Observations on Hybrid War
And the many coincidences lately
I thought about writing and publishing something else today (SARS-CoV-2 related) but I know most of my readers don’t mind if I don’t publish constantly or choose to write something else. A year to date, and a little over a year I wrote my first two Beyond Mathematical Odds, introducing how I see things, partially how I analyze things, and some of my observations, and the titles spoke for themselves.
Hybrid warfare.
I wrote many of these for most of the year until I felt the need to stop for many reasons I won’t bother to state here. A few days ago I wrote about the Ohio train derailment, the other odd accidents shortly after that one, and one a few days before, those were followed by a few others, suspicious in nature. I will merely list them.
On February 18, an industrial steel plant in Warren, Ohio suffered an explosion
February 20, a metal manufacturer in Bedford, Ohio suffered an explosion
February 21, an industrial park with a lot of vehicles went up in flames in Medley, Florida
February 21, A fire broke out at the WVA Manufacturing plant on Tuesday at 9:52 a.m. in Alloy, West Virginia
31 cars carrying coal derailed in Gothenburg, Nebraska and it prompt the presence of HazMat for some reason
Among a few others, these are the ones that got my attention at first. What made me want to write my thoughts and observations today was this particular event.
Pemex hit by fires at three facilities in one day
MEXICO CITY, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Three fires broke out on Thursday at different facilities in Mexico and the United States operated by state-owned Mexican oil company Pemex, leaving five missing and eight others injured as of Thursday evening.
Five people were unaccounted for after a fire at a storage facility in the state of Veracruz that had sent three others to a hospital, the company said in a statement.
The cause of that fire, which had been put out, had not yet been determined, the company added.
One of the facilities was Mexico’s largest oil storage facility.
Huge blaze at Mexico’s largest oil storage facility in Veracruz
The Ixhuatlan del Sureste oil storage facility that caught fire is Mexico’s largest such facility.
A massive fire broke out on Thursday, February 23, at the Tuzandepetl oil storage facility of Mexico’s state oil and gas company Pemex in the eastern state of Veracruz. The regional emergency management announced the blaze on its official Twitter profile.
Here is where we stop with data points and start with the actual reason I decided to write this, in this particular manner.
A rather intriguing misconception many people indulge in, at least from where I am looking at things is the “frequency” argument, which has some validity until a certain specific point in time. The frequency argument uses the year-over-year number of X to draw out an average and state “things are normal, things are not normal”. Year-over-year there are hundreds of derailments in the US, probably as many fires, explosions, and accidents in all manner of factories and plants.
A sound argument up until 2019, where any sort of suspicious event would have very little impact on the overall machine, one could say if hybrid war was being fought, it was being fought under the cover of the night, in a very neo-political way. Certain major events, like ports in the Middle East and China suffering massive, suspicious explosions had a sizable impact, but they didn’t break the machine, they barely brought any disruption to the whole of the system, a momentary price increase in certain items, inconveniences to local governments, financial burden, but that is “about it”.
Which is not the case post-2020 lockdowns. The global policies enacted in 2020 were bound to cause the most damage in modern human history, and many might argue this was by design, and with good cause to that argument. The frequency now matters a little less, and the “targets” and cascade effects of certain events bear a heavier weight in the system than others. Specific factories stopping or diminishing the production of certain products now have the ability to bear such a burden in the system that some can quite literally affect global inflationary trends by themselves.
What appears to be a minor, secluded event, ends up disrupting the system at an unprecedented level. From a hybrid warfare perspective, that is a hell of an ROI (return on investment), and often the investment is nil or minimal.
Another common misconception shared between the public to “experts” alike, incisive and pernicious among the military and intelligence personnel would be the argument above, with experts in the military and intel field attempting to boil down everything into equations and numbers, something Clausewitz, father of what is the equivalent of the modern philosophy of war criticized in his seminal book “On War”. I will leave the quote with you.
Earlier theorists aimed to equip the conduct of war with principles, rules, or even systems, and thus considered only factors that could be mathematically calculated (e.g., numerical superiority; supply; the base; interior lines). All these attempts are objectionable, however, because they aim at fixed values. In war everything is uncertain and variable, intertwined with psychological forces and effects, and the product of a continuous interaction of opposites.
