Oddbean new post about login | logout In the future, I wonder what will be pointed to as the 'start'. I would say it started in 2020/21, especially following the release of the bioweapon. I guess there are many avenues to warfare nowadays.
there are "pillars" or "gates" to World Wars, especially Total War. Many have been activated, however covid 19 could may have well been one of them, but it's not as defined as blowing up a countries infrastructure, in particular undersea cables or pipelines. These have been recognized as a pillar or entry to war. This is why I say this, but it's not me saying this, it's CENTCOM and others - among the whisperers, who are like "shit that was actually a bad move by the establishment". When there's usually someone quick to blame i.e. "China Virus" then most likely it's not a caveat for war. When it's hushed and avoided, it usually is.
in any case, 5th gen warfare is warfare using the previous 4 iterations methods, tactics and strategy but equally "not having a war" - so the use of non-state actors (ISIS, Hamas, EDL, IRA, Proudboys, BLM, Azov, Wagner) to wage war on behalf of state actors. The reason is nukes. it's just not possible to have a hot war between the countries because nuclear escalation is pretty quick so becomes a null state of play. So the only way to keep the game going is to keep playing, all the time, on every sphere - land, sea, air, space, digital and psychological. In fact, you'll always feel like WW3 is about to break out, though it never really will (hot war) and that anxiety will be on-going until nukes are removed from the equation or the world is a radioactive wasteland.
I'm on board with all this, except I think the nuke narrative is a scare tactic.
