Netwar
We at the Sharp End of things must Sharpen Our Ends / / Netwar First Raw Efforts
If you would network war, then network war.
Network is the organization.
Return to Limited War. Kept as much as possible between Combatants.
Clausewitz defined war as: An act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.
Control of the People is not the Objective. That is Evil.
Destruction of the enemy and his will to resist is the Objective.
The people are allowed neutrality, their natural course.
CLOUD OR NETWORKED CONFLICT
The network is the logical evolution of war.
It's an obviously superior method of organization and coordination.
From the Internet we learn how to make networks work together.
Current conflicts are collections of disparate networks. They organize differently than traditional Command and Control organizations, along the lines of a starfish rather than a spider. If you cut off part of a starfish it regenerates, the cut off limb make become an entirely new starfish.
If a spider loses a limb it is crippled, if you cut off its head it dies.
But the traditional organization has the advantage of being able to marshal, control, command and coordinate resources and action. The various disparate networks while being much more resilient and agile are ground to a paste slowly by Command organizations superior marshaling and control of resources. The challenge is to maintain networks full grasp and use of the modern and their incomparable agility in learning, adapting, and surviving assaults while finding a way to better marshal and exploit this incomparable resiliency.
If someone has already done something similar, we should learn from it. They have, it's called the Internet.
From the Internet we learn how to make networks work together. Disparate groups with disparate and conflicting interests, often in direct competition work together every second. It's not machines, its machines put to the service of those same groups.
That's what networks are.
These groups have concerns, control, security, limited resources, integrity of transaction.
The first Internet was built to survive a Nuclear Holocaust. It endures, self-heals, has many checks for security, integrity, transaction, conserving of resources.
There is no Command and Control. There is Coordination.
Begin with Public aliases. They conserve resources and provide Security.
And they can act as aliases for one, one to many, or many to one.
Begin as the Internet did; simply, building out, scaling out, increasing in complexity and scale as organizations grew.
When a network goes live it advertises its existence, by action if nothing else.
What you advertise and to who is of paramount concern.
The earliest inter-networks developed protocols to coordinate and transact. One was called routing information protocol. It has two important features - split horizon or never advertise information back towards where you learned it from, and poison reverse: if you no longer trust that path it's advertised as unreachable. This model should be how strangers begin. With one way drops and aliased communications.
DO NOTHING however until they are vouchsafed, for obvious reasons.
The most important relationship on the Internet is that of the "peer speakers" or Peering. Organizations decide who talks to the Cloud, what alias they use, and what information or transactions are exchanged. Peers are selected to speak to other peers and coordinate exchanges. Peers begin by advertising themselves to others.
The Cloud or Internet itself is coordinated by peer relationships, by design it is very slow to converge. That's to prevent constant disruption; it can be strength or a weakness.
Security and integrity are critical to establishing and maintaining peer relationships, protocols exist to do this. Of course, it begins by the peers being known to each other or vetted, or how can there be any trust?
Suggestions for peering
* When you stop hearing from them, don't advertise or attempt traffic towards that peer. Assume they're gone.
*You weight or prefer some peers and routes to them over others. Your internal peers are of course more trusted than the external peers or groups.
* There are natural boundaries between organizations of people, interests, geography.
A trusted entity should be the intermediary at those borders.
*The trusted intermediary is a key critical point. This can be exploited, so there should be redundant paths and backup intermediaries. Only a minimum should be active at any one time for maximum resiliency. The less exposed, the less the loss. The inactive networks are the network ‘sleepers.’
*Thou shalt not advertise thy internal matters. And be cautious about sharing external deliberations or actions internally.
The Cellular Network
A cell is the base unit of the network, it peers by nature on multiple sides. The size of the cell should be 8 people. Peering is based on the 8 compass points. Cells and their natural peering clusters of cells allow maximum resiliency and scaling. Scale both horizontally on all sides, and it allows scaling upwards.
If the cell or cell clusters are alone for whatever reason, then operate as a stand-alone network using the same principles.
This is not a classic network of resistance cells. It's for local forces defending their own homes and communities. This is modeled off the Swiss, Finn, Vietnamese local Defense forces. The Swiss one was formidable enough to deter Hitler, the Finns defeated Stalin, and the Vietnamese in addition to their business with us trounced the Chinese Army in 1979 with Villagers defending their local communities.
Our equivalent is militia or the English Yeomanry.
However, since going out and digging foxholes and trenches in your yards will not save you, and will be literally a dead giveaway, it shall be networked.
The optimum network is what makes your phone work - the Cellular Network.
