Understanding the Threats from Unrestricted Warfare (UW) and Fifth General Warfare (5GW)
- PAUL PRESTONxd
- 3 days ago
- 11 min read
AENN
Joe Hoft
Guest post by Matt Meck, Retired Marine Officer and Facilitator of Coalition on Election Reform
Unrestricted Warfare (UW), as outlined in the 1999 book by Chinese PLA colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, expands conflict beyond traditional military domains to include economic, cultural, legal, cyber, and psychological elements. It emphasizes “no rules” and using all means to achieve dominance without direct confrontation, often targeting technologically superior foes like the US.
Fifth Generation Warfare (5GW), meanwhile, is characterized by decentralized, non-kinetic operations focused on manipulating perceptions through misinformation, social engineering, and cognitive biases, blurring lines between combatants and civilians.
These threats exploit divisions, erode trust, and undermine societal cohesion, often without attributable actors. The US has historically countered such hybrid threats through strategies emphasizing irregular warfare, gray-zone operations, and network-centric approaches that prioritize information sharing and alliances.
However, over-reliance on advanced technologies like AI risks vulnerabilities in these domains. Instead, a robust strategy can draw from Judeo-Christian principles—such as truth-seeking, justice, communal responsibility, and moral resilience—to foster human-centered networks that build enduring strength. These principles, rooted in biblical concepts like “the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32) and communal care (e.g., “love your neighbor” in Leviticus 19:18 and Mark 12:31), provide an ethical framework for countering deception and division.
Combined with the power of networks—social, diplomatic, and informational—this approach creates decentralized, resilient systems that outmaneuver asymmetric threats. Strategy Overview: The proposed strategy views UW and 5GW as battles for hearts, minds, and societal integrity. Judeo-Christian principles supply the moral compass: emphasizing truth to combat misinformation, justice to uphold rule-based order, and community to strengthen bonds against isolation tactics. Networks amplify this by enabling coordinated, adaptive responses—drawing from network-centric warfare concepts where shared awareness turns disparate elements into a unified force.
This avoids “overselling” AI by prioritizing human agency, ethical decision-making, and organic alliances, using technology only as a supportive tool (e.g., for secure communication). The approach is tiered across time horizons, building from defense to transformation.
Short-Term (0-2 Years): Fortify Defenses Through Moral Clarity and Rapid Networks: In the immediate term, focus on awareness, resilience, and quick-response networks to blunt ongoing UW/5GW tactics like disinformation campaigns, economic sabotage, and social fragmentation.
Leverage Truth and Justice Principles for Counter-Disinformation: Promote national campaigns rooted in Judeo-Christian values of honesty and accountability to expose false narratives. For instance, establish community-based “truth networks”—local faith groups, civic organizations, and veteran associations—that fact-check and debunk misinformation in real-time, drawing on biblical calls for discernment (e.g., Proverbs 2:6). This counters 5GW’s cognitive attacks by fostering skepticism toward divisive propaganda, as seen in recent X discussions on spiritual warfare.
Partner with churches and synagogues to host workshops on media literacy, emphasizing ethical journalism as a form of “bearing true witness” (Exodus 20:16).
Build Agile Defensive Networks: Create decentralized alliances among states, private sectors, and civil society to share threat intelligence without centralized bottlenecks. For example, revive and expand models like the Moral Majority’s grassroots coordination, but updated for hybrid threats—linking rural communities, urban hubs, and border states to monitor economic infiltration (e.g., foreign land purchases near bases, as noted in X posts on Chinese strategies).
Use simple, secure apps for coordination, avoiding AI-heavy systems to prevent hacks. This mirrors network-centric warfare’s emphasis on information superiority through human collaboration.
Expected Outcomes: Reduce immediate vulnerabilities, such as election interference or supply-chain disruptions, by 20-30% through heightened communal vigilance, per gray-zone strategy analyses.
This buys time without kinetic escalation.
Mid-Term (2-5 Years): Strengthen Alliances and Institutional Resilience: Shift to building sustainable structures, using Judeo-Christian ethics to unify diverse networks and counter long-game UW elements like cultural erosion and proxy conflicts.
Foster Ethical Alliances with Moral Foundations: Draw on principles of covenant and stewardship (e.g., Genesis 1:28 for responsible governance) to form international networks with like-minded nations. Expand partnerships with Eastern European countries viewing Israel as a hybrid-war model, or India/Japan on counterterrorism, but ground them in shared values of justice and human dignity rather than pure realpolitik.
Domestically, integrate faith-based organizations into national resilience programs, such as training community leaders in conflict resolution inspired by biblical reconciliation (Matthew 5:9), to heal internal divisions exploited by 5GW.
