Dr. Asher Idan, Director of Lahav's Future Management Program, Faculty of Management at Tel Aviv University, explains Israel's need to prepare for the cyber war
Five years ago, I spoke to the General Staff about the need for an immediate transition to digital combat technologies, postmodern military organizational methods and values, and a global strategy. In the same summer that I wanted to be in the General Staff, I went on a trip to Turkey. During a cruise in the Bosphorus Straits in Istanbul, the guide explained to us about "the fortress that the Turkish Sultan built to face the challenges of the future". Then I suddenly realized where Israel is deteriorating in terms of the fear of the new military paradigm that the American military has developed: the network war paradigm.
In this video you see how to train the IDF and the security services, and how to enable them to fight, with the help of new technology and new Second Life values. This is my humble contribution to the fear of Barak and Ashkenazi and most of the IDF from plasmas. The first tip I give them is: plasma for every Golani soldier and every tank driver.
Concept and paradigm errors
This paradigm is described in detail in Alvin Toffler's book "War and Anti-War", published in Hebrew in 1994, and in his book published in 2000 - "A Guide to the 21st Century". So what can be learned from the failure of the conception of the Ottoman Empire, a decade before its fall in 1917, in light of the story of the tour guide in Istanbul? The instructor said that when the Turkish Sultan heard that the "Island of the Pirate terrorists, called England" had developed a new type of army, "with iron birds" that spit fire from the air, he defended himself by thickening the walls of the Istanbul fortress to four meters.
But thickening walls in front of planes is like toasting the dead. But this the Ottoman Chief of Staff and the Sultan and his Minister of War could not under any circumstances understand. It is outside their terminology and outside their perception.
I read a similar story in a military magazine about the collapse of the Polish army in World War II, due to paradigmatic omissions. The Polish army charged with horses and swords against the German tanks and machine guns. The Polish honor said that there is no substitute for the noble warrior and there is no substitute for his faithful servant, the horse.
The sword, the machine gun, and the wiki
Toffler in his book "The Third Wave" from 1980, describes the battle at the beginning of the 20th century in which the Ottoman army fought the English army in the "Battle of Khartoum". The Ottomans with the traditional-clan-agricultural paradigm fought the English with the modern-national-industrial paradigm.
The results of the battle, according to Toffler, were 400 Ottoman dead for every British dead. Arithmetic is very cruel. In light of the first failure against the British, the Ottoman army rejected the innovation of machine guns and deepened its grip on swords. Even today, because of the partial success of the plasmas, the army will dig deeper into the terrain war of the 19th and 20th centuries.
These are the technology levers. One machine gun is worth 400 swords, like one tractor is worth a hundred hoes and ten plows, just like one banking operation on the Internet is more than 100 times cheaper than the same operation in the old-fashioned bank branch with its faded paper forms.
McLaughlin was indeed very right: technology is an amplifier of man. The plow and the hoe are the amplifiers of the working hand. The sword and the machine gun are the amplifiers of the fighting hand.
The wiki replaces the shotgun, and social networks replace the divisions.
What does the computer and the Internet increase? The computer is an amplifier of the brain. The Internet is an amplifier of the organization or group. The computer makes the warrior and commander much smarter and more knowledgeable and informed. A social network with file sharing, instant messages, tags, etc., makes the brigade or division more cohesive and updated in real time, so that the lone Golani fighter or the tank driver knows almost as much as the chief of staff or the squadron commander.
In his book "Networks and Network Wars", the digital war theorist "the Clausewitz of the Internet war", John Arkila, claims that the paradigm of the pre-digital army will only sink the US more and more into the Iraqi mire. Does the same thing put the IDF at risk of a second sinking in the Lebanese mud?
Hezbollah and al-Qaeda are decentralized network organizations. The IDF and the CAA are hierarchical pyramidal organizations. When the IDF eliminated Sheikh Yassin, he only benefited Hamas. Here Hamas came to power. If the IDF eliminates Nasrallah, it will strengthen Hezbollah. Iraq is a hierarchical pyramid, therefore eliminating Saddam is beneficial. However, Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are networks. Each part of the network can operate independently of its commanders. The opposite is correct. The commanders are only harmful.
The big question that Israel faces today is how to become a network civilization in all areas: How will the IDF, the Mossad and the Shin Bet become network organizations? How to turn universities and school classrooms into Wiki-learning?
The conceptual failure: Is Hezbollah an Iranian commando division?
