The Sixth Operational Domain

In 2012, while serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Australian Army, I worked within the Chief of Army’s think tank—the Directorate of Army Research and Analysis. My task: to imagine what the Army’s Future Land Force might look like in 2035. It was an opportunity to think strategically, unconstrained by budget cycles or rank. My brief was clear: challenge assumptions, think creatively, and—above all—look around corners.

At the time, military operations were commonly understood to occur across five recognised domains: land, sea, air, space, and cyber. Each had distinct tools, tactics, and strategic implications. More than a decade later, in Operation Rising Lion, the Israel Defense Forces delivered a masterclass in how to synchronise effects across all five. But even back in 2012, I suspected something was missing. So I posed a provocative question to our group of civilian scholars: If there were to be a sixth operational domain—one we’re not yet prepared for—what might it be?

Several days later, a consensus emerged: the next frontier of warfare would be the human mind.

Back then, we speculated on how minds might be manipulated. Could nanotech alter cognition? Could neural implants hijack thought? Would social media fracture societies from within? At the time, it all felt speculative—almost sci-fi.

But that future has arrived.

Since the atrocities of October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists brutally attacked Israeli civilians, it has become clear: the sixth domain is no longer theoretical. It’s real. And we are already fighting—and losing—within it.
The irrational hatred of Israel and Jews that erupted in the aftermath was not spontaneous—it was cultivated over decades. Our enemies—radical Islamists, anarchists, and social Marxists—have played the long game. Not by building bombs, but by infiltrating minds, classrooms, and institutions.
Social Marxism is a cultural offshoot of classical Marxist thinking. It replaces class struggle with permanent grievance—between race, religion, gender, and identity—where every hierarchy is oppression, and victimhood becomes a weapon. In this twisted worldview, Israel is recast as a colonial aggressor, and terrorists as liberators.

This isn’t drift. It is Orwellian inversion: rape is resistance, self-defence is genocide, truth is hate speech. Over the weekend, I was horrified to witness a performer at Glastonbury Music Festival chant “Death, death to the IDF”—and worse still, a crowd of Westerners echoing it back without hesitation. How on earth have we come to this?
What we are witnessing is not criticism of Israeli policy—it is the systematic dismantling of truth.

One book that shaped my thinking—both framing the problem and pointing to what the solution may look like—is The Islamist by Ed Husain, published in 2007. The son of Bangladeshi immigrants to the UK, Husain was radicalised as a teenager in East London. Alienated and angry, he found comfort in extremist circles. But when he travelled to the Middle East, he saw first-hand the corruption, moral decay, and hypocrisy of the regimes he once romanticised. That experience changed him. He walked away—and has since dedicated his life to deradicalisation.
His story is a potent reminder: minds can be hijacked—but they can also be reclaimed.

And nothing reclaims the mind like lived personal experience. That’s why getting the right people to Israel matters. Competing in the sixth operational domain won’t be won over cappuccinos in Sydney, New York, London, or Toronto—or through tweets and slogans. It will be won by exposing tomorrow’s leaders to truth on the ground, in Israel itself.
That is precisely the mission of The 2023 Foundation, the charity I founded after October 7. Our aim is to combat antisemitism through lived personal experience. Where the BDS movement seeks to lock people out of Israel so its lies go unchallenged, we bring people in. We let emerging non-Jewish leaders see the country with their own eyes, meet Israelis of all backgrounds, and draw their own conclusions.

Our vision is to grow tomorrow’s non-Jewish upstanders—not bystanders. In many parts of the world, Israel isn’t even seen as a destination for non-Jews. I plan to change that.

Einstein once said: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” If we are to push back, we need better ideas and fresh eyes and faces working the problem. We need courage, clarity, and cultural confidence to win the war for the human mind.
That war is already upon us. And Jews in the diaspora are losing—outflanked in classrooms, newsrooms, and global institutions by those who glorify terror and distort truth.

Israel cannot fight this alone. She needs allies.

Gentiles like me. But I cannot do it alone either.

We must build the next generation of upstanders—the Douglas Murrays, Richard Kemps, and Erin Molans of tomorrow. That means meeting people where they are, building trust across communities, raising funds with urgency and purpose, and stitching together a global network of principled, courageous voices. People who will not flinch when the truth is under attack. A grassroots movement. Because from drops come ripples. From ripples, waves.

Only together—Jews and gentiles—can we rewire the corrupted minds of so many across the fortunate West.

Together, we will prevail. יחד ננצח

Michael Scott CSC is the CEO and Founder of The 2023 Foundation, a charity focused on combating antisemitism through lived experience. While serving in the Australian Army he rose to the rank of colonel. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official positions of the Australian Defence Force or the Commonwealth Government of Australia.