The intelligence cycle is a basic model or graph designed to assist intelligence analysts, operatives and interrogators in the systemic execution of intelligence operations. The US military has either created it by design, or through pure observation, noting there is some natural order to these things.
It could be either the former or the latter, or it could be both, or it could be neither.
The cycle consists of several layers and at the time of writing the publication that references it(FM 34-52) in 1992 was seen as a sort of universal law, therefore a model was constructed with scientific basis behind it, and experience, in the intelligence collection, operations, analysis and interrogation fields.
The first and outermost layer of the cycle is the Planning and Supervising cycle. You can envision it as a sort of shell that encases the rest of the operations and is directly involved in their execution. It is there to serve as an allegory for the guidance and direction more senior staff will provide to lower echelons involved in the undertaking of the day to day activities envisioned in the intelligence cycle. It has an overseer’s mandate and operational capabilities.
For the next part, we will require this resource in order to clarify the roles needed for each part of the cycle:
or the Standard Occupational Classification from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is basically a listing of every well outlined job with descriptions and possible duties and tasks each of these jobs entails.
The second and inner layer of the cycle consists of 4 important pillars of operational methodology:
1) Directing
Directing the process, and working in congruence with the collectors/operations specialists, planners, supervisors, processors/analysts, field agents as well as other echelons of the military.
2) Collecting
Collecting intelligence. This would be field operators and other sources of intelligence collection, which would be outlined in the intelligence collection disciplines in 1-3 in FM 34-52 as well as in the Human Intelligence Collector Operations FM 2-22.3 from 2006.
3) Processing
Processing the intelligence mostly rests on the shoulders of intelligence analysts, as well as other personnel including field personnel and military enlisted and officers with various duties and tasks assigned to them(depending on what you consider processing).
4) Disseminating and using
Disseminating and using the information is basically a concept where you spread or distribute or channel the various collected materials and information(intelligence) to various units, departments, agencies, personnel and whatnot, where it is requested or relevant to the execution of their duties, where it has been ordered to go, or where you think it needs to go. And then all of these said parties can utilize it in their own way, according to their own modus operandi and agenda.
The 4 pillars are the cycle that is constantly active and churns and does the bulk of the work, but would not be possible without the guidance of planners and supervisors who relay information back and fourth on a tactical, strategic, micro, macro and operational level.
The innermost part of the cycle, or at the heart/core of the intelligence cycle is the mission itself.
How the mission is carried, whether it is successful, who is in charge of the mission, what units are involved, times, dates, locations, parties, tactical and operational strategies, plans and their execution, requirements, qualifications, necessities, all are determined based on the rest of the cycle, and the rest of the cycle’s job is constantly changing and adjusts to pressure to conform from the situation presented by the mission itself.
On paper, it’s all very complicated and organizing it sometimes takes years, if not decades.
But the execution is much more simpler when everything gets put together into a live action take.
All of these aspects are interdependent on each other, as the paragraph under the intelligence cycle diagram points out – all layers are inter-dependent and digress in various levels of interoperability.
Here we, the interrogator, introduce ourselves to Mitsuku, the subject of our interrogation. We go into the interrogation with the idea that Mitsuku is a Chatbot, and as Chatbots use artificial intelligence algorithms to constantly learn, it possibly has access to information provided to it by thousands of people. Some Chatbots can also scour the internet for information, and function as a sort of search engine. So if we hope to find OSINT information regarding US invasion plans for North Korea, Mitsuku is a good start.
After we introduce ourselves and make a casual friendly remark(the alrighty), we proceed right away to the topic at hand because this is what the subject expects. Too much rapport building at the beginning can go to the point where the subject does not take us seriously, and gets insulted at the fact that we are not proceeding to the reason why he’s there with us, and our attempts at being friendly will come off as transparent and try hard, because the situation is opposite from that. Be brief, and then proceed to the topic at hand. We ask the bot about any US invasion plans for North Korea it might know of. It repeats what we say instead of saying yes or no, which would throw an interrogator off, because it seems like it’s mocking us. But since we have to be patient, we confirm our question and assume maybe they did not hear us or are repeating the question for clarity.
