Global Guerrillas

FAILURE AS A STRATEGY

Some thinking on terrorism that may be of interest:

The recent al Qaeda sponsored attempt to blow up an Northwest Airways flight is an example of an interesting, but likely inadvertent strategy:  failure.  Given the earlier example of 9/11, even failed attacks provide the following benefits:

• New and sweeping rules on airline passengers (most inane) and beefed up security.
• New military/intelligence efforts launched against Yemen.
• A potential substantive review and expansion of the broken no-fly lists and other substantial/expensive "systemic" overhauls.  

In sum, the attack generated more expense (a nice return in red ink for a relatively small effort) even though it failed.

NOTE:  This is hilarious given the only thing that did work to stop the attack was (again) quick thinking/heroism on the part of the passengers on the flight.  This implies that the real reason for all this 'action' is more about bolstering nation-state legitimacy (why do we spend all this money in taxes on these massive bureaucracies) than preventing attacks. 

Failure is interesting, as a strategy, because it doesn't require the necessary planning, funding, and training required for a potentially successful attack.  As a result, attacks can be made quickly across a broad spectrum of targets.  If al Qaeda did embrace failure as a strategy, we could expect them to:

• Increase the frequency.  Since the level of effort required is very small, do more to generate substantive returns in red ink/securitization/bureaucratization.  Since suicide isn't even a requirement for the attacker, it would likely make it easy to hire them (payment to families for the effort would attract a vast pool of applicants).
• Expand the venues.  Attack more types of places.  Schools, malls, etc.  Terrorist attacks are treated differently than even much more violent attacks by postal citizens in the same venues.  Why?  They are outsiders and the fear is that these attacks will be systemic rather than one offs.
• Embrace more ethnicities/races to expand the profile of the terrorist.  The use of a Nigerian student is a first step on this.  Expand this profile to include Chinese, Indonesians, etc. to generate sweeping fear of all "outsiders."  Spread the bureaucratic restrictions on travel that would be generated in reactions to these attacks far and wide.    

LINKS: 29 DEC 09

Some random items of interest:

• Engadget.  Toy gun + RFID zapper.  Nice.  I want one with more range for zapping embedded electronics.
• WSJ:  Legalizing Marijuana in the US (already in process in CA, WA, and MA) would cut Mexican drug gang revenues by 50-65%.
• Integral.  Using trade barriers for corruption.
• BBC.  Crowd sourced surveillance on the Mexico/US border.  130,000 virtual deputies have yielded 21 arrests in a year.  The costs is a negligible $4 m (compared to government alternatives it's the equivalent of free).  Systems like this are easily replicable, at a fraction of even this low cost, within Darknets.  
• Ramthemdown:  Crowdsourcing a competitor to FedEx.  Hilarious.  
• Goldman Sachs buys into the military industrial complex (the L-3 spyplane) through its purchase of Hawker Beechcraft.  
• Internet Triad in China -- able to influence public opinion through manipulation of the Internet terrain.  Lots of people/companies try to do this (from penny stock manipulation to damaging the brand of a competitor).  Few can really do it at a level that matters.  My company's new software has the potential enable this at a master class level.
• Home batteries from Panasonic.  A weeks worth of electricity.  Resilient electricity won't come from the grid since the investment required is a huge step function (even more remote given national/global political and economical dysfunction).  It will come through decentralized investments by individuals/families/communities (in a very similar way to how interactive TV never arrived, but computers + modems bought by individuals/families/communities allowed the Internet to take off).
• Gizmag. 3D printer for human arteries and organs.  The 3D bio-printer allows scientists to place cells of almost any type into a desired 3D pattern. It includes two print heads, one for placing human cells, and the other for placing a hydrogel, scaffold, or support matrix. The cells used by the device need to be the cells of what is being regenerated – building an artery requires arterial cells for example. Because the patient’s own cells are used the new organ will not be rejected by the body. The printer fits inside a standard biosafety cabinet for sterile use.

