Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
Xi is using Mao's methodology to brainwash his citizens. The similarity between Xi and Mao is both embrace oppressive governance; the difference is Xi comes closer to embracing Confucius thought (as Xi calls it, socialism with Chinese characteristics) than foolishly embracing communism as Mao did. The results economically are night and day, but increasingly similar when it comes to oppressive governance. Like Mao in the 60s and 70s, Xi is now exporting this model of governance, and the means (IT, AI, etc.) for other nations to implement it. Xi infiltrates economically, then gains control of the various media outlets to the point of controlling country's media may publish, etc. With Huawei, artificial intelligence, facial recognition technology increasingly available, I think it is possible that Xi will gradually assert control over social media in other nations. If you control the information, then you can control the populace.

This thread started with the claim that our NDS is not a strategy. In the traditional sense it is a strategy, but one that clings to outdated Clausewitzian views of power. I'll refer back to a post I made a couple of years ago that is relevant here.

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...l=1#post202760

Connectography: Mapping the Future o...y Parag Khanna

I'm quoting reviewer on Amazon below:



Parag makes the following arguments:
- Infrastructure is destiny
- Connectography proves why past is no longer prologue
- Why China’s “One Belt, One Road” project is a winning strategy that outflanks the U.S. rebalance (Go) by integrating all of Eurasia’s economies under China’s auspices.

For those that think proxy wars are the way to compete, he offers a counterview. I am reading more and more thought pieces that propose we revert to Cold War proxy wars to compete, but to what end? It is hard to break from the past when our doctrine clings to it.



I think our national leadership has awakened to this fact (there are exceptions of course), but too late and we don't have a strategy to compete effectively for connectivity. We also have a White House that messages it is opposed to connectivity, creating opportunities for China to exploit.

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Hi Bill,

Connectography looks interesting and is now in my Kindle queue.

At a glance, it aligns quite nicely with my recent Mad Scientist submission.

Which network operating system(China or US) will offer individual users(consumers) and sovereigns(enterprise) the best respective value proposition?

I’ve been grounded in Metcalfe and learning how to apply Clausewitz.

I’m hoping those that are grounded in Clausewitz start applying Metcalfe.

I’ve been looking at two very sobering comparisons:

1) (E-commerce/mobile payments), Chinese > USA .....by 50x

2) (Relative spend in 2018 dollars), One Belt One Road > Marshall Plan .....by 50-90x

Advancements in disrupting & destroying insurgent networks is a useful capability(McChrystal et al), but how are we at amplifying friendly/coalition commercial network effects and deterring/disrupting adversary commercial networks via non kinetic means?

The GWOT expression “we can’t kill our way to victory” can also be recycled and repurposed for peer threats to “lethality doesn’t create positive geodigital network effects”.