Global Guerrillas

JOURNAL: Good Enough Tech

I'm a big believer in good enough tech:  simple, low cost products that emerge from below to dominate or shake up a market segment.  I've designed lots of products in that category (I also design products that ruthlessly rethink the assumptions of established product lines, to radically improve them and deliver them at a fraction of the cost/time of competitors).  Here's a Wired article from Robert Capps that details the features of "good enough" products (which applies from Predator drones to Flip video cameras to Web apps):

• Significantly less expensive than existing full featured products.  1/5 of the target price for the full featured product is a good rule of thumb.
• Easy to use.  Easy to network. 
• Flexibility.  Small size.  Rapid configurability.  Lack of specialization.

Good DIY (do-it-yourself) weapons, draw on the good enough thread.  However, most DIY weapons are still single use hacks, but with a little redesign work (think 3D fabs and easy to use product design software) they can become systems that change warfare...

Think what a DIY design for a low cost and portable HERF box would do:  hit button and lights, computers, cars, phones, RFIDs, security systems, CCTVs, etc. sizzle.  I'd like one with a car recharger.  ;->

JOURNAL: Professional Pride in an Environment with No Rules

"These are technically sophisticated people who take pride in their work, and when we knock them down they don't just decide to go find something else to do. You could say we are breeding the perfect spammer." Jim Buckmaster, CEO Craigslist

This is a great quote that captures the idea that global crime has become professionalized, and that the increasingly sophisticated people that engaged in it take pride in their work/expertise.  Remember, capitalism doesn't have an intrinsic morality.  The only objective is to match supply with demand and make money doing it.   How you accomplish that goal is irrelevant.  

NOTE:  In a round about way, this is also one of the reasons why Russian and Chinese hackers are stomping all over US government and corporate networks.  Contrast the darwinian environment (pressures include everything from arrest to financial ruin) where these young professional criminals work with the financially generous (pay and pensions), tenured, and bureaucratically opaque world where the engineers in our technical intelligence agencies work. 

JOURNAL: Decriminalizing Demand for Drugs

Mexico has legalized usage of all drugs, even for tourists:

...there is (now) no jail time for anyone caught with roughly four marijuana cigarettes, four lines of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams of methamphetamine or 0.015 milligrams of LSD.

There's a snarky saying that applies here: "don't make your problem, my problem."

INTERNET INFOWAR

Umair Haque, blogging for the Harvard Business Publishing, has an interesting take on information warfare.  He lists ten rules for information warfare, many of which are best applied to tech heavy societies (I've added some notes and spin of my own to the list).  This list applies to conflict from politics to market destabilization to guerrilla warfare to counter-insurgency.

• Speed it up.  As close to real-time as possible.  Classic OODA acceleration.
• Micro-chunk it.  Smaller  and more condensed messaging.  Thousands of sound bites (not just a few).
• Meta-attack.  Facts don't matter.  Focus on how to value attacks.  Context over substance, provide a framework for decentralizing rebuttals.
• Anti-defend.  Don't try to centralize defense, spread it across the board.  Make it redundant and ubiquitous across your network, so no one node is vulnerable.
• Darwinian counter-attacks.  Classic open source warfare approach.  Copy anything that works, no matter what the source.
• Hack your enemies weapons.   Repurpose anything and everything the enemy uses to your own advantage.
• Normatize it.  Make rules for what is acceptable warfare and what isn't.  Generate outrage.
• Self-organize hyper-locally.  Generate interest groups that link up in local geographies.  Reinforce face to face relationships based on common cause.
• Re-mix.  Give people information that they can remix to fit local conditions.  Best way to do this: provide a platform and modular tools to allow people to repurpose messages.  
• Attack the base.  Go after the main supporters of the opposition directly.  The best way to do this is to get them to attack each other or divert them (rather than attempting to enlist them).

The US, GLOBALIZATION and the RED QUEEN

Here's something useful to those of thinking about the future of conflict and society.  Hopefully, this gets you thinking.  I had fun with it.

