Rethinking Security

Open Spaces and Systems

I missed this one, but Curtis flags an interesting initiative going on with P2P thinking.

Politics 101 for Futurists

Jamais Cascio has a bone to pick with futurists who don't factor politics into their analysis:

"I've heard the sentiment that advocates of Revolutionary Technology X 'must seek to escape politics' repeated in various forms time and again, even by people and groups I otherwise respect. It's a fascinating and sad delusion, characteristic of a movement that sees itself as both smarter than everyone else and unbound by the problems of the past. ..Politics is part of a healthy society -- it's what happens when you have a group of people with differential goals and a persistent relationship. It's not about partisanship, it's about power. And while even small groups have politics (think: supporting or opposing decisions, differing levels of power to achieve goals, deciding how to use limited resources), the more people involved, the more complex the politics. Factions, parties, ideologies and the like are simply ways of organizing politics in a complex social space -- they're symptoms of politics, not causes. Calls to get rid of politics can therefore mean one of two things: getting rid of persistent relationships with other people; or getting rid of differential goals."

To add to Cascio's own excellent words, I'd also have to say that denial of politics is also a denial of friction. Futurists, and technologists dislike politics because it subjects fine-tuned rational ideas to a state of irrationality they find genuinely threatening. The problem is that politics is not some kind of Bizarro World full of UFOs generated by the Bermuda Triangle. It pervades human life. The same irrationalities, unknown variables, and surprise upsets seen in politics also are characteristics of the wider world.

Futurists and technologists, especially those who prefer Hari Seldon/Foundation-style master plans, are going to have to reckon with the simple fact that those plans will be mediated through the social world--politics being only one face of it--and thus need to design their forecasts and technologies accordingly.

This does have geopolitical relevance as well. See Joseph Fouche's excellent post "The Tragedy of the Geopolitical Nerd" for more.

Moralism and Nichepapers

By now everyone knows that I'm not a great fan of Umair Haque. To me, he is the tech industry's version of Thomas Friedman. However, I thought his "nichepaper manifesto" was an interesting look a the changing dynamics of the media. He's right that small-start up and scaled-down ventures are increasingly driving coverage and content, especially stuff that eschews the dominant 20th century journalism model of "he said, she said" objectivity. This is hardly an original observation, but it's reminiscent of the early days of the press, with bloggers substituting as pamphleteers and the new "nichepapers" mirroring the somewhat sensationalistic and partisan tone of the 19th century press. The problem, of course, is Haque's enthusiastic over-selling of nichepapers and niche forms of media.

Disruptive Technologies May Change the World But They Don't Pay Much

Your invention can revolutionize the world but it won't necessarily make you rich, Marco Rinesi argues:

"But for all of its undeniable power, the printing press wasn’t the source of large fortunes for the engineers, investors, and businessmen involved in this industry. Profits were made, yes, sometimes significant ones, but nothing quite proportional to the influence of the technology. The bulk of the benefits came to the organizations that leveraged this technology for their own ends like modern states, which would have been logistically impossible without the printing press, or the myriad business that cannot be conceived without a superbly well-educated (for pre-modern standards) source of workers and consumers.

The same pattern can be seen in many other technical advances, specially those that impacted society the most. Contraceptives, telecommunications, refrigeration: they are often overlooked foundations of the contemporary world, each of them enormously disruptive, yet none of them, over the long term, a gold mine of extraordinary returns."

Why is this so? Rinesi notes that "most industries, no matter how advanced," simply sell tools to other people. Those who use the tools are most likely to gain the most benefit from them. When reading of this, I think mostly of Mikhail Kalashnikov, whose humble assault rifle was widely pirated and copied. Despite the production of 100 million AKs, Kalashnikov lives on a meager state pension and is buying shares in umbrella companies. This is a reason to look askance at claims of disruptive innovation making instant billionaires. Rather, it's worth reflecting on how niche inventions and tools developed out of existing platforms have been the most successful. Kalashnikov did not invent the first assault rifle--rather he invented the most cheap, reliable, and user-friendly variant. Similarly, the team behind Facebook didn't invent social network sites but created a juggernaut through innovative redesign of an existing template and platform.