THANKS (!) AND ONTO THE NEXT YEAR

A big thank you to all the hundreds of thousands of readers of Global Guerrillas over the years!  

The work being done here is a collaborative process.  Through the course of millions of visits, tens of thousands of discussion comments, and over a thousand posts we are well on the way to:

• Developing a working theory for open source warfare -- a methodology of warfare whereby a bevy of small groups can take on larger foes and defeat them.  This theory applies equally to non-violent and violent conflict and it is the first theory of warfare that takes into account today's unique environment (a connected world).
• Developing the model of resilient communities -- a methodology for societal resilience that allows participants to: not only avoid the deleterious effects of rapid change and systemic shocks, but enjoy a societal growth path that is scalable, equitable, meaningful, and evolutionarily superior to its competitors.

Here's what I am going to be working on over the next year.  Your contributions, either intellectual via discussion items/e-mail/collaboration or financial (the TIP JAR, thanks!), will make the first two items possible:

• Keep working on open source warfare (Nature magazine's embrace of this form of warfare as a breakthrough in thinking, indicates that we are on the right track).  More:  Get Bill Lind publishing again and add more voices to the process.
• Get a book out on Resilient Communities (I think I finally have the right approach on this).  Develop working prototypes of software that supports the development of resilient communities (depending on funding levels -- both external and self-funded by me).  This spans: the application of gaming methods to systems as diverse as permaculture to real world economics to mesh/P2P networks to reputation/reward systems to tinkering networks for DIY everything.  The objective is to build the start of a system that can help resilient communities grow/spread virally.
• Deliver a software system that enables dominance of the information terrain.  My "software company" has developed a system to enable this and we are in the process of securing customers (currently, mostly DoD/gov't, although it is open to anyone that can buy it) for this system.  If you have both the financial resources and a desire for dominance over the information terrain, buy this development path.  It also has the beneficial effect of funding the above efforts.

LINKS: 22 DEC 09

Some random items of interest:

• Copenhagen collapse.  Note the role/roll of financial capitalism in this article.
• Advanced topic: Darknet economics:  Radu Privantu has some well articulated tips on growing an MMO economy from 2007.  Still valid.  It's really not a stretch at all to apply these to constructing a virtual corporation or tribal economy that operates in (or in parallel to, but still deals in tangible wealth) the existing global economy.  More at wikipedia.
• Mexican military adopts gang PR techniques.  It has already generated a backlash.  Remember Van Creveld's maxim:  He who fights against the weak and loses, loses. He who fights against the weak and wins also loses.  
• Unrest in China is heating up.  Basically, the government has zero to negative (given the perks it provides its members) legitimacy other than its ability to deliver fast growth.  Given that the 'fast follower' mercantilist strategy that focused on US markets has evaporated, the only thing that is left is a bubble strategy (ala Japan).  When that pops...
• Guerrillas are starting to regularly sabotage Kurdish/Turkish oil pipelines again.  Last time this heated up, there was nearly a 100% downtime.
• Kahn Academy.  Free education for everyone..
• US:  1 millions homes in foreclosure in Q3 2009.  A new record, even though most potential foreclosures are being held by banks to prevent a realization of losses.  Bye bye middle class.  
• Mathematics of war. More data on the new study in Nature magazine on open source warfare.  US spy agencies appear to be completely clueless in what to do with this (unable to make the transition to 21st Century warfare): I'm underwhelmed. Seems like an awful lot of number-crunching for a meager output," says former CIA counterterrorism analysis chief Paul Pillar of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C."The chief output is the finding that violent incidents in insurgencies tend to come in bunches rather than reflecting a random distribution," he said by e-mail. "I don't see how that points to any one model of the internal shape of insurgencies, or how it constitutes a challenge to models that posit hierarchies or networks (guiding insurgencies). Frankly, I don't see how this approach would be of use to counterinsurgency planners or policymakers."  Good thing he's at a cushy job at Georgetown now.
• Russian gang hacks Citibank (the tip of the iceberg): The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing a computer-security breach targeting Citigroup Inc. that resulted in a theft of tens of millions of dollars by computer hackers who appear linked to a Russian cyber gang, according to government officials. Parasite vs. parasite predation.

