As an adjustment to both thinking and doctrine, America’s military thinking must include two additional domains of conflict—information and cognition. They must join with the current five domains—air, ground, maritime, space, and cyber. At the heart of this issue, one finds a distinct need for the military mind to expand and deepen its thinking. In the Information Age, information and intelligence cannot be mere commodities. No, they have become so important for success in winning military endeavors that they must be considered as both commodity and domain. Moreover, one can easily make the case that intelligence per se is a weapon system—it creates effects just as industrial age kinetic weapon systems. Furthermore, cognition is so important to commanders and planners that one can lose engagements, battles, and campaigns coming from a panoply of information idiosyncrasies, e.g., disinformation, misinformation, deception, interfering with and manipulating recursive data coming forth as a critical element in co-evolution and adaptation. As an aspect of information age warfare, opponents will employ smart data to collect and report on data at moment of impact and to sow confusion about the validity and quality of data.

This adjustment in both thought and doctrine is complicated. Nonetheless, the change is necessary because of the changes in warfare. Examples include computing, social media, narratives, data, variations of artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), holograms and avatars empowered by AI, deep machine learning, smart data, information, knowledge, communications, the advent of generative adversarial networks (GAN) and so on. It must be foundational in future war; command and control can quickly become extinct because of the advent of hunter/killer drones and speed of maneuver and ability to converge, diverge, and inherent cautionary and hiding propensities. Regardless, one can conclude that command and control must be survivable but also capable of controlling and directing hundreds and thousands of small and miniature capabilities as they mass, maneuver, swarm, attack, disaggregate, and rapidly change from massed attack into disaggregated hide sites.

Of note, many important battles will occur in the information domain such as battles of narrative, battles of truth, facts, evidence, quality of thinking, quality of decisions, quality of data, quality of thinking, quality of decisions, quality of training, disinformation, misinformation, deception, and so on. I imagine at least thirty-four new kinds of battles[1] facing our warriors in future conflict. Many of these battles will occur simultaneously and outcomes of these battles will have cascading effects because of the phenomenon of connectedness and the law of unintended consequences. Accordingly, outcomes of battles in these two new domains will have a tremendous influence on war’s outcomes, winning battles of “will,” designing meaningful purposes, understanding a meaningful theory of victory, establishing cogent policies as they connect with meaningful political goals and objects, and making decisions with minimal risk and desired outcomes. It follows that our modern warriors cannot continue to ignore these two new “wildernesses” of war—information and cognition.

Continuing with this line of thought, I submit that the new cognition domain is of critical importance to success as one wages war in the information age. Mental combat, within a bubble of wars of wits, occurs all the time in political, economic, social, information, and cerebral operations. Cognition involves rationality and thinking, in our case, military thinking, to succeed in combat operations. One must outthink their opponent; therefore, one must learn “how to think”[2] about their unpredictable, capable opponent, about the complexities of information age operational contexts, about participating in and winning in multidomain operations, and the meaning and relativity amongst themselves, populaces, cultures, allies, and corporate organizations. Mental combat, which I mentioned earlier occurs under the umbrella of wars of wits. Cognition and its focus on “how to think” and “what to think” skills constitute a principal aspect of both mental combat and wars of wits. Mental combat and wars of wits prove to be imperative to engaging and winning in MDO, hybrid war, unrestricted war, asymmetric war, irregular war, war against drugs, war against terrorism, and thwarting criminal gangs in our homeland. In my view cognition is a critically important aspect of modern information age warfare. As a part of my rational for this assertion, it is self-evident by now that America’s enemies have chosen unrestricted war, hybrid war, multi-domain operations and asymmetric warfare as their tools of war. These enemies are on the march around the earth. Many of these types of war will occur at once and our foes will connect and orchestrate them. All these kinds of war will tax human thought. Accordingly, thinking must occur at an extremely elevated level on a continuum. To this end, America’s people must learn how to think sufficiently well to outthink a variety of enemies and their leaders/ directors to include: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, drug cartels, terrorists, and criminals. As one of the most daunting mental tasks involves our thinkers to operationalize Sun Tzu’s dictums such as attack the enemy’s plans at their inception, attack the enemy’s plan, attack the enemy’s mind, seek the intersection of normal and extraordinary forces, and so on.

Typically, the American military learns “what to think,” which is training. What people don’t learn is “how to think,” which involves education, small groups, use cases, case studies, war games, and military reading from authors such as Sun Tzu, Caesar, J. F. C. Fuller, Corbet, Clausewitz, Jomini, Du Picq, B. H. Liddell Hart, T. E. Lawrence, von Manstein, Howard, Nietzsche, Goethe, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Slim, Leibniz, Jung, Bohm, Arendt, Alexander, and so on. “What to think” connects with “how to think,” and “why think.” Interestingly, the notion of “why think” involves a compulsory philosophy of thinking and its many capabilities and relationships coming forth and dominating mental combat and wars of wits. This triad, this whole, is powerful and tantalizing. Why? Because it is available for use by people who understand connectedness and emergence.[3] And learners in “how to think” education must learn foreknowledge (again one of Sun Tzu’s dictums) and anticipation to outthink one’s many enemies. Technology such as AI will help in this endeavor; however, humans must maintain control of AI and cause it to support them in mental combat and wars of wits.