The Lagos Raid

Terrorism Monitor has the details on the latest MEND operation in Nigeria:

"Niger Delta militants in speedboats launched a devastating attack on Nigeria’s rapidly decaying energy infrastructure on July 13 by seizing and destroying a major oil distribution point in Lagos, a city of 16 million people. The assault was the first time militants from the Delta region have struck Nigeria’s largest city. ...An assault group from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) struck the Atlas Cove Jetty during the night, killing a number of sailors guarding the facility before driving away the rest. Dynamite charges were placed on ten pipelines at the terminal and the resulting explosion was heard throughout the city. The attackers returned to base without apparent intervention from the Joint Task Force (JTF), a hybrid security force detailed with eliminating the insurgency in the oil-rich Delta. The attack came only hours before the release of imprisoned MEND leader Henry Okah under a new Nigerian amnesty program."

Jeff Vail has some interesting thoughts about the campaign as a whole:

"MEND fractioned amidst infighting among Ijaw tribal alliances. Various factions, with various political agendas, neutralized the ability to push for peace through negotiations—there was no single party, nor accession to a single set of demands, that could defuse the motivation to violence. In addition, the ransom money that foreign oil companies now routinely paid for the return of western employees spawned a market for guerrilla entrepreneurs—actors who were less motivated by traditional Ijaw political goals than by a return on investment. The lure of easy money has led to a proliferation of militant groups (now perhaps best characterized as criminal gangs) and a dramatic increase in attacks. This infusion of easy money to youthful militants broke down the traditional tribal structure of respect for leadership by elders—much as the infusion of easy drug money makes urban street gangs in the US less accountable to traditional cultural and familial restraints."

The link to street gangs here is rather important, especially given that the attackers struck after Okah was released as part of an amnesty program. The Terrorism Monitor story notes that one faction has named "fugitive militant leader and tribal chief Government Ekpemupolo (a.k.a. Tompolo)" perpetrator of the attack. Some suspect that Tompolo, a warlord with his own elaborate military base, worked a "protection racket" as an security adviser to various foreign oil firms.

Constructivism and Counterinsurgency

I have a new RTJ post reflecting on some of Stephen Pampinella's recent work. Pampinella is doing some of the most interesting thought on current strategic issues in the blogosphere, so if you aren't already reading him you should be.

RTJ Gems

Two new great articles have been posted on Red Team Journal.

First, Chris Flaherty has a new look at assessing topography in urban operations planning for domestic counterterrorism missions. Although people having been sour on geometric approaches to analysis since Jomini went out of style, he has an intriguing criticism of the common approach to "mass space:"

"[I]n any major city we see complex spaces, and the diffusion of many vulnerabilities and potential targets spread three-dimensionally through urban settings. Thus, along urban linear routes (roads, transport, or building thoroughfare) an attacker moving along these can threaten multiple targets. Again, this raises the basic tactical problem of the 2007 Haymarket attack–namely, military, security, or police forces are kept strategically off-balance, unable to protect any one potential target, and spread too thinly to protect all assets effectively from attack."

Flaherty has many other interesting articles examining operational issues on his page at the Archer Ball consultancy.

Second, Tim Hsia takes a look at a much-heralded Malcolm Gladwell article and draws some conclusions about tactical surprise and asymmetry. This paragraph is especially rich:

"Tactical surprises are commonplace, and underdogs seek to employ them at every opportunity. In a sustained campaign, however, events that were once deemed surprises can quickly become viewed as commonplace events (for example, the use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs). Therefore, underdogs often need more than tactical surprise to achieve strategic victory. Even in the basketball game analogy, a full court press can possibly win a game, but to win the season requires more then just a team that employs a surprise tactic."

Tim has published widely at the Small Wars Journal on a host of operational issues and has published on strategic analysis at Red Team Journal, most recently on North Korea and mirror-imaging.

"Greening"

Short hit at RTJ on self-replication and mirror-imaging.

More on Media Spectacles

I have a new post on information campaigns at the new Dreaming 5GW site.

System Perturbations and Influenza

Inspired by Arherring, I posted a brief blog at Red Team Journal looking at H1N1 Flu from the system perturbation analytical framework.