A Brief Foreword to “No Rules”
For two millennia, war came with rules: declarations, uniforms, front lines, truces, and treaties. That old framework is gone. Today, states and non-state actors wage continuous conflict across military, economic, cyber, informational, legal, biological, chemical, and demographic domains without ever declaring war or signing peace. A drone strike, a severed undersea cable, a sanctions package, an AI-generated deepfake campaign, a currency raid, a fentanyl shipment, or an engineered migration wave can all belong to the same operation, launched on the same morning by the same command.
Sun Tzu taught victory without fighting.
Clausewitz said war is politics by other means.
Boyd compressed decision cycles.
Gerasimov dissolved the line between war and peace.
Qiao and Wang declared everything a weapon.
This series observes that they were all correct, and that their ideas have now fused into a single, observable reality.
No Rules warfare is no longer a customized setting—it’s the new operating system for great-power competition in 2025.
Welcome to permanent conflict.
Kinetic Warfare
Kinetic warfare—bombs, bullets, bayonets, battleships—is still how most people picture war. And for most of human history, that picture was essentially complete. From the chariot clash at Megiddo in 1457 BC to the longbow slaughter at Agincourt in 1415, victory belonged to whoever could kill, wound, or scatter the enemy fastest. The loser was broken on the battlefield or starved into surrender. Kinetic warfare reigned supreme.
That monopoly ended in the 20th century and is now dead. World War II was the final major conflict adhering to those rules, requiring physical destruction or homeland surrender. Stalingrad, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the fire-bombing of Dresden were all kinetic contests decided by who could move, supply, and annihilate more men and machines faster. August 1945 marked the culmination: atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki basically forced Japan’s surrender without the Allies invading the mainland.
Since 1945, no great power has been decisively defeated by kinetic means alone. Korea stalled, Vietnam was lost politically, Afghanistan and Iraq collapsed for strategic reasons, and the Ukraine war persists because kinetic superiority yields no breakthroughs.
Physical force is still necessary, but it is no longer sufficient. In 2025, the state or non-state actor that simultaneously freezes bank accounts, blinds satellites, floods social media with deepfakes, and engineers migration surges can often prevail without a decisive shot.
Kinetic warfare has been largely dethroned. It is now just one tool among many and often not the most important one.
Case Studies in Current Warfare
Warfare today unfolds globally, often without traditional declarations or clear boundaries. In some cases, front lines form decisively; in most, they blur across domains. Observers often recognize US involvement in Ukraine and Israel due to visible arms shipments—we’re at war implicitly without formal acknowledgment. Yet states engage in No Rules conflict far more frequently than formal war. To illustrate this evolution, we’ll examine some current cases and how the leaders are engaged in No Rules warfare.
NOTE: These assessments are intended for analysis, not moralization. While the US is engaged in these conflicts to varying extents, the validity of US strategic interests will not be analyzed.
Russia vs Ukraine & NATO
As stated by defense analyst Logan Pierce:
While the world’s attention has often focused on missile strikes and troop movements, a quieter but equally dangerous front has been expanding in parallel: the non-kinetic battlefield.
This is where Russia’s hybrid war strategy thrives—a blend of conventional military force, cyber attacks, electronic warfare, disinformation campaigns, and psychological operations. (July 2025)
As a great power, Russia extends beyond conventional warfare. Though engaged kinetically in Ukraine, No Rules tactics dominate. Mark Voyger’s Hydra model from 2015 is applicable (and applies to all these case studies):
Key Elements of No Rules:
Attrition Warfare: While adjacent to traditional warfare, attrition warfare is slightly different. As defined by EBSCO:
Attrition warfare is a military strategy aimed at wearing down an opponent through the continuous expenditure of resources and infliction of losses until the enemy’s capacity to fight disintegrates. (Sheposh 2023)
Russia employs attrition due to its manpower (1M+ troops) and economic edge over Ukraine. Despite NATO aid, incremental gains persist in Donetsk. Direct NATO intervention remains politically untenable in member states.
Electronic & Cyber Warfare: Russia is disrupting GPS signals, drone communications, and battlefield networks. At the same time, they are targeting Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian services with cyber attacks. This is all done in tandem with kinetic operations, often coordinated at the exact same place and time.
Economic Warfare
Energy Blackmail: Early in the war, Russia cut oil and gas to Ukraine-backing nations, spiking prices and forcing domestic reckonings that deterred deeper involvement. Such tactics have unintended effects, like diverting EU imports to China. US energy independence, however, mitigates Russia’s leverage, potentially undermining its strategy.
