Ep. 148 Donnie Gebert on The Art of War, 2020
Former Military Intelligence Sergeant Donnie Gebert returns to the show, this time to explain some of the major elements of his new book, *The Art of War 2020.* Gebert draws on his eclectic background to give techniques for navigating the modern world.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- The YouTube version of this interview.
- Donnie Gebert’s The Art of War, 2020 (pdf).
- Donnie’s original appearance on BMS ep 42.
- Daily Show bit on Ron Paul.
- SNL bit poking fun at Ross Perot.
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
The audio production for this episode was provided by Podsworth Media.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
I think he makes some good but obvious points, in between stuff I don’t understand at all. Sounds like a lot of ex-mil folks I’ve heard that were exposed to too much war-craziness, catch-22 etc.
Some things that resonated:
* Going to Iraq to clean-up a problem does not help, because the problem is in DC. ✓
* Legal accountability for military and law enforcement would be nice; Less qualified immunity. ✓
* Covid scare as psychological warfare? Big ✓
Maybe some other listener who found Donnie insightful can explain what new thing he’s trying to teach.
There’s a fairly well known theory that if the prevailing style of warfare is a “pushing match” (or a numbers game if you want to call it that) then you get a political democracy. That’s because elections are a proxy for war, given that the winner of the pushing match will always be whoever can mobilize the larger group of people and organize them to all push in the same direction at the same time. Sure you can fuss around with details like supply lines, factory production, chain of command … but that’s all the meat and bones of how you go about winning a pushing match … those things sort themselves out once you get enough people who all want to win badly enough.
If the prevailing style of warfare is a gear sport, then you get feudalism. That is to say, if you have a small elite fighting force with high capital investment in each individual (both training and superior equipment) then maintenance of this fighting force becomes embedded into the social fabric.
There’s another style of warfare that is neither “pushing match” nor “gear sport” and that is the so called “Gray Zone Warfare” or if you prefer, “4th Generation Warfare” which involves acceptance that all of society, including culture, economics and politics, can be utilized as weapons on a continual basis. Deception is considered a fully legitimate strategy at every level and there is no such thing as a fully peaceful encounter. Despite the name, this concept is not new … Sun Tzu talked extensively about effective use of deception and the blurred distinction between warriors and civilians. COVID-19 is certainly not a weapon of mass destruction, by any means … but it can be used to terrorize people and potentially might be used for assassination, if high doses can be transmitted to elderly targets, by untraceable aerosol methods. Now that one virus has been used for hybrid political/economic/military purposes there will no doubt be more of them coming.
Based on this concept, politicians are a type of warrior, particularly in democratic countries. Their methods might appear peaceful, but the election determines who will have power when the dust settled, and who will kowtow … just like a real battle. A true pacifist should keep out of politics, but unfortunately the concept of “Gray Zone Warfare” makes that extremely difficult to do.