Thought Systems and Network Centric Warfare

The notion of Thought Warfare and Anti-Warfare (TWAW) has been introduced in earlier work as a way of thinking about future military conflict and its avoidance. TWAW involves the dynamic interaction of allies’ and adversaries’ Thought Systems. Current Thought Systems involve entities capable of cognition, emotion and volition typically (groups of) people interacting via networks of information and data systems. This paper summarises a conceptualisation, ie a system of ideas, of the domain of Thought Systems. The relationship between TWAW and Network Centric Warfare (NCW) is explained: TWAW encompasses NCW. Unlike NCW, TWAW explicitly considers the interaction of will and feelings as well as knowledge, information and data in networked systems of people and machines in both the conduct of war and in the maintenance of peace. This affords various new insights that may be of significance to the NCW community.