Global Guerrillas

JOURNAL: Amplification

Here's an example (via al Qaeda's propaganda video) of how core global functions are hijacked (Google, in this case) to amplify messaging and how decentralized tinkering networks (al Qaeda's media arm) improve over time: "The Power of Truth" Review of the video by Jarret Brachman, research Director at the CTC: "It's beautifully crafted propaganda, and it's a huge problem for us... You're left shaking your head and saying, 'Yeah, I guess they're right.' "

BOW-TIE CONTROL SYSTEMS

Here's some fun big picture thinking that may help explain current global gyrations/shocks as we head into the rest of a difficult year. I find it to be an interesting model although your results may vary. As always, use it or discard it, it's your choice. Feedback is always welcome.
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The rapid growth of global guerrillas (the systems disrupting, crime fueled sons of global fragmentation), non-bank financial firms (hedge funds and investment banks that are cumulatively known as the "shadow banking system"), and cybercriminals can be explained by a fundamental restructuring of our global economic, energy, and communications system. In a little over a decade, this collection of relatively isolated systems (markets and networks) firmly ensconced within nation-state regulatory/legal structures (political economies and national networks) have merged into a single fluid global system (absent any meaningful global governance). This new structure has enabled a form of parasitic predation by these newly empowered participants, that puts the entire global order at risk.

The Bow-Tie
If we look at this new global system from a distance, its architecture is something called a Bow-Tie (aka "Platform"). This is a form of universal control system architecture that underlies complex systems from the Internet to cell metabolism (for background, read the excellent article, "Bow ties, metabolism, and disease" by Caltech's Marie Csete and John Doyle). While Bow-Tie architectures existed within the nation-state system, it was organically intertwined with political controls.
This new system is devoid of those organic connections. It's pure. The Bow-Tie architecture has the following features:

• Nearly unlimited scalability. The ability to accept a wide variety of inputs (the left bow) and convert them into a small set of universal building blocks (the knot). This, in combination with protocols for interconnection, enable a plug-and-play approach to building a wide variety of outputs (the right bow).
  
• Robust and evolvable at the same time. As environments change in the short term, new combinations can be made from the basic building blocks and protocols to meet new demands. Additionally, since the system is shared, any evolutionary innovation quickly propagates across the entire system.
  
• Fragility. The entire system is vulnerable to changes, perturbations, and hijacking within the core set of building blocks and protocols.

Parasitic Predation
The strength of the Bow-Tie is evident in its ability to handle a wide variety of environmental demands, both efficiently and quickly. However, it can suffer catastrophic breakdowns when the core building blocks and protocols (the knot) are hijacked by parasites. These parasites can use access to the core to radically accelerate growth and gain new flexibility/adaptability. Eventually, other critical processes are crowded out and the entire system collapses.

AUTOMATING HIERARCHY?

Modern information networking technology, if used correctly, can make a 50 person company look like 500. It also works in reverse, you can take a 500 person company and pare it down substantially (although usually not all the way down to the level of a company organized from scratch around automated processes).

I would go even further, in order to gain any meaningful return on the technology investment, you HAVE to radically reduce head count. This isn't merely due to straight forward calculations of profit and productivity (although reason enough by themselves), it's due to the fact that the organization will devolve into a pile of mush if you don't. Simply, with everyone hyper connected/productive the volume of mostly needless interactions will grow exponentially. Soon after the arrival of the technology, the entire organization's decision making capacity will be lost in discussions and white noise -- OODA loops will sputter, spark, and eventually fail. It will also prevent the reorganization necessary for decentralized decision making by super-empowered employees (parallel processing in uncertain environments).

This appears to be exactly what is going on in the US military. While the US military has been investing heavily information networking technology, it hasn't changed its basic organizational structure. Its organizations are still staffed to balloon (via conscription) to fight the large conventional wars of the last century. That means lots and lots of mid to senior level management with nothing to do but generate lots of white noise. To get a glimpse into what this means in practice, please go read Tyler Boudreau's article, "The Internet age comes to the battlefield."

