I must inquire: Does American realize that we are in various kinds of war as we speak. Most of them are in what I can information and cognition war fighting domains. This choice of domains by our enemies is not a choice of tactics but a deliberate choice of aim, goals, objectives, and strategies. In this struggle, one finds many pressure points, decisive points, and centers of gravity. Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, proxies, and drug cartels are waging mental wars/combat against us underneath the rubric of wars of wits all the time at all levels of war and across all domains of conflict. With thought, one finds the fighting is primarily occurring via information war and cognitive war. Trouble is, as currently thought about, depicted in doctrine, and used revolves around these concepts as commodities to be sliced and diced for everyone. In my view, this is the wrong approach.

In the Information Age, however, one must view both information and cognition them as actual war fighting domains. This means our thinking and doctrine must recognize both information and cognition as not only commodities but also as war fighting domains. Yes, in my view we need seven domains of conflict—air, ground maritime, space, cyber, information, and combat. Yes, in my view we need four levels of war—tactical, operational, strategic (military), and strategic (policy/political). I discuss this paradigm shift in The Moral Imperative of Our Time—Purposeful Intellectual Growth.

Mental warfare is nothing new. Great military minds have always waged war on their opponent’s minds—some of those minds include the works of Sun Tzu, Scipio Africanus, Caesar, Hannibal, Napoleon (Austerlitz, not Moscow 1812), Mao, Manstein, Zhukov, Giap, Slim to name a few. As the omnipresent antipode, not so great military minds have neither considered nor failed to think similarly to their enemies (e.g., wargame their wargaming, defeating one’s own plans) and thus failing to beat them in all kinds of conflict prevalent in operational contexts of the Information Age. Taking the thought even further, America’s warriors and their organizations will not always possess one, two, or all seven of the kinds of advantages one seeks in war: (1) initiative, (2) tempo, (3) momentum, (4) knowledge, (5) decision, (6) position, and (7) freedom of movement/freedom of maneuver. One will struggle, lose, struggle to attain, lose and so on as these advantages prove irresistible to any military mind and system, meaning one must know when they have the advantage in these areas and exploit the advantage and know when one or more advantages rest with the opponent and strive to regain these advantages. This is a normal logic of war, but it (the logic) must expand to include the information and cognition domains.

Thus, to fight and win in the Information Age, one must prepare their military and political people to learn ‘how to think,’ engage in ‘deep thinking,’ and ‘critical thinking.’ I define these terms in my new book, The Moral Imperative of Our Time: Purposeful Intellectual Growth. As one fights in the information age, it is of even greater importance than in present combat to possess agile minds, organizations, and technologies. Auftragstaktik must come to drive how one leads and fights; therefore, one must understand the term, read history to see how leaders have used it in planning and executing engagements, battles, and campaigns. And military units must practice using Auftragstaktik in training as it engenders acceptance of greater risk and a sharp reduction in micro-management, and a capability to explain one’s intent via vision and conceptualization, hence know how to think and describe to subordinates one’s intent and plan. To do so calls for a paradigm shift in a quick and major shift in ‘how to think,’ leaders, instructors, professors, and learners must understand the definition of ‘how to think,’ and discuss in doctrine.

Also, to win in the Information Age, one must define “will” and explain its intricacies (see essay one in my new book The Moral Imperative of Our Time—Purposeful Intellectual Growth; it is about Verdun where leaders failed repeatedly via vapid thinking). Yes, one must be prepared for physical aspects of wars and conventional warfare such as LSCO but also prepare for MDO, unrestricted warfare, hybrid war, asymmetric war, irregular war, drug wars, cyber war, and mental combat. Yes, one must prune ‘end state’ from doctrinal lexicons and substitute the concept of aftermath, or actuating aftermath, or states of continuity signifying the constant changes inherent in any kind of conflict in any domain, at any level. One can argue that there the term ‘end state’ is a misnomer and a psychologically dangerous one at that, e.g., Franco/Prussian War 1870-1871, Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Iraq 2003-2007, and Afghanistan 2001-2021 and beyond.

My new book, The Moral Imperative of Our Time—Purposeful Intellectual Growth–addresses these issues and argues that we need to revamp our doctrine, organizations, training and education, leadership, and materiel development to meet these challenges. See Amazon—https://a.co/d/dfTVR6F—e-book is the cheapest. One can find a visual and verbal summary of the book on my book’s website—mwaynehall.com—. With respect to both book and summary, you will want to read/visualize essays one, four, and five for warfare in today’s world and the Information Age per se, and essays two and three for meeting intelligence challenges of war in the information age. MDO alone will cause great upheavals in our attempts to perform the intellectual and intelligence systems’ requirements.

Unfortunately, our enemies are very smart and are coming at us via many avenues of approach, e.g., unrestricted warfare, hybrid warfare, cyber war, information war, asymmetric war, mental combat, and so on. To my way of thinking, one cannot just plod along preparing for the big one while our opponents are coming at us in many other ways other than LSCO. LSCO is the least likely of any of the kinds of warfare I have mentioned about. Read Peter Schweizer’s book, Blood Money for a good synopsis of China’s war against us now.

Wayne Michael Hall
Brigadier General
US Army, Retired