Sanctions Evasion: While sanctions were introduced and $300 billion worth of assets were frozen, Russia has been able to avoid much of the effects. Sanctions work well with sustained trade levels between enemies, but Russia increased trade with China and India as a response. Illicit trade between Russia and other countries as well as use of cryptocurrency to covertly bypass frozen assets has allowed them to avoid effects without a direct confrontation with NATO.
Information Warfare: Both sides have ramped up propaganda (i.e. the denazification narrative and Bucha massacre denial from Russia, the Ghost of Kyiv story from Ukraine) in order to affect morale, garner sympathy, sow doubt, increase tensions, provide casus belli, etc.
Lawfare & Legal Warfare: While institutions like the UN and ICC exist, Russia has been utilizing gray areas to undermine their cases against them. They’ve done this by way of proxies such as the Wagner Group in Sudan (later dissolved and succeeded by the Africa Corps) and operatives from criminal groups. These are attempts to garner plausible deniability while carrying out covert sabotage campaigns to weaken NATO resolve and slow down unified responses.
Proxy & Paramilitary Warfare: GLOBSEC documented 110 Russia-linked sabotage acts in Europe, 89 successful, mainly in Poland and France via recruited criminals (avg. age 30, financial motives). While use of mercenaries isn’t unique to this conflict, the digital age has accelerated recruitment and blurred the lines of great-power accountability. Spy recruitment, use of Iranian Shahed kamikaze drone models, and the Zapad-2025 military exercises conducted with Belarus serve as ways to absolve Russia of complete responsibility and further expand their reach indirectly.
The elements above show even in the current most kinetic war, hard warfare between aggressor and aggressed is not the sole battlefield. Some may lump all the above into the “warfare” box, but the integration of economic, technological, diplomatic, and financial domains is a recent development in how war is conducted.
Israel vs Iran
Israel vs Iran is a unique case because of the dominance of technological warfare. While missiles and bombs are sent back-and-forth, infantry is not widespread.
Key Elements of No Rules:
Electronic & Cyber Warfare: Iran and Israel are both using modern techniques with regard to this type of warfare. Israel uses techniques such as AI targeting through companies such as Palantir and Predatory Sparrow third-party hacking on IRGC infrastructure (although denied by Israel state media). Iran uses timed, targeted DDoS (Distributed Denial of Services) attacks to disrupt electronics as well as CCTV camera hacks. These are just some of the techniques that are being reported on—the extent of cyber warfare in this case extends far beyond those techniques.
Information Warfare: Framing the other side in a negative light is the most common use-case here. Iran has used the Gaza conflict as a way to ruin Israel’s global reputation, bolstering their own support in the conflict, and Israel uses state media and foreign lobbying to push back. Israel has reportedly used TV hacking and selective protest footage broadcasting. Iran has been caught using deepfake content. This is an especially important domain in this conflict because both parties need support from other countries to continue prosecuting their war.
Sabotage: Sabotage is another method used historically, but usage rates and methods have been revolutionized for 21st century warfare. The exploding pagers story, officially labelled Operation Grim Beeper by Israel, is the most famous instance of sabotage. Another operation that somewhat fell under sabotage was the US-supported airstrikes of Iran’s nuclear facilities, a US-Israel joint operation as part of Rising Lion, to disrupt nuclear development in Iran.
Proxy Operations: The “axis of resistance”, containing Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas (Hamas aligned but unofficial) is used by Iran as a proxy against Israel. These groups have largely been managed by Israel with the exploding pagers taking out much of Hezbollah’s leadership, the United States fighting against the Houthis (although mutually beneficial considering US trade disruptions in the area), and Hamas being attacked directly in the Gaza conflict. One could also say that Israel is being used as a proxy for the US to fight Iran indirectly. With more groups involved, interests converge and escalation by way of quasi, or official, allies occurs to avoid asymmetry.
Economic & Legal Warfare: Israel is successfully advocating for sanctions on Iran, but like Russia, Iran uses crypto to evade said sanctions. Iran also used ICC filings to frame the Gaza conflict as a genocide, isolating Israel from many UN allies.
Because of the asymmetrical nature of the troop counts, Israel is relying heavily on No Rules warfare techniques. Iran is doing the same, but the reason they aren’t resorting to boots-on-the-ground warfare is two-fold: Israel has US backing and the perceived deterrent of nuclear weapons. This case shows that large-scale infantry isn’t always necessary in the No Rules framework.