As a student of mine, a fighter in an elite unit in the Second Lebanon War, told me: "We did not fight against Hezbollah, but against an Iranian commando division." Hezbollah is an emissary of Iran just as Iran and Al Qaeda are emissaries of China. China has recognized the fact that its economy will overtake the American economy within a decade or two. Its support for Iran and Al Qaeda is part of its explorations to discover the weak points of the Americans and Europeans, in preparation for the future battles in the 21st century for global hegemony.
This is how the Americans also saw the Second Lebanon War as an operation to discover Iranian and Chinese fighting methods. Most of the decision makers in Israel still see the military and political events as national or regional occurrences instead of understanding them from a global perspective.
The organizational failure: three types of army: agricultural, industrial and digital
All our military thinking is based on the changing world of the industrial age: machine guns, armored machines (flexible tanks) and aviation machines (planes).
Indeed, since the Napoleonic Wars, the army of the industrial age has defeated the army of the agricultural age. A machine gun is worth a hundred swords, as one tractor is worth a hundred hoes.
But since the Internet revolution, digital technology is doing to war machines what mechanical-industrial technology did in the last few centuries to agricultural technology.
The strategy, technology and national security
A. Personnel:
- Private army: officers from the aristocracy and casual mob soldiers that exist from the occupation (reward in the form of land, slaves, property).
- National army: a people's army that exists from an industrial infrastructure in the hinterland. A military bureaucracy fed by the government.
- A network army: a digital army built on a communications infrastructure and civil digitization. Organizational structure of a network of combat teams.
B. The focus of the impact:
- Destruction of the agricultural production infrastructure, taking land and taking slaves or destroying the land and killing the people, using swords, arrows, etc.
- Destruction of the military and civilian industrial production infrastructure, using explosives or nuclear, chemical and biological materials.
- Software disruptions through viruses in computing and communication systems, of the military and of the civilian infrastructure (banks, television, commerce). Hardware disruptions using a magneto of the above systems.
third. The intelligence:
The main part of the intelligence was a physical inspection of food and transportation infrastructure. Like spy stories from the Bible and the Odyssey. The main part of the intelligence is a physical inspection of industrial, financial and transportation infrastructures. Leaders are biased, leaders' intentions are biased. Modernist (positivist or Poperian), objectivist, scientific, practical, systems and collective biased, postmodernist, dialogic, multi-paradigmatic.
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The examples from the past are valid, but how to draw the connection between those examples to the situation we are facing today I did not understand at all.
I can also understand that it is preferable to manage your forces in the field in the style of strategy games, where everything is within a network and everyone is aware of everyone else in the battle arena. And outside that arena stands the actor (who is like that, the senior army officers).
As good as it sounds, as if every country works like a sea or a swarm of ants, it must be remembered that technological methods work on an enemy that has similar infrastructures. Against guerilla fighters in the jungles of Colombia you have no IP address and no door and no address.
Is Hezbollah an organization built as a network? Eliminating Nasrallah will not help? Yes, eliminating figures of a political nature whose job is to control the rhetoric, obviously won't help.
Eliminating characters with a military background and operative knowledge is what we are looking for. Don't tell me that hitting Morenia strengthened anything there other than a motivation to take revenge (those if you have reasons). When you eliminate the "experience" there is no way to replace it out of thin air, you must repurchase it.
For example this site
http://www.metooweb2.info/the-asher-idanizer.html
On which era….
Asher Idan has already been talked about by countless people, in many blogs (see at Velvet
Losing the transcripts and more.) Those who are interested will read there and understand who they are dealing with....
To Abi Blizovsky, please do yourself a favor. This guy is not really an accurate scientific source.. It is not recommended to publish his own articles (lest you think like him..)
Very childish, very vague, fragmentary statements. Postmodernist gibberish. Not even nonsense.
I agree with Sagi. How does the wiki replace the shooting machine? And even if we accept the claim that Hamas and Hezbollah are decentralized organizations that operate in a new "paradigm" (I doubt if it includes plasmas, which cost a lot of money), how will the IDF benefit from it also becoming "decentralized"? And how does this relate to "globalism" " of the conflicts in our region? The parallels with the Ottomans and the Poles are dramatic, but they are simply not valid (or at least the author of the article did not bother to prove their validity).
There is a lot to be said in the area of real-time updating of commanders on the state of their forces and the enemy's forces, but it is not a panacea. A few months ago there were articles in the newspapers that commanders in the field were not satisfied with the handheld computers that were provided to them for this purpose for various reasons. They don't have time to mess with dedicated computers in the middle of a battle. And the writer wants to push them plasmas?