Develop Hybrid Network Capabilities: Invest in human-centric networks for irregular warfare, like expanding unconventional warfare units with ethical training to counter gray-zone threats.
Create “resilience hubs”—networked community centers blending faith groups, schools, and local governments—to provide economic alternatives to foreign influence (e.g., countering Chinese “unrestricted” tactics via local trade networks).
Emphasize underground or decentralized structures, inspired by historical resistance networks, to evade disruption.
Expected Outcomes: Establish a “superorganism” of coordinated actors, per game theory insights, capable of preempting threats like cyber sabotage or influence operations, while reinforcing societal trust.
This could deter 5GW actors by demonstrating unbreakable communal bonds.
Long-Term (5+ Years): Cultural Renewal and Global Leadership: Aim for transformative change, embedding Judeo-Christian principles into national identity to create an enduring counter to UW/5GW’s erosion of values.
Revive Moral and Communal Foundations: Promote a renaissance of Judeo-Christian ethics in education and policy, countering secular humanism or militant ideologies that exploit moral vacuums.
Integrate teachings on justice and truth into civics curricula, fostering generations resilient to manipulation. Encourage faith-led initiatives for national unity, like inter-community dialogues drawing on prophetic calls for righteousness (Amos 5:24), to rebuild trust fractured by 5GW.
Globalize Ethical Networks: Lead a coalition of nations committed to rule-based order, using networks to export these principles—e.g., through faith-diplomacy with Africa and Latin America, where evangelical growth offers fertile ground.
Develop “non-simple” strategies for modern warfare, emphasizing adaptive, value-driven coordination over tech dominance.
This positions the US as a beacon against unrestricted tactics, inspiring global resistance.
Expected Outcomes: Achieve strategic superiority by turning moral resilience into a force multiplier, rendering UW/5GW ineffective as societies become too cohesive to infiltrate. This aligns with visions of restoring Western civilization through foundational values.
This strategy is politically robust, substantiated by historical precedents, and prioritizes human networks over fleeting tech advantages, ensuring sustainable victory.
COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): Hybrid warfare ultimately fails against a people who know who they are, whose they are, and refuse to lie to themselves or each other. Combine that identity with dense, trusted, horizontal networks and you create a society that is simply “Anti-Subvertible.”
What follows is a suggested, comprehensive, multi-domain strategy for the United States to defeat Unrestricted Warfare (UW) and Fifth-Generation Warfare (5GW)—the decentralized, non-kinetic, perception-and-identity-based warfare that China, Russia, Iran, global jihadi movements, and transnational progressive networks are already waging against the American polity, culture, economy, and psyche. The strategy is built on two mutually reinforcing pillars:
Judeo-Christian anthropology and ethics (the “why” and moral cohesion engine).
Decentralized, covenantal human networks (the “how”—resilient, high-trust, self-organizing cells that out-scale and out-maneuver centralized authoritarian systems).
AI is treated as a useful but secondary tool—never the center of gravity—because 5GW is ultimately won or lost in the human heart, family, church, and local community, not in server farms.
Short-Term (0–3 years): Survive the Current Siege: Goal: Stop the bleeding—halt the ongoing demoralization, institutional capture, and social fragmentation that are the primary 5GW attack vectors.
Re-moralize the population through a “Great Awakening 2.0”
Mass revival campaigns (modeled on 1730–1740s First Great Awakening) led by non-compromised pastors and lay leaders, emphasizing repentance, masculine responsibility, feminine nurture, and covenantal marriage/family.
Explicit rejection of the sexual revolution, critical theory, and transgender ideology as demonic strongholds (2 Cor 10:4–5).
Use existing church networks (SBC, Acts 29, non-denomination mega churches, Catholic dioceses that still believe the Creed) as distribution layer for truth and mutual aid.
Build parallel polys: local covenant communities
5–15 family “households of faith” (micro-congregations) that meet weekly for worship, education, mutual aid, and light civil-defense training.
Each cluster adopts a school board seat, a city council seat, and a precinct captain role. Politics is downstream of culture; culture is downstream of cultus (worship).
Re-establish tithing → local mutual aid funds so people can leave captured institutions (public schools, dying denominations, woke corporations) without economic ruin.
Information warfare counteroffensive
Fund 1,000 independent, theologically grounded citizen-journalists and meme warriors who operate on locals-first model (county → state → national).
Primary mission: name the anti-human spirit behind specific policies and cultural moves (Eph 6:12 applied to real institutions). This collapses the enemy’s ability to maintain plausible deniability and “respectability.”
