We are trapped by linear thinking, when we should be using our web thinking
22 February 2025 – – Russia isn’t preparing for World War III. It believes World War IV is already underway. While the West debates whether a global conflict is looming, the Kremlin sees things differently. To Moscow, the Cold War was World War III – a battle of ideology and influence that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, Russia sees itself fighting World War IV, not with tanks and missiles, but through deception, disruption, and destabilization.
Modern warfare is no longer about mass armies clashing on battlefields. Russia knows it cannot compete with the West’s military and technological superiority. Instead, it wages war in the shadows, exploiting the vulnerabilities of open societies. Propaganda confuses, disinformation divides, and social unrest weakens adversaries from within.
At first glance, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might seem to contradict this. Moscow believed it could seize Ukraine in a week – not just through military force, but by using disinformation, corruption, and social destabilization to make resistance collapse from within. That strategy failed. But Russia not only regrouped and adapted – it expanded its unconventional war on a global scale.
Russia’s alliances extend beyond rogue states like Iran and North Korea. It also works with non-state actors – Hamas, Hezbollah, narco cartels, human traffickers, and cybercriminals. These groups don’t wear uniforms or march in formation, but they are instrumental in spreading chaos, eroding Western stability, and carrying out operations that Russia can deny involvement in. The West, focused on conventional threats, has failed to recognize or counter this new kind of warfare.
The West is totally unprepared. It’s Bamby versus the crocodile.
The upcoming Ukraine *negotiations* are just another weapon in Russia’s arsenal. Moscow understands that the mere act of diplomacy forces the West to make concessions – exactly as the Soviet Union did before. While Western leaders prepare for outdated forms of warfare, they also cling to outdated diplomatic assumptions, failing to see Russia’s real strategy. Again – totally unprepared.
So what does this mean for the future?
* Every statement from Russian leadership is designed to manipulate Western perception
* Every show of Russian military strength is psychological warfare, meant to intimidate
* Every rise in internal division within the West plays into Moscow’s hands, as Russia actively fuels unrest and election interference
Russia sees the world differently – where war is no longer declared, but constantly waged across political, social, and digital fronts.
Do not fear World War III – you already survived it. Fear instead that we are in World War IV, and we do not even realize we are fighting it.
Watching CPAC (the annual Conservative Political Action Conference) last night, and seeing the richest man on earth, concealing his eyes behind glasses because he was so drugged out, unable to make a coherent sentence and idiotically waving a chain saw should alarm every American:
This is a guy accessing the most sensitive data on every American . . . every – single – day.
But for whatever reasons Musk went off the deep end, he still embodies a tectonic shift in what is happening in our times. Even if he was sill the *old* Musk, he would never have attained the rank of General or Admiral had he joined the military, nor would he likely have become a member of the Senior Executive Service in the US government.
The reasons for this shed light on how so many unexpected events are catching the world off guard on a daily basis. This needs a longer exposition, but herein a few of my main points.
The primary reason geopolitics seems uncertain today is because linear solutions excel during prosperous times, promoting leaders proficient in linear thinking. However, we’re witnessing a shift where linear systems are being overtaken globally by massive complexity, events long in the making but beyond the scope of current Western political schema, and so favoring a different type of leader.
This phenomenon isn’t new. Historically, peacetime generals often struggled at the onset of wars, while wartime generals found it challenging in post-war linear bureaucracies. Our present-day Western military efficiently filters out individuals with non-linear thinking patterns. For instance, those with ADHD or mild Asperger’s can’t even enter a service academy. Struggle with following a linear checklist? Good luck passing flight or nuclear power school.
This explains why individuals like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen are thriving, and why the DNA of the ruling class has changed. And it is often the reason many of them find it challenging to present linear arguments succinctly on a stage. Many linear thinkers shorted Tesla stock and predicted Twitter/X would fail – primarily because their linear mindset failed to grasp the intricate web Musk and others saw and understood, and the world they are able to influence, and in fact, construct.
These people are “web thinkers” who were often filtered out of these systems—and there’s a rationale. Web thinking can be deemed inefficient and resource-intensive during peaceful, productive eras. The post-war world made significant advancements, thanks to global security and dominant linear thinking.
However, those times are quickly fading.
Web thinkers saw the complexity, the interconnected patterns, that the world was not operating in straight lines.
In my wildest dreams I see myself as being a “web thinker”. No, I do not have a mega-brain but I do see things. Years ago I wrote that climate change would disrupt agricultural cycles, and coupled with information technology advancing at warp speed, and forced migration, would simply unravel political systems across the globe that could not measure up. So, as I wrote, it would get easier to be a dictator because the weakness or absence of bureaucratic institutions to “fix” things or *change* things would become problematic – and so “The Leader” would swing into play, into power.
But that has been my mantra for years. You need to step outside all of the usual lanes and to cross disciplines, social silos, political tribes and cultural boundaries. Those myriad spheres I read and write about – orientations, value sets, law, art, science, eros, economy, politics, just to name a few – are on different but always conflicting and overlapping trajectories.
And, yes, the media churn does become exhausting and debilitating. But you must overcome it. I read, perhaps, too much, but it is what I do for a living. I hate our faux social environment that rewards simplicity and shortness, and punishes complexity and depth and nuance. I simply detest it. You must step outside your usual lanes, and cross those disciplines, those cultural boundaries.