THE RESILIENT COMMUNITY: SCRIP

A growing number of communities now use scrip (aka a community currency or loyalty program) as a way to keep business activity local and thereby increase community resilience to economic shocks. Here's how it works. Customers buy scrip that can only be used with local businesses to buy goods and services. This is usually done in response to a community initiative. Businesses that accept scrip can either pay employees with the same (to the extent they accept it), provide it as change to customers (again, limited by acceptance), or exchange this scrip for hard currency (usually at a steep discount). Examples of scrip range from the Ithaca HOURS, Berkshares, to the Totnes Pound. While these attempts at scrip are better than nothing, in almost all cases these efforts have fared about as well as most "green" initiatives:

• participation is meager (it is relegated to a lifestyle choice)
  
• velocity is weak (low turnover),
  
• it is vulnerable to economic contraction (when times are tough, participation among retailers falls off due to a scramble for a dwindling amount of hard global currency)
  

How to Accelerate Scrip
However, despite the spotty record so far, scrip is an extremely powerful means of accelerating local economic activity when nothing else seems possible (in economic extremis). Past experience with depression era scrip like Austria's Worgl indicate that the following will accelerate scrip adoption, velocity, and robustness:

• Allow community members to use it to pay all or part of their tax liabilities to local governments. This instantly establishes a market for the currency. Also, pay local government employees a portion of their wages in scrip.
  
• Deflate the value of the scrip (optimally, one percent per month) to promote immediate use rather than hoarding.
  
• To the extent possible, connect scrip to local production rather than retail. Locally produced food (farmer's markets), energy (via local microgrids), products (personal fabs), and labor/services. Further, work with local banks to establish checking accounts for scrip and to enable conversions hard currencies (at a slight discount).
  

NOTE: Scrip should also be considered to be a part of a 21st century approach to economic development (likely superior to microcredit), (open source) counter-insurgency, and disaster/crisis recovery. For more background read the economist Irving Fisher on depression era scrip. The rambling utopian tract by Silvio Gesell is also interesting.

GLOBAL OIL PRODUCTION UNDER SIEGE

Systems disruption, made effective superempowerment, has now gained control of pricing on global energy markets. Returns on investment (ROIs) for attacks are now routinely counted in billions. This is particularly evident as MEND's open source war against the government and its corporate partners (Shell, Chevron, etc.) speeds up. In one week, they have taken out over 400,000 barrels a day of oil (This represents a half of one percent of total global production. It is also a substantially larger percentage of light crude, which has a larger impact on prices):

• Shell's off-shore Bonga Platform. 225,000 barrels a day disrupted. Guerrillas in speedboats towing dugout canoes attacked a platform 75 miles offshore (likely guided there by hand held GPS navigation). Jeff Vail has some good analysis of the attack.
  
• A gang attack on Chevron's pipeline near Escravos Nigeria. 100,000 barrels a day disrupted.
  
• An attack on the Escravos facility itself. An additional 100,000 barrels a day of production.
  

Again, this demonstrates (particularly the offshore attack) rapid cycles of improvement while maintaining strategic focus -- the result of decentralized tinkering/innovation by the many groups participating in the effort under the same plausible promise. The large number of groups involved in MEND also makes it nearly impervious to government counters. In the larger context, these attacks put at risk one of the world's foremost sources of new production -- which was slated to bring 1.25 m more barrels a day of offshore production online in the next couple of years, all of which is now at risk. So, instead of 2.5 m barrels a day climbing to 4 m barrels a day, production has dropped to ~1.3 m barrels a day (and is continuing to fall).

NOTE: Disruption isn't limited to Nigeria. A remote control bomb by the FARC on Occidental Petroleum's pipeline in Colombia just knocked out 100,000 barrels a day. It's also interesting to note how irrelevant the US military/national security system has become in regards to global energy security. The entire paradigm of warfare has changed but the $1 Trillion behemoth has barely budged.

JOURNAL: Task Force ODIN and Cloud Power

'Cloud Airpower' -- a three dimensional blanket of microsensors and machines that can dominate a target zone -- is the future of the Air Force. It's how the Air Force will participate in the future of warfare (which will be mostly a form of special operations and not conventional warfare). However, the AF leadership doesn't want to acknowledge it. Instead, the US Army is doing the innovation/tinkering necessary (this is a rough early effort, but it is coming from the right direction - from the bottom up):

The battalion is called Task Force Odin — the name is that of the chief god of Norse mythology, but it also is an acronym for “observe, detect, identify and neutralize.” The task force of about 300 people and 25 aircraft is a Rube Goldberg collection of surveillance and communications and attack systems, a mash-up of manned and remotely piloted vehicles, commercial aircraft with high-tech infrared sensors strapped to the fuselage, along with attack helicopters and infantry...

The Army cobbled together small civilian aircraft, including the Beech C-12, and placed advanced reconnaissance sensors on board. Also assigned to the task force are small, medium and larger remotely piloted Army surveillance vehicles, including the Warrior and Shadow, with infrared cameras for night operations and full-motion video cameras.

All are linked by radio to Apache attack helicopters, with Hellfire missiles and 30-millimeter guns, and to infantry units in armored vehicles.

