Consider the many ways that the cyber arms-race is precisely this – a procedurally-incremental measure, counter-measure, counter-counter-measure. The hyper-inflating combinatorial possibility space of attack and defence as a gestalt creates it’s own momentum and self-propagating, patterned structure(s) and open or extensible system(s).
The evolutionary nature of this process is inescapable. Each act of interdiction then shapes the probabilistic branching paths of all possible counter-measures, and so on – self-inflected, accelerating. As with a viral pandemic that exploits socioeconomic activity as it’s primary method of transmission, there is an underlying (abstract) pattern here that autonomously exploits the cyber arms-race for its own optimal self-propagation.
From inside these systems it is perhaps not always possible to simply or unproblematically observe the underlying symmetries or causal and logical mechanisms at work, a fish not necessarily being aware of the chemical properties of the water in which it swims.
We are never going to even aspirationally win this game by NOT extending the conceptual rules-sets and vocabularies with which we play it. Viewed orthogonally, there are other ways to play.