Yes, in a way we are screwed, because we live in such *messy* times, a most impossible enterprise, forced to prepare for dramatic surprises. As Leo Tolstoy intimates in all of his books, great events are the summation of phenomena that, because they are so complex and numerous, and also involve the Shakespearean passions of human beings, remain “inaccessible to the human mind”. And what makes them even more incomprehensible, according to Tolstoy, is that the “intrigues, aims, and desires” of the historical actors often lead to outcomes different from what they intended.
And that is the devil within the mix. All human societies are regulated by where their nation/system is on its “empire curve”. Systems that have risen to the top, or are rising, are driven predominantly by lateral thought processes, and so will fail in “non-linear times”. These systems know no other way and so their decline becomes increasingly linear, institutional, and unadaptive, accelerating their demise. That is the state of Europe today.
The poet John Keats urged us to be “content with half knowledge,” which echoes Tolstoy’s observation that much of what will happen in international affairs remains “inaccessible to the average human mind, is beyond the average citizen to cope with, to understand, because it is not part of their daily toil.” As John Keats wrote:
And other spirits … are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart,
And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings? –
Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.
I began writing this on the overnight ferry to Chania, Crete. It left the port of Piraeus, just outside Athens, at about 9 pm last night, docking in Chania about 6.30 am this morning. I booked a sleeper cabin with a view to the sea. It’s quite comfortable. And quite cheap in the off-season.
It’s my every-now-and-then escape weekend. A backpack, a few books and an 11 inch MacBook Air. Perfect for taking notes, writing. Plus my Nokia 3310, only good for phone calls/text messages to stay in touch with the family. And not check email or watch the news.
Just as we were departing last night, wine glass firmly in hand, the latest essay from Robin Horsfall popped into my timeline.
Robin was a member of the SAS counter terrorist team that assaulted the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980, helping to rescue the 19 hostages who had been held for 6 days. You may have seen the movie that came out a few years back reciting the event.
Some years ago Robin and I became friends via Linkedin where Robin has . He has had an extraordinary life and has been speaking about it at events both small and large for over 10 years. He has been an extraordinary source for understanding the subtleties of the war in Ukraine, and in Gaza.
His essay today truly captures my mood. Here is that essay.
Golum can wait
Robin Horsfall
She had said, ‘I know his type.’ The old man knew more than most exactly what she meant.
He had lived and worked with people like Golum. Intelligent, ruthless people who manipulated opinions. Often academically gifted, they were always emotionally deficient. They had no empathy for the suffering of others; enjoyed cruelty and found the pain of others hilarious. Such people were quite common. Many became senior managers or CEOs, but few ever became presidents.
He found it surprising how easily they used the information people provided in conversation as weapons against them. A small confidence or mistake could be exaggerated and used to isolate and humiliate. With those small barbs, they could take someone who asked for understanding or sympathy and reduce them to a shell. The response of the poor victim was always to be nice and more agreeable, blaming themselves. The more ingratiating they were, the more they were despised. Their eyes would grow blank and vacant, dead inside they often killed themselves from the shame of being nothing.
He’d felt the downside; been beaten to an inch of his life – for fun, isolated, and humiliated; been the victim of unfounded, malicious rumours, lost a valued career and nearly his home, but discovered a stubborn determination born from those bad experiences. He didn’t cry. He knew self-pity was pitiless.
He had seen men tortured for fun. He also knew the Golum type. Given his experience he no longer tolerated such people. His wife told him to be careful. She didn’t want to lose him, but he would not stand idly by and watch evil dominate without doing his best to intervene. He had once worked for a man like Golum. Brought in by two peers of the realm to rip the company apart, sack the staff, sell the assets, and double down on every challenge. He had been the closest thing to evil he ever met. God, he had feared and hated him! Narcissistic, aggressive, greedy, and overwhelmingly insecure.
He had watched Golum, that Great, Obnoxious, Loud, Unrelenting, Monster (Golum), rise to power and seen good people destroyed by his cruelty, lies and manipulation; seen him destroy people, destroy businesses; now he was destroying a nation. He saw it, he had shouted about it, but they could not hear him. In the land of the deaf, the loud man is an annoying irrelevance.
Golum was unrelenting. He would not stop; he was vengeful, unforgiving, and shameless. People were reduced to quivering mutts in his presence. His power came from fear. Take away the fear take away the power. Easier said than done, if Golum couldn’t hurt his opponents, he could hurt their families. He had no fear of the law. The law was there to lock up the poor and his opponents. Open to abuse the law could be purchased like any other commodity.
The old man was helpless. Golum’s drones went back to surfing hardcore on the net, eating pizza, and watching TV. The workers pranced for their king shouting ‘Me sir, me!’
The old man had to let it go for a while. He couldn’t change the world, so he had to change himself. Repeatedly shouting about something that upset him was stupidity. Sometimes the world was too real.
Everyone knew the answer, they all knew what needed to be done, but they dared not say or print it. It was
the harsh truth that could not speak its name.
He stopped, switched off his phone and computer, took his grandchildren to the park, had a beer with his wife, and for one brief moment, enjoyed the simple blessings of being alive.
He wouldn’t change the universe today. Golum would have to wait until tomorrow.
* * * * * *
Enjoy your weekend.
