Conflict – The Information Badger

The Badger recently saw an elderly pensioner clash with an Extinction Rebellion (XR) activist at a demonstration in London. The clash triggered the Badger to think about ‘smart warfare’ and reminded him that anything prefixed with ‘smart’ might mean ‘clever’, but it doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good’ or ‘beneficial’.

‘Can you zealots stop blocking my way please’, the pensioner asked politely. ‘I’m not a zealot; I’m a climate activist engaged in smart warfare’, the activist replied with a sneering arrogance. The pensioner responded indignantly with ‘I’ve been climate and environment conscious for years, so you should be ashamed about being at war with me when it’s the big countries in other parts of the world that have the biggest impact on the planet’s climate’. With that the pensioner pushed past the activist blocking their way. With a derogatory hand gesture, the activist turned their attention to someone else. The activist believed they were engaged in ‘smart warfare’, but to the Badger they seemed to be illustrating the polarising, fixated, tribal behaviour that is prevalent in today’s world.

The phrase ‘smart warfare’ tends to trigger thoughts of ever-evolving advanced military weaponry and a future of cyber warfare, swarms of drones, and robots. The activist’s use of the phrase, however, illustrates that ‘smart warfare’ is really modern-day terminology for the centuries-old execution of power over people using whatever clever tools and techniques are available. Tools range from extreme physical violence to the most subtle psychological techniques that enable one mind to influence and control another. Yes, clever advances in technology broadens the tools available and changes how wars are contested, but truly ‘smart warfare’ requires more than just technology, it requires clever, effective, and inspirational leaders, and committed and united people. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows that subjugating a population takes more than advanced ballistic, information, cyber, economic, and propaganda weaponry. It’s people that conduct ‘smart warfare’ not technology, and people will always find ways to resist against the odds regardless of the clever technology in use.

As the XR activist’s use of the phrase illustrates, ‘smart warfare’ has broadened beyond the military domain into the routines of normal life in our globally connected, online world full of misinformation, disinformation, processing of personal data, and location and preference tracking. When you buy a traditional newspaper from a shop, there’s no record of the articles and adverts you look at or share with other people, your opinions, other people you associate with, or whether something in the paper prompted you to make a purchase or change your behaviour. The opposite is true when we use the phones, tablets, and laptops that dominate life today. ‘Smart warfare’ is thus a routine aspect of life today because organisations are using clever tools to analyse this information to wield power over us! With this in mind, always use the apps on your phone, tablet, or laptop wisely…

Working at senior levels in major organisations exposes you to decision makers with different personalities, motives, and different ways of interpreting a situation. You tend to calibrate decision makers, and hone instincts that alert you to circumstances where their decisions take the organisation in a direction destined to fail. These instincts woke like never before while watching Mr Putin’s theatrics justifying the invasion of Ukraine. Mr Putin has put himself and his regime on the road to eventual demise, at least that’s what the Badger senses.

By invading Ukraine, Mr Putin has shaken democracies out of a comfortable complacency with Russia, galvanised democratic nations into unity of action, and forced the United Nations to question Russia’s membership of the Security Council. Mr Putin has ‘form’; he sent troops into Georgia and Crimea and his regime’s institutions are implicated in using a nerve agent against people in Salisbury in the UK and an opposition activist in Russia itself. The regular television pictures of him sitting at his long table distanced from others conveys an insecurity and the aura of an obsessed, irrational, barbaric, bully corrupted by power. A bully, however, can only be a bully if those being bullied allow themselves to be a victim. Standing up to a bully by not allowing them to have power over you is the best way to deal with any bully, and that’s just what the courageous people of Ukraine are doing. Western democracies are now doing this too and Mr Putin will be held responsible for his actions.

The fate of the Ukrainian people is in the balance, but their ‘fight to the end’ spirit reminds the Badger of his father’s stories from sheltering as a twelve-year old boy in London’s Underground during the Blitz in World War 2. He often said that ‘everyone believed they had right on their side, and everyone had a warrior spirit inside to fight if enemy troops arrived in London’. This inherent spirit is much in evidence in Ukraine today.

Today’s world is highly dependent on connected IT systems and computer devices, and nations across the globe have been ramping up their defensive and offensive cyber capabilities over the last decade to mitigate threats. However, although cyber incidents undoubtedly feature in this conflict, this war shows that conventional military forces with bombs and bullets are needed to take territory and supress a population. Although few people consider themselves to be any kind of warrior, the Ukrainians have shown not only that we have to fight for our freedoms, but also that in today’s world this means we must all now be warriors. The world today is different to that experienced by my father during the London Blitz. Mr Putin, however, has shown that while the world might be different, with people like himself in positions of enormous power, the world is no better than it was 80 years ago.

Category: Conflict

Smart Warfare…

We must all now be warriors…