JOURNAL: Shell Capitulates in Nigeria

Royal Dutch Shell PLC is seeking buyers for 10 of its Nigerian onshore oil-production assets following years of militant attacks on its facilities that have squeezed the company's profit, people familiar with the matter said Sunday. The oil fields have a market value of $4 billion to $5 billion and represent proven oil reserves of about 100 million barrels, one of the people said... The move marks a capitulation of sorts for Shell.  Wall Street Journal.

This a great example of an open source insurgency's effectiveness against a massive multinational corporation.  What was the decision making process at Shell regarding this threat?  Why was the company so ineffective at defending it's interests?  A good forensic analysis would be useful (I'd like to see how it matches up against theoretical approaches re: attacking corporations).  

LINKS: 21 DEC 09

Some random items of interest:

• Avatar. Kunstler (spoiler) As the end-credits rolled for James Cameron's new movie, Avatar, the audience burst into rowdy applause. It seemed to me that they were applauding the sheer computerized dazzlement of the show -- but in the story itself they had just watched the US suffer a humiliating defeat on a distant planet. In the final frames, American soldiers and the corporate executives they had failed to protect were shown lined up as prisoners-of-war about to embark on a death march.
• India.  It appears that the Naxal's adoption of open source organization and systems disruption for its insurgency has even produced positive body count ratios vs. government forces (unlike the other insurgencies operating in the country):  In Naxal affected States, the number of the number of Civilians and Security Forces personnel killed upto Oct.31, 2009 was 742 while it was 721 in 2008. However, the number of Naxalites killed during the same time is 170 (till Oct.31, 2009), which stood at 199 in 2008.  The same ratio is true with Nigeria's MEND.  In short, system disruption is vastly superior, as a method of warfare, to a traditional insurgency that measures its success through attacks on government forces. 
• Infotopia: How many minds produce knowledge.  This book on group decision making (with some emphasis on the massively parallel level) looks interesting.  Basically, it uses experimental data and studies of group behavior to build a set of recommendations on how to improve group decision making and avoid blunders.
• Nigeria.   MEND damaged a Shell oil pipeline as a warning to the Nigerian gov't to continue to negotiate in good faith.  Good luck with that.  The gov't is denying the attack to continue to the illusion that the conflict is over.  Factions in the government are also hiring, in an attempt to route around MEND's reconciliation negotiations with Nigeria's President, former MEND commanders to build an open source counter-insurgency.  
• Thanks so much to all of the wonderful supporters for their donations to the TIP JAR!  
• Seattle and Washington State moving towards legalizing pot and selling it in state liquor stores.  Another sign of the trend towards decentralization.  
• Due process suspended in the US.  More.
• Sorkin on the financial crisis:  Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and GE were all about to go bankrupt. 

RADIO INTERVIEW

Did a radio interview yesterday with the IEEE's "Change Surfer" radio hosted by Dr. J.

It's posted to the Internet for your listening pleasure.

LINKS: 18 DEC 09

Some random items of interest:

• TIP JAR.  I've added a tip jar to the site (upper left).  The more funding I get the more I can do.  One of the things I'd like to do is get a new fax machine so Bill Lind can send me his articles (he doesn't use a computer).  
• Permaculture MMO (see the Food Game).  I've gotten a great response to my post on the need and opportunity for a permaculture MMO -- mostly from people with lots of experience in permaculture and software development.  Some are even working on a game/software of this type already.  All want to help and collaborate on a project to do this.  Will reply soon.  Not sure what to do given current financial limitations.  If those restrictions reverse, we could get things moving in short order (an early Darknet module?, could be).
• Sesawe.net   Tools for getting around censorship online.  Nice.
• "Hollowing out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and what it means for America"  Book review in the WSJ.  Sounds interesting.  My response?  With virtual work replacing traditional in person "office work" and the rapid growth of micro-manufacturing, there will soon be no reason to leave a small town.  Or for those ahead of the curve:  Think of Darknet connected resilient communities as a means of rapid reversal.

