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Thought systems and network centric warfare

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Abstract

The notion of Thought Warfare and Anti-Warfare (TWAW) has been introduced in earlier work as a way of thinking about future military conflict and its avoidance. TWAW involves the dynamic interaction of allies' and adversaries' Thought Systems. Current Thought Systems involve entities capable of cognition, emotion and volition - typically (groups of) people - interacting via networks of information and data systems. This paper summarises a conceptualisation, i.e. a system of ideas, of the domain of Thought Systems. The relationship between TWAW and Network Centric Warfare (NCW) is explained: TWAW encompasses NCW. Unlike, NCW, TWAW explicitly considers the interaction of will and feeling as well as knowledge, information and data in networked systems of people and machines in both the conduct of war and in the maintenance of peace. This affords various new insights that may be of significance to the NCW community.

Executive Summary

In Thinking Together, [Burke, DSTO-RR-0173, 2000], the notion of Thought Warfare and Anti-Warfare (TWAW) is introduced as a way of thinking about military conflict and its avoidance; it is foreseen as an increasingly important Defence issue in the twenty-first century. TWAW involves the dynamic interaction of allies’ and adversaries' Thought Systems. Current Thought Systems involve entities capable of cognition, emotion and volition - typically (groups of) people - interacting via networks of information and data systems. This paper summarises the conceptualisation, ie the system of ideas, of the domain of Thought Systems presented in Thinking Together. Simple architectural techniques are used to assist the reader to develop an understanding of the distinguishing features of the concepts involved that is sufficient to grasp the nature of the arguments relating to Thought Systems and TWAW developed elsewhere. Illustrative examples are outlined to indicate how the conceptualisation can be applied in this respect. The major features of the conceptualisation are: • Thought Systems are considered to consist of five principal types of components namely: Data Systems, Information Systems, Knowledge Systems, Will Systems and Feeling Systems. Figures 1 and 2 and Table 1 depict their inter-relationship. The goal in synthesising Thought Systems is to achieve synergy in the sense that the "capability" of a Thought System is greater than the sum of the capabilities of its component Data Systems, Information Systems, Knowledge Systems, Will Systems and Feeling Systems. • Meaning is the most important issue in the domain; the conceptualisation is dominated by what is involved in assigning, deriving and sharing meaning by Information Systems, Knowledge Systems, Thought Systems, etc. • Recursive relationships of intelligence/computing, cognition/knowing, consciousness/thinking, etc give rise to hierarchies of levels of complexity in Information Systems, Knowledge Systems, Thought Systems, etc. • Some of the concepts are extensively inter-related. For example, the concept of schema is inter-woven throughout the conceptualisation. It is emphasised that the conceptualisation does not commit to a "mind as machine" metaphor in which cognition and thought are considered to be merely informationprocessing activities. It adopts a radically different stance: it assumes that "meaning matters". The paper explains the relationship between TWAW and Network Centric Warfare (NCW): TWAW encompasses NCW. Unlike NCW, TWAW explicitly considers the interaction of will and feelings as well as knowledge, information and data in networked systems of people and machines in both the conduct of war and in the maintenance of peace. This affords various new insights that may be of significance to the NCW community. For example: • It exposes the natures of various concepts (and their inter-relationships) that are of crucial importance in NCW. These include: • system; • architecture; • culture/Culture System; • understanding; • meaning; • thought/Thought System; • knowledge/Knowledge System; • feeling/Feeling System; • will/Will System; • information/Information System; • data/Data System. • It provides a coherent way of thinking, and a language to support discourse, about current military issues of relevance to the NCW community. • It promotes speculation about the nature of future military conflict and its avoidance related to NCW. In particular, it promotes speculation about new forms of Thought System that may provide significant comparative advantage in this respect.

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