Global Guerrillas

HOLLOW STATES: LEBANON

May's dispute between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah is an interesting example of the contest between hollow states and virtual states over legitimacy and sovereignty. As in most conflicts between gutted nation-states and aggressive virtual states, Hezbollah's organic legitimacy trumped the state's in the contest (an interesting contrast between voluntary affiliation and default affiliation by geography). The fighting was over in six hours.

A Parallel Communications Backbone
What's more interesting than the actual fighting is what the conflict was about. In summary, the government made an attempt to slow the expansion Hezbollah's fiber optics network, which provides secure/robust communications and surveillance (via automated cameras) to the group. Specifically, the government tried to shut down surveillance nodes of the network overlooking Beirut International Airport. Hezbollah responded by defining the network as a core part of its organization and that they were willing to defend it with violence if necessary.

So, we can now conclude that in addition to a 4GW militia and social services, a parallel communications/surveillance network is a core feature set of virtual states. This tracks with our emerging experience in Sadr City. It also implies we may see interesting virtual variants of this via the parasitic piggybacking of open source insurgencies (the PCC, al Qaeda, etc.) on cell phone networks and the Internet.

DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURES

NOTE: Here's one more exploration of thermodynamics as an underlying driver for the high levels of systemic malfunction we are currently experiencing. It also implies that the global situation will get much, much worse before it improves.

Sorry for all of the high level theory, but it is proving useful in defining the parameters for successful decision making in the future and where/how violence will erupt.
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If we view our world as a thermodynamic system, a simple application of the second law of thermodynamics won't suffice. Everything doesn't get progressively worse over time. Based on our collective experience, the global system, as well as simpler biological systems, operate on a different basis. They don't run down with the conversion of energy. Instead, they increase their structural complexity over time.

The modification of thermodynamics necessary to accommodate this observable fact was formulated by the Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine in a theory called "dissipative systems" (read his excellent book: "The End of Certainty" for more). One important leap in this theory is that a dissipative system isn't a closed system. Rather, it lives within a larger system (an "environment") that it can interact with.

This upshot of this is that it can extract energy from this larger external environment to increase its structural complexity (build itself up through a process called self-assembly). It can also use this external environment to dump the entropy created during the energy conversion process to minimize the deleterious impact on its structure.

In summary, the global civilization we inhabit fits nicely within Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures. Unfortunately, there are numerous signs that that our system's structure has grown so large, that is now nearly equal in size of its external environment. This implies that disruptive fluctuations will likely increase in intensity (positive feedback loops) until the global system either reverts to a much simpler model (closer to thermodynamic equilibrium, think Kunstler's "World Made by Hand") or evolves into a more stable configuration (think "Resilient Communities").

JOURNAL: Why use the Thermodynamic Crisis as a framework?

As many of you already know, a large part of what I do is to provide people with useful frameworks for thinking through difficult or complex problems. To the extent that these frameworks get you thinking (even if you disagree with me, which is encouraged), they are a success.

The benefit of using the "Thermodynamic Crisis" as a framework is that it is a relatively complete and simple explanation for many of the global trends we are currently seeing. It also appeals to a scale that is beyond the noise generated by cycles of introspection (at the political, social, and economic levels) that forces analysis paralysis. As John Boyd points out in "Destruction and Creation":

...we find that the uncertainty and disorder generated by an inward-oriented system talking to itself can be offset by going outside and creating a new system. Simply stated, uncertainty and related disorder can be diminished by the direct artifice of creating a higher and broader more general concept to represent reality.

To repeat: by moving up the scale to a global thermodynamic systems approach, we can start to see the outlines of the real situation. A situation not adequately modeled by global and (even less) national political/economic analysis. Keep this in mind when I begin to expand this framework in the next months.

THE THERMODYNAMIC CRISIS

Globalization has catalyzed the decline of the nation-state and spawned decentralized violence/opposition (which is increasingly effective due to innovations in theory and DIY technology). The result has been an ongoing crisis in the global control system we use to mitigate the impact of emerging challenges -- our responses/efforts are therefore slower, less effective, and more divisive. Much of this has been documented in this blog and the book, Brave New War.