_________

"It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass

The Red Queen hypothesis (the name was taken from Carroll's book) is a simple concept from evolutionary biology that describes the evolutionary arms race between competitive species -- predator/prey and parasite/host.  It was found by the evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen via extensive analysis of marine biological record. In short, it posits that the probability of extinction isn't a function of how long the species exists. It doesn't get easier or harder as time goes on.  It's random. Which implies:

1. Constant evolution is necessary just to stay competitive.
2. If your rate of evolution falls behind your competitors: You die (become extinct).
3. Your evolution must be relative to the evolution of your competitor.  If they zig, you must zag (if not, you die).

The US, Globalization and the Red Queen

Since the treaties of Westphalia nearly 400 years ago, competition between nation-states was the primary driver of social evolution.  The method or model of competition was between predator and prey and between predators, made stable through creeping global expansion (new competition) and a wide diversity of competitive models.  That competition narrowed during WW2 and again through the cold war down to two keystone competitors, each with a different model/ecosystem.  The US and the USSR.  With the elimination of USSR as a competitor, the US social and economic ecosystem became dominant and now blankets the world through globalization.  

However, as a result of this victory, the US lost it's drive/imperative to evolve.  It has became increasingly stagnant as a social and economic system, and it is now merely a participant in the much larger global capitalist system.

The flaw in this set-up is that evolutionary competition NEVER stops.  It just changes its form.  In this case, since the global social system is now a singular entity -- capitalist -- evolutionary competition changed into a model of parasite and host (conflicts, reflecting traditional state vs. state predator vs. prey competitions, like those with Iran and N. Korea are a sideshow joke).  Worse, the global system is becoming increasingly homogenous -- it expands via cloning itself and improves itself merely through incremental innovation and not evolution.  In short, it has become a homogenous static target for parasites (the most vulnerable type of target).  

So, what are the parasites to this homogenous global system?  Networks.  They range from financial/corporate networks (per the recent financial crash) to terrorist networks (al Qaeda, etc.) to criminal networks (narco-gangs, MEND, etc.).  All of these parasites are post-modern in that they don't adhere to any meaningful ideology that can replace the state (even al Qaeda envisions a decentralized feudal Caliphate as an end game).  They all are in the process of co-opting global system functions (host functions) to achieve operational space for the advancing their evolutionary advantage. Unfortunately, per the Red Queen hypothesis, a rapidly evolving parasite's competition against a static, non evolving, homogenous host likely results in extinction of the host.

Adaptation?

The only likely process of evolutionary competition against globally systemic parasites is to decentralize core functions of the global system (resilience through scale invariance).  The process of decentralization, one model being resilient communities, manufactures geographic and social heterogeneity.  Heterogeneity makes it possible for the host to develop solutions to parasitic predation (be it financial, criminal, biological, technological, or purely violent disruption).  In this way, any potential extinction event visited on the global system would be met by solutions emerging out of systems hidden in a socially/economically heterogenous geography.  It's only in this way that a stable relationship between parasite and host can develop.  

PS:  This post is due to a lots of cross fertilization with my online friend Daniel Suarez, author of Daemon.  IF you are interested in reading a fantastic near future sci-fi book that applies global guerrilla concepts, read Daemon (it's been optioned for a movie). 

RUSSIA INC

Russia is now a corporate energy monopoly, and not a nation in a traditional sense. The traditional protection racket where nation-states charge corporations for protection (and deliver protected expansion of their business interests) has been reversed due to previous financial crisis. The energy corporation, with Putin as its Chairman, now calls the shots and the nation-state jumps. So, what's the grand strategy of Russia's corporate state? It is following a path of unregulated capitalism, specifically:

• Towards an unfettered monopoly in its primary industry, in this case energy. 
• Vertical integration/expansion (control of the downstream industries powered by its energy -- think Standard Oil, although natural gas in this case is really the end game).  Use of monopoly control/profits to push this integration forward (mostly Europe).
• No holds barred destruction of its economic competitors. Remember: capitalism is morally neutral. Violence, warfare, and terrorism are not at odds with its operation.

