The Imperative for Competitive Initiative Democracies need multi-dimensional strategies suited to the highly competitive information and AI age. There are dozens of regional and functional US national strategies, but the overarching one is the US National Security Strategy (NSS). For historically understandable reasons, the NSS focuses on weapons technology as the most effective approach to…
The Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) “One Country, Two Systems” narrative toward Taiwan out-competes the US “strategic ambiguity” and “one China” policies even though it’s false. How? The narrative operates as a strategy to gain information advantage by propagating meaningful identity in structured content. In short, Narrative = Meaning, Identity, Content, and Structure (Ajit Maan, Dangerous…
Gulf of Tonkin, 1964 On 4 August 1964, data-driven decisions in an uncertain operational environment falsely assumed a North Vietnamese patrol boat attack on American destroyers in Gulf of Tonkin international waters. See Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s “The Fog of War” video account here, which mentions uncertainties such as weather, equipment limitations, and operator…
China uses narrative warfare as an integral part of diplomatic, informational, military, economic, and social (DIMES) combined effects to seize disputed territories. This Note explains how this strategy is globally propagated, narrated warfare. China’s Narrative Warfare China’s narrative normalizes the ends, ways and means of a strategy that is cooperative and confrontational, physical and psychological,…
Authoritarian states are weaponizing supply chains into all-effects warfare while democratic states compete with inferior strategies. We can be more competitive and wage superior complex warfare in kind.
Colonel John Boyd’s OODA Loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act— is a powerful model for making decisions in contested environments. Strategic use of information can defeat it. Understanding narrative strategies can protect it.