And what is "[intelligence] modernist (positivist or Poperian), objectivist, scientific, practical, system and collective biased, postmodernist, dialogic, multi-paradigmatic"? What it means? What's the deal with fractals?…
Too many words, too little content.
I didn't understand the article.
So soldiers have to sit at a computer and talk on messenger and read WIKI in order to know what the Chief of Staff knows?
What is this nonsense? It seems the firebender doesn't really understand combat paradigms.
Combat has two main parts:
1. Defense - this can be done digitally behind a computer screen with drones and missiles and the like.
2. Attack - when you are sitting in a bunker in Kriya it is a bit difficult to make your enemy surrender, you have to take a rifle and a tank and artillery and knock on the enemy's door.
The problem with Hizballah and Hamas is not that they kill the head and another one rises, this is true in any organization, the problem is that there is no door to knock on.
And in general, this statement "Each part of the network can operate regardless of its commanders. The opposite is correct. The commanders are only harmful." Shows a basic lack of understanding of the operation of an organization (and it does not matter if it is a guerrilla organization, an army or an economic-civil organization).
And one last thing, a simple soldier doesn't need to know what the Chief of Staff knows, the opposite even, the only thing he needs to know is the mission in front of him, he doesn't even need to know why he goes on this mission in particular (I'll let you think why)
Great article, very interesting. Straight up
to shimmy -
Regarding Iran - China does not actually need a strong Iranian army, but rather its economy (in this example mainly oil fields that operate around the clock). After all, if the US destroys half of the Iranian army and the entire nuclear program but does not damage the oil, the Chinese will be elated!.. and in any case These are not facts, but opinions that can be debated 🙂 By the way, the US and Israel make enough noise from distributing weapons that it is hard to blame China if it found a good customer..
In the current world order, I will call a major political decision maker (Putin, Bush, Ahmadini, etc.) "the lucky idiot on duty".
It is true, once in a few dozen leaders there is someone with a mind (who is not always used for the benefit of his people...) but basically their relationship is roughly like that of a bunch of rascals among themselves, and they are expected to blow each other's shape (the population) when they both want the same woman (territory) or even because one simply doesn't like the other that much (where is this racist dwarf? In Tehran? Is there an Abarbanel car in the area?).
Response to 1
Al Qaeda is supported by Iran which is supported by China and hence the link, China does not provide money to Al Qaeda but definitely uses the information it has gathered
Regarding the Chinese interest in a strong Iranian army, it exists and it is there
China's entire construction boom will stop as soon as Iran for one reason or another stops the flow of oil
They have multi-year plans that include a lot of money and are dominant in the world, so there is a good situation that China is arming Iran in order for the world to know that if someone messes with the Iranians (ie our oxygen suppliers) to know that we back them up
As for the decision makers - just like Syria is a puppet of Iran, Israel is a puppet of the USA
Now you will understand for yourself who makes decisions (tip-"the man of the century is the man of the opinion")
very interesting article,
The demonstration of the network structure and hierarchy was instructive, but there are also parts that I don't get and I will focus on them:
1. Parts presented as facts but are not facts but political speculations: "Hezbollah is an emissary of Iran just as Iran and Al Qaeda are emissaries of China." - Messengers of China why? Because "its support for Iran and Al Qaeda is part of its explorations to discover the weak points of the Americans and the Europeans, for the future battles in the 21st century for global hegemony."
Regarding al-Qaeda, I have no idea where you got that from..
Regarding Iran, I think that China is satisfied with the test of the Western (and Arab) world against Iran and will learn from it, and perhaps that is why they are also willing to sit on the sidelines and not strongly oppose the Iranian nuclear program - that the West will attack.
China is certainly not in Iran's immediate bank of targets.
On the other hand, this does not constitute "support" for Iran - there is no Chinese (military) interest in arming Iran with nuclear weapons, although there is a Chinese (military) interest in seeing the West's struggle against Iran and learning from it.
In summary, the Chinese want to sit on the sidelines, watch the two fight, but not be against Iran in order to profit financially, also from the Western "blockade".
2. Abstract parts like: "Most of the decision makers in Israel..."
What is "decision makers in Israel"?! Can you be more abstract?
Large scale decision makers like the government? the income? The General Staff? Wertheimer? Gaidamac? The Abbottall Brothers? McDonald's? Intel? WWWBush?
Or maybe you are talking about all the people who make decisions in Israel? I make a decision to go to bed soon. Don't know about others.
3. Wiki replaces the shooting machine actually? Not the encyclopedia?
Buttons and missiles replace the shooting machine.
In short, you get 82 out of 100.
Appeals will not be rejected without explanation 😉