RC QUOTE: Competitive Advantage

"We don't want to save the World and we don't claim that Marburg will revolutionize climate action. But we must chart new territory in order to ensure a future supply of energy independent of oil and gas.... No south-facing roof will be left unused." Fritz Kahle, the Mayor of Mahberg, Germany (80,000 people) on the change in the city's building code that requires solar collection (thermal or PV) whenever a roof is renovated, a heating system replaced, or an addition made.

How will a home or a community be valued by the marketplace in the future? By the amount of solar energy it captures (via heating, PV, or photosynthesis). Changing building codes is gradual way to make your community more competitive, reduce exposure to risks, and improve property values.

BOOK REVIEW: The Unthinkable (Ripley)

Just wrote a review of Amanda Ripley's new book, "The Unthinkable" for the City Journal. This book is about how human beings respond to disasters (psychologically and biologically) and what can be done to improve your odds of survival.

JOURNAL: DIY Rocket Launchers

Here's a photo of a formerly mobile DIY Rocket launcher rusting at BIAP.

JOURNAL: More on the Shadow OPEC

I have a guest post up on "The Oil Drum" (an excellent "out of the box" site on energy topics) on how global guerrillas can use disruption to set global oil prices. Have fun.

NOTE: On cue with this brief, a MEND attack on a Nigerian offshore facility (Shell's flagship project, Bongo, 75 miles offshore) took out 200,000 barrels a day of production yesterday. About ~9% of potential production and ~14% of existing production in one event. Didn't get the computer control room though (probably forgot the thermite). This is also likely light sweet oil production and it is at a level that is more than enough to offset the planned Saudi increase in heavy oil production (although not the Chinese price hike).

NOTE 2: More disruption in Nigeria. Chevron lost 120,000 barrels a day when its pipeline in the delta was breached on Thursday. This time from a youth group (gang). Open source insurgency at work...

JOURNAL: Early 'Cloud Power' Visuals?

Here's an off-topic riff on high level ideas for how the USAF might remake itself:

A company called SenseNetworks has an interesting new product called Citysense (via). It aggregates location/movement data on cabs in major cities, models the data to tease out insight, and then makes it available via their platform. Users access output through a variety of applications (i.e. a dashboard). Here's the output:

The most interesting aspect of this system is that it provides a visual clue as to what Cloud Power (a blanket of microsensors and machines that can dominate a target zone) is going to look like:

• Granular real-time data acquisition (permissive or non-permissive tagging) on every object of interest in an urban zone,
  
• modeling of that data for insight, trending, historical patterns and
  
• actions that take advantage of that data (micro-UAVs).

NOTE: even if the AF doesn't embrace "cloud power" -- sclerortic decision making, misdirection, etc. -- the strength of the trend line (riding Moore's law down) indicates that we will definitely see some variant of this in the DIY weapons space over the long term.

RC JOURNAL: DIY Tractor

Here's an open source effort to design a low cost (both assembly and maintenance) tractor called the LifeTrac. Key attachments: backhoe and well drilling. It uses modular design for versatility of use and low cost repair.

The "Open Source Ecology" wiki (of which this design is a part of) is yet another example of the many efforts underway to accelerate DIY technology development for Resilient Communities (The RC). As personal fabrication improves, these tinkering efforts will become MUCH more sophisticated at an ever decreasing cost. We (collectively, those of us engaged in decentralized thinking/action) are in the process of reinventing how the global economy is structured at a root level -- good thing we didn't ask permission.

Here's an archive for Resilient Community posts.

JOURNAL: Foreclosures and Violent crime

Mortgage foreclosure rates for US single family homes are expected to range between 10-15% over the next three years -- with some neighborhoods well over 30% (for example: in the San Diego exurb Temecula 15% of homes are already either bank-owned or in some stage of foreclosure). The Chicago Fed has found that under normal circumstances, every increase in the foreclosure rate by 2.87%, there is a 6.68% increase in violent crime. Further, housing values fall by nearly 1% for each foreclosed home within 1/8 of a mile.

The Swiss Cheese Effect

As US cities, suburbs and neighborhoods begin to look like swiss cheese, there's little doubt that the US will experience a radical increase in the formation of gangs, militias, and other violent groups. A volatile mixture of wealth/expectation destruction, neighborhood decay (due to empty and abandoned properties), and a visceral sense of economic betrayal/abandonment will be the drivers. Connectivity (both local and global) will ensure that the damage spreads virally.