A cell network works by having repeater towers spread over an area, when you turn your phone on your phone associates itself to the nearest repeater, when you move it picks up the signal from the next nearest one.
Here's the key: you too shall be mobile and out roaming with your cell - your trusted little circle whose leadership you elected - and defending your local area.
Your leadership or trusted delegates will tie in with the adjacent cells on 5-6 sides. When defense is needed swarm to that area hitting and running on pre-arranged or designated targets on guidance of your leadership, massing, striking, and withdrawing on their direction. It is not everybody run over here now - which would be followed of course by everyone running away when the enemy massed their firepower against it.
Swarming means hitting multiple targets from multiple directions, then withdrawing or massing again based on both plans and direction. Remember you're overwhelming the enemy's senses with scores of attacks without a main effort or targets for him to focus fires and people on - although you have objectives. The volume and wide dispersion of attacks is your substitute for raw brute force and numbers.
You'll know your objective, or your leaders will, the enemy [hopefully] won't know in time to organize a concerted reaction.
This means you'd better have your direction - leadership - agreed on prior as well as your priority and other pre-planned targets. As the enemy has a vote you'll have to react to their actions, any internal voting had better have happened before you left the house. Debates are over when you commit. Choose your leaders wisely, pick the Strongest Horses not the popular ones.
PICK THE STRONG HORSE.
Cellular Leadership
As noted, your fellows will have elected you, there should be at least 4 leaders with the Primary as Commander of your Cell. It might be prudent not to call him Commander, by the way.
There then follows the matter of higher leadership. They'll be overlap with local cell leadership, but this person will need people to gather intelligence, perform logistics, coordinate operations. And of course, there must be bosses.
So, among the Primary and Secondary Leaders, they must decide by some process who is fit to perform these higher-level network functions. The identity of these people must not be known to the rank and file, or anyone who doesn't need to know, and the key people should designate successors unknown to all but a tight circle.
You would also consider there may well be input from above.
Remember at all times a network that can't immediately regenerate either by predesignate, process or election isn't worthy of being called a network. Have a combination of methods. Leaders will be killed, wounded or captured and interrogated.
Plan that captured people will talk. There's also the matter of infiltration.
A robust network can adapt and heal around all, and a robust leadership network can heal and adapt around adversity and re-task assets from damaged or decimated groups.
This brings us to elections.
Elections in a network.
ELECTIONS: Do not confuse network elections with political elections. Elections are a network feature for regenerating a network when it has suffered disruption or need to adapt to new conditions. We are adapting a network principle to regenerate networks.
That is why they are important. It's a network regeneration/adaptive principle.
Elections can be directed or weighted from above [and often should be] but elections are not political. By using network elections and other networking principles to adapt or regenerate around damage or compromise or adapting for advantage you are changing the “Inexorable destruction and replacement" of organizations that is feeding them into the maw; by instead regenerating or adapting the network to the situation. It's less destructive and more efficient than feeding resources into a hopper to be eaten.
Remember it doesn't have to be perfect; it has to be better and faster.
Elections in a network are not a vote. It's a determination based on preset criteria and process for determining what node is in designated to be in charge and the next backup node, what functions are performed by each, and those designated nodes control and route assets of either people or materials for operations, intelligence, and logistics.
These are traditional Command functions - but in a network we avoid traditional Command and Staff relationships. Oh, let the enemy have that...
Some of the criteria will be local, but much common. The criteria must be predetermined prior to operations. Common criteria would be combat power relative to the tactical situation, logistical assets, possible compromise for which we must be guarded but not paranoid, the intelligence and political situation. Once you have your criteria set then have a process and communications to determine these criteria relative to each other, the strongest node has command. Based on a combination of that criteria, direction from above, or designation by the Primary Node the backup is also known by this same election process. Again - this is a process based on criteria and not a vote. And guess what? If and when the backup node becomes primary, the election process takes place again, in the background - the primary node remains in control, but the next backup is already "elected" that is ready to assume control.
You should also run the election process after every major change for good or bad.
The most common result may indeed be status quo and should be.
Reasons for switching to the backup: loss of communications, destruction, capture, nearing capture, must relocate due to the tactical situation, or a reasonable belief it has been intelligence compromised -that is infiltrated or eavesdropped to such a degree it's unsafe to leave it in charge [or maybe in the network at all.
Not elections really but selections.
Communications: there are so many secure methods generally available this won't be touched on much, just that there should be multiple secure methods.
Remember at all times the networks and nodes are people, not electronic toys. You gain nothing but unwanted attention by having a bunch of electronically emitting toys clustered together. It's unnecessary - at any level - and more is definitely less for both information and security.