We now begin Book II. If you thought it took Carl forever to get around to simply defining war, then you’re really not going to enjoy him trying to tease apart different aspects of warfare. Here we really start to see his reputation for rambling.
After reintroducing us to the basic concept of war = combat, Carl talks a bit about weapons. “The need of combat very soon led men to special inventions to turn the advantage in it in their own favor. In consequence of these, combat has undergone very many changes; but in whatever way it is conducted its conception remains unaltered, and combat constitutes war.” What constitutes a “cyber weapon” is nearly as annoying a question as what constitutes “cyber war”, but it is still important.
One part of the 2019 Hong Kong protests that received attention was the use of lasers by protesters. Some suggested this was to disrupt facial recognition. More likely is that they were being used to direct the attention of protesters, and disrupt normal use of cameras by police. At least one person on Twitter referred to this as “cyber war”, while many others disagreed.
In any case, whether we classify them as weapons or not, it has been very interesting watching the protesters adapt their tools and tactics to those used by the police. This will likely drive innovation by the police, which will drive further innovation by the protesters… “Combat has determined everything appertaining to arms and equipment, and these in turn modify the combat. There is therefore a reciprocal relation between the two.”
Keeping in mind that humans have generally developed new weapons in response to the conditions on the battlefield, if you know the conditions ahead of time, you can select the correct weapon from your arsenal. Bringing the wrong weapon… well.. “The greatest personal fitness in one field has turned out to be nothing but the most useless pedantry in the other.” As an illustration of this in purely human terms, take a look at how each of these athletes, who are at the top of their respective sports, all look completely different. As there is no one perfect athlete, there is no one perfect weapon.
Often I will hear someone who doesn’t understand the field want to “cyber” something, or ask people to “turn out the lights.” Not only is it not that simple, but it ignores the fact that, depending on the ultimate desires of the Combatant Commander, cyber means may not lead to the preferred end. Before recommending the use of a cyber weapon (or any weapon, for that matter), a Commander must “need know nothing but their main results.” If they don’t know the probable effect of a given action, I would not advise that Commander to take that action.
Now that we have discussed weapons, Carl moves on to delineating between tactics and strategy. On the one hand, tactics is “individually arranging and conducting … single engagements” while “combining them with one another to attain the object of war” is strategy. I don’t often hear people caring much about this distinction outside of .gov/.mil circles, but maybe we should.
If I’m a Security Operations Center (SOC) Analyst, I am mostly concerned with protecting my company’s network. I likely take each alert from the Intrusion Detection System (IDS) as an individual problem to solve. I might tie several things together as being a single threat that has manifested as multiple actions, but I don’t often think about the big picture. I focus on “how do I stop this specific thing from happening again?”
As I’m around for a while, and I become a Senior SOC Analyst, I get a very different view of the world. I have an understanding that “yes, macros are horrible, but the people in finance rely on them, so unless we give them some other way of producing their own code, we allow them.” I also have the experience to say “since we allow macros, here are some things we can do to minimize their risk.” I am able to look not just at singular engagements, but I figure out how to support the organization’s goals. I have moved from thinking purely tactically to being able to think strategically.
To summarize tactical vs. strategic: “tactics teaches the use of the armed forces in engagements, and strategy the use of engagements to attain the object of the war.” Carl returns to this concept of strategic vs. tactical many more times throughout this chapter.
Another distinction that is drawn here is activities that have to do with the art of war vs. the conduct of war. I’m going to do some gross oversimplification, and say that there’s a lot of supporting activities that aren’t properly part of the art of war, but are still carried out by the military because the military needs to set up its own tents. (I’m going to conveniently ignore long-term basing. As I said: gross oversimplification). These enabling activities are part of the conduct of war. While tactics/strategy may be necessary in selecting how these activities are carried out (where one sets up camp) but the activity itself is neither tactical nor strategic (not a whole lot of tactics in pitching a tent).
An interesting point that Carl brings up: even when tasks are neither tactical nor strategic, “the knowledge and skill required for such work must already be present in a trained force. The technique of the engagement takes them for granted.” As examples Clausewitz uses “the pitching of tents, subsistence and sanitary service in camp or quarters.” While the tasks have changed over time (as the current combat reality means we rarely set up camp), this is very similar to the tasks in today’s Soldier’s Manual of Common Tasks. These are the tasks that every Soldier should be able to conduct without supervision. This is a large part of what units should be spending peacetime training on.
As a homework assignment, consider: what are your common tasks? What are the baseline skills that every person in your shop should have? What are you doing to ensure that they know how to do them, that they can execute those tasks, and that they practice them? If you can honestly answer those questions, good job! If you can’t, then you may want to look at your employee onboarding process.