Classic Form: When the state of Zhao was under siege by Wei, the strategist Sun Bin advised not to attack Wei's army directly. Instead, he attacked Wei's undefended capital, forcing the besieging army to abandon its campaign and rush home, where it was ambushed and defeated. The principle is to relieve pressure on one front by attacking a more vulnerable, seemingly unrelated point.
Modern Version: Distract from a primary strategic advance or a human rights atrocity by provoking or amplifying a secondary conflict elsewhere. While the West is consumed by kinetic wars overseas or internal cultural battles, the CCP wages a quiet war for technological and cognitive dominance at home.
AI-Powered Execution: Instead of merely guessing at an enemy's weakness, multi-person game decision-making systems run complex simulations based on game theory to identify the optimal, non-obvious pressure point. The AI may determine that a kinetic military feint is less effective than targeting a key node in an adversary’s financial system or seeding a divisive social narrative. This forces the adversary to redirect political, cognitive, and material resources away from the CCP's primary objective, effectively besieging their attention to rescue the CCP's strategic initiative.
CCP Application: When international condemnation of the Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang reached a peak, CCP-controlled state media and bot networks aggressively flooded global social media platforms with content highlighting social unrest and protests in the United States, creating a false equivalence and diverting public outrage. Similarly, when Taiwan's sovereignty makes international headlines, China often escalates military drills in the strait while its state-backed hackers simultaneously launch probing cyber attacks against Western hospitals and power grids, creating a multi-front crisis that paralyzes a coherent response.
Collaborators: Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and media outlets that reflexively focus on Western faults while downplaying or ignoring the CCP's atrocities. Social media platforms whose algorithms promote rage content and sensationalism, making them unwitting tools for the CCP's distraction campaigns.
Counter: Develop disciplined pattern recognition in intelligence analysis and public discourse. When a new crisis or outrage erupts, the first question must be: cui bono? Who benefits from this distraction? Expose the funding and influence channels that connect domestic agitators to foreign adversaries. Build resilient institutions that are not easily swayed by manufactured outrage.