The Other Crisis
This "Control System Crisis" is particularly unfortunate since globalization has also created a "Thermodynamic Crisis" characterized by increasingly expensive energy (demand growth that far exceeds supply growth as well as expensive/inefficient substitution for declining sources) and ecosystem overload (global warming, pandemics, water/soil depletion, etc.).* The reason for this is that our global scale civilization has exceeded:

• The production capacity of stored solar (oil, natural gas, etc.) energy resources. As demand (driven by 2 billion more people, a 3x gain, becoming middle class consumers) continues to outstrip supply, we will see energy inputs become increasingly expensive.
  
• The carrying capacity and natural defenses of our ecosystem. More specifically, our civilization's entropy production has exceeded the baseline negative entropy of our environmental systems.
  
• Our global system's capacity for evolutionary change. Incremental changes to the global system through technological innovation, economic restructuring, and social reengineering can't produce the results needed to reverse or slow this crisis.

The Impact
Worse, there are signs that these crises are coupling into a global scale positive feedback loop that threatens increasingly frequent disasters (of a wide variety of types).

*I'll provide a MUCH more detailed examination of this in my new book, "The Resilient Community."

JOURNAL: Searching for Assumption Errors

One of the best ways to determine the viability of any future scenario is to examine its assumptions (aka its initial conditions). For example, there's an interesting 2001 report from Shell on energy futures called, "Energy Needs, Choices and Possibilities: Scenarios to 2050." This report paints a rosy picture of a technological fix (through an energy substitution process, which is commonly conveyed via intellectual fast food like the Whale oil story) to future energy needs. However, if you dig into the assumptions you find this:

“Personal Choices – related to values, the environment and lifestyles – influence the energy system. Affordability is not the key constraint in OECD countries.” (page 24)

and this:

"... scarcity of oil supplies -- including unconventional and natural gas liquids -- is unlikely before 2025... Technology improvements are likely to outpace rising depletion costs for at least the next decade, keeping new supplies below $20 per barrel. The costs of biofuels and gas to liquids should both fall well below $20 per barrel of oil equivalent over the next two decades, constraining oil prices." (page 18)

Of course, seven years of hindsight makes it easy to see these assumptions are false. It is much harder to find assumption errors that have yet to play out.

SPEAKING: Renewable Energy Conference

2nd Annual Distributed Energy Conference
Renewable Energy VT
Stratton Mountain Resort
15 May, 2008

I'm speaking on the topic of building resilient communities during the lunch session. This is going to be the first time I've given this brief. Hope you can attend.

At the end of May I'm going to be at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey (at the invitation of John Arquilla) for the "Beyond GWOT" Conference.

BTW, here's the feedback on a recent speaking engagement with senior DoD personnel.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The Resilient Community

What am I doing? I've been hard at work on my next book: The Resilient Community.

Recent thoughts? While I was writing this morning, I was surprised at how much Brave New War's (BNW) exploration of the future of warfare informs the new book on:

a) the nature of the emerging threats that will be faced and

b) how a Resilient Community can defend itself.

As a result, I think that people that liked BNW will find the chapter on warfare in the RC book very interesting indeed.

My goal with this book? I hope this book will provide readers with a useful eschatology for the current global system and a conceptual blueprint for the DIY (do-it-yourself) efforts necessary to build a Resilient Community.

The reaction the book will get? For those that completely tied to or immersed in the legacy system, this book will be a very scary read. For those that are fearless and willing to adapt in order to progress, it will become a go to reference.

QUOTE: MEND on the march

"Our candid advice to the oil majors is that they should not waste their time repairing any lines as we will continue to sabotage them. We have time on our side and there is so much to be destroyed." Joseph Gbomo, spokesman for MEND.

As anticipated, MEND has quickly found a new "Joseph Gbomo" and is back in action as a charter member of the shadow OPEC. It's a great demonstration of how quickly open source warfare can bounce back from seemingly fatal blows. NOTE: The combination of a labor strike at Exxon (850,000 barrels a day) and systems disruption aimed at Shell and Chevron (~500,000 barrels a day) has shut down 50% of Nigeria's oil production. The oil markets responded to this loss of production from a major producer and drove prices to nearly $120 a barrel.