RC JOURNAL: Self-Replication in 3D

"Think of RepRap as China on your Desktop"
Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc., 8 April 2008

In the mid to late 70's a small group of tinkerers in the "Homebrew Computer Club" created many of the foundational technologies, techniques and concepts required for personal computers (it also attracted the ire of a protean Bill Gates). The early efforts of the group seem extremely crude by modern standards, but within a decade, it was clear that the process that they had initiated was remaking the world.

A similar tinkering process is now underway in micro-manufacturing. An open source project called RepRap is working on micro machines that can produce (fabricate) products on your desktop. Further, it has achieved self-replication (actually, a very close approximation thereof), so each RepRap machine has the capacity to produce a copy of itself. Again, it's early days, but the implications of how efforts like these will enable DIY production (for everything from consumer products to weapons) are clear as day. Personal fabrication on a global basis is less than a decade away.

JOURNAL: Neo-Feudalism and the Decline of Insightful Research

Phil Williams, from the Strategic Studies Institute, has an excellent riff on the decline of the state and the rise of global disorder. It picks up on the themes pioneered by Martin Van Creveld, Bill Lind, and myself and runs with them (while being particularly adept at not citing/mentioning any of us -- clever feat, that). "From the New Middle Ages to a New Dark Age: The Decline of the State and US Strategy" June 2008.

On a side note, there is an "inside the beltway" struggle between terrorism pundits (Hoffman and Sageman) being waged in the pages of Foreign Affairs and the New York Times. It's a great demonstration of how insulated Washington's decision makers and media elite are from the best thinking on terrorism and insurgency (Sageman's "pundit class" bow-tie is hilarious).

BTW: Sageman fundamentally erred (lack of experience with virtual organizations and/or entrepreneurial start-ups?) in his recent book by going with the "leaderless" approach to describing al Qaeda's organization. "Leaderless resistance" sounds cool (coined by white supremacists), but the dynamics of real world organizations are much more concrete and complicated. An "open source process" is descriptive and actionable. In contrast, "leaderless" is all label and no substance, a pipe dream.

JOURNAL: GG Progress

With a partial US withdrawal from Iraq likely for next spring, the factions in Iraq are relatively quiet, building strength for the battles to come. There are lots of bloody scores to settle (is there a Maliki dead pool online?). Meanwhile, global guerrillas (the open source, system disrupting, crime fueled sons of globalization) are making progress in both Nigeria and Mexico.

Mexico:

Simply, Mexico is in a guerrilla war and the majority (54%, in a recent Reforma poll) of the population thinks the narco-guerrillas are winning. Last month, the guerrillas decimated the senior staff of Mexico's law enforcement organizations and there are threats of more assassinations to come. In small towns, policemen are resigning en masse as the drug gangs continue their killing spree. Placards and banners are openly displayed in town streets promising death to the police that oppose the drug gangs and/or offers to recruit anybody with military experience.

Calderon's effort to crush the syndicates has backfired. As the top leadership of the syndicates were arrested or killed, a myriad of smaller and more violent groups have emerged to replace them (as predicted by global guerrilla theory). Currently, the groups are fighting each other more than the government, which has reduced their effectiveness. That will slowly change as territories are become fixed, connected to the primary loyalties of village or neighborhood. Eventually, a fully formed open source insurgency will emerge and the government might find itself only in command of the capital. At that point, Mexico will be a hollow state. A government in name only. This is going to be interesting to watch.

NOTE: The only existential threat the US faces in the near term, is from global guerrillas in Mexico and not the Middle East. A breakdown there could result in massive population movements, refugee centers, and the spread of guerrilla warfare into US border states.

Nigeria:

A world away, Nigerian guerrillas under the banner of MEND (an organizational shell that serves at the mouthpiece/catalyst for Nigeria's open source insurgency) has rapidly ramped up its attacks on the country's oil system (and particularly Shell Oil). As anticipated, Henry Okah has been quickly replaced. Oil workers are being killed and oil flow stations are being damage at the highest sustained rate to date. These attacks have helped keep oil prices at record levels. Ominously, the guerrillas have expanded their operations to include electricity disruption. As pressure continues to mount on Nigeria's government, we are likely to see broad-based unrest as other groups, spawned by widespread deprivation, begin to take up arms. At that point, oil production from Nigeria, except for bunkering, will completely cease (due to the lack of a viable counter-party to purchase the oil from and a total breakdown in oil worker security).

JOURNAL: UAV Snipers (Early "Cloud Airpower")

An unmanned aerial vehicle sniper system. Sagetech has a design/whitepaper on the topic available.

Highlights:

The TAPSS system is much more accurate than a traditional human sniper team for both the first and second shots fired, as shown in Figure 2 for a range of 1500m. A traditional sniper weapon’s maximum range is typically limited to 600-800 m. Kills have been recorded at longer ranges than this, but it is typically considered to be a “lucky shot”. The TAPSS automated firing system pushes the useful range of the sniper weapon out to 1500 m.

Each 50- caliber ammunition round will likely cost from $4 to $8, as opposed to a cost of $60,000 for each AGM-114 Hellfire missile. UAV sniper will also have a relatively large number of stowed kills; about 100 50-caliber rounds versus 2-4 Hellfire missiles for other UCAVs.

This direction of development is inevitable (towards what I am calling "cloud airpower"). Only the pace of advance and the sponsor (Air Force or Army) is in question. We can also expect variants of this on the DIY weapons front as well.

Think forward towards a cloud level saturation of an urban environment. Moore's law rolls forward. Vehicle size shrinks. Vehicle intelligence zooms. Numbers per $ goes exponential. $.0000001 nano-sensors and nano-tags delivered in billion unit blankets, all radiating information. The Cloud's larger vehicles coordinating activity via stigmergic communications. Hunter-killers sifting through that data to find targets, leaving a trail for others to follow in their wake.

JOURNAL: Is the Global System a Frontier?

There's a mountain of evidence that the global system is now so large, fast, and fluid that nation-states have lost control. The market is now in charge, and even the most powerful nation-states are merely participants. Worse, uncontrolled markets are prone to disruptions (price spikes, shortages, starvation, etc.), corruption (hollow states, predatory money, etc.), and melt-downs (economic, environmental, etc.).

However, optimists, like my friend Tom Barnett say this is to be expected. The global system is merely a new frontier, a periphery, soon to be settled by a new form of global governance. I'm not nearly as sanguine.

In my view, the global system is an open source platform (in engineering speak, a bow-tie control structure). This type of platform grows very quickly due to simple rules of interconnection and is VERY resistant to upgrades after they are established. This simplicity is actually a design feature, not a flaw, since it enables a bewildering level of complexity to develop on the periphery (the two ends of the bow-tie, radiating outwards). Doesn't look like a frontier to me...

RC JOURNAL: Microgrid Wiki

Since I last wrote about community Microgrids I've received lots of e-mails on the topic -- everything from those willing to share experiences to those needing help. Given the criticality of this to resilient community development, it might be best if we either set up an independent wiki or farm a section of wikipedia (easier) for the topic (there isn't a microgrid entry). All it would take is "five" people to start the ball rolling.

JOURNAL: KPCB

One good place to look for ideas on innovations in anticipation of black swan events, is to routinely check the portfolio of KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers). KPCB is the top of the food chain in Venture Capital. It's interesting to note that two of the four categories of investment at the company are:

• 'Greentech' Coal Gasification Tech, Fuel Cells, Refinery Scale Ethanol, Cellulose Ethanol Tech, Utility Scale Solar, Thin Film Solar Tech, Plug-in Hybrid Cars, and Synthetic Bio Platforms (for fuel production) This portfolio is a bet on a peak oil hedged by Global Warming.

• 'Pandemic' This portfolio is betting on a global scale opportunity (as in "trillion dollar companies overnight" via an Avian flu pandemic, etc.)

SUMMER READING

While the rest of the world wastes precious mindshare on the latest 'kiss and tell', self-help, and 'Asian Century' books, those of us in contact with the real world can enjoy some excellent summer reading with two new entrants in the Global Guerrillas genre. Both will provide great ideation.

REINVENTING COLLAPSE by Dmitry Orlov

NOTE: Dmitry graciously sent me a PDF of his book's early manuscript so I was able to provide some feedback. Thanks!

Reinventing Collapse makes three points:

• The similarities between the US and the USSR, as countries that distorted their political and economic systems to become global superpowers, were/are greater than the differences. The implication is that the US will suffer a fate similar to the USSR: economic, political, and social collapse.
  
• A comparison of the US and USSR's economic and social systems reveals that at a deep level, the US is much less resilient than the USSR. This implies that a collapse of the US will be substantially worse than the experience of the Soviet Union.
  
• A series of insights on how to survive the collapse of a superpower (this is my favorite section).

McMAFIA by Misha Glenny

Glenny dutifully documents, in exquisite detail, the rise of transnational criminal organizations in every global region. Simple formula: morally neutral global economic platform + economic/social distress = the rapid proliferation and unabated growth of transnational criminal organizations. The book is an excellent read and a natural compliment/backgrounder to Brave New War's analysis. Without a fundamental revision of global governance (not very likely), we will soon become very familiar with local variants of the stories he documents.