hypothesis. These should then be tested against competing hypotheses. This is a dialectical process (debate) where differences are identified, mutual concessions made and joint resolutions are agreed upon (hypothesis, antithesis, synthesis).
Unacceptable responses include
‘What about’ ism. Example "Well what about [totally random unconnected propaganda with no evidence"]. That is not an answer to a well formulated proposition. Only an equally well formulated and explained proposition can be used as a counter.
Ad hominem attacks - name calling, rudeness, all caps, attacks based on identity or assumed identity.
It is important to try and be aware of cognitive biases. We all do it. Awareness helps avoid it.
List of 50 Cognitive biases.
List iof 30 logical fallacies.
List of 15 common data fallacies.
I reserve the right to delete a contribution or ban anyone I believe is trolling, being rude, will not make a substantive counter argument or routinely ignores these basic guidelines.
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