Turbulence and change negate thinking of the future as a straight line forward. Instead, progress never follows a straight line but instead treks along one or more crooked lines moving forward and always appearing jagged with sharp twists and turns because of the influence of constantly changing interplay among humans, self-interests, and nonlinear operational contexts. One must envision a change in doctrine to facilitate our thinking. That is, one must discard the word end state as it connotes an end or closure to an engagement, battle, campaign, war, and so on. Instead, one must think about using actuating aftermaths a.k.a. desired states of continuity linking to one’s vision, aim, goals, and objectives. With deep thinking,[4] one must formulate plans to reach such states of being and thereafter knowing, of course, there is rarely an end to anything. Likewise, even with the best of visions, statements of intent, and concepts of operation, these pathways will change owing to resistance by constantly co-evolving and changing complex adaptive systems—human beings, organizations, cyborgs—and interference from nonlinear activities and unwanted data flows inherent in the operational context hosting any combat or conflict related situations.

With this background in mind, let us examine some impediments to accomplishing what I have presented. Next you find a list of impediments that always exist and always dampen the ardor for change.

1. Arrogance People can be arrogant and thus believe their thinking capabilities do not need improvement. Further, there is a certain and dangerous arrogance that comes with being strong and rich, like America is today.
2. Commodity vs. Domain People do not comprehend the need for information and cognition to be domains of war. Instead, they remain relegated to the status of commodity. While I recognize the need for the commodity roles, both information and cognition must rise and become domains of war too. I have explained my rational above in abbreviated form; I explain in more depth in The Moral Imperative of Our Time—Purposeful Intellectual Growth. When thought of and treated as commodities both information and cognition are starved of understanding, attention, resources, and thoroughly defined, explained, and conceptualized in doctrine.
3. Overreliance on Technology People tend to think that technology, AI, and processors, will think for humankind. This attitude relegates humankind to stoking the furnace with data and inputs and maintaining the systems that are machines or cyborgs. The old saw “why spend money developing human minds when machines such as the All-Source Analysis System (ASAS), the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS), and artificial intelligence (AI) will take over the heavy-duty thinking information age warfare requires. This line of thought is specious in that machines cannot do what well-trained and educated human minds can do. The military institutions need to educate and shape human minds so they can perform high-level “how to think” mental operations.
4. Not Invented Here Syndrome The not invented here syndrome is alive and well in America’s military learning institutions. One always recognizes the presence and influence of this dark cloud. That is, when an innovator or disrupter poses a new idea or different approach to thinking to an entrenched, anti-change bureaucracy, they approach interaction with trepidation. The guardians of no-change bureaucracies knock the ideas or approaches to innovative change and the expenditure of individual and organizational resources to learn “how to think,” with stock phrases such as: “we already do this,” “what do you know,” “we don’t need these ideas,” “we already train our intelligence analysts,” “what you advocate is too expensive,” “machines with AI will do these high-level thinking skills you advocate,” “doctrine (which should drive the need for “how to think” capabilities,) is inviolate,” or “I like what you are thinking, but my leaders and organization will never go for it and thus I won’t push the ideas forward,” “we don’t need our people to be PhDs,” and so on. Conventional wisdom is the twin to the omnipresent “not invented here” syndrome and proves alive and well and sets the stage for such tactics to maintain stability (which is what bureaucracies do).
5. Training Over Education Upon investigation, one finds that the high levels of thinking, the “how to think” portion of the triad of “how to think,” “what to think,” and “why think,” remains sublimated to “what to think” training. Training is cheaper than education and its outputs are much easier to quantify than “how to think” education. One can peek under the tent flap, as it were, and find an open kimono where even the casual observer finds the following negative situation in play—in learning how to think about intelligence analysis and collection one discovers that there is no philosophy, no system of thought, no theoretical underpinning, and no connection with military theory that has underpinned military thinking for millennia. Intelligence analysis and intelligence collection must have theoretical underpinnings, strong links to the great works in military history, a system of thought, and baseline theory all influencing and directing the way intelligence operations occur and how people think.
6. Intellectual Decline People do not recognize that America is experiencing an unprecedented decline in individual and collective intellects. I argue, though, that signs of this phenomenon exist; one just must look and listen. Any sentient, thinking being will see the telltale and glaring signs of this phenomenon as it ravages our minds, from schoolchildren to senior officers at the country’s war colleges. Unfortunately, one finds the appearance and influence of sophistry and gaslighting that convince people that they are great, that all is well with status quo thinking, and of the abject need to resist intellectual change.
7. Complexity of Reform Reforming how people learn “how to think” is difficult to think about, plan, and fix, as the overarching problem is big and terribly complicated.
8. Insufficient Reading People do not read enough—all of us must reenergize our minds and read challenging books.
9. Weak Theoretical and Philosophical Foundations Some systems of current critical thinking do not rest on sound philosophical, historical, and theoretical underpinnings. Intelligence collection and analysis and “will” do not have foundational systems of thought, philosophical underpinning, and theoretical foundations
10. Undefined and No Conceptual Explanation of “Will” “Will” is the central idea of conflict. Yet, even with the age-old importance of this term, this concept, one finds neither definition nor conceptualization in the military’s doctrine. This shortfall requires immediate fixing.
11. Focus on Technology Over Intellect One finds huge, expensive conferences, displays, symposia, and gatherings about technology for the future. Technological advancement is, of course, necessary. However, the human intellect has never (in my 54 years of critically thinking about the problem of the lack of attention to intellectual development) received the same attention and importance as given to technology and organizational design. I posit that the human mind must guide both technology and organizational design based on its views of future war. Leaders throughout the years neither provided sufficiently high priority of resources nor the effort to raise intellectual development to achieve a lofty goal. That goals is to develop intellects capable of performing the high-level thinking and “how to think” capabilities that are absolute and irrefutable for competing and winning against our highly capable panoply of unpredictable enemies. These enemies will operate in multiple domains performing with traditional and nontraditional capabilities in operational contexts replete with the unexpected influences of nonlinear characteristics. So, one must ask: who is working on a vision of human intellectual development to fight in future operational contexts against very capable enemies? The military’s investment in schools of advanced military studies is commendable; however, such efforts only reach a small number of people. Instead, curricula for intellectual development must be introduced at the lieutenant level and connect and complement captain to major to lieutenant colonel to general officer levels. Progression must: connect, be coherent, be increasingly challenging to eager minds, and complimentary.
12. Inadequate Intellectual Development Our many and diverse enemies are taking advantage of us because we don’t help people learn “how to think” in organizations (tepid, feckless leadership and staid structural problems), and learning institutions responsible for stimulating and helping intellects from lieutenants’ intellectual development in basic-level schools all the way up to the selectivity of our war colleges, or on learning via one’s own recognizance for lifelong learning. The organizations of which I speak train well “what to think,” but do not do well in fomenting the long journey to learn “how to think,” and to understand “why think.” The three aspects of thinking live in the same whole and connect with one another, but they remain different.
13. Assumed Innate Capabilities People believe that all humankind is born with the capability to synthesize, engage in holism, and creatively and logically think at the same time—sadly, that is not the case. But not all is lost. Synthesis and holism are learned thinking arts. Thus, people can master them on one hand or become better at thinking with these two arrows in one’s quiver. Accordingly, we need to pay attention to and invest in intellectual development of America per se but in a pointed way, the officer corps of the American

