Blitzing DC
A networked organization is now in control of Washington DC. Here's how networked organizations evolved, from insurgency to protests to political parties to governance.
This report took a while to write and not because it’s long and in an essay style I don’t normally use for reports. What took so long is that I wrote it with the help of AIs (Grok 3, GPT4.5). I chose this style as a way for me experiment with writing another book with an AI as my co-writer. After some lengthy experimentation with how to get the most out AIs (that took a long time), I settled on a simple approach.
I picked a style guide. I uploaded the text of my book “Brave New War” as a reference. I wanted it to sound like me and since social AIs are mimics due to how they were trained (not singular minds), it immediately complied with that.
I then uploaded a couple of dozen GG reports (there are limits to uploads depending on the AI model you are using) with concepts and examples I wanted to incorporate into the essay. I had the AIs do a deep analysis of these reports.
Next I wrote a draft of the essay, providing a chain of logic and an orientation that the AI could follow. I then told it to write me a draft using the uploaded references as guides. Due to capacity limitations, I had to do it in parts, fleshing out each section. Once done, I stitched it all together.
To finalize it, I went through as an editor, changing the flow slightly, tweaking the examples, etc. The result is akin to an expanded outline of three chapters of a book (that also serves as an introduction to the topic for people new to the report). I thought it was a good test of the method, and I plan to use it again if people like it.
If you don’t like the result, let me know. It’s important to note that it all in my words, the AI didn’t ‘write’ the report, but I used it to push me to write more.
PS; I also found that it’s possible to use social AIs for creative writing. It’s easy to change styles, going from dialogue to descriptions of action sequences to deep dives into what a character is thinking. It’s even fun, in an addictive way it fries your brain a bit. For example, I built a rich character with a backstory, made it come alive with a method of thinking, talking, and behaving that I pulled out of the AI (remember, it’s a social mimic), and then play tested it on scenarios I built, changing the scenario to achieve the results I wanted. If you write fiction, give it a go.
One thing AI’s aren’t really that good at yet is image generation. Here’s my attempt (of many) to get something useful showing the four layers of social decision making.
Networks (new and now dominant)
Bureaucracy
Markets
Nationalism (tribalism)
Now onto the report (or an expanded outline for a portion of a new book). Let me know if you like it.
Blitzing DC
A networked organization is now in control of Washington DC. Here's how networked organizations evolved, from insurgency to protests to political parties to governance.
Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign shattered traditional American politics by launching a networked insurgency unlike any before. Instead of conventional political conflict, Trump waged a digital war fought through social networks—Twitter as its command center and Facebook as its staging ground. This wasn't a war of guns but of viral media: posts, videos, comments, and memes weaponized to exploit rigid political hierarchies and slow establishment reactions. The result was an unprecedented victory, leaving traditional gatekeepers—political elites and mainstream media—baffled and incapacitated.
Packetized Media
A form of media that breaks down information into small, independent, and transmissible units (or "packets") such as posts, short videos, or images. Unlike traditional media (e.g., books, movies), packetized media is granular, dynamic, and flows through digital networks, allowing individuals to select and assemble these packets into personalized patterns or narratives. Packetized media is a major shift in social communication that is rewiring our minds and society to conform to it.
Yet, networked warfare didn't begin in Trump's America; it emerged earlier, far from Washington, in the chaos of the Iraq War. During the early 2000s, traditional military analyses failed against an insurgency that defied conventional explanation. Over seventy distinct Iraqi insurgent groups—driven by diverse motives such as religious zeal, tribal loyalty, or economic despair—operated together with astonishing adaptability. Though fragmented, they became a networked insurgency unified around a single goal: expelling American forces. As a former special operator and an Internet analyst, I noticed that their decentralized structure resembled online open-source networks I'd analyzed earlier.
Open Source Network
A network of people working on a common project, with the promise of the project uniting them. Each contributor, has their own reason for participating in the project and their own vision of what finishing the project would look like. They might be enemies in real life, but for the purposes of this project, they are co-participants. Without any barriers to participation (like ideology, religion, etc.), mass mobilization is possible. These networks are very adaptable and innovative. Innovations in open source networks use a try it out and see if it works method of development. If an innovation works, it’s copied by the rest of the network.
These insurgents communicated using simple yet effective channels — tapping into improvements in the speed of information flow, from cell phones to online to rapid news cycles — spreading innovative tactics rapidly using newly emergent capabilities. For example; if an IED attack was successful, its success was immediately shared via SMS or news coverage, prompting rapid incremental improvements that are widely adopted. This phenomenon, known as stigmergy, allowed dispersed groups to spontaneously align and amplify their tactics without centralized leadership. Each attack acted as a beacon, triggering similar strikes and innovations elsewhere. The result was an insurgency resilient to disruption and nearly impossible to predict or dismantle.
The success of the insurgency in holding the world’s only superpower at bay for years, was prophetic. The principles of decentralization, rapid innovation, and networked media as a force multiplier didn't remain confined to conflict zones. They leaped into global political arenas, transforming protests, elections, and governance itself. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was the first American political insurgency to fully exploit this networked warfare approach, effectively turning social media into a weapon that outpaced the establishment’s outdated strategies and slower reactions.
