I write as a neutral observer, from a philosopher’s perspective. The desert origins of the British Special Air Service illustrate a fundamental principle of power: a small force can produce consequences disproportionate to its size by organising relationships with a much larger environment. Founded in North Africa in 1941, the SAS exploited geography, intelligence, mobility, concealment and logistical support, including that provided by the Long Range Desert Group (National Army Museum, n.d.-a; n.d.-b). Its effective organisational boundary extended far beyond its formal membership.
More than eighty years later, the reversal is striking. A force built to exploit tactical asymmetry now operates within legal, political and informational systems capable of generating asymmetric consequences upon it. The relationships that extend operational power also extend exposure. This has contemporary relevance to debates about British special operations, including those surrounding the 2026 Hereford Military History Festival’s Stirling Memorial Series, featuring former SAS commander Ed Butler and veterans Bob Parr and George Simm (Hereford Military History Festival, 2026a; 2026b). Respect for military service is compatible with rigorous accountability, including accountability to those harmed by unlawful conduct. The purpose is neither to diminish service nor prejudge individuals, but to examine the organisation of power within which soldiers, institutions and legal processes operate.
The term lawfare requires precision. Dunlap (2001; 2017) describes the strategic employment of law to accomplish military objectives, without assuming every such use is illegitimate. The term is also used polemically to describe proceedings perceived as hostile or politically motivated. These meanings are not interchangeable. Investigation, prosecution and adverse judgment do not become lawfare simply because they impose serious consequences. Legitimate accountability must remain distinguishable from deliberate strategic exploitation, which requires examination of identifiable actors, purposes and conduct.
Legal institutions organise power through jurisdiction, evidentiary standards, procedural obligations and safeguards. A complaint or referral can activate investigators, lawyers, courts and governments. The initiating act may be small, while its consequences extend through an elaborate organisation of dependencies. Legal accountability and military action have fundamentally different purposes and ethical constraints, but both demonstrate how effective power depends upon relationships rather than the resources of the initiating actor alone.
Contemporary communication amplifies this asymmetry. A statement can activate journalists, investigators, governments, markets and digital networks. Transmission takes seconds; verification may take years. Allegations circulate at negligible cost while reconstructing the circumstances they describe can demand substantial resources. Political actors pursue objectives, media organisations compete for attention, lawyers exercise procedural capacities, and institutions manage legal and reputational exposure. These activities involve intention and material interests, but their cumulative consequences extend beyond any participant’s control. Truth concerns evidential status. Asymmetry concerns the organisation through which information becomes consequential.
A claim prompts institutional response; response becomes news; news changes political attention; attention influences decisions; and those decisions generate further information. The signal does not merely circulate. Its circulation reorganises the conditions of its return. Recursive, probabilistic and spectral dynamics establish patterns of recurrence, directionality and selective response. Archives preserve descriptions, procedures establish precedents, and expectations influence subsequent action. Individual intentions participate in a larger organisation capable of sustaining and reproducing its own activity. Holland’s (1992) complex adaptive systems provide a foundation for understanding emergent collective behaviour, while the temporal and spectral relationships developed in my related work address the persistence of these patterns (Wallace, 2026a; 2026b).
The effective organisational boundary is not identical to an institution’s formal boundary. It extends through the relationships sustaining its capacities, dependencies, expectations and responses. Its effective identity persists through those relationships, not independently of them. This becomes consequential when responses generated by an allegation are mistaken for independent confirmation. An investigation establishes that an investigation exists. Publicity establishes circulation. Political concern establishes political concern. None independently establishes the originating allegation. Evidence, independent testimony and judicial findings must be distinguished from reports derived from the same source. Recurrence can generate the appearance of corroboration without providing it.
Deliberate manipulation can exploit this vulnerability, but deception is not necessary for the pattern to persist. Governments, litigants, lawyers, advocacy groups and media organisations exercise identifiable agency within wider systemic dynamics. Powerful organisations can impose disproportionate legal costs upon opponents; less powerful actors can use legitimate protections to challenge otherwise inaccessible authority. Neither circumstance establishes lawfare by itself. Strategic intent, procedural conduct, evidential merit and institutional context require separate examination. Human agency and systemic dynamics are not competing explanations. Each participates in the reproduction and transformation of the other.