These predicaments doom people to live in a world of bureaucratic processes, stifling rules, punishment for advocating innovative ideas, training instead of educating, and, of course, not knowing the difference between the two. One can find answers for these questions and approaches to these problems in the five essays of my book The Moral Imperative of Our Time—Purposeful Intellectual Growth. In the title of the book, one finds breadcrumbs leading to answers to these questions and directions for necessary approaches to developing not only high-technology and AI, but human minds capable of high-level thinking, knowing “how to think,” and leading people to be thought leaders of sufficient intellectual prowess to win in twenty-first century conflicts.

[1] Thirty-four kinds of battles— narratives; effects and causes and links; truth; disinformation;

misinformation; facts; evidence; data, information, and knowledge; initiative and six other advantages (tempo, momentum, knowledge, decision, position, and freedom of movement/maneuver); colliding “wills;” life force; resolve; purposes; strength of motive; capabilities; determination; perseverance; advantage; disadvantage; passion; sacrifice; action; assessments and intelligence; learning; adapting; recursion; clashing thoughts; intelligence systems; quality; quality; deception; observed/observer relationships; and using the operational context.

[2] How to think— an approach to thinking adhering to the thought processes and practices of holism, analysis, synthesis, combination, coherence, relationships, connectedness, wholes, and synergy to (1) reason, (2) conceive new ideas, (3) form in one’s mind then defend inferences and derivative implications, (4) demonstrate the ability to judge via meaning, knowledge, and coherent views, and (5) communicate conclusions and recommendations defending the conception. Hall, The Power of Will, 620.

[3] Emergence— Occurs when an entity is observed to have properties in which its parts do not have on their own,

properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. Emergence is unpredictable, novel, and nonlinear; it cannot be explained with the context of the previous system; emergence depends on underlying systems but paradoxically, it is also autonomous from underlying processes; emergence possesses downward causation, in which within a complex system there are these micro-processes and macro-ones that are ongoing. Downward causation occurs when emergence transforms micro-processes at the macro level of which the micro-processes could never have realized within the older (nonemergent) systems. Ben Zweibelson, March 12, 2022, https://benzweibelson.medium.com//emergence-explained.

[4] Deep think—Taking the time and expending the mental activities to think about something—a project, a problem, a challenge, a mystery, etcetera—with profundity, relationally, and critically.