The Art of War in the Information Age

Yesterday, we witnessed DeepSeek R1 release an on-par model with OpenAI O1.

For those not familiar with the LLM and GenAI landscape, these are the state-of-the-art publicly available and commercial models as of today.

The Economic Warfare Front

While open-source and resource-constrained teams can champion this as a net good in making AI more equitable, affordable, and accessible, this is a significant earmark in the grand chessboard of US vs. China in next-generation all-domain warfare. I'm deliberately using the term "warfare" since we are aware that APT Salt Typhoon has compromised virtually all US telecommunications, embedded itself in critical infrastructure to execute destructive operations in the event of a Taiwan conflict, and infiltrated a multitude of federal agencies, primarily but not limited to the United States Treasury Department.

Cyber relations continue to be covert and lawless, in the realm of diplomacy and public relations - facts are facts - and it's wise for us Americans to be cognizant of this as conscious constituents.

Back to the domain of economic warfare, DeepSeek R1 is roughly 30% of the cost of OpenAI in tokens and API calls. All American companies are subject to this economic warfare as the modus operandi of CCP-aligned commerce is to empirically dominate American companies.

The Pattern Across Industries

Another prime example is with robotics.

Here is an in-depth comparison of Boston Dynamics' "Spot" robot dog and its Chinese competitors, primarily from Unitree Robotics:

In the realm of drones, the same occurrence. The market of transformers, electrical infrastructure, same thing. Expensive athleisure clothing... same thing.

Virtually all markets are the same, and to add a critical industrial and manufacturing component, the thousands of companies embedded inside the value chains to ultimately build these products natively is vehemently out of short-term strategic reach.

Asymmetric warfare as championed by the leadership of NextGen defense primes such as Palantir, Anduril, and the growing cohort are spot on in effective defense industrial base innovation.

"who wishes to fight must first count the cost" ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Decentralized Security as National Security

American psychology has to deeply understand how decentralized security is core to our national security. Defense in depth, nationally, occurs when we as families can secure ourselves across energy, food, cyber, finances/assets, and capabilities.

This then extends to our communities, cities, and states — a bottom-up form of security, where you are a node and you must secure your node. Node-centric security then builds hyperscaled network security for Americans.

If you are unable to access your bank, your card doesn't work, your power doesn't run, your grocery store doesn't have food, your internet doesn't work — how long will you pray the outside services take care of you? Now zoom out and understand this on the national and federal level of the US empire.

There's a reality that strengthening yourself as an individual denigrates the state - technologies like Bitcoin, enforce this via technology. In a collective vs. individual paradigm of governance this is perceived as unlawful, but there is a difference in the Rule of Law and being Ruled by the Law down to the Letter and Spirit of the Law.

Combining the concept of the interdividual and understanding our individual behaviors have cause and effect on the collective, and vice versa, can be principled and not juxtaposed.

"The wise warrior avoids the battle." ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Multipolar Reality

These are the realities of war, and a potential that becomes more probable in the multipolar order with a rising BRICS economic block beyond the G7.

The visualization below provides you context on how Goldman Sachs projects the global economy in 2050.

Our ancestors and forefathers sacrificed so we could live and have the comfort to so gracefully operate within widespread domestic peace, but we dissociate from parts of the world where that is not the reality and are immature in our behaviors and words to think we are immune to seismic chaos in our domestic society.

"In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity" ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Ask tough questions, embrace adversity, build solutions to problems you can solve, lift people's spirits, do hard things, so help us God.

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Authored by Tobalo Torres-Valderas

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