China vs Taiwan
Continuous incursions and neutral zone violations are pushing countries like the United States to bolster defenses in preparation for an increasingly unavoidable hot war. The No Rules techniques exemplified could also be interpreted as acts of war already.
Key Elements of No Rules:
Kinetic & Maritime Warfare: While limited, kinetic and maritime operations as well as posturing have a central role in this conflict. Taiwan’s annual Han Kuang exercises, designed to simulate military response to an invasion from mainland China, are a way of power projection and gamesmanship. With water between the rivals, navies have taken a central role as well. In April, Taiwan charged Hong Tai 58, a Chinese boat, with damaging undersea cables after they dropped anchor near the site. China denies direct involvement, but even perceived involvement escalated this conflict. China has also been bolstering their navy, exceeding the United States in total ships recently and producing certain vessels at a 2x rate. Based on this, we can infer China is perceiving this conflict as China vs US and Taiwan—no surprise given the US-Taiwan chip manufacturing relationship. US support for Taiwan independence is still mealy-mouthed, however, as the government refuses to agree to China’s terms of the “one-China” principle, only adopting a “one-China” policy. This is keeping the door open for providing defense support for Taiwan. Either way, China seems to be preparing specifically its navy to counter any US involvement.
Electronic & Cyber Warfare: Numerous sources have detailed alleged Chinese state-sponsored cyberattacks on Taiwan through RedNovember. These attacks are disrupting infrastructure and eroding public trust in the Taiwanese government. Taiwan has largely mitigated these tactics through jamming and AI defense, but disruptions still persist. The erosion of public trust is a key tactic in this conflict as reunification with China is still on the table for a small portion of the Taiwanese population albeit not necessarily viable given US intervention.
Cognitive Warfare: Domestic support in Taiwan is also being attacked through information warfare campaigns containing tactics such as deepfakes and bots. Although largely mitigated by public debunking campaigns and educational resources, Taiwan’s resources now have to be redirected to said mitigation similar to the cyber defense domain. Eroding support and causing domestic instability are again hallmarks of this conflict.
International Relations & Economic Warfare: Like the prior two cases, international relations have played a key role in shaping the conflict. The US, for example, is playing both sides in this domain, maintaining pacts with Taiwan while also largely allowing China to control the narrative within institutions such as the United Nations. This dichotomy is no surprise given the interests the US has in 1) trade with both countries and 2) avoiding a hot war with China. On the economic side, China is tightening trade with their usual pacific partners while the US is involved in “deterrence” measures such as expanding AUKUS, potentially increasing their sphere of influence in that region. This increasing bifurcation of the conflict could be both a step up on the escalation ladder leading to a potential world war or a deterrence from further escalation—it’s not yet clear.
Figure 2: AUKUS Map (updated 23 March 2023, Council of Geostrategy)
No Rules techniques are on full display in this conflict. No domain is off-limits except large-scale kinetic warfare as of today. Of the current great-power conflicts, this is especially at-risk to developing into a large-scale war soon given the current tensions and economic interests. Unless the US ramps up microchip processing, Taiwan is perceived as a necessity for future technological dominance. China, while motivated by promise of reunification, likely sees this as a way to both weaken the US as well as secure their own economic future.
No Rules: The Evolution of Warfare
Warfare has changed. Kinetic warfare has taken a backseat to a combination of other domains depending on where the parties find their advantages. Qiao and Wang described the evolution as Unrestricted Warfare in 1999. Today, I describe it as No Rules warfare because the rules of warfare no longer apply when great powers flex their muscle to avoid international penalty.
This is far from the end of kinetics though. Many countries still aim to annex their neighbors and increase their spheres of influence; kinetic warfare will still be the only way to achieve results with uncooperative foreign populations. But with increased scrutiny on conflict, especially after the Nuremberg Trials, countries can’t simply engage in kinetic warfare to take over land like they did in the past 3000 years.
The definition of warfare has also been expanded. The “war on terror”, for example, continues today with precise military operations, most commonly assassinations of rival actors. Was the assassination of Qasem Soleimani in 2020 an act of war or a one-off military operation? In this new environment, many would argue it’s proof positive of a broader US vs Iran war although never formally declared as such.
This is the other important conclusion we should draw: warfare doesn’t simply stop and start. If there’s a cyber attack on UK infrastructure from a Chinese-linked hacking group, a new tariff placed on India by the US, a spy from Kuwait caught in France, or a destabilizing wave of migration to Ireland from Romania, what response do those actions warrant? Who’s to say we aren’t already at war? And if we are, is there an off-ramp?
NEXT: No Rules II: Tempo