Always good to hear from you, Wilf and glad that you helped get this discussion flowing. Your views here on the media and warfare are neat, plausible and wrong

The media is not "irrelevant". If commanders find themselves eschewing perfectly legal and militarily efficient options because of how they would "look" under conditions of a panopticon battlefield, then the political effect of the media is one of the variables to which modern armies must adapt. If the adaptation is a continual circumscribing of military operations over time, then I submit that they are not being particularly creative in adapting.

ALL WAR has ALWAYS been uncertain and complex. Adaptation has ALWAYS been required
Yes, but what matters here is to what degree?

Warfare has oscillated historically through periods of stability where tactics, weaponry, accepted rules of engagement and parley, treatment of prisoners went unchanged in significant ways for decades or even centuries. I agree with you that "adaption has always been required" but as institutions, militaries are often very conservative. It often takes many hard knocks for them to give up beloved but outdated practices, be they caste-based military systems, red coats, bronze cannon, horse cavalry or battleships.

This can be contrasted with periods of innovation where new ideas - for example, metal weapons, writing, the stirrup, gunpowder, close order drill, republican government, nationalism, industrial mass production, railroad timetables, atomic bombs - disrupted customary patterns of warfare. Some of these inventions amounted to game-changers for warfare.

The military that recognizes the need for adaption and executes it successfully wins a comparative advantage - for a time. The greater the number of innovations a military has to deal with at once, the more difficult that process becomes organizationally. Particularly, when the change is a societal one that is periphereal or indirect to immediate military concerns - like the information revolution.

You conduct operations in line with political guidance from your chain on command. You do not modify a plan because you fear the media. You modify a plan so as it best gains the political objective you Commander in chief is seeking to achieve.
Wilf, what democratic government with a modern military conducting operations is not going to expect its military leaders to make an effort a priori to account for the possible political effects of global media in their planning?

This concern goes beyond the traditional political-psychological-morale effects we saw at, say, at Tet after Cronkite's infamous broadcast. In a globalized world, war news impacts "hot money" flows of currency in or out of national economies. By itself, this media-driven market reaction can have a strategic, even crippling, impact on a nation's war effort in a very short time frame.

Sorry, the idea that "The media" has changed War is evidence free. The idea that modern war is complex, is progressed by those unable to understand it.

Media is only relevant in terms of it's political effect - so Clausewitz applies. Martin Luther had no modern media, and the Nazis only had radio and print - all of which was used to "political" not Military effect.
I do not see many examples of militaries these days successfully disaggregating political and military effects during combat, and a major reason for this is the ubiquity of media - professional and amateur.

Modernity is relative, not absolute. Luther had the printing press and the Bible in the vernacular. For his time, that was "modernity" and it had an explosive political impact that transformed the military dynamic of the Holy Roman Empire by giving rise to Protestant powers. While the Kaiser lost control over the Imperial German Army to Ludendorff and Hindenburg, Hitler's use of the radio ensured his ultimate command and control over the army and state until his very last days on earth before committing suicide. Radio was "modern enough" to permit the national political leadership to decisively micromanage the affairs of theater and army command.

To conclude, what I'm arguing for really, is greater military adaption to the effects of a global media in a way that preserves the greatest latitude for commanders to carry out their mission.