Guerrilla 2.0 : Asymmetric warfare in the tech era

Asym­me­tri­cal war­fare pits a state and its conven­tio­nal forces against non-state enti­ties : guer­rilla figh­ters, ter­ro­rists, cri­mi­nals and drug traf­fi­ckers. Some of these enti­ties act on their own behalf, while others act on behalf of other states in what is known as sur­ro­gate warfare.

Mili­ta­ry stra­te­gy has long been inter­es­ted in divi­ded groups ; the Spa­nish against Napoleon’s armies, resis­tance figh­ters during World War II, or Chi­nese com­mu­nists in the late 1940s, who were able to defeat forces which were, on paper, much more power­ful than they.

This ‘asym­me­tri­cal’ war­fare, which for a long time was the excep­tion, is now beco­ming the norm. In a speech at the French Ins­ti­tute of Inter­na­tio­nal Rela­tions in 2007, Gene­ral Ber­nard Tho­rette, for­mer Chief of Staff of the French Army, explai­ned : « Large, conven­tio­nal, head-on bat­tles have given way to mul­tiple, repea­ted enga­ge­ments on a lower scale… this does not mean howe­ver mean low inten­si­ty. Our armed forces are now faced with frag­men­ted, even ato­mi­sed, states and socie­ties, and with a com­plex rami­fi­ca­tion, that encou­rage the emer­gence of small, deter­mi­ned groups. The result is an almost sys­te­ma­tic asym­me­try of threats. These threats are not neces­sa­ri­ly pri­mi­tive, far from it, as shown by the wides­pread use of IEDs (Impro­vi­sed Explo­sive Devices) in sta­bi­li­sa­tion operations.”

Our armed forces are now faced with frag­men­ted, even ato­mi­sed, states and societies.

Near­ly fif­teen years later, this obser­va­tion takes on even grea­ter signi­fi­cance, both for what it says about the asym­me­try of threats and tech­no­lo­gi­cal advan­ce­ment of forces involved.

Actors in asym­me­tri­cal war­fare have been quick to unders­tand the advan­tages of tech­no­lo­gy to renew their reper­toire of action. Lines of code and the art of trans­for­ming civi­lian tech­no­lo­gi­cal objects into wea­pons have now joi­ned the Kala­sh­ni­kovs and plas­tic explo­sives. Impro­vi­sed explo­sives using mobile phones have been repla­ced by real inno­va­tions, com­bi­ning high-tech civi­lian objects to make for­mi­dable wea­pons that are, for example, effec­tive on a far grea­ter scale.

A smart­phone and a hun­dred small recrea­tio­nal drones can create a swarm of drones, whose coor­di­na­ted attack is capable of cau­sing panic on a bat­tle­field and even more so among­st civi­lians. Hackers can, like the pirates of the past, put them­selves at the ser­vice of a state and consti­tute an auxi­lia­ry force capable of car­rying out offen­sives against phy­si­cal or soft­ware infra­struc­tures, cau­sing serious damage.

Infor­ma­tion wars are des­ta­bi­li­sa­tion ope­ra­tions car­ried out through high­ly decen­tra­li­sed net­works, conduc­ting attacks that leve­rage ten­sions within tar­get socie­ties. Here again, the results can be mas­sive : the part played by Rus­sian intel­li­gence in Trump’s elec­tion in 2016 is a remin­der of the rele­vance of Clau­se­witz’s argu­ment that : “war is a conti­nua­tion of poli­tics, by other means”. Both on the bat­tle­field and far from ope­ra­tions, tech­no­lo­gy gives uncon­ven­tio­nal modes of action, and the actors that wield them, unpre­ce­den­ted power.

This tech­no­lo­gi­cal revo­lu­tion is not without conse­quences in the art of war. It modi­fies the theatre of ope­ra­tions and fur­ther blurs the idea of the “front line” by allo­wing remote inter­ven­tions. It also changes the pro­file of the players. Final­ly, it has led to an evo­lu­tion in conven­tio­nal forces, which are taking note of these new threats and lear­ning how to coun­ter them. In March 2021, Israel used swarms of drones coor­di­na­ted by an AI for the first time. The Uni­ted States has been tal­king about this since 2015.

Mobile, agile, inven­tive, these enti­ties have points in com­mon with pirates, but also with digi­tal start-ups : their orga­ni­sa­tion is flexible, often decen­tra­li­sed, and they can mobi­lise a ‘base’ of people who com­pen­sate for their low cri­ti­cal mass.

Richard Taber, the main modern theo­rist of guer­rilla war­fare, speaks of a “war of the flea” (The War of the Flea : Gue­rilla War­fare, Theo­ry and Prac­tice, Lon­don, Pala­din, 1977). In the tra­di­tion of Clau­se­witz, he insists on the poli­ti­cal dimen­sion of this form of war­fare in the modern age, conduc­ted by sol­diers who are also mili­tants of a cause (natio­nal sove­rei­gn­ty in par­ti­san war­fare, com­mu­nist revo­lu­tion, etc.). He gives a now clas­sic defi­ni­tion : “guer­rilla war­fare has the poli­ti­cal objec­tive of over­thro­wing a contes­ted autho­ri­ty, by means of small, high­ly mobile mili­ta­ry means using the ele­ment of sur­prise and with a strong capa­ci­ty for concen­tra­tion and dis­per­sion”. What strikes a rea­der in 2021 is that in eve­ry detail this defi­ni­tion applies to the stra­te­gies fol­lo­wed by digi­tal entrepreneurs.

The digi­tal age is one of the dis­rup­tion of esta­bli­shed powers by small, agile players.

The digi­tal age is the age of the dis­rup­tion of esta­bli­shed powers by small, agile players, such as Airbnb in the face of the hotel sec­tor or Uber in the face of the power­ful cor­po­ra­tions that pro­tect the taxi indus­try. Appea­ring out of now­here, they prac­tice uncon­ven­tio­nal stra­te­gies and choose to move the theatre of ope­ra­tions to new spaces where they can concen­trate their forces. As for the “dis­per­sion” men­tio­ned by Richard Taber, the net­work struc­ture, the absence of a pro­prie­ta­ry fleet or real estate, in short, the absence of a conven­tio­nal “army”, is pre­ci­se­ly the key to their suc­cess. They rely on a mul­ti­tude of ama­teurs, not on an orga­ni­sed and trai­ned contingent.

They even have causes (sha­ring, sus­tai­nable deve­lop­ment, social inclu­sion) to enlist these ama­teurs, which are admit­ted­ly less mobi­li­sing and less direct­ly connec­ted to their action than those of yesterday’s com­mu­nists or today’s jiha­dists. Howe­ver, the voca­tion to change the world, or at least to “dis­rupt” it, is an obli­ga­to­ry part of the pitch to investors.

Suc­cess­ful small digi­tal players rely on the power of capi­tal to concen­trate their forces and move for­ward qui­ck­ly. The notion of power is the­re­fore not alien to their stra­te­gy or their suc­cess. The same is true of today’s guer­rillas, who rely on pri­vate funds or forei­gn powers to car­ry out their actions.

The world of hackers pro­vides a link bet­ween the two worlds, that of the guer­rillas and of the start-ups. Howe­ver, it is above all through a form of reci­pro­cal ins­pi­ra­tion that these two worlds com­mu­ni­cate. The stra­te­gies of busi­ness and war have often cros­sed their models. Once again, it seems that we are wit­nes­sing cross-fertilisation.