JOURNAL: Food and the RC

The global shift to the resilient community model (RC) won't be merely a function of systems disruption (as it is in developing economies and in COIN efforts). In the main, it will be driven by basic economic necessity as the costs for core inputs (food and energy/fuel) soar beyond affordablity. For example. According the the Wall Street Journal, price inflation for basic items is already very high:

The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

The trend data appears solid, in that this inflation will not abate in intensity for some time to come (NOTE: this a natural outgrowth of a global market system that has expanded beyond the capacity for oversight during a substrate shift -- lots of dislocation will result). Food riots in Asia were just an early warning signal. Given that median incomes are static in the West (eight years of data), likely due to fierce global competition from below , these increases in core inputs are going to quickly reach an unsustainable percentage of the average household's disposable income. In tandem with the upward march of energy/fuel costs and a housing crisis (home foreclosures in California are running at 500 a day now), a widespread shift to the RC is increasingly inevitable. Don't expect any help from the nation-state on getting this done (unless the DoD helps out via the backdoor of RCs for COIN and stability operations).

JOURNAL: A Shadow OPEC?

Intentional disruption of the global oil system (MEND shut down 169,000 barrels a day this week in Nigeria and Terrorists shot an RPG at a Japanese Oil Tanker off of Yemen) is driving the price of oil well past $100 a barrel.

Have we reached the point where guerrillas/terrorists now have more control over the price of oil than Saudi Arabia? A real and quantifiable Shadow OPEC, where even small attacks can influence prices? Perhaps.

If so, this would be the realization of a potential I identified back in 2004, when I began to write about the trend in global terrorism towards systems disruption.

JOURNAL: COIN without a model for Community Resilience is Futile

Here's a news story that describes how the US took parts of Sadr City from the Mahdi Army but is unable to deliver the basic services required for legitimacy:

Michael Gordon "In Sadr City, Basic Services are Faltering" NYTimes. April 22, 2008.

The Sadr City situation is yet another example of how, for want of a model for community resilience (there's a long discussion of the philosophy required for this in Brave New War) from tech to process to education, counter-insurgencies in both Afghanistan and Iraq aren't gaining traction despite the enormous cost in lives and treasure already paid. Also, it is a good indication that the new Africa Command will likely fail to establish any meaningful improvement on the continent (in fact, without meaningful alternatives like a package for resilient communities, it will likely default to the opposite by propping up brittle oil-based dictatorships like Equatorial Guinea).

How to correct this? Get smart people involved to define the scope, scale, and proposed response to this hard problem (in a fashion similar, but over longer period of time, than what I am doing for the NIC on another hard problem). Pour DARPA dollars into resilience technologies aimed at communities. Test prototypes to get data and insight. Find out what works.

WIM (what it means) long term? My strong belief is that if the DoD can help crack this problem, it will be as big a contribution to the world as ARPANET.

JOURNAL: The Ghost of Boyd Invoked

Secretary of Defense Gates invoked the late John Boyd in his recent battles with the Air Force brass over future funding. That's a good thing if he actually means it. More creativity across all the services is needed to meet future threats without bankrupting the treasury, especially within the Air Force (where I earned my wings). Time Magazine:

To the horror of some in the Air Force, Gates cited the late John Boyd, who attained the rank of Air Force colonel, as an example young officers should emulate. Gates called him "a brilliant, eccentric and stubborn character" who had to bulldoze his way through the Air Force hierarchy to launch the F-16 fighter, now regarded as perhaps the best value in the skies. Gates lionized Boyd for telling colleagues they could think in traditional Air Force ways that "will get you promoted and get good assignments," or do the right thing "and do something for your country, and for your Air Force, and for yourself." The Defense Secretary added that "an unconventional era of warfare requires unconventional thinkers." Gates made clear change won't be easy for the Air Force, whose key victories, he suggested, happened long ago. "The last time a U.S. ground force was attacked from the sky was more than half a century ago," he noted, "and the last Air Force jet lost to aerial combat was in Vietnam."

Personally, I think that with a deep rethink of the future threat environment, the Air Force could become a decisive player in 21st Century conflicts.