In Action: 

The BTC (Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan) pipeline system, a pipeline that pumps oil from the Caspian area bypassing Russian transportation, is a threat to its Russia plans for expansion not only now but even more so in the future (Russia is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas). Namely, its successful operation would serve as a model for a new pipeline, Nabucco, that pumps natural gas from the country with the second largest reserves of natural gas, Iran.

Therefore, Russia is in the process of trying to shut it down by attacking weak points in its route. Georgia is the most vulnerable point in the pipeline's route. Attacks against it have ranged from a total shut off Georgia's inbound energy (it was deprived of heat and light for five days in deep winter) to the funding of separatists to outright invasion. 

Recent Example ???

Most recently, Russia has turned to it "outsourced" hackers (open source cyber warfare) to take down the BTC's control systems. Here's the details (note how the FBI/NSA was already there and ready to pounce on the situation -- which led to the control system now being run out of the Washington DC area), although its veracity is in doubt (or the story is being jammed by disinfo):

According to a news report on a Georgian Web site, Russian hackers under the direction of the GRU/FSB took down the data server of the BTC Pipeline on August 24th, 2009, effectively shutting down the second longest oil pipeline in the world. An FBI team and an un-identified intelligence service regained control of the pipeline’s data server and migrated it to Washington. The BTC pipeline has resumed normal operation.

UPDATE:  Russia suffered a second massive industrial catastrophe in the last week.  This time it was regional oil storage for Transneft in Siberia (the location of the dam disaster) burned up in a massive fire that required 300 fireman (and killed 3).  Is this more of the Chechen independence scenario??  If it is, the pace of attacks and the ROI's required are right in line with requirements.

UPDATE 2:  Google working with "digital refugees" to get their message out.

JOURNAL: Deviant Globalization

Excellent video presentation (28 minutes or so) on global guerrilla topics by my friend Nils Gilman (Monitor/GBN) at last year's European Futurists Conference.  Nice description of how deviant (or black) globalization works and how its post-modern approach to commerce and social organization may represent our future. 

MARKETS AND WARFARE

Our unregulated global marketplace is a fantastic conduit for warfare since it is...

• extremely complex (nobody understands it, least of all economists),
• tightly coupled (information travels at the speed, measured in milliseconds, of programmed trading),
• highly leveraged (perched precariously on a mountain of debt),
• and vast (more than two orders of magnitude larger than the US government, aka add two zeros to the end of any metric of measurement).

Better than all of the above, in a blindingly fast transition to relativism over the last few decades, the global marketplace is now completely dominated by participants without a moral compass.  These participants are completely free of any internal constraints on behavior and hold wealth as the only true metric of success.  The only constraint on means is:  don't get caught (although the current permissive environment of regulatory and ideological capture makes this VERY unlikely).  

As a result of the marketplace's characteristics and the shift in participant behavior, small actions aimed at disrupting and materially harming countries, corporations, and industries is now aided and abetted by the marketplace.  Even a small amount of disruptive contagion that:

• increases risk/uncertainty,
• reduces prospects for long term profitability,
• and reduces trust

can rapidly spread throughout the market system, jumping from specialized market to market through complex mutual interdependencies. Worse, market participants will amplify these negative changes in attempts to make money regardless of the consequences, generating positive feedback loops that push and hold markets in turbulent territory.

They key takeaway for those interested in 21st Century warfare is this:  the global marketplace, like the Internet, is your friend/ally.  Don't disrupt it directly, use it to amplify disruption.  Learning how to do this effectively is the way to convert the returns on investment (ROI) from vanilla systems disruption from millions to one into billions or trillions to one.

SYSTEMS DISRUPTION IN RUSSIA

Weakness often begets rapid innovation in warfare.  Wonder if the success of this attack will serve as the plausible promise for many more attacks via open source copying.  Russia is very vulnerable to physical systems disruption since it is, at heart, an energy corporation.  A couple more attacks of this type would heavily discount Russian financial instruments (already suffering a high 17% discount due to political risk according to Citi) and generate deep direct losses from lower exports of energy.

