As a pre-read in the run-up to the OODA Network monthly meeting this Friday, September 20, 2024 – and in light of the recent stochastic terrorism incidents – we have compiled OODA Loop research related to and inspired by the “early warning” statement from the forward of the recently released Brian Jenkins’ led report  – Addressing the Threat of Political Violence in the 2024 Elections  (a few OODA Network Members participated in the workshop that led to the contents of this final report). 

In the Spring of this year, participants in the creation of the report “were motivated by their shared concern for the future of the country.  They have confidence in the resilience of American society––faith that American common sense will prevail. But they also worry that the country’s deep divisions and dark mood could propel even minor incidents of violence during the election cycle into a dangerous national crisis.“

Why is this Important? 

• Recent stochastic political rhetoric—incidents of violence, phony and real threats of violence, and stochastic feedback loops—has only extenuated the concern raised by the workshop’s early warning statement.  
• The finite timeline of the approaching U.S. election day  – the clear runway left of 49 days until Election Day on Tuesday, November 5th – seems to be acting as an accelerant for actions and behaviors by groups and individuals who have strongly held beliefs that their “side” not winning means the end of the republic as their political philosophy sees it and frames it.
• Based on this timeline, events are now in a tactical rather than a strategic phase—more the “A” of individual and collective “OODA” Loop decision-making processes— as the perception of the threat is aligned to interests and incentive structures  – also as perceived by state and non-state actors alike (i.e., lone wolf assassins, political campaigns, Russian purveyors of misinformation, etc.).    
• We look at these events through the prism of the ongoing threat of domestic political extremism and violence in the U.S. in this epoch of poly-crisis, a cluster of interdependent global risks that create a compounding effect such that their overall impact exceeds the sum of their individual parts. 
• The phrase “we are in unchartered territory” comes up frequently. 
• Everything is convergent and interrelated globally. 
• Our OODA Loop/hypothetical research questions then become:
  • What does the usual election cycle “October Surprise” look like when some stakeholders feel like they are under  – the now perceived as tactical  – stress of an ‘existential threat’ to their very way of life?  
  • In a hard break from the first principles thinking of the separation of church and state that is central to the founding documents of the U.S.:
    • For those who prescribe to a Christian Supremacist worldview that their candidate is biblically prophesied to win this election and save the republic, what does “winning with God’s support by any means necessary” look like? Or 
    • Their candidate’s loss of the election is not consistent with their extreme religiosity and fanatical prophecies. What does that look like in the next 50 days to roughly 120 days through the certification of the election on January 6, 2025, by the U.S. Congress at the Capitol? How does such fear-based zeal fueled by religious beliefs manifest – again?   

Politico | “The most complex, dynamic and dangerous threat environment I’ve experienced“

• Security experts say sharp polarization and increasingly hateful political rhetoric — fanned by foreign adversaries and supercharged by social media — have combined to test the nation’s ability to protect its candidates and institutions.
• “The 2024 presidential election is taking place at a time when the U.S. is facing the most complex, dynamic, and dangerous threat environment I’ve experienced in the 40-plus years that I’ve been working in law enforcement, homeland security, and national security,” said John Cohen, a former senior Homeland Security intelligence and counterterrorism official.  “We’re facing cyber, physical, and other threats by foreign and domestic threat actors, and what’s different today is how they have fully embraced the power of the internet,” Cohen added.

What Next?

The next 49 days are nothing less than an information ecosystem tightly re-organized around the narrative tropes of the 2024 Presidential election cycle – which has a deep-rooted “nothing to lose”/”by any means necessary” incentive structure for the further use of stochastic terrorist tactics and strategies – that, invariably, will then embolden and mobilize deeply structural, organized, ready to be deployed political violence, military extremism, political extremism, white supremacy, Christian supremacy, and military accelerationism forces in the domestic United States.    

Addressing the Threat of Political Violence in the 2024 Elections

Reorientation Resources: Stochastic Terrorism and Confirmation Bias

Additional OODA Loop Resources

OODA Almanac 2024 – Reorientation

Civil War Cinema  Viewed through the lens of history, 2024 will be a landmark year punctuated by the complexities of a political process that will exacerbate the binary fractures of the American republic. These issues are much too deep to benefit from the analysis here, but it is always important to contemplate how close to the flame we are dancing in the context of an Eric Hoffer case study. It is also a year that will be marked by a major cinema film that contemplates a new American Civil War, normalizing the idea of conflict to resolve political differences, and it hits at a time of misaligned governance incentives and high levels of poverty and displacement.

Focused on the thematics of this Almanac, we should acknowledge that problems arise when societies dream more about how things were than how they could be and that a vote is the last bastion of power you have against a broken and corrupt system without firing bullets. Therefore, the articulation of the future and the benefits of exponential technologies need to align with the first principles of democracy and opportunity.