Classic Form: Preserve your own strength, resources, and energy while encouraging your enemy to exhaust theirs through fruitless endeavors or internal strife. A wise general lets the enemy march into fatigue before striking.
Modern Version: Allow, and subtly encourage, Western societies to burn themselves out on internal chaos, cultural divisions, and costly foreign wars. While the U.S. expends blood and treasure on kinetic conflicts and tears itself apart over domestic politics, the CCP focuses its resources on the decisive future battlefields of AI, biotechnology, and economic dominance.
AI-Powered Execution: AI systems continuously monitor an adversary’s information environment for signs of "cognitive exhaustion"—metrics such as high levels of social media rage, declining trust in institutions, and increased political polarization. Wargaming AI, using dynamic game theory under uncertain information, can then advise CCP leadership on the optimal moment to launch an economic or cyber offensive, striking when the adversary is at its weakest and most distracted point for maximum impact with minimum resistance.
CCP Application: The CCP actively promotes narratives that fuel America's "culture wars," using its control over platforms like TikTok to amplify divisive content. While the U.S. is embroiled in debates over pronouns and historical statues, China is building a global network of ports, telecommunications infrastructure, and surveillance systems, methodically expanding its strategic footprint in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. It automates its own intelligence gathering, conserving human resources for high-level strategy, while its primary adversary is mired in self-inflicted labor.
Collaborators: Domestic political elites and media outlets that profit from division and keep the population in a constant state of agitation and distraction. Social media companies that prioritize engagement metrics over societal health, allowing their platforms to become vectors for foreign-amplified chaos.
Counter: Build local and national resilience in critical areas: food, energy, manufacturing, and information security. Foster a culture of discipline and strategic focus, recognizing that internal chaos is often a cover for an adversary's advance. The most effective counter is to solve domestic problems and restore social cohesion, thereby denying the enemy a field of labor in which to exhaust us.