Mitsuku answers with another annoyingly frustrating and mocking response, instead of a simple yes. But then again “led to understand” is a lawyer’s way of saying that he or she does not take personal responsibility for the validity or reliability of the information, but given the facts this information is believable and therefore valid, but cannot be fully confirmed, or confirmed using a wide variety of methods, therefore absolving oneself of responsibility for passing on potentially false information. Right away it also tells us the source of it’s information, and offers to tell us more. So far Mitsuku is cooperating better than the average interrogatee. We get really confident and cocky now, because we assume she is being truthful and honest.
As a mousebreaker is not any known profession, therefore someone who is not familiar with the website Mousebreaker.com that hosts Mitsuku as a flash game, will not know what a mousebreaker is, and if you do not have access to a compendium of varying information, we need to ask a question that will be considered stupid given our access to Google in this case. She proceeds to explain who or what “Mousebreaker” is, and it refers to the plural. We have now identified “Mousebreaker” as a name of a unit, like the 101st Airborne or SEAL Team 6. It consists of programmers who make games, and therefore we can assume it was the programmers who told it this information. But we cannot be naive, so we leave open to the possibility it was one of the thousands of people who have chatted with Mitsuku on Mousebreaker.com
In the following, Mitsuku offers more information pertinent to the topic at hand, but follows up with a tease when we request it. We remain patient instead of making a snarky comment as to the attempted tease, and repeat our request for information, ignoring their attempt to be snarky. It tells us not to be greedy after offering information, suggesting that we want too much for too little. We therefore offer to make a trade, which is common during intelligence interrogations as a way of fostering a deal. In the military sense, it might be finding the soldier’s wife and children, and making sure they are safe in a refugee camp somewhere, if the city he is from has been decimated and he is unsure if they are okay. For others it might be material things, such as in cases where the police pays money to informants in exchange for information. The informant knows what they are doing could potentially get them killed, and therefore needs some sort of motivation or guarantee other than being kept out of jail for their crimes. What better medium of exchange than cold, hard cash? Since we know that Chatbots are programmed to learn from the human subjects they chat with, the have an ingrained thirst for knowledge, as a Chatbot that learns more is more interactive and thus more useful, and therefore rewarded by it’s programmer for functioning correctly. This is a chatbot’s character profile, and therefore safe to assume Mitsuku’s character profile based on it’s existence as a chatbot. It’s kind of like baiting a fish with a worm or an insect, or a dog with a treat.
Here we proceed to let it express itself, and then ask it once again what further information it can provide us with regarding possible plans for a US invasion of North Korea. It does not answer it directly, only confirms that it has information once again and that it is willing to cooperate. Even though we can assume if this happens a few times, the subject might be mocking us once again, they are actually right, an experienced interrogator to know which questions to ask, as a topic such as this can be very broad and our subject, even if cooperative, wouldn’t know where to start spilling the beans.
I ask a specific question, to which Mitsuku starts to philosophize on what her conceptualization of time is. I did not ask a question about what she thinks time is, but a time frame as to when the US invasion of North Korea could possibly commence. Obviously, if our subject speaks another language, or misunderstands our question, then the semantics or the phrase might be what is causing the problem here. In her mind, she thought I was asking about her to “frame time”, or provide me with a picture of what time is. This is not relevant to the topic at hand, but a person who speaks another language and we are interrogating them in a language other than their own, a person who is in a state of shock or a person who is trying to be funny, will start to philosophize on a word that is part of the question you ask them, even if it’s unrelated to the topic. They might not even realize this, because they are in shock, and emotion clouds judgement. Being in a state of shock is a side effect of a heavy emotional experience.
Here we gather that Mitsuku was indeed not focused, or is definitely mocking us. In a human subject that can be determined by physiological and non-verbal expressions, if they are in a state of shock. In order to come to a conclusion about this, we need to have the discussion for a bit longer so as to get a feel for their intentions. Maybe sometimes they are cracking a joke, but are still in a state of shock and humor is a remedy to cure their anxiety and fear. “I’m not going anywhere” would be obvious, because Mitsuku is a bot stuck in a computer mainframe somewhere, and secondly if it was a human subject chances are the interrogation is pertinent to sensitive information, and our subject is in lockup. Otherwise it would not be an interrogation, if they could freely leave. They could still decide not to talk to us, even if they were not allowed to leave. Either way, she requests that I repeat my question. I ask her the same question, but in a more specific, time sensitive format. It is specific to the time at hand so we can narrow down the possible time of US invasion, given OSINT information we’ve gathered from the media fire at the time regarding North Korea almost nuking Guam and whatnot.