Final thoughts: Unfortunately, that's not the direction we are going. Instead of unconventional thinking we get internally-focused IO (information ops/public diplomacy) and talking pointy heads. A better approach is to think of the public discourse over war and peace as an information marketplace. IF we do, we can use a lesson derived from the ongoing malfunction in the ~$400 Trillion shadow banking system. The lesson is: if you game the system too much, you can taint the market's price discovery mechanism (akin to the mechanism of finding common ground in the case of public discourse). If that happens, trust evaporates and the underlying systems the market controls will careen from failure to failure.

DIY (do-it-yourself) WEAPONS

This is a follow up to an earlier brief on DIY Rockets and aircraft.

In the 20th Century, guerrilla warfare was a derivative of state vs. state conflict largely due to the dependence of guerrilla groups on nation-states for weapons (or, more accurately, the manufacturing capability necessary to make them). That dependency is rapidly declining as:

• Vast quantities of mothballed Cold War hardware continues to find new uses.
  
• Grey market manufacturing becomes increasingly available (down to low-cost knock-offs) from a growing number of sources in a hyper-competitive global marketplace.
  
• DIY (do-it-yourself) weapons, built from scratch using off the shelf parts/knowledge/tools and produced in quantity through cottage industry at low cost, emerge (IEDs, Qassam Rockets, Storm worm, etc.).

DIY Weapons
My first exposure to a muscular DIY systems was in the early 80's while working on a 1.5 meter rocket with a solid fuel engine (a shaped version of the same fuel used in the Minuteman ICBM). For one of the launches I built a disc camera system with a wireless servo attachment. It took great pictures. There's been LOTs of progress since then, so much more is possible on a shoestring budget. As a result, these systems offer the most headroom for improvements in lethality or effectiveness (which is a constantly moving target), is in weapons built by individuals or small groups using globally accessible knowledge, resources, and tools. In short: DIY weapons. Unfortunately, DIY weapons and the organizational processes necessary to take advantage of it have been vastly accelerated by the catalyst of Iraq. While 9/11 was also a catalyst, however, it is better seen as an anomalous outlier (an early warning of what was possible) since it occurred years before the changes necessary to enable small groups to fight nation-states evolved. Regardless, DIY weapons are now a major factor on the global battlefield, made worse by an ability to improve at rates 20 times faster than what we saw with groups of similar size late in the last century.

WIM (what it means)
We can expect to see these weapons become dominant (in use) in the next decade as they branch out into new areas and begin to take advantage of newly emerging capabilities. For example: personal fabrication that can churn out rockets/UAVs with tight form factors and customized/integrated flight systems -- or -- bioengineered pathogens that use commonly available materials, university sequencing/design software, widely available skills, and labs on a chip. The only limiting factor are the imaginations of the world's guerrilla entrepreneurs. In combination with systems disruption and increases in lethality, the sky's the limit.

NOTE: In contrast, the big defense contractors will find themselves focused increasingly on developing anti-weapons to counter innovations in the DIY space. Not sure they will be flexible enough to pull it off.

RESILIENT COMMUNITY: FABRICATION

It's normally assumed in most projections of a localized future (driven by disruption, expensive energy, etc.) that consumer products become very rare. Either they are too expensive (usually due to the vast expense globalized transport/delivery) or too infrequently available (due to disruptions) to support current lifestyles. However, in the longer term, that doesn't need to occur. In resilient communities that undergo the transition, a revolution in manufacturing currently underway (we are only at the very start of this journey) may provide a solution. What is it? Personal fabrication. It's a method of low cost and small scale production for anything from 3-D objects up to and including intelligent systems (it will get even more effective as the costs are driven down and capabilities increase in concert with Moore's Law). It has enormous promise and will likely provide a way for resilient communities to not only stay completely "modern," but even advance economically and in quality of life faster than communities dependent on traditional centralized sources of production.

I'm going to spend much more time exploring the limits and implications of this in the future (particularly in my upcoming book on the Resilient Community). In the interim, here's a broad/high level overview to get your head wrapped around the concept.

