Classic Form: Combine multiple, distinct stratagems in a sequence or in parallel, so that each tactic reinforces the others. A single trick may fail, but a chain of interconnected deceptions becomes almost impossible to unravel and defend against.
Modern Version: Run misinformation campaigns, legal warfare, economic coercion, and cyber infiltration not as separate operations, but as a single, layered, and integrated campaign. This is the essence of Total Domain Warfare, where every instrument of national power is woven into a seamless fabric of control.
AI-Powered Execution: This is the domain of large-scale, distributed reinforcement learning frameworks. Multiple AI agents, each mastering a different stratagem, can be deployed in a coordinated, asynchronous attack. One agent creates a social media distraction (Stratagem 6), while another exfiltrates data from a vulnerable network (Stratagem 12), and a third runs a legal-warfare model to tie up the victim's response in court (part of Stratagem 13). The system learns and adapts the sequence of stratagems in real time for maximum effect, functioning as an "entire operating system" of conflict where all domains interlock.
CCP Application: The CCP's entire approach to Total Domain Warfare is a prime example of chained stratagems. It integrates financial mechanisms like VIEs (Stratagem 7) to fund technological development. It uses this technology to build digital twins and surveillance systems (Stratagem 1). It deploys these systems through the Digital Silk Road under the guise of infrastructure development (Stratagem 8). It uses the data collected to fuel cognitive warfare via platforms like TikTok (Stratagem 9). It combines this with economic coercion by controlling critical supply chains (Stratagem 19) and elite capture through market access (Stratagem 10). Each domain feeds and reinforces the next, creating a system of algorithmic coercion and a managed simulation of reality that enforces compliance without overt military action.
Collaborators: Western bureaucracies and institutions that are siloed and too slow to recognize or respond to cross-domain warfare. They analyze a cyber threat, a trade dispute, or a propaganda campaign as separate issues, failing to see them as interconnected elements of a single, chained strategy.
Counter: Develop a "whole-of-government" and "whole-of-society" response. Break down the silos between intelligence, defense, commerce, and treasury departments. Train systems and teams to detect the patterns of a chained attack and to anticipate the second- and third-order effects of any single hostile action. To defeat a chained strategy, you must see the entire chain, not just a single link.