Secure the children
Immediate exodus from public schools wherever possible (already ~4 million homeschooled + 3 million in classical Christian schools). Scale classical Christian and Hebrew-academy hybrids 5× in five years.
Teach the Trivium, Bible, Western canon, and basic tradecraft (gardening, mechanics, first aid, small-unit tactics).
Mid-Term (3–10 years): Reclaim and Rebuild Institutions: Goal: Move from parallel structures to re-conquest of captured ground.
Economic warfare: “Benedict Option + offensive capital”
Build parallel financial rails (credit unions, Bitcoin/cryptocurrency mutual credit circles, precious-metal depositories) owned by church networks.
Train 100,000 young men in skilled trades + entrepreneurship with explicit covenantal business charters (no ESG, no DEI, no porn advertising, Sabbath-keeping, profit-sharing with workers).
Target 15–20% of GDP run through explicitly Judeo-Christian businesses by 2035.
Political warfare: precinct strategy on steroids
Turn the 168,000+ evangelical churches and 18,000 Catholic parishes into permanent political machines (legal under Johnson Amendment if done correctly; Johnson Amendment case – National Religious Broadcasters, et al v. Billy Long pending review of 7 JUL 2025 consent judgment).
Goal: 500,000 trained precinct committeemen by 2030 who control the GOP at county and state level in red/purple states, then use that leverage to force institutional reform or replacement (sheriffs, DAs, school boards, state legislatures).
Legal warfare: covenantal lawfare networks
1,000 law school graduates per year trained at explicitly Christian law schools (Liberty, Regent, Ave Maria, new ones) plus alliances with Orthodox Jewish firms.
Sue every institution that violates the First Amendment or basic biology until they choke on legal fees or backdown.
Demographic warfare (the only one that ultimately matters)
Raise fertility from 1.62 → 3.0+ among faithful families. This requires:
Ending no-fault divorce at state level.
Tax policy that does not reward childlessness and rewards 3+ children.
Cultural glorification of motherhood and fatherhood (see Hungary/Israel models).
In two generations, a minority that outbreeds its adversaries by 3–4× becomes the new majority.
Long-Term (10–50 years): Renew the American Covenant: Goal: A Fourth Great Awakening that re-establishes America as one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all who accept the covenant.
Constitutional amendments (requires mid-term political dominance)
Explicitly recognize the laws of nature and nature’s God as the foundation of the Republic.
Marriage and family policy returned to states or defined federally as one man/one woman + their children.
Education freedom: tax credits follow the child; public schools are defunded if they teach gender ideology or critical race theory.
Foreign policy: armed missionary nations
Rebuild U.S. military around explicit Judeo-Christian chaplaincy and warrior ethos.
Contain and convert adversaries through a combination of economic isolation, information ops, and demonstration effect of a functioning high-trust society.
Technological posture
AI and quantum computing are treated as utilities, not saviors.
All critical infrastructure hardened against EMP/cyber-attack.
National policy: no digital currency without 100% auditability and opt-out; no social credit systems under any name.
Why This Beats Unrestricted/5GW
5GW wins by dissolving identity, trust, meaning, and fertility. This strategy directly rebuilds all four at the most local, unbreakable level: the covenant family and household of faith.
Authoritarian systems are brittle because they rely on fear and coercion. High-trust covenant networks scale infinitely because they run on love, honor, and shared transcendent purpose.
China and the post-Christian West are both dying demographically. A remnant that refuses the poison and outbreeds everyone else inherits the future (see ancient Israel vs Canaanites, Christians vs Rome).
Bottom line: The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God for pulling down strongholds. Networks of faithful families who fear God more than the regime are the ultimate 5GW countermeasure—because you cannot hack, demoralize, or seduce people whose identity is hidden with Christ in God. Execute at the “Speed of Repentance.” Start this Sunday.
Comprehensive Framework for Countering Hybrid Warfare Tactics
Hybrid warfare combines conventional, irregular, cyber, economic, legal, informational, and psychological tools below the threshold of open war. Its goal is to paralyze decision-making, fracture societies, and achieve strategic aims without triggering a traditional military response. Below is a practical, phased playbook tailored for the United States that integrates Judeo-Christian ethical principles with proven network-centric approaches—while deliberately minimizing dependence on AI systems that adversaries can manipulate or spoof.
Core Principles (Non-Negotiable Foundation):
Truth as a strategic weapon – “You shall not bear false witness” (Exodus 20:16) and “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32) become operational doctrine.
Decentralized, covenant-based networks – Modelled on biblical covenants and early church structures: small, trusted, redundant cells that scale horizontally.
