The New and Old Rules of War

Computerised social networks and immigration have been weaponised to destabilise developed nations. Can they hit back the same way?

At first glance, autocracies are winning easily. Poorly worded memes out of fake news farms stoke division within electorates. Even democratically elected leaders are looking to project power and control like the strongmen they once scorned.

"The New Rules of War" suggests that totalitarian states have surreptitiously undermined their more powerful rivals in the developed world with:

• disruptive waves of immigration, and;
• computer hacking, not merely in the form of systems penetration, but social manipulation, to fan fears of said immigration, and sow distrust of the establishment.

Why? My first guess is to reduce international oversight. A country suddenly consumed by internal problems is in less of a position to finger-wag at another. My second guess, related to the first, is to send a message to its own people: "That rich democracy over there is really a hypocritical dumpster fire that can't get its own house in order. You don't have it so bad under our strong leadership."

All is not lost. The book's author suggests that a fitting retaliation for rich countries would be using social media to ridicule, penetrate, and otherwise dismantle the image of competent consensus that authoritarian governments build around themselves. (e.g. Putin on a horse, Photoshop Xi Jinping with Winnie the Pooh.)

Going further, emigration out of those countries, perhaps from manufactured fears of being caught in the next anti-corruption crackdown [I can see the copy now, "Are you corrupt? Who says?"], could be harnessed to bleed still-developing economies of entrepreneurship and capital.

The book recognises that the U.S. used internal divisions and deniable proxy battles in the Cold War. It didn't simply act as a passive beacon of wealth and freedom. In this sense, the new rules of war look quite like the old. All that is missing is the decision to fight.