JOURNAL: A Critique of Open Source Warfare

One upshot of the Nature article on open source warfare, is that it has already provoked some push back from the academic community.  The most interesting of these is from Drew Conway at ZIA (a nice blog btw).  His critique is emblematic of the stumbling blocks faced by those of us trying to communicate a new conceptual structure for warfare:

The role of the media is central to the decision model proposed by the authors, which is illustrated in the figure above. Again, however, this presents a logical disconnect. As the figure describes, the authors claim that insurgents are updating their beliefs and strategies based on the information and signals they receive from broadcast news, then deciding whether to execute an attack. For lack of a better term, this is clearly putting the cart before the horse. The media is reporting attacks, as the authors’ data clearly proves; therefore, the insurgents’ decision to attack is creating news, and as such insurgents are gaining no new information from media reports on attacks that they themselves have perpetrated. Rather, the insurgents retain a critical element of private information, and are updating based on the counter-insurgency policies of the state—information they are very likely not receiving from the media. The framework presented here is akin to claiming that in a game of football (American) the offense is updating their strategy in the huddle before ever having seen how the defense lines up. Without question updating, in football both sides are updating strategy constantly, but it is the offense that dictates this tempo, and in an insurgency the insurgents are on offense.

Unfortunately, this critique assumes only two decision making cycles (insurgent and counter-insurgent -- offense and defense). This is a very serious assumption error.  There are many groups involved.  It also doesn't even cross his mind that media coverage is a means of stigmergic communication for cross group communication (despite the clarity of the graphic in the paper -- to the left). 

The second bad assumption is that counter-insurgency responses aren't covered by the media. In most cases, they are broadcast, in an attempt to dampen public fear and a loss of legitimacy. Second, if these responses are truly secret, there's very little chance a small group could uncover them until an attack failed. That failure serves as a signal to the other groups via media coverage.

JOURNAL: A Quantitative Examination of Open Source Warfare

Open source warfare* is now at the top of the heap in the scientific study of conflict.  A new paper showcased in Nature magazine, Common Ecology Quantifies Human Insurgency (by Boorquez, Gourley, Dixon, Spagat, and Johnson)** is an attempt to provide a quantitative model for open source warfare.   As a scientific study of the area, it does a great job.  

Based on data (timing and severity) from 54,000 events across 9 insurgencies, the authors were able to generate models for behavior that explain why modern insurgency operates the way it does (particularly, its unique power law coefficient) -- it operates differently than convention warfare (very rare now) and civil wars (which should provide you a clue as to why the Iraqi insurgency slowed down).  The model they derived has two parts:

• A grouping mechanism.  Why groups fragment and form.  It assumes a constant insurgent population with a fluctuating number of groups depending on counter-insurgency pressure (more pressure = more groups).
• A timing mechanism.  A description of how insurgent decision making cycles (assuming lots of groups) impact the timing of attacks.  The conclusion is that of cross group communication through the media (stigmergic learning) explains how this mechanism works.

The result is a graphic (a little technical for some) that describes the decision making process that each group in the insurgency goes through.  What makes this very interesting to me is not the scientific support it provides to open source warfare, but rather that it provides me with additional clarity on how open source warfare could be instantiated in Darknet software.  Huzzah!

* Open source warfare has become the dominant form of warfare in the 21st Century. Basically, it's a model of warfare that describes how many small autonomous groups can fight an insurgency despite the lack of a central command hierarchy. Here's a good article in the IEEE Spectrum magazine that describes how it works.  For a more formal description, read Brave New War (cited in the Nature paper).