From the Battlefields to Digital Streets
The decentralized network warfare witnessed in Iraq soon evolved beyond insurgent battles, spreading into urban squares and digital spaces worldwide. By the early 2010s, open-source networks had transformed into powerful tools of mass mobilization, fueling protests that shook entrenched regimes and global elites.
The Arab Spring of 2010 was sparked by a single emotional event: the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi. Captured by cellphone footage, this image ignited online empathy, quickly mobilizing millions who toppled dictators from Tunisia to Egypt. In Colombia, the No Mas FARC movement leveraged similar network dynamics, using viral social media campaigns to demand peace after decades of guerrilla warfare. Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street harnessed live streams and tweets to mobilize against economic inequality, rapidly scaling from a local protest into a decentralized global movement.
These uprisings shared a crucial feature: they were leaderless and spontaneous, operating through "fictive kinship," a term describing online emotional bonds formed between strangers around shared outrage and empathy. Images and videos acted as triggers, instantly unifying disparate actors around a common cause. Each viral event—a Tunisian vendor's self-immolation or a police crackdown in Cairo—functioned as an emotional trigger, pulling people together in collective action without centralized coordination. A single tweet from Tahrir Square ("Tanks rolling in; we need the world to see this!") could summon thousands to protest within hours, turning digital sparks into political wildfires.
Empathy Trigger
An empathy trigger is content, typically a powerful image or video shared on social media, that evokes a strong, involuntary empathetic response, connecting viewers to victims and mobilizing them for action by creating a sense of fictive kinship (a strong relationship akin to those in an extended family) and tribal cohesion.
Trump’s Online Insurgency
By 2016, this dynamic had evolved again, moving from the streets to American politics. Donald Trump’s campaign weaponized online open source networks, using packetized media—tweets, memes, and viral videos—to wage a decentralized war on Washington's entrenched establishment. The very elements that had worked in a real world insurgency became central to his campaign: rapid innovation, resistance to counter-pressure (due to decentralization) from the establishment, and digital maneuver warfare, deployed with devastating effect against an unprepared political elite.
Network Maneuver Warfare
A method of warfare where a networked organization exploits the mental (psychological) dimension of conflict to disorient, disrupt, and overload opponents while enhancing their own psychological cohesion. It uses rapid, adaptive maneuvers—such as a barrage of memes, tweets, or deceptive bots—to leverage ambiguity, novelty, and speed, overwhelming the opposition’s ability to think clearly.
Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign a new evolution of network warfare — shifting from street insurgencies into a sophisticated online political insurgency defined by speed, disruption, and overwhelming adaptability. The insurgency seeking to put Trump into the White House was a textbook example of maneuver warfare principles — rapidly shifting narratives, novel initiatives, and deceptive feints to disrupting and overload the psychology of the establishment (first the Republican party, then the Democrat party and the establishment media), making it impossible for them to make decisions.
When the Access Hollywood tape scandal erupted in October 2016—featuring Trump's crude remarks—political commentators rushed to declare his campaign finished. But unlike traditional politicians, Trump wasn't trying to maintain moral authority or conventional appeal. Getting him into the White House, where he could disrupt the establishment, was the promise that united the insurgency. As a result, instead trying to defend him, his insurgency ignored it and counter attacked by weaponizing controversy itself, quickly dismissing Trump’s remarks as mere “locker-room talk,” and redirecting outrage towards Hillary Clinton’s scandals.
While decentralized, Trump’s insurgency used social networks to synchronize their effort, trying out new narratives, seeing what worked, and then copying the successes. Within hours of an attack, online operatives generated effective counter-narratives faster than mainstream media could respond and pulled the focus of the discussion into new territory. They capitalized on speed, overwhelming opponents through sheer volume and rapid shifts between topics—maneuver warfare adapted to the digital era.
Blue’s Network Counter-Insurgency
The 2016 victory, however, provoked a fierce counter-insurgency from the opposing "blue" political network. By 2020, Democrats had adapted, launching their own networked insurgency rooted in moral warfare. This counterattack mobilized emotions and empathy triggers—like the viral outrage following George Floyd’s killing—to forge "fictive kinship" among millions, transforming strangers into allies bound by shared outrage and moral urgency.
Network Moral Warfare
A strategy in a digital conflict where networked organization leverages the moral dimension of warfare to undermine an opponent’s cohesion and legitimacy while strengthening their own. It employs empathy triggers—such as emotionally charged images or narratives—and moral tactics like public shaming, nullification, or claims to moral superiority to heighten menace, uncertainty, and distrust. This fosters alienation and fear within the opposition, breaking it into non-cooperative fragments.
Unlike Trump’s maneuver warfare, the blue network waged a campaign of attrition and moral condemnation. Trump's policies and rhetoric were systematically labeled racist, sexist, and authoritarian—framing him not just as a political opponent but as an existential threat. This moral framing justified aggressive suppression, making it possible for social media platforms to actively censor Trump and his supporters under charges of "hate speech" and "disinformation." As social pressure intensified, pro-Trump voices found themselves banned from major platforms, their networks disrupted, their message marginalized.
In 2020, the blue network’s strategy succeeded in suppressing Trump’s digital insurgency, isolating and demoralizing supporters through censorship and social shaming. Joe Biden’s victory, a triumph of exclusionary moral framing and networked suppression, succeeded (he barely campaigned), but it didn’t end the political war and set the stage for what followed.