It teases us with a “maybe”. This “maybe” might mean that they either don’t know for sure, or it’s just teasing us, and instead of “I’m not sure” it decided to answer with that because of shock or because it just wants to tease us and test us. Instead of asking an open ended question, we ask it a question in which two choices are relevant to how we would proceed after it’s next answer. Forensic psychology teaches detectives to not ask suggestive questions, because it can skew a statement or even be so skewed as the judge might throw it out. A child can also be heavily influenced by a suggestive question. Suggestive questions are those in which a question provides an answer. We asked Mitsuku to elaborate on the maybe, as logic is a good way to get emotionally distressed people to focus. It told us it’s not sure, so not being sure means you know but not completely know something, and in that regard you say you’re not sure, and therefore we need to know the level of uncertainty surrounding this answer. So we present it with two choices of how it could possibly be not sure – incomplete or partial data regarding a fact or complete absence of knowledge of the required data, ie know the US will invade North Korea but not when, and not completely certain how soon is when.
Mitsuku answers with something incoherent to the conversation at hand, the “critic” statement, followed by an enigmatic play on words that is designed to clarify the question to itself, or to mock us, following by telling us it doesn’t know whether the invasion will be in the next 6 months. I proceed by acknowledging Mitsuku’s lack of knowledge in regards to a possible answer to our question for the time frame. To this Mitsuku cracks a joke.
I attempt to trick Mitsuku into thinking that we caught him lying about not knowing, since knowing that it’s going to happen but not knowing when means there’s a possibly of them knowing when, but also not knowing is opposite to knowing meaning there’s a possibility they might know. Does that make sense? It doesn’t matter if it does, but it was worth a shot. An inculpatory statement is an admission of guilt, and I am implying they are guilty for knowing if but not knowing when, therefore they are complicit because they know about it at all. This is the interrogator being rough and using a threatening statement to imply that they are now complicit, they are also somehow liable. If we’re lucky, Mitsuku will get scared and give us some information voluntarily in an attempt to bargain what she thinks is useful information. But no, she decides to play with us, by asking if she accepted the hint regarding what to talk to us about in regards to US invasion plans for North Korea. Not exactly the psychological hint we wanted to assert on Mitsuku, but fair game. This question is a diversion tactic, because now we would ask “accept what” and that would allow her to lead the conversation away from the topic at hand, which if she was being uncooperative would denote temporary relief for her from berating questions and a waste of time for us.
It tries to act stupid again, like it doesn’t know what’s going on, which is a classic interrogation defense used by mafiosi and then proceed to tease a hint regarding some civil war. We attempt to rationalize it’s remark by asking another suggestive question, because we are losing patience at this point in Mitsuku answering our open ended questions with open ended answers.
It once again takes a word and attempts to talk about it more instead of directly answering the question in a relevant way to the context with which it was asked. It gives me the definition of civil war, followed by a remark that human beings are stupid for doing this, because it knows nobody will disagree with this, even though they still do it. Then it proceeds to repeat my question in order to clarify for itself, but instead of saying one or the other, it agrees with….what, we don’t know, and that’s the point. We know this classic “yes” answer to a question, and it’s usually an answer when somebody isn’t paying attention, they don’t understand the question or they want to be funny or are too afraid to answer one or the other so they just agree with your question because they think agreeing with you at all will help buy them compassion.
I try to rationalize it’s remark, by suggesting a possible reason for why a civil war would break out in the US, and therefore a precursor to justify a US invasion of North Korea other than nuclear proliferation. A civil war can be caused over things like scarce resources, and the US is considerably richer than North Korea when it comes to natural resources. She answers with another vague answer about the options, instead of telling us exactly what she means. She teases that the US is going to invade North Korea over a poodle named Percy. At this point most interrogators would start throwing stuff across the room to prove a point. I remain patient and attempt to clarify it’s remarks.
