I would be interested in hearing about any testing of 4GW/5GW/GG/xGW ideas in multiverse areas like blogshares/second life/WoW/etc.

You know, as far as testing concepts goes that might not be a bad idea. Advantages would include a fairly controlled environment with a size that is large enough for the 5GW actors to fade into the background but small enough to be able to readily observe results. Very interesting.

Guys, I'm testing, testing.

The opponent has lately been using a very GGish operational style to gain back some ground. A kind of attrition where large numbers of blogs "held" by us get attacked repeatedly but in a minor way without being entirely taken over. We lose, say, 400 shares out of 4000 associated with each blog. As we rush to get those few shares back, down long lists of blogs -- a relatively simple maneuver but time consuming -- they hit somewhere else, or another member of that corporation jumps in to take back the few shares we had recovered. The enemy corporation watches each others' transaction logs, so they know when and where we are trying to recover those small sums of shares.

It's all very interesting. As for 5GW return maneuvers...ha, well I won't be posting them here, for what should be obvious reasons. ;)

Maybe you should kick it over to the forum, then Purple and I can do some of that 5GW advising that Baron D was talking about.

You know this gave me an idea for something that might be explored in the future.

'5GW analysis paralysis'

In other words, what is the effect of the knowledge that you have an opponent merely capable of 5GW campaigns? Given the inherent secrecy of 5GW your opponent has only two real options, (regardless of if you choose the engage in a 5GW campaign or not) he can proceed as if no campaign is ongoing and accept your influence while trying to maintain his objectives, or he can search so obsessively for the 5GW manuevering against him that he ceases to able to function as a legitimate threat.

Or: He can begin to engage his own 5GW plan (if he understands the basic concepts.)

I once mentioned on tdaxp that I thought the only effective defense against 5GW would be another 5GW operation. Dan disagreed. I think that Dan might say that preemptive resilience (institutional, infrastructure, ideology perhaps) would be the first defense and that the secondary defense would be an offense which attempts to "degrade" your 5GW opponent into operating at 4GW or below. I believe the post in question was a consideration of America and federalism; don't remember, however.

The problem with each of these defenses:

1. Preemptive resilience: The 5GW attacker works with an iterative process; he's always judging the reality of any present conditions and tweaking his operations. I view 5GW as being the most dynamic of the generations of warfare. Whatever resiliencies you have built will become part of that plan. (Moreover, I wonder if inherent in the idea of resiliency is a dependence not only on that resiliency itself but also on static conditions able to "re-bound" after attacks or changing circumstances. This reminds me of the little quibble I had with DeAngelis once, early on, since resiliency is often thought of in terms of "bouncing/jumping back" into a specific place/condition.)


2. Degradation of 5GW: While degradation can happen naturally, through the fault of the 5GW planner, forcing a degradation would require that the defender be able to surpass the 5GW. I.e., it would require some type of 6GW operation -- unless, that is, we want to reconsider the generational framework by positing that (x+1)G is not designed to overcome xG,is not actually able to cause 20-times losses and so forth. A 5GW defense might be able to degrade a 5GW attack; but surely at least an on-par defense would be require for intentional degradation of a 5GW force.

I've bumped that last comment to a post at D5GW.