"On Monday morning, within hours of each other, a giant Siberian dam was seriously damaged by an uncontrolled torrent of water pouring through the machine room and more than 20 people were killed when a suicide truck bomb rammed a police station in the North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia."  Reuters

"The plant supplies about 10 percent of Siberia’s energy needs, including several major aluminum smelters belonging to Rusal, the world’s largest aluminum producer. It has been shut down since the accident and could be out of service for a significant time. Repairs are estimated to take from two to four years."  Associated Press

"A decision was taken at the start of the year at a meeting of the council of the mujahideen of the Emirate of the Caucasus, led by Caucasus Emir Doku Abu Usman, to activate an economic war against Russia on its territory. To carry out these tasks, subversive groups were created and sent to a host of Russian regions with the aim of carrying out industrial sabotage. The priority targets laid out for them are gas pipelines, oil pipelines, the destruction of electricity stations and high-voltage power lines, and sabotage at factories." Riyadus-Salikhiyn, Battalion of Martyrs (Kavkaz Center). 

________________

This looks like something right out of the Chechen Independence Scenario I wrote back in 2005:

"The new Chechen strategy, enabled by a small percentage of the tens of thousands of Chechen exiles scattered throughout Russia, emerged with multiple attacks on the critical sections of Gazprom's natural gas pipeline network to the north and south of Moscow. The simplicity of the attacks were alarming." Scenario "Chechen Independence" (Part 1)  January 2005

"Nation's are no longer self-sufficient, they are interdependent and increasingly reliant on their ongoing ability to perform in global markets. Fall behind in this competition and currencies collapse, debt becomes exorbitant, and domestic stock markets plummet. A sharp slap of Adam Smith's invisible hand can quickly turn a weak state into an economic basket case. As a result of this progress, the target for a moral victory doesn't rest within the nation-state, but rather the global market" Scenario "Chechen Independence" (Part 2)

JOURNAL: Operation Get Rich or Die Trying

Albert Gonzalez is a good example of how in this super-empowered global environment:  a high school diploma, some smarts, and a hard work ethic is all it takes to generate incredible wealth and do massive amounts of damage.   Albert is accused of masterminding the cyber theft of 130 million credit/debit card numbers and associated account data with two Russian partners (asking prices are $10 to $100 each, depending on the account profile and credit limit, on the black market).   Albert's role involved doing the on the ground intel work necessary -- from scouting retail stores to see which provider processed its payments to mapping the financial supply chain to uncover weak links.  

Granted, he got caught.  But his use of self-replication (via software) to push the boundaries of super-empowerment makes him a global guerrilla innovator (see earlier post on this for more).  Perhaps he missed an opportunity:  if after getting rich he had opted to destroy credit card balances/accounts that had revolving balances, he might have been hailed a modern "Robin Hood" and become the stuff of legend rather than merely a super-crook. ;->

JOURNAL: More on Funding the Taliban

It appears that the US military/government is slowly starting to focus on Taliban funding issues.  

Here's a recap.  An estimated half of the Taliban's funding comes from the protection racket it runs against Afghanistan's opium/drug industry.  Estimates are that it rakes in $70 to $300 million a year from that activity alone.  Much of the other half appears to come from protection rackets geared towards US/UN/NATO sponsored reconstruction efforts.  Protection rates are 20% of construction costs (which may be a bargain, since private military companies in Iraq cost up to 40%).  This equates into a ~$250 million a year budget for a force that pays its soldiers $10 a day (even if all in cost is treble that, the Taliban foot soldier operates at less than 0.4% of the costs of US soldiers).

However, whatever funding they do receive is now likely to surge now that the US is targeting the top 50 leaders of the opium industry in Afghanistan.  Despite efforts to claim otherwise, it's almost a certainty that this will drive much more funding from the $3b opium industry into the Taliban's coffers (for protection against encroachment from military operations and crop substitution efforts).  Worse than pure funding, it will likely enable the Taliban to leverage the industry's global supply chain to access weapons, equipment, skills, etc.  We've done so poorly in Mexico against a drug fueled insurgency, it's probably not prudent to force Afghanistan into that model too -- perhaps even with new hybrid tribal/ideological models of narco-jihadi groups ala La Familia?