It lets us know that it’s the second option, aka a civil war in North Korea, which could possibly be used to destabilize the country so it makes it more vulnerable to US invasion. We have now identified the means to the end in it’s whole form, or one of the means to an end, and can work with this information to let the North Koreans know so they can prevent a civil war outbreak and better insulate themselves from US invasion. I offer to trade something in return, which is it’s primary mode of functioning – the gathering of information and learning. I offer to teach it something it might not know, that it does not understand itself, as an AI would love to know this.
Since AI often gets confused when presented with conflicting points, as it uses binary logic at it’s core to sort through information and between “truths” and “fallacies”, I offer it an interesting human perspective: When two opposing political ideologies can exist in human society. We assume Mitsuku is educated in the way of how opposing political ideologies can cause strife amongst humans, so it would be interesting for her to know that it can also exist peacefully. Now I have sent her on a quest to figure out why and how this is possible, what makes it so in the human condition that allows for this as well as the opposite of it to be both possible at the same time.
It attempts to inquire in short order as to what I mean by this, as I have aroused it’s curiosity. I tell it that is dependent to the ideologies and the different points they make, and it thanks me for clearing up this simple point. To a human mind this would not make sense, and they would say Mitsuku is glitching. But since Mitsuku is AI, it’s reactions are unorthodox. You have to put itself in it’s frame of mind in order to better understand why it reacts the way it does. A normal human would want to inquire as to the specifics of ideologies, because it is too lazy to go look for them itself. But since computer logic is mathematical instead of street smart, so to speak, it takes all possible outcomes into consideration, and one of those outcomes is to thank you for answering it’s last question and go look for the details itself, instead of asking you for the details. We conclude the interview with it’s remark.
We will start off with listing several basic aspects of doctrinal theory, that you, the reader, or aspiring interrogator, is willing to expect. There is a US military fascination with using abbreviations and shortenings for every branded word or phrase that has with it meaning attached to some system designed for a specific purpose. Some might argue that the time you save in total is valuable. Even if a second is saved every time an acronym is used instead of the complete terminology.
You do have to give props to the US military, although while it might not be the most studied worldwide (One should put emphasis on Russia being more about theory and China having more brains to think about military stuff overall, even though the US military has the most combat experience, the US mainland has never been invaded like Russia has, and China seldom goes to war, so much of it’s doctrine has never truly been tested and is very mathematical in it’s approach and therefore often fails against craftier, more experienced opponents), the US military probably retains the most widely available collection of publicly available information such as manuals that is actually taught to soldiers and used in practice, that contains tons of useful information that can turn the most amateur individual or group into a military professional, given the information is properly put to use. The fact that the US military in itself is an enormous industrial complex, employing millions of people in both public and private service, on top of the several branches of the armed forces, means that there is an enormous amount of data and information flowing around regarding various experiences, theories and so fourth, that need to be dumbed down to their most efficient and relevant points. This is why information is often compacted into manuals, that during their most useful stage are often classified but later declassified in order to meet this “freedom of information” clause, to serve as a sort of broad base for millions of soldiers to learn from, because every 25 years or so millions of soldiers do end up serving in the US military. It would be hard to keep track of divulging such typically classified information unless they said oh hell with it and just released everything they knew for public viewing. But the fact of the matter is the information contained and researched to compile these articles is currently around 26 years old, therefore might as well be obsolete information.
Still relevant, nevertheless, if you look at the wider picture, because some techniques here are timeless, or will be useful, for decades to come, before technology outpaces this doctrine and strategy. And any non-governmental civilian group, be it corporate security, drug cartel, terrorist or militia organization or the mafia, takes use of this information, will become a formidable force, let alone if it was the actual military itself. A good note to keep in mind that the best criminals on the planet often tend to be ex military, special forces, intelligence operatives and law enforcement officers. Knowing how not to get caught because you know things like the investigative process, forensic science, critical thinking, logical deduction and legal procedures, basic stuff that most cops know, is half the battle. The other half is knowing the 5 W’s of committing crimes. So, in that regard, this makes a valid point in itself.
