The Disruption Doctrine
The US has turned networked systems disruption into a doctrine. It is kinetically decapitating (either capture or kill) the senior leaders of targeted states to force regime collapse.
The kinetic decapitation strikes (capture/kill) that targeted Venezuela and Iran indicate that the US has adopted networked systems disruption (the disruption of critical nodes to cause systemic collapse) as its new national security doctrine. Here’s why;
Networked systems disruption has a high ROI (return on investment). In a complex, networked world, relatively inexpensive attacks on critical nodes can collapse large networks (in this case, a state), causing massive damage.*
It’s safe, particularly if you don’t care about the damage it does to the people in the targeted state. In fact, it is becoming safer and more effective as technology advances, such as autonomous drones and AI-fueled intelligence-gathering.
This makes it a repeatable model. Rinse, repeat against new foes or against the same foe if they resist coercion with very little delay or expense (all while operating business as usual at home).
How Did We Get Here?
Here’s how our path to network systems disruption began;
Between 2003 and 2005, we toppled weak, hollow states (illegitimate, corrupt, and unable to deliver prosperity) in Russia’s orbit with color revolutions (Rose in Georgia, Orange in Ukraine, Tulip in Kyrgyzstan, plus precursors like Serbia’s Bulldozer in 2000).
These ‘organic’ ‘open source revolutions’ were designed and funded by US intelligence agencies to roll back Russia after the Cold War ended. This was an inversion of the Containment Strategy that won the Cold War, and as predicted by Kennan, inevitably turned a democratic Russia into a ruthless enemy decades later.
However, countries rapidly learned to counter these revolutions by cracking down on NGOs, imposing internet controls, raising large loyalist militias, etc. In short, the hollow states we wanted to target built an armored core to protect themselves. As a result, subsequent similar efforts like Iran’s Green in 2009, Belarus in 2020, Venezuela in 2014→2026) failed repeatedly.