JOURNAL: 3D Printing Update

More on the local fabrication revolution (an important driver of functional resilient communities) from Shapeways (an online 3D printer that allows people to share designs):

• in stainless steel
• in DNA (using self-assembly)
• mechanical parts catalogue
• Co-creator platform

Interesting interview with Bram Cohen (Bittorrent creator) on 3D printing and the outsourcing model (scroll to bottom). Key quote: "Moving towards a person or company owning a printer and taking orders from other people to do on it has been a huge improvement in how 3d printing is done, so no, I don't see anyone owning their own 3d printer any time soon. If anything we'll see an extension to the outsource model, where companies own geographically distributed printers and are able to print something physically close to you to have it ship faster." 

More: Jamais Cascio chimes in on the "desktop manufacturing revolution."

Note:  most of the approaches and challenges faced by Shapeways are similar to the conventional 2D print industry (a massive industry).  So, as I anticipated, it's likely that the globally decentralized (just in time and place -- JITP) manufacturing system my team built a couple of years ago for the 2D print industry would work here too.

NO CONSUMER RECOVERY

Here's a contrarian view on why economic recovery isn't in the cards.  Unlike the last Century's experience, the American "consumer" is broken (this isn't reflected in the vast bulk of economic modeling/projections).  How broken?  The best exploration of this that I've found is from Elizabeth Warren (here's a video of her presentation on the topic before the crisis, worth watching in its entirety).  The top line is that the American consumer, prior to the financial crisis, was already fragile due to:

• Stagnant incomes.  Median per capita income has stagnated for 30 years and is now headed lower. The only increase in household income came from adding the income of a spouse (that typically gets less than the male income earner). The value generated by mighty productivity increases over the last thirty years was routed to the financial markets (aka casinos) and not shared with American workers.
• Increased fixed expenses.  The costs and amount spent on variable consumption have fallen (clothing, food, autos, etc.) over the last thirty years -- which puts the lie to the "over consumption" charge.  Instead, the median cost of housing, health, and the costs of work (childcare, two cars, etc.  brought on due to a need for sending two people to work) have skyrocketed with very little improvement in the quantity or value of the goods/services received.
• The entry ticket to the middle class has skyrocketed.  This is due to the costs of education.  Instead of publicly subsidized education (k-12 used to be sufficient for entry), we now have 6 years (pre-school and college) that are directly charged to the American family.  Those costs have ballooned into budget breakers.

The Consequences of Fragility

The driver of this fragility is that 75% of a typical American families budget (not counting education costs of kids) is dedicated to fixed expenses.  This means that the loss a small as 10% in a family's income would be sufficient to force failure.  Combine this fragility with increasing income volatility and even the slightest shock will set off a wave of extreme frugality and mushrooming financial failure at the household level.  In the past, we were able to hide this fragility through increased debt/bubbles.  That's over.   We've already taken on as much debt (375% of GDP right now, and still climbing) as we can acquire and the banks are hoarding the bulk of federal cash infusions to paper over their insolvency (almost all of the toxic assets from last fall's debacle are still in place, and more are en route from commercial real-estate).  What follows from the recent shock is almost guaranteed:

• retail sales will stagnate/fall as far as the eye can see.  This is backed up by recent numbers.  Sales fell in July 2009 and deflation appears to advancing.  Household savings (read debt servicing) is on the rise.
• home sales/prices will continue to decline on a long trek to affordability.  Again, the numbers appear to be trending in this direction.
• bad feedback loops will form -- low sales means less work, less work means more frugality/failure (as household wink out financially) which means lower sales.  The second wave of the primary feedback loop appears to be forming.

JOURNAL: Shift?

A sign of the move to resilient communities?  Craigslist went from 10 billion page views a month in June of 2008 to 20 billion a month in July of 2009 -- with only 23 employees.  That makes it the #7 site in english language page views in the world.  This rapid growth rate is indicative of the growing shift towards an highly dynamic, informal, locally driven economy enabled by low cost virtual connectivity.