Classic Form: Covertly sabotage an enemy's house by replacing its strong support beams with rotten timbers. From the outside, the house looks unchanged, but its structural integrity is gone, and it will collapse in the next storm. The principle is to secretly dismantle an enemy's core supporting structures—their leadership, their foundational beliefs, their key institutions.
Modern Version: Oust authentic, independent voices from key institutions—media, academia, government, and corporations—and replace them with CCP-friendly proxies, compromised leaders, or an AI-generated consensus. The goal is to weaken the foundational pillars of a democratic society: trust in elections, media, education, and the rule of law.
AI-Powered Execution: AI systems are used to map the "support beams" of a target institution—the key personnel, core doctrines, and trusted symbols that give it strength and legitimacy. The system then identifies or cultivates "rotten timbers"—compromised individuals, corrosive ideologies, or divisive narratives—and systematically promotes them through targeted influence campaigns. AI can model the destabilizing effect of replacing one person or idea, ensuring that the institutional collapse happens quietly and appears to be a result of internal failure rather than external sabotage.
CCP Application: The CCP actively funds "reformers" and activist groups in the West whose ideologies work to undermine traditional institutions and values. Through its United Front Work Department, it seeks to influence hiring and promotion decisions in universities and think tanks, favoring individuals who are sympathetic to or uncritical of Beijing. It uses information operations to amplify social divisions and spread disinformation, subtly replacing core values like merit and free inquiry with disruptive ideologies that weaken societal cohesion from within.
Collaborators: Domestic groups that, in the name of "progress" or "reform," advocate for policies that weaken core institutions, becoming unwitting carriers of the "rot". Media organizations that accept funding from CCP-linked entities and subsequently soften their critical coverage of the regime.
Counter: Audit the beams. Vigorously defend the integrity and standards of core institutions. Mandate transparency in funding and expose efforts by foreign powers to influence personnel and policy decisions. Do not trust the name on the door; test the structural integrity of the institution itself.