Rethinking Security

Twitter Information Flows

Shlok makes a good point about Twitter and Iran:

"Twitter’s feed is not an effective way of understanding what’s happening on the ground. It was useful seven months ago (much smaller audience), yes, but not anymore. Data overflow has rendered the presentation stack ineffective. At the minimum, a real crisis-Twitter would process data (not just provide a raw feed)."

There's a constant arms race between aggregation tools and design methodology and the ever-expanding flow of information. Twitter worked for a while as an aggregation tool but it's not working anymore. I would argue, though, that the focus and reliance on tools to aggregate and channel information is what is part of the problem.

The key thing that people looking to understand the situation through social media need to think about is how they look at information. The problem with the notion of the information consumer is that the consumer's constant aggregation of information through the proliferation of blogs, Twitter, and Facebook traps them within a cybernetic loop that gives an illusion of understanding. The end result is a kind of "database animal" constantly desperate for raw data devoid of context. With each up to the minute information update the hunger for more information grows. The image that comes to mind is the classic cyberpunk sci-fi figure of a human being plugged into a giant machine.

RAND analyst Carl H. Builder notes in Command Concepts that the cybernetic concept of command and control (C2) features the commander as the receptor of a massive amount of information processed through command nodes. This, Builder argues, turns the commander into an information omnivore who is constantly hungry for (and dependent on) massive amounts of raw data. The anecdote to this is the notion of the "command concept"--the guiding pre-set vision of the battlespace from which successful engagements are won.

In an event like the Iranian protests, the most important immediate thing for an observer to do is to build a kind of "command concept" of the basic parameters of the situation through a more old-fashioned kind of information aggregation: going to the library. Strategic information like the nature of a country's political system, elites, cultural cleavages, etc is more important than tactical updates that may or may not be true. Users dependent on tactical information are usually easy prey for memes that sound commonsensical but actually are products of lazy thinking and mirror-imaging.

Evolutionary Security

Via John Robb, the next addition to my ballooning to-read list.

New COIN Books

Anyone reading these?

Running Notes on Science, Strategy, and War

I read Frans Osinga's Science, Strategy, and War a while ago for the John Boyd Roundtable but have recently started re-reading it, most specifically his treatment of Boyd's core arguments. Shimon Naveh's Systemic Operational Doctrine has a lot of similarities to Boyd's ideas, although Boyd himself disliked doctrine--saying it would easily become dogma. Nevertheless, SOD inspired me to go back to the source.

Perhaps the most important thing I've realized the second time around is how deeply difficult the Destruction and Creation cycle is. Fragmenting and deconstructing beliefs and approaches in order to build a new synthesis is often a traumatic process for organizations, especially those who attach world-historical importance to aspects of method. Everything from the WWI "Ideology of the Offensive" to Detroit's decline comes to mind here.

The COIN Graduate Seminar

New article with John P. Sullivan at Small Wars Journal on books in counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, criminal insurgency, and future warfare.

Review: Terrorism, War, Or Disease?

Just finished getting through bookpile and finished reading this compilation of essays on biological warfare. This is not a typical technical overview of biowar and arms control issues. The contributors genuinely focus on the political and social contexts surrounding biological weapons and their usage. Of particular interest is the chapter on Imperial Japan's biological weapons program, which demonstrates the complexity of trying biowar criminals for usage on civilians and POWs. The most valuable chapters focus on false allegations of biological weapon usage, the process by which those charges were constructed, and how the accused responded. Those interested in political ecology and economics will also find an interesting study on the effect of disease and false biological warfare allegations in India.

Review: The "New" Terrorism: Myths and Realities

Crossposted at The Anti-Library.

I am finally getting around to reviewing the stack of review copies sent to me from various publishers on security topics. One book I have been especially remiss in reviewing has been Dr. Thomas R. Mockaitis' book The "New" Terrorism: Myths and Realities. An accomplished historian and expert on low-intensity warfare, Mockaitis sets about by defining the myriad terminology of terrorism and insurgency and explaining the tactical and operational interplay between the terrorist and counterterrorist. As such Mockaitis is intent on placing terrorism within the greater spectrum of low-intensity warfare. This is enormously useful for those who can't tell their VBIEDs from their 4GWs.

REPORT: BLACK AND WHITE SWANS

Sam Liles has an excellent review of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan" up at Selil.com. I wrote about "Black Swans" and super-empowered individuals for Defense and the National Interest a while back myself.

MISC: BOOK BUYING

Zenpundit details his new purchases. I myself am coming off a long (and very serious) illness, so I have been behind on the book-buying. However, a quick trip to a neighborhood bookseller got me back into the game. I picked up Joanna Burke's Fear: A Cultural History, Jacques Ellul's Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, and Alan D. Schrift's edited compilation Modernity and the Problem of Evil. However, that is going to have to wait until I finish two books I have in the review pipeline, Thomas K. Adams' The Army After Next: The First Postindustrial Army and Thomas R. Mockaitis' The "New" Terrorism: Myths and Realities. All in all, a good haul.