Personal fabrication is a method of manufacturing that has been recently popularized and accelerated by MIT (specifically MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms). Essentially, it takes rapid prototyping machines (which have been around since the early 90's) and combines them with easy to use design software to create a small local manufacturing shop that can produce a wide variety of original products. Here's an explanation of what personal fabrication is from the center's director, Neil Gershenfeld (read the entire article if you get a chance).

NOTE: Again, this has applicability to both development and counter-insurgency (although, over a longer time horizon). It also may be transformational in terms of warfare. Think DIY (do-it-yourself) weapons systems.

PS: I am on Twitter.

JOURNAL: Hezbollah Continues to Evolve

Hezbollah is in the process of evolving into a more effective force. Nicholas Blanford has a great article over at the Christian Science Monitor on this.

New type of military:

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the party's leader, in February said that Hizbullah had evolved into an "unparalleled new school" that is part guerrilla force and part conventional army.

This is aka a 4GW military.

New offensive methods:

New tactics are being taught, including how to "seize and hold" positions, a requirement that Hizbullah's guerrilla fighters – traditionally schooled in hit-and-run methods – never needed before... Jawad says that the next war will be "fought more in Israel than in Lebanon," one comment of many from various fighters that suggest Hizbullah is planning commando raids into northern Israel.

In context: Simultaneous hostage dramas during a conflict to shut down city/town centers, economic activity, and sow confusion? Broad spectrum damage. Civilians are the best defensive works possible in the modern variant of the strategic barrage. As a result, these hostage dramas could last for the duration of the conflict. Message to fighters is that if they survive: they will be released in end of conflict prisoner exchange (its not necessarily a one way mission).

Wider movement :

Hizbullah's military buildup is not confined to Shiite Lebanese. Sunnis, Christians, and Druze also are being recruited into reservist units called "Saraya," or battalions... Sheikh Afif Naboulsi, a prominent Hizbullah cleric, last month was quoted as saying that next time "the Israelis will find resistance fighters from all sects and denominations."

This is a variation on open insurgency.

TINKERING NETWORKS AND DIY ROCKETS

The history of the dominant technologies of 21st Century warfare won't spend much time on the complex and expensive systems developed by US defense contractors. Instead, the focus will be on the innovations that are derived from open tinkering networks of amateur inventors. The reasons for this include:

• Higher levels novelty production. Diverse and open networks of amateur hackers, tinkerers, and inventors can pursue more paths of discovery and development simultaneously than large, expensive, and linear development efforts. The importance of this will increase as Moore's Law, which measures the level of computing power available to the average user, increasingly shifts to the vertical (remember, this is an exponential curve). See open decision making for more.

• More platform leverage. Open development has access to all the global platform has to offer from services to systems to knowledge. In short, the more open and globally networked you are, the better you can take advantage of this leverage.

• Faster adoption. The delta between development and widespread adoption of innovations that work will increasingly shrink due to widespread sharing. This is in contrast to the closed and tightly controlled process of deployment seen in traditional defense systems acquisition.

DIY ROCKETS

We can see an early example of this trend in weapons development with the IED (improvised explosive device) which has migrated from a tactical device to an operational (operational art is between tactics and strategy) weapon. Another weapon that may follow a similar path of development is the DIY (do it yourself) rocket. Although it is early days, the writing is on the wall. DIY rockets are inexpensive ($500 to $2000 currently). Easy to store and quick to launch (they require less set-up time than IEDs). In terms of effects, they convey the message (despite the current inaccuracy) that no place is safe for civilian supporters of a war effort. It can also be used to destroy economic activity in affected areas. For example, the Israeli town of Sderot, which has suffered an increasing number of DIY Rocket attacks over the last seven years:

About 4000 of the town's 23,500 people have moved out in the past two years, according to municipal figures. Many more say they would leave if they could... Home prices have fallen by 50 per cent... 20-30 per cent of businesses in Sderot and surrounding areas have shut down... Overall sales at the stores that remain open have dropped by nearly 50 per cent...

Given this example, it's clear that DIY Rockets can make wars with global guerrillas disastrous under the requirement (set by the highly competitive global marketplace) that these wars should be fought during peacetime. Further, if they combined with a defensive hedgehog, it forces conventional forces to make relatively ineffectual and harried strikes on fleeting targets, which creates the collateral damage so useful to an insurgency.

