Anons I think there are some among us that will be excited to read the article by Michael Anton, "The Art of Spiritual War". Last portion of the article below and his conclusions on Spiritual War & Machiavelli.

"Machiavelli was also willing to accept, and even seek, allies wherever he could, even in unsavory quarters (D III 47). In his time that meant, primarily, “men of little faith.” In appealing to them, he risked confirming the enemy’s worst fears about himself, thus reducing his wider appeal. He also ended up with many allies who did not fully accept nor even fully understand his real doctrine, even who rejected parts of the slimmed-down version. These were prices he was willing to pay for the sake of victory. He counsels being receptive, if cautious, to defectors from the other side (D III 48)—as we should be toward the likes of Greenwald and Taibbi.

Finally, Machiavelli thought BIG. His aim was nothing less than to reorder the world (D III 49). He was not merely trying something no one ever had, but something no one would believe possible. This is the meaning, Strauss explains, of the story of the Ciminian Forest (D II 33): “it is the incredibility of [Machiavelli’s] enterprise which secures him against detection.”

There you have it, as succinctly as I could say it. I have threaded in some thoughts on what Machiavelli’s strategy might teach us about today and left others unsaid. Doubtless there are many more I haven’t thought of that will occur to others.

Those more expert than I in so-called “fifth generation warfare” may find the above summary somehow both familiar and inadequate. But as I said, no solution formulated in the sixteenth century can be applied today like a recipe. I hope to have established, however, that there is still much we can learn from the Florentine Secretary, not just about theory but about practice.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-art-of-spiritual-war/