The practical response is to distinguish consequences generated by recurrence from conclusions warranted by evidence. Preserve provenance through transmission, independence through aggregation, and uncertainty through amplification. Distinguish allegation from investigation, investigation from finding, and institutional response from independent corroboration. Corrections must propagate through the relationships that gave the original information its force. Otherwise the record may be corrected while reputational, administrative and political consequences persist. The test is whether the larger organisation can change direction when its evidentiary conditions change.
The SAS illustrates a reversal extending far beyond special forces or lawfare. Contemporary organisations increase their capabilities through law, finance, technology, media and information, while creating dependencies through which others can influence them. Scale produces capability and exposure simultaneously. Connection extends reach in both directions. The same arrangements can expose wrongdoing, protect vulnerable people, propagate error or enable deliberate exploitation. These outcomes are not morally equivalent. Asymmetry has no inherent moral direction.
Power increasingly generates its own exposure. The underdog principle has not disappeared beneath the scale of modern states and institutions; it has acquired new expressions through their dependencies. Control remains provisional, and institutional responses continually reorganise the conditions of subsequent action. The safeguard is neither to suppress allegations nor weaken accountability, but to preserve the distinction between evidence, intention and systemic consequence. We cannot eliminate recursion from the systems through which civilisation operates. We can learn to distinguish its directionality from truth.
Key takeaways
- Power extends beyond formal boundaries. Organisational capability depends upon relationships with larger legal, informational, logistical and political systems.
- Capability creates exposure. The dependencies that extend an organisation’s reach also create pathways through which others can influence it.
- Lawfare is not synonymous with accountability. Strategic exploitation of legal processes must be distinguished from legitimate investigation and judicial scrutiny.
- Recurrence is not corroboration. Repeated allegations, institutional responses and media circulation can create apparent confirmation without independent evidence.
- Control remains provisional. Recursive systems generate consequences beyond individual intentions, while their responses reorganise the conditions of subsequent action.
Companion pieces
Crime and Punishment: The Generative Structure of Law and Disorder
Examines how law, enforcement and disorder recursively produce the conditions to which they subsequently respond.
The Open System: Technology, Security, and the Management of Permanent Exposure
Explores how extending a system’s capabilities simultaneously extends the relations through which it becomes vulnerable.
Examines information environments in which recurrence and replicability can acquire consequence independently of evidential quality.
References
Dunlap, C.J. Jr (2001) ‘Law and Military Interventions: Preserving Humanitarian Values in 21st Conflicts’, paper presented at the Humanitarian Challenges in Military Interventions Conference, 29 November. Available at: Duke Law Scholarship.
Dunlap, C.J. Jr (2017) ‘Lawfare 101: A Primer’, Military Review, May–June, pp. 8–17. Available at: Military Review.
Hereford Military History Festival (2026a) ‘The SAS – Past, Present and Future’, Stirling Memorial Series, Hereford Cathedral, 26 September. Available at: Festival events.
Hereford Military History Festival (2026b) ‘Our Speakers for 2026’. Available at: Festival speakers.
Holland, J.H. (1992) ‘Complex Adaptive Systems’, Daedalus, 121(1), pp. 17–30. Available at: JSTOR.
National Army Museum (n.d.-a) ‘David Stirling: The Phantom Major’. Available at: National Army Museum.
National Army Museum (n.d.-b) ‘Origins of the Special Forces’. Available at: National Army Museum.
Wallace, G. (2026a) ‘Semantics Follows Frequency: Why Meaning Repeats and History Rhymes’, Daedelus Kite, 8 August. Available at: Semantics Follows Frequency.
Wallace, G. (2026b) ‘The Logic That Lives’, Daedelus Kite, 11 October. Available at: The Logic That Lives.