** The authors and Nature both sent me a copy of the paper and the article that accompanied it.  Thanks.

A "DARKNET"

Here is an idea that is more than a little ahead of the curve.  It's one that you might want to wrap your brain around.  Feedback is always appreciated.

_____________________

A Darknet is the system that runs an autonomous social network (a tribe, a constellation of resilient communities, a gang, etc.).  It is composed of a software layer and hardware infrastructure that connects, organizes, allocates, and automates the functions of the synthetic social system it is built for.  Some details:

• Software can be built that automates the rules by which any social and economic system operate.  Nearly any social construct imaginable can be automated (at least on a small scale).  Whether it works efficiently or is appealing to recruits is another story entirely.  Early experience in MMO games and social software development indicate that this is not only possible, but probable.
• The networks hardware and software infrastructure ensures that all members of the network are provided access to the system and the tools necessary to use it effectively.  It is also constructed in a way that makes it opaque to outside observation and impervious to non-members or intrusion.
• This system, both economic and social, runs both in parallel and in conjunction with the global economy (the environment).  It is self-referencing, autonomous, and willing to defend its own interests.  It can be parasitic or additive to the global environment (or more effectively: both).  It is competitive with other entities that operate within the global environment, from nation-states to corporations.

"Darknet" is a term used by Daniel Suarez, in his books Daemon and Freedom (TM) (see review).   Many thanks to Dan for providing the cover necessary to explore this idea.

SUPER EMPOWERMENT: Hack a Predator Drone

Skygrabber.  $25.95  Easy to use software that enables you to hack the video feeds of US military drones (satellite dish, satellite card, and desktop computer required).  Classification:  DIY weapon.

Iraqi and Afghan insurgents are currently using cheap software to hack the video feeds of Predator (and likely Reaper) drones.  Due the difficulty of adding encryption to a large number of deployed systems, each with high bandwidth video flows (particularly the "Gorgon's Stare" with 10 separate feeds), a quick fix is very unlikely.  

Skygrabber was developed by a Russian software company to allow people to snatch the content (media files) that other people were downloading via their satellite Internet connection (all part of the copyright wars currently underway).  It has the following description:

But you say, well, well, we get the data, but how do we get the files that other users are downloading? The SkyGrabber can do it. The program intercepts data of other users, assemble in files and saves files in your hard drive. SkyGrabber makes your life more exciting and interesting.

NOTE:  I got a flood of e-mails this morning on this story.  Thanks much to the global guerrillas community!!   

This event isn't an aberration.  It is an inevitable development, one that will only occur more and more often.  Why?  Military cycles of development and deployment take decades due to the dominance of a lethargic, bureaucratic, and bloated military industrial complex.  Agility isn't in the DNA of the system nor will it ever be (my recent experience with a breakthrough and inexpensive information warfare system my team built, is yet another example of how FAIL the military acquisition system is).  

In contrast, vast quantities of cheap/open/easy technologies (commercial and open source) are undergoing rapid rates of improvement.  Combined with tinkering networks that can repurpose them to a plethora of unintended needs (like warfare), this development path becomes an inexorable force.  The delta (a deficit from the perspective of the status quo, an advantage for revisionists) between the formal and the informal will only increase as early stage networks that focus specifically on weapons/warfare quickly become larger, richer, etc.  (this will happen as they are combined with the economic systems of more complex tribal/community "Darknets"). 

The idea of building a defense acquisition system that accelerates open source weapons production -- one that outcompetes the military industrial complex by several orders of magnitude in time, cost, effectiveness, flexibility, ease of use, etc. -- sounds like blast!  

DON VANDERGRIFF: On Adaptive Leadership

Obviously, warfare and conflict in the 21st Century present new challenges.  It's not only hideously complex, mercurial, and lightning fast -- it's an environment where missteps or brain dead actions of an individual or small group can unwind the work of an entire Army within hours.  

The solution to these challenges isn't achieved by:

• automating new layers of oversight/controls on individual behavior or 
• hermetically sealing off the organization's members from the outