Global Guerrillas

NOTE: What I am up to

Been pretty busy over the last couple of weeks.  Here's a recap of what I've been doing since my HASC (House Armed Services Committee) testimony:

• Working on the sale of a breakthrough software service on information terrain management.  My team was able to put together something that is the first of its kind.   It's very, very cool and something that may eventually change how wars are fought.
• Worked on a script for a new DreamWorks movie with Tom Cruise.  Essentially, I made the bad guy scarier.  Script writing is a ton of fun.  Global guerrilla thinking is now in Hollywood ;-> 
• Writing papers on the future of warfare for the DoD.  Lots of deep think stuff -- which is where I thrive.  
• Speaking at various conferences.  My latest one was entitled "Post-Industrial Media and Warfare."  It drew on my experience pioneering blogging (and by extension much of social software) -- a company I managed years ago created RSS, the first aggregator, and many of the core features of social software.  The speech was a big hit with the audience.  NOTE:  I think I have finally perfected my presentation style/content -- audiences are really jazzed, brains exploding with creativity, when I finish my riff.

Unfortunately, haven't had the time to finish the resilient community book.  

ENERGY, MOORE'S LAW, AND SUBSTITUTION

I'm still hard at work on some great new projects that are absorbing most of my thinking.  I'll try to post when practicable.  

A big part of being a successful strategist is differentiating between long term trends and short term blips.  The long term trends are inexorable.  They define the future  environment's boundaries.  In contrast, the short term blips mislead and confuse.  It's also important to understand that long term trends should never be brought to their logically extreme conclusion, since the human system they influence is both thinking and adaptive.  That means that it will change to meet the challenge -- as in, get us out of any box we find ourselves in -- but often in unexpected ways.

One of the long term trends that now seems inexorable is that fossil fuels (stored solar) will be expensive from here on out (see my earlier attempt at this topic with "Crossing the Energy Chasm").  Demand will continuously outstrip our increasingly depleted and difficult to obtain sources of supply.  Prices will rise when demand increases, and when prices rise too much, demand will be destroyed (with demand destruction starting first at the low end, as we saw with sub-prime borrowers in the US).  In other words, every time we attempt to grow economically within the current model, we will bump into energy that is too expensive to support that growth.

However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel.  Since we live in an adaptive system (much less adaptive than it could be due to deep structural and conceptual problems) alternatives will be found.  The common assumption is that these alternatives will be in the form of direct substitutes, or new forms of inexpensive energy (presumably, fossil alternatives or solar power) that can power the existing model of the global economy.  That's likely a false assumption.  

Why?  The substitutes for energy that are available, aren't available in the quantity demanded nor at a price point necessary to serve as direct substitutes for existing sources at their historical (low) prices.  Most particularly, solar power (the only source with the theoretically achievable scale to serve as a true substitute for fossil fuels) won't be inexpensive enough to serve as a true substitute for decades.  

The reason for this is that the Moore's law equivalent for solar power appears to be a halving underlying costs every 10.5 years (not two, like we see in the computing industry).  Moore's law has been powering productivity improvements in other industries (like biotech) at rates approaching the underlying rate of semiconductor  improvement.  This due to the high levels of information processing in those industries (directly addressable by improvement in computational capacity) relative to the level of improvements needed to advance the materials used.  In contrast, manufacturing more efficient solar cells reverses that ratio:  less information manipulation in the design and much more in terms of fundamental improvements in capacity of the materials utilized (new breakthroughs).  Therefore, the rate of improvement in solar efficiency occurs much slower, even when it uses much of the same equipment used by the semi-conductor industry.

As a result, on the current doubling rate of improvement, we can't expect to reach grid equivalence at the current prices in any reasonable scenario (sooner than 20 years).  In contrast, grid equivalence at higher prices, say 10 times current prices (of electricity, which is already a premium energy source), may be achievable in the 2025 time frame.  Sure, we can accelerate the share of solar energy production  through the use of government subsidies and mandates (as we are currently doing), but that only shifts costs and doesn't scale (particularly given the red ink induced pallor of our finances).  

So, what does this mean?  We will likely adapt, but not in the way anticipated.  The most likely adaption will come in the form of a substrate shift.  A shift in the underlying model of the global economy to one that is much, much more energy efficient.  This shift isn't seen the small and peripheral gains in efficiency we see in the work of Amory Lovins' Rocky Mountain Institute.  

Instead, it's a global judo move that flips everything on its back.  A core change to our fundamental economic and social model that substitutes physically moving products globally to virtually moving information about products.  Where virtual presence is substituted for actual visitation and nothing is made that isn't bought.

It's a place where you telecommute to work if you sell goods and services globally.  Where all production is increasingly and inexorably local, from food to energy to consumer products.  It's a place were physical travel is a premium event, reserved only for those objects and occurrences that are the most valuable.  In short, localization into resilient communities (the only term I know to describe it) drives orders of magnitude improvement (10x to 100x) in the use of energy, time, space, matter, and information over the old model of globalization.  

However, like any shift in fundamental substrates, this a process of creative annihilation (as opposed to the much milder form of Schumpeter's creative destruction we see in free markets).  The benefits will only available to those that make the shift and the devil to the hindmost. 

NOTE:  It's interesting that under this scenario, the traditional categorizations of optimism and pessimism regarding our future become non-sensical.  

NOTE2:  Here's a great interactive graphic on US energy from NPR.

Taking a Break

Not sure when I will be back. 

THE BUBBLE

Nearly the entire world's population of 6.7 billion is now mediated in some form -- via phone to radio to TV to Internet -- and a majority have been mediated by two-way technologies.  For example, over 60% of these people or 4 billion now have wireless phones up from 15% in 2002, and another billion will have them in a year).  It's extremely hard now to find a sizable population from the Niger Delta to the Swat Valley in Pakistan to the favellas of Sao Paulo that haven't been fundamentally changed through connection to the global media sphere that:

• Shapes their perceptions
• Drives organizational design and interpersonal contact 
• Reorganizes their view of the world

There's no reason to think it will stop here.  Each iteration of connection is deployed faster than the previous and the value of being connected to the network (not only through Metcalfe's law but through radical improvements in the quality of the connection) is growing exponentially.  This likely means that every significant social movement, conflict, innovation, etc. will start/erupt in some corner of this media sphere and virally propagate within it.  

So, in short, if you want to accomplish anything in the future, you must be deeply connected to this media sphere, accomplished in its use, and immersed in its flows.  

The Bubble

This insight is why the Pentagon's approach to the global media sphere is so hilarious.  Bathed in a world view dominated by deprecated cold war logic/secrecy, it is in the process of trying to create an impervious bubble to shield itself from the very environment within which it is expected to fight.   This can be seen in everything from a growing plethora of buildings that bar any and all communication devices to the blocking of Web sites that contain dangerous ideas.  Bill Lind has a great post on this:

 The goal of the website blockers, it seems, is to cut American military men off from any views except those of DOD itself. In other words, the blockaders want to create a closed system. John Boyd had quite a bit to say about closed systems, and it wasn’t favorable.

In fact, John Boyd said that closed systems tend towards insanity (talking to itself without reference to the outside world).  He also made a great case that the ultimate goal of grand strategy is to "disconnect" or "isolate" the enemy on the moral, psychological, and physical levels while improving your own connectivity on the same level.  So, in essence -- by blocking access, hyping the threat posed by Chinese citizen hackers, and locking down facilities -- the US military is self-inflicting grand strategic failure on itself.   US servicemen are now being increasingly reduced to a level of isolation on par with an immunologically suppressed "bubble boy."  

Another approach is for the US military to learn to learn live in this media sphere.  To leverage it and operate within it on a level that befits the trust and treasure we routinely imbue it with. 

Avoiding it, by claiming it is too tough an environment for the US military to operate, is a path to complete obsolescence.

BFTP: Epidemic Innovation in Open Source Insurgency

Here's a blast from the past (BFTP) from an updated version of an older 2004 post:

Summary:  A good way to understand why open source insurgencies innovate so quickly, is to dive into how epidemics spread and cascade in social networks.  An open source insurgency is different from traditional 20th Century insurgencies because it isn't cohesive (politically, organizationally, or methodologically).  It's leaderless and composed of many small autonomous groups working in a framework of coopetition. 

Within open source insurgencies, innovation occurs quickly. A good way to understand why, is to treat the spread of tactical innovation from one group to the next as an informational epidemic. The spread of an epidemic to susceptible individuals is determined by its reproduction rate (the ability to infect others). The equation for this is: 

Rate of reproduction = (duration of contact) x (likelihood of contact) x (duration of infectiousness) 

Tactical innovation travels quickly in open source insurgencies because the rate of reproduction is extremely high.  One reason is that the "likelihood of contact" is large relative to the other factors due to the topology of its decentralized network structure. Three topological features of Iraq's insurgency feed this high "likelihood of contact" are: 

• Small cohesive cells. These small organizational units exhibit high degrees of structural cohesion (Menger's Theorom). Every member knows all the other members (this is different than the 9/11 operational network). Each cell is composed of family members, friends, and neighbors.  


• Small world properties (Milgram). Cross connections between members of the insurgency radically reduce the mean path length (the mean distance between any two members) of the network.  Party membership, military experience, etc. provide, tribal affiliation provide short-cuts. 


• Scale free properties (Barabasi) due to electronic communications (the Internet and Cell phones).  Due to electronic connectivity, many open source networks are scale free. Early entrants that leverage these scalable connections become highly connected hubs. As the network grows, they become more central and powerful. 

Another reason is a high duration of infectiousness.  The nature of open source insurgency provides a high duration of infectiousness since everyone that joins has the potential to add innovation to the network.  There aren't any barriers to entry.  If it works, it will be adopted.  Hence, infection is sprouting from a plethora sources as fast as it can be generated.

Finally, there is also a high likelihood of contact.  Why?  Firstly, there aren't any limitations due to hierarchical structures (which prevent cross connections).  Secondly, electronic connectivity (i.e. a cell phone) makes connections simple.  Thirdly, since groups aren't typically large enough to accomplish bigger missions, they often team up to gain the size sufficient for success.

JOURNAL: Methland

If ever there was a chance to see the place of the small American town in the era of the global economy, the meth epidemic is it.   Nick Reding's "Methland"

A few years ago, I helped Nick Reding on research for a book he was writing.  I'm happy to find that the product of his labors is amazing.  I've only read the prologue so far (now available online) but I can't wait to read the rest.  

JOURNAL: No March Back To Equilibrium

Here's a fundamentally pessimistic view on the future of the current system:

A fundamental truism derived from the laws of thermodynamics, is that closed systems trend inexorably towards chaos.  The reason is that there isn't an external environment to which it can export the entropy created by its ongoing operations.  Our global system recently became a closed system.  There is very little of the world that it doesn't touch, influence, or manipulate.  So, we can expect to see an increase in entropy in all fields of human endeavor; expressed as chaotic forms of pollution, warfare, economic crisis, and societal discontent.  Worse, this trend line can't be mitigated with even with best of management (if we were only so lucky) at the national or global organizational level, since the only process which might accomplish this is organizational fragmentation/death.  So, when you hear economists talk about a return to equilibrium for our global economy (or words to the same effect in other professions) ....

QUESTION:  Are governments increasingly opting for the management of optics, spin, manipulation of the public's (and its own) perception as a replacement for the hard restructuring that must be accomplished in all fields/endeavors from warfare to finance to economics to etc.???  Has "confidence building" replaced meaningful action?  If so... 

JOURNAL: Guerrilla Entrepreneurs take to the seas

Back in 2004, I wrote quite a bit about the return of Guerrilla Entrepreneurs and how once they are established, their interactions will begin to create a bazaar-like dynamic.  It's pretty clear the piracy situation off of Somalia is another example of this process in action (yet again)>

With this in mind, here's an excellent primer on venture financed piracy off the coast of Somalia.  Link via NPR, Shlok and the research J. Pham over at James Madison University (who sounds like a global guerrilla strategist, welcome!). 

... they actually found time sheets onboard the ship after the pirates had left. "We could see that there was a time sheet on a particular person who had been onboard and dates they had been onboard and so many dollars per day, and then a total sum on the time sheet," he says. The pirates, in effect, were clocking in and out. 

From this and other ransom situations, here's a typical accounting for a piracy operation: About 20 percent goes to pay off officials who look the other way. About 50 percent is for expenses and payroll. The leader of an attack makes $10,000 to $20,000 (the average Somali family lives on $500 a year). The initial investor — who put in $250,000 of seed capital — gets 30 percent, sometimes up to $500,000.

Read more analysis on pirates.  

JOURNAL: Afghan Surge?

We're in there to stay.  

Lt. Col. Gallahue, in a info-ops piece on the 

"Afghan Surge" in the Wall Street Journal.  

Clearly, we are not there to stay.  

The increase in troops wasn't the decisive factor in slowing the insurgency in Iraq.  It was turning insurgent groups into allies (which was possible due to the dynamics of the conflict).  This isn't happening in Afghanistan.  Hence...

JOURNAL: Pakistan's Army

How do you instill organizational loyalty in an army if the nation-state you are defending has little legitimacy?  Pakistan's answer was to use religion as a bonding agent and a focus on external "Godless" foes.  As a result, the Pakistani army, within the ranks at least, doesn't see Taliban groups and their conservative form of the religion as an enemy.  They see it as a social movement within which the army could coexist (even approve of).  Further, what little legitimacy the army has been able to accrue via religion, would be lost if it undertook a bloody fight to oust the Taliban from their autonomous zones.  The Washington Post provides a data point:

...it is hard for the Pakistani military establishment, trained to view Hindu-dominated India as its mortal enemy and inculcated with an Islamist mind-set during the military dictatorship of the 1980s, to accept Muslim insurgents as adversaries. Soldiers home on leave have been taunted for fighting their own people; desertions are rising.