Highly advanced countries, with a technological edge, have been suffering from an effect called “data deluge”, since the early days of 5 Eyes and global spying programs by agencies such as the NSA over a decade ago, this was already a developing problem, by gathering absurd amounts of any type of data, you don’t have the personnel to actively go through it at a timely manner. (Here is a more contemporary example and possible ways to mitigate it).
Data deluge doesn’t occur solely in the digital realm, you can mimic its effects while waging hybrid (covert) warfare against one or many of your adversaries, or merely as retribution against sanctions, perhaps whatever your high-ranking politicians perceived as a moral offense. By either creating or hijacking a cascade of events, one can easily use human failure, incompetence, bureaucracy, and all problem in between as a subterfuge to effectively hide its own actions.
As I have written in the past, quite a few times, most experts are on average 3 months behind, and bureaucrats are another good few months behind their own experts, in an unconventional war scenario such as the one I propose we have been living for the past 3 years, this is easily exploitable, how one can differentiate what exactly is an act of (hybrid) war and an accident of any given nature when you have hundreds of these per year ? How far behind the bureaucratic system itself is to feasibly measure the extent of the damage such disruptive events have ?
One could also ascribe these effects to the lockdowns of 2020, the policies that led to a massive shock in the global supply chain, and the massive pressure it exerted on factories and producers alike. This leads us to one of my biggest criticism, especially among my former “peers”.
Often alluded that you need a massive conspiracy, using quasi-legal instruments, all sorts of institutions, often backed by the covert arm of the intelligence apparatus of a nation to effectively set off a chain reaction of events to damage or disrupt an adversary. By professional experience, I can assert it does not.
With certain mathematical equations, aided by Machine Learning, one can ascertain with rather obnoxious precision which points to pressure or disruption to create further cascade effects and pressure points, creative unorthodox thinking plays a larger role after this point. By employing such (rather sophisticated) methods, one can hide hybrid war in plain sight, until it is too late.
Going back to my second point (above the picture), the problem here lies in how many events classified as small, unimportant, ordinary, or common occurrences may lead to unforeseen circumstances that disrupt the capabilities of both national security or foreign policy, if one studies history outside the common books most refer and have a predilection, you will find yourself surprised.
When looking from a big-picture perspective, often very small events had the most impact in the course of history, changing the fate of entire armies or empires. In an overly globalized, heavily dependent on other countries to maintain optimal function, said small events will, undoubtedly, be overlooked.
If a reader has the time or desires they can go back into one of my many BMO substacks, and traceback very specific events with an outsized impact on the overall function of the global system, it is very time-consuming and most people won’t take much lessons from it, unless they apply certain techniques (taking hand-written notes of every event you think may have some significance and cross-checking, corroborating is the early, initial stage of some of these techniques), but if done that, one would find that China has been waging hybrid war at an alarming speed since early 2020.
The goal of this substack is not merely to bring the “coincidental” aspect of many of the events occurring all around us, but as an initial salvo to attempt to make some of my readers reframe how they look at any type of information, in this particular case events in regards to the function of modern society, but this reframing can be applied to any and all types of information with a little effort.
And the second goal is for people to take this to heart because this will be the theme for the next few years, and a quote from one of my few opinion pieces. There are many, many players that not only create, but they in fact thrive in chaos.
Historical moments like we are living, and will for years, where massive wealth and power transfers occur, “chaotic times” are not doom. They are once-in-a-century opportunities to achieve meaningful, everlasting change. And for once, in over 150 years, I firmly believe mankind has a realistic chance of finally being free.
Opportunities like these happen only every 3 generations, and they take an immeasurable amount of sacrifice to come by. Don’t be sorry for the state of affairs, create goals, and strive to achieve them.
As a side note to this, hopefully, now some of you understand why I pay attention to many events that seem unconnected or meaningless. Because they are not, it just takes some effort and curiosity to pierce the veil, and understand if/how they are meaningful.
Hopefully, this brings some clarity to you, but maybe not. I am one to covertly attempt to make you learn and instigate curiosity, and not merely consume information. I wish you a good weekend.
Thank you for supporting this work in whatever way you choose to or can. Sharing what you find interesting is also helpful.
Forgot to add, this was the music I was listening when I wrote portion of this piece -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-xfqwp6jDY
Complicity & silence = assistance. Absolutely NO one in government is speaking out, and that overtly passive behavior equates to assistance. A great game is afoot. I doubt it's as simple as "China is the new Russia," but they appear to have been given a role to play.