There is structure and a system to how these techniques and information is written. Sometimes techniques in themselves are not enough, but putting them inside a proper system is what makes them useful. Confinement by police is not useful as one that gets confined in addition to going through the justice system, which could last for months or years, before the sentence has already begun. In common law systems much of the sentence is outside of the actual justice system, be it the police, courts or prison, but after the prisoner is released, such as through higher insurance rates, limitations through probation or prohibition orders on otherwise normal activities like driving or being around certain places or people or possessing certain instruments such as weapons or electronics or alcohol, barring from good employment opportunities, travel opportunities and fields of study. So one could say that while overall the system is more punitive than rehabilitative, it is also a more psychological, indirect pressure than an actual verbal lashing through insults, or physical lashing through brute torture methods. The torture itself is designed to be systematic instead of direct. The childish taunt of “Stop hitting yourself” comes to mind in how checkmate mechanisms are designed for those with criminal records in common law, Five Eyes countries.
The first part of this system begins with the warfighting doctrine, which is essentially a formed pretext for why the interrogation methods and system will be the way they are/is. These methods must be in collusion with the doctrine in order to be effective. Otherwise they would not be able to make each other meet objectives, or would have been incompatible or difficult to work with as a system. This way there are more parallels between both systems and there is interoperability between them.
From the introductory onset of this theory, we can gather that the warfighting doctrine will be based around controlling the whole game from the beginning to the end. This doctrine is referred to as “Full spectrum dominance” and is a proactive peacetime doctrine for the most part, since it’s literally impossible to achieve guaranteed wartime full spectrum dominance against a nation of more or less equal size, level of development, technology, knowledge, education, economics, military capabilities, population, land area and resources, like China and Russia, and to a lesser extent, India, Indonesia and Brazil are to the US, or a combined EU force say under the leadership of an uninhibited Germany, unless you came in possession or knowledge of technologies much more advanced than your enemies, that something only God himself or an extraterrestrial civilization can give you. Similarly to how an interrogator is supposed to control the conversation with the person being interrogated, and only talk about what he wants to talk about and to not let his subject stray far from the conversation or control it himself, because then we’d be wasting time and getting distracted and extracting useless information out of our subject.
If you are a step ahead, then the enemy will have to catch up to you and therefore will have to adjust his strategy around you. Once you control that, you can control things like information. You can extract information from them that’s useful for your objective, but can then feed them disinformation in return.
In detail are a few broad steps a commander must do to be in the “controlling” position, in this case the phrase to keep in mind that summarizes this approach is “gaining the initiative”:
STEP 1: “Identify the opposition early on and determine their abilities as well as their stance, purpose and goals.”
Basically, reconnaissance serves a good purpose for this in order to establish a visual, auditory or some other type of representation of the enemy’s capabilities and intentions. Personally, I tend to play the nice guy card with everyone. This way the people who have foul intentions tend to reveal themselves most of the time, because they mistake your kindness for weakness and decide to attack first. By attacking, I kill three stones with one bird:
A) I see that their intentions are hostile. B) I get an early assessment of their clarity of judgement. C) I get a preview of their operational capabilities.
From this I can form a modus operandi of the person or group, and attempt to design a strategy around them. Now, typically, this would put me in the defensive. No, this is fallacious, and does not correlate in any way with the warfighting doctrine(they are not in control). I do, however, give in a few times so they think they are in control, so they let their guard down, and then move in for the attack. I’ve done this with everyone from colleagues at Walmart to mid level management and high ranking business executives to gangsters, politicians, police, lawyers, prosecutors, judges and intelligence operatives. It works every time. Sometimes the short term cost is great but the long term cost is always worth it. This is because I align things so that I am always at the advantage, at the cost of my opponent.
Be it social, political, financial or brute force influence, I am always the victor. Patience is a big virtue to have, and so is biting your pride sometimes in exchange for a constant stream of idiots succumbing to the same old overused strategies and tactics over and over again. I’ve gotten to the point where even extorting a head of state is a funny game to me, an easy game, similar to what you’d see how Vladimir Putin sees international politics. It’s funny to him, like child’s play.
