JOURNAL: The Marines and Stigmergic Awareness

Eight Marines died and eleven were wounded in a car bomb attack at the end of October. Information on the attack was suppressed by Marines who correctly concluded: ''Anything we provide only serves to aid the enemy in determining the effectiveness of their tactics, techniques, and procedures," said First Lieutenant Lyle L. Gilbert, a spokesman for the Marines. This reflects an understanding of the stigmergic learning system used by global guerrillas to innovate on its open source warfare and coordinate swarms. Media information suppression is already being used for attacks on the oil/electricity system. The objective: slow the feedback loops.

NOTE: Iraq's stigmergic feedback loops appear to have crossed borders with this week's hostage crisis (aimed at globalization's people flows) in Afghanistan. The establishment of a bazaar in Afghanistan that is in synch with Iraq's bazaar would be a major setback for the US and a major milestone in the advent of global guerrilla warfare.

Comments

[Marcello Invernizzi]

In theory not letting your enemy know if he is doing well or bad is surely a good idea.But in practice in the specific case I do not see a significant tactical advantage.The local group which has carried out the attack must surely have more direct means to gauge its effectiviness that watching the CNN to see if it is reported.And while I do not know how exactly the various groups in Iraq communicate with each other I suspect that yet again they do not have watch the CNN for tactical input.It is possible that this might slow down the imitation process somewhere else in the world but all in all it looks like blocking Al Zarqawi bank accounts.Perhaps due, but next to useless.
I suspect that the only real advantage deriving from suppressing information is propping up the home front.If one does not hear much about the bad news, then he can go on believing in the inevitability of the Final Victory.
Given the critical importance of morale in such types of conflics such factor cannot be stressed enough.

[Jeremy Hartley]

Couldn't agree more with the previous comment. The guerillas probably rarely watch CNN, instead they would stick to Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya, which would be much more likely to post the story. Or more poignantly they would listen to word of mouth.

Everybody in the surrounding area would know. The marines would know. The Guerilla's would know. The only people left in the dark are the US public, just one week before the election.