Moral asymmetry – Refuse to mirror the enemy’s lack of rules; instead, make restraint and justice a force multiplier that wins allies and exposes adversary hypocrisy.
Human judgment over algorithms – AI is a tool for logistics and pattern recognition only, never for narrative creation or final decision authority.
Short-Term (0–24 months): Stop the Bleeding:
Hybrid Tactic | Countermeasure (2025–2027) | Lead Actors | Judeo-Christian Anchor |
Mass disinformation / deepfakes | National “Truth Squad” network: 50,000+ vetted volunteers (pastors, teachers, veterans, journalists) using simple, open-source verification tools and local town-hall debunking events within 12 hours of a major lie. | Faith communities + state National Guards | “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess 5:21) |
Foreign funding of divisive NGOs and campus groups | Pass and enforce expanded FARA 2.0 + state-level “Foreign Influence Transparency Acts” requiring real-time public disclosure of all foreign grants >$10 k. | DOJ + 35+ state attorneys general | Stewardship & justice (Micah 6:8) |
Economic coercion (critical mineral cartels, port investments, farmland purchases) | Immediate inventory + 5-year moratorium on adversarial-nation purchases of land within 100 miles of military bases; create domestic critical-mineral public-private cooperatives. | DOD + USDA + governors | Responsible dominion (Genesis 1:28) |
Lawfare (weaponized international courts, sanctions evasion networks) | Pre-emptive diplomatic coalitions with Global South nations offering debt restructuring in exchange for rejecting adversarial lawfare venues. | State Dept + faith-based diplomatic NGOs | “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matt 5:9) |
Cyber + infrastructure sabotage | Distributed “guardian node” program: every county emergency management office + major house of worship gets a hardened, air-gapped backup comms kit (mesh radio + Starlink offline maps).
| FEMA + local churches/synagogues | Preparedness without fear (Proverbs 22:3) |
Mid-Term (2–7 years): Rebuild Cohesion and Deterrence:
Objective | Key Initiatives | Network Model |
Restore societal trust | National “Covenant Renewal” campaign – 3-year cycle of community service, shared meals, and truth-and-reconciliation events led by local clergy and civic leaders. | Cell structure → county → state → national |
Deny adversaries narrative oxygen | Fund 500 independent local news co-ops owned by readers/residents (modeled on 19th-century American newspapers but with blockchain-verified donations). | Decentralized, subscriber-owned |
Counter proxy militias & terror | Expand Abraham Accords–style “faith and security” partnerships with moderate Muslim, Hindu, and African Christian leaders to isolate jihadist and Marxist proxies. | Religious diplomacy networks |
Economic resilience | “Made-in-America Mutuals” – regional manufacturing credit unions owned by workers and churches that prioritize domestic supply chains. | Mutual-aid societies 2.0 |
Cognitive defense | Mandatory high-school course: “Discernment & Worldview” – logic, source criticism, and biblical/theological foundations of Western liberty. | Education + local congregations |
Long-Term (7–20 years): Achieve Strategic Dominance Without Firing a Shot:
Re-establish America as the “city on a hill” that cannot be manipulated
Mass revival of Judeo-Christian ethics in public life creates a population psychologically and spiritually immune to 5GW manipulation (historical parallel: Cold War-era moral clarity defeated Soviet active measures).
Export the model via soft-power networks
Create a global “Covenant Nations Forum” – annual summit of countries explicitly committed to rule of law, human dignity, and truth-based governance. Membership requires rejecting adversarial lawfare and disinformation campaigns.
Permanent decentralized resilience architecture
Every county in the U.S. has a trained, equipped “civil defense league” (10–15 % of adult population) that meets monthly in existing houses of worship or community centers. They train in:
→ Physical first aid & infrastructure repair
→ Information triage & counterpropaganda
→ Mutual aid economics
This mirrors the Swiss militia system but is culturally rooted in American congregational life.
Make the adversary’s toolkit obsolete
When a society is so cohesive, truthful, and locally resilient that foreign billions can no longer buy division, and when deepfakes are laughed off within hours by grandma’s church group chat—Unrestricted Warfare and 5GW simply stop working.
Real-World Proof This Works
Poland & Baltic states (2014–present): Heavy investment in civil society, territorial defense leagues, and moral/religious identity blunted Russian hybrid attacks.
Israel (2000–present): Combination of mandatory service, strong national narrative, and community trust makes 5GW penetration extremely difficult.
American Founding era: Decentralized “Committees of Correspondence” and pulpits defeated British psychological warfare before a single shot at Lexington.
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