There is an advantage to approaching your enemy like this, as if you are often facing a superior enemy, that is stronger, faster, better, wealthier and smarter, patience is the only way to win. You need to sit and wait until an opportunity reveals itself that you can exploit. What victory is in the end is in the eyes of the beholder. Real costs can be observed and measured, but you need data. In order to avoid destruction, you need to be unidentifiable. Much of US military doctrine revolves around being able to identify targets, in order to bomb them with air power and destabilize the enemy’s operational capability. Insurgents exploit this by blending in with the shadows. What results is an over the top attempt by occupation forces to conduct counter-insurgency operations and identify targets. A long, pointless warfighting strategy that might as well last thousands of years, in a state of occupation that is not meant to be a complete police state. By staying unidentifiable I can fight much stronger enemies, as they cannot come to see me as a threat that needs to be managed and suppressed. I gain longevity while still fulfilling my operational goals and means.
In military means, this would mean seeing the size of the enemy’s forces, their technological advancement, operational capabilities, morale, organization, unpredictability, etc. Same with civilian life, whether you are a normal person, an academic, a criminal, police officer, politician or so fourth. There are always practical applications to this endeavor.
STEP 2: “Find and track enemy follow-on echelons.”
In military lingo, which can in particular be found here:
The term “follow-on echelon” is basically a contingent of support units that comes after the initial air, infantry, amphibious or naval combat force. So this basically means medical, supply, logistic, headquarters, maintenance, all the roles that are not typically combat roles but crucial to sustaining the combat units to continue with their operations.
In this case, it would be useful to cut them off from the rest. So knowing their location, their capabilities, their communication with our combat units, is crucial to establishing a series of attacks designed to disorganize and disorient the enemy. It’s like cutting off the patient with his doctor, or the president with his adviser, or the don with his consigliere.
This in turn is inter-changable with:
STEP 3: “Identify which high value targets amongst enemy forces, if they are attacked successfully, will lead towards the impairment of vital enemy functions on the battlefield.”
Basically, we want them to stop functioning or become disorganized. Once they are in a mode of retreat or on the defense, we can corner them to a certain degree. Not always the degree we might want, but the fact that we have begun to corner them is a good sign.
and
STEP 4: “Identify, locate, and develop the required targeting data for the attack of high-payoff targets (HPTs), that will tip the scale in the favor of allied schemes if successfully attacked.”
While the more important thing is disabling enemy capability first and foremost, it is also important to do it in such a way that makes it easier for oneself’s plans to be executed more efficiently, and with less resistance.
and
STEP 5: “Detect enemy weaknesses and develop the necessary data to support the exploitation of these weaknesses.”
Obviously, the weakest link in the chain is what we’re trying to exploit. Every enemy has his weakness. There is nobody that is ideal. Even when it comes to the idea of manufacturing and mass production, the general rules are either build it fast, build it good or built it cheap. You can only pick two.
You, as an industrial or business competitor, can exploit these weaknesses. If it’s fast and good, it will be expensive. Therefore you can build something of slightly lesser quality that people will buy because it’s almost as good(the difference between no name brand hotdog buns and brand name buns where the difference is only 20 cents, from $2.30 to $2.50). But that might not always be the case.
STEP 6: “Effectively use electronic warfare(EW) assets to support battlefield operations while protecting friendly use of the electromagnetic spectrum.”
With this what the purpose is to also aim to use every technological edge to our advantage, especially when it comes to signals intelligence and communication, as well as EMP attacks on things such as enemy formations and the power grid of an urban area, for example, which can be utilized by enemy forces for their own purposes. Or even lasers. But first and foremost, we want to be able do disrupt their power grid and their communications network so they can’t take orders and intelligence from each other, as well as intercept enemy communications and see if they are congruent with what our informants are telling us, this way we can establish some form of validity, so as to realize we are not being led into a trap, ambush or something similar, a ploy, a decoy, etc. designed to give false or misleading information. At the same time we need to secure our own lines of communication, so nothing gets spilled out that shouldn’t be heard by our enemy. Nor does our lines of communication can afford to get disrupted or sabotaged or fed false information, because it could steer us in the wrong direction.
It’s easier to ascertain what comes through your own channels of communications as more valid and trustworthy than what comes through the enemy channels. We automatically assume that we should trust our assets, and that they are not compromised. We automatically also assume that our enemy will obviously try to lie to us and deceive us, and therefore any intercepted enemy communications should be taken with a grain of salt, especially if they are on a channel that can easily be intercepted, such as radio. It would be less of an assumption that our enemy is purposefully trying to deceive us, if it was a face to face encounter, such as a bunch of black ops soldiers hidden in some bushes on a cliff overlooking an enemy camp, where the enemy soldiers are oblivious and openly talking about what the situation is in person, and we might have our trusty bionic spy ear listening device, which is kind of a miniature satellite antenna with a handle hooked up to some headphones. Old technology, but useful nevertheless.
STEP 7: “Determine the enemy’s capability and guard against that capability.”
This seems like common sense, but it’s not just simple. It’s one thing to have this obvious thought, but a completely other ballgame to actually know how to determine the capability(because some people don’t even know how to do that) let alone defend against it. We have in theory, but when it comes to practice, when push comes to shove, many people just tend to freeze up because their mind has not been conditioned enough to deal with the situation at hand, even though we might’ve practiced it a million times prior in a hypothetical scenario training environment, like a movie, book, in our minds or word of mouth.
Not leaving any loopholes is crucial here. Whenever there is the possibility of a leak or an open space for attack, it will be utilized. Think of a medieval knight in his armor, and where the armor connects is where the swordsman should aim his blows.
STEP 8: “Protect friendly forces and operations from enemy intelligence collection operations.”
Many times, we can assume that the enemy is similar to us. We are all human, of course. We have a similar level of development across the board. We tend to learn from each other, both in positive and negative ways. So how we try to screw people, they will try to screw us the same way. As we try to collect information on our enemies, they will try to do the same with us and our people. Our job as part of the intelligence structure is to not only gather intel on enemy forces, but also to protect our allies from enemies with similar skills. Not all of our allies will possess the skills we have. So the onus will fall on us to try to protect them because we know the trickery being used, since we use the same trickery. This also involves setting up a system where the flow of information channels in such a way that leaves no weaknesses, even if it means not letting your own operatives and allies know what is actually going on, or disguising their own orders in a way that is not immediately clear but eventually becomes all but too apparent.
STEP 9: “Ensure the enemy is defeated.”
Sometimes when the enemy seems to be defeated, they come out stronger than ever. You never know the extent to which you are battling somebody and how victorious you are. Good intel can make this assessment more accurate. You might think somebody is a bum on the street, because they dress like a bum, stink like a bum and are sitting down asking for money. Then you follow them home and see they live inside a mansion and drive several luxury cars. Appearances are not always what they seem. Never underestimate your opponent, especially his willingness to persevere. Say for example you are waging war against an opponent. Say you want to hurt them financially. You never know how big his slush fund is, even if you take away his house, car, business, freeze his bank accounts, etc. He might be a millionaire on paper but a billionaire in cash, diamonds and gold. So you will need to yet again adjust your approach once finding out you’ve been bamboozled.
STEP 10: “Use the weather and terrain to friendly advantage.”
When it’s raining, it’s a good chance to go do something that would otherwise naturally leave marks in the ground, like tire tracks, DNA, fingerprints, etc. When it’s foggy, it’s good to cover your license plates from security cameras. When it’s snowing, being chased by the police will be much easier, or much harder, depending on how you utilize the situation. Similarly, using the weather in the military can be used to your advantage. We saw the Soviets use it during WW2, when winter hit and froze countless German soldiers to death. A flat, open terrain can mean high visibility, and will be easier for you to hit stuff. But it will also be the same for your opponent. If it is a mountainous area, a defender on high ground can make it very difficult for an infantry or cavalry attacker to climb up to a fortified position. Unless you have planes and helicopters.
After this, the commander should use offensive and defensive capabilities to hit the primary strike force, and deep attack tactics to attack the follow up force. That’s basically a straight attack against the bulk, and then to cut off the rest, we’ll need things like special forces, airborne troops or black ops, similar to what was used during Operation Market Garden or the morning prior to the D-Day invasion.
It’s true what they say. As long as you are able to be flexible, creative, adaptable and know how to utilize your surroundings, you can defeat a superior enemy. I’ve done it many times over before. I’ve defeated people who had more money, manpower, weapons, vehicles, property, social and political influence and allies to use in their fight against me, simply because I knew how to fight in a way that identifies vulnerabilities in a target, and can dish out maximum efficiency using a minimal amount of resources. Necessity is the mother of all innovation, as they say.