We can expect these DIY efforts to get steadily better as new amateur tech (tinkering networks) adds increasing levels of sophistication (from range to accuracy). Here's a great example of low cost design software from RocketSim. Basic avionics. Here's a nice system that adds telemetry and inertial/GPS measurement. As a capper, here's potentially a platform play in open source avionics for rockets. The last step, a control system connected to servo based vanes is all that is needed to enable it to hit specific buildings. That's hard, but well within the capabilities we see emerging in the tinkering space.

NOTE: Of course, I should point out (and was encouraged to do so by quite a few people), that a much simpler solution in the short term is to use small drones to do the same thing (essentially, a V1 solution). Further, this area is much farther along the development path, as you can see on Chris Anderson's DIYDrones site.

JOURNAL: Case Study on Open Decision Making

This is a follow up to the brief, "Open Decision Making."

Regional disasters of all types, from natural to man-made, are similar to warfare in that they are:

informationally (low levels of information flow, rapidly changing circumstance, and high levels of novelty),

morally (who should you help first, how far should you go to help, etc.),

and physically (the scale exceeds means) complex.

Therefore, disasters in extremis should provide an excellent opportunity to compare the efficacy of different organizational decision making styles and their applicability to the escalating complexity of modern warfare.

Katrina
So, how well did the respective decision making styles do during hurricane Katrina? Fortunately, Steve Horwitz, from St. Lawrence University, has already done this work with an excellent case study on the topic. He found that organizations with open decision making systems, both public and private, greatly outperformed those that didn't. Across every measure of success (in particular, the feedback from locals) the Coast Guard, Wal-Mart, Home Depot stood in stark contrast to the miserable performance of FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency).

NOTE: All three organizations that were successful used Boyd's approach. Strong organizational cultures and training were used to harmonize orientation for local decision makers. This common outlook in turn allowed decentralized decision makers to quickly optimize their actions to meet the requirements of rapidly evolving local circumstances without specific guidance from a centralized leadership or written regulatory framework.

RESILIENT COMMUNITY: MICROGRIDS

Electricity is the lifeblood of modernity, but it is going to become much more expensive (fuel expense/availability) and unavailable (due to an increase in random failures via underinvestment to a plethora of black swan scenarios). As such, communities need to gain control over the flows of electricity in order to become resilient. One of the first steps towards this goal is through the concept of the Microgrid. Here's some background reading from the CERTS (Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions). Essentially it is a local power network connected to the national/regional grid through a smart switch.

Why the Microgrid?
There's been lots of exploration at the national level on incorporating computing architectures (data services plus sensors) into the grid system (known under the rubric "the Smart Grid"). Unfortunately, these efforts suffer from the step function problem. This means that the changes contemplated are too expensive and too wrenching to accomplish on a large scale (akin to boiling the ocean). The only way to implement these new technologies and methods is to find a way to do it organically. The Microgrid enables this by creating a local network (electricity plus data services) that can become a platform for the organic growth of a diverse and innovative ecosystem of solutions and providers.

What it Does
A Microgrid enables the ability to do the following:

• to disconnect from the national grid when there is a general utility failure. This enables a combination of back-up power systems from third party providers -- everything from flywheels to back-up generators (very much the same approach that data-centers use).
  
• to build a local market for power production. Since the Microgrid buys power in volume from the national grid, it will likely get dynamic pricing data (time of day, etc.). This data allows the Microgrid to offer local producers of electricity the ability to sell into the Microgrid at competitive prices (peer to peer production). Of course, if local power production is a priority, then the price comparison can be weighted via subsidies to favor local producers.
  
• to add smart features that will only get nominal deployment on the national grid. For example, the ability to add smarts to devices and homes to allow customers to manage their consumption of electricity at a granular level -- from price to device.
  

WIM (what it means)

It's important to point out that Microgrid technology and processes have applicability to:

• Counter-insurgency. Even though tens of billions of dollars have been invested in the reconstruction of Iraq, we still can't keep the lights on in Baghdad. Microgrids could make this possible.
  
• Development. Microgrids provide a mechanism for organic growth in developing economies plagued by badly functioning national grids.
  
