psychological warfare

Fear created by convincing an enemy that endless Romans will individually attack him.

Terror practices used against conquered people and Mongol soldiers themselves to prevent rebellion, flight, and resistance.

Jiang's term for how elites manage domestic instability and how adversaries like Russia intensify those same fractures inside a rival society.

Mucius’s failed assassination succeeds psychologically because his willingness to burn his hand makes Rome appear inexhaustibly fanatical.

Modern warfare is mostly hybrid warfare: informational, media, cyber, psychological, covert, economic, and sabotage operations may precede or substitute for visible kinetic war.

The conquest toolkit for poorer or fewer outsiders is escalation dominance, terror, and an aura of inevitability or invincibility, which lets them win psychologically before they win materially.

Psychological warfare compensated for low population and weak governance capacity by making enemies and subjects afraid to fight or rebel.

Jiang argues that most warfare now is psychological: the main task is to reshape perceptions, weaken resolve, and manipulate the information environment rather than simply destroy enemy forces head-on.

He says warfare in the nuclear age is primarily about maintaining control over one's own population while diminishing cohesion inside rival societies.

He says civil war is not only a danger but also a mechanism elites may use to reduce social discontent, and he treats conspiracy talk in the United States as evidence of elite anxiety about how to retain control after COVID, the Epstein files, and the Biden presidency.

Jiang says the American elite's problem is how to navigate present crises through psychological warfare, while Russia's problem is how to intensify those same fractures to maximize social discontent inside the United States.