• Competitive advantage. Communities that get this right (high availability power that is also very clean), will gain a competitive edge in competing for residents and business flow. The pay-off is higher home values and better/more jobs.
  

RESILIENT COMMUNITY: TRANSITION TOWNS

"How do we enjoy the benefits of globalization without being vulnerable to its excesses?"

The key to our collective future success (from maximal wealth creation to basic survival), will be in how we mitigate the impact of black swans generated by global instability. One of the best approaches I've encountered is to add resilience to the very fabric of our global system, the community.

NOTE: From the controls engineering perspective this approach both simplifies and adds resilience to the design of the global system. In short, it creates a bow-tie control system that enables extremes of complexity without egregious loses in both stability or efficiency (it's a control system that we see in use with both the Internet and in the energy production subsystem used by cells in our bodies).

One of the early (and very smart) approaches to this can be found in the grassroots Transition Towns movement. This movement started in the UK, with an academic paper and a follow on experiment in a town called Totnes (see the excellent 3 part YouTube presentation by founder Rob Hopkins). The movement has expanded to 600 towns across the world at various stages of implementation.

How To Do It
To focus the effort, the movement assumed two of the many potential black swan scenarios (in this case Peak Oil and Global Warming) would likely occur and their arrival would damage local life. This approach led them to focus on a reduction in oil consumption (and thereby long-distance transportation) as a means to improve resilience (a good start). Through trial and error, they were able to generate a blue-print (PDF and more expansive Wiki) for building local resilience entitled the "Transitions Town" network (note that many of these steps use the approach of open source insurgency and even uses the rule of five). Here are the steps:

• Develop a steering group to get it started (a foco). Five people is recommended. Plan to disband this group when things get started.
  
• Raise awareness (basic education on the effects of black swans).
  
• Network with existing groups (go open source).
  
• An event to launch the initiative (the great unleashing).
  
• Form working groups.
  
• Leverage activity with technology (social tech).
  
• Develop visible examples of progress.
  
• Reskilling and teaching (sharing skills/knowledge).
  
• Connect to the government (financial risks).
  
• Connect to elders (narratives and skills).
  
• Let it run itself.
  
• Complete the effort by formalizing a plan through the contributions of the sub-groups.
  

An Economic Case via Risk Mitigation
One of the most interesting offshoots of this movement is that they were able to generate an economic case for their efforts. Through audits of the energy use by local businesses, they were able to demonstrate the financial risks the businesses faced if energy prices spiked. This provided the movement with the opportunity to help the business source local resource alternatives and/or develop new opportunities that presented less risk.

Author's Note: I'd like to flesh this out in more detail, perhaps through a investigative trip sponsored by a magazine looking for a great article on the future of communities/consumption/etc.

THE STRATEGIC BARRAGE

The US military and the Iraqi government are currently caught in the grip of a strategic barrage. The strategic barrage, a method used by great generals across history, works like this:

• the attacker maneuvers its forces to seize critical territory in an enemy's rear zone (astride lines of communication and supply for example),
  
• it makes extensive defensive preparations to hold that territory (i.e. a hedgehog),
  
• which then forces the enemy to either make a series of hasty attacks (very costly) or a strategic retreat/surrender.
  

This method has been adapted by virtual states (a much more formal type of networked organization than a pure open source insurgency) like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Sadr's Mahdi Army to defeat their nation-state foes. Here's how:

• By default, the Mahdi army controls territory within the Iraq's rear zone -- Baghdad's and Basra's slums. Further, Sadr's militias have the popular support and resources necessary to create defensive hedgehogs using modern weapons and light infantry tactics. Extensive financial resources allow them to get advances weapons/training (Sadr's militia makes billions from smuggling etc.).
  
• They can turn this territory into a platform by which to attack the strategic interests of the state. In Baghdad, this translates into rocket/mortar attacks on the Green zone and US forward operating bases. In Basra, this means attacks on the oil export system. This puts a timer on the conflict. The longer the attacks go on, the worse the strategic position of the nation-state and its allies.
  
• The nation-state is either forced to attack the defensive position (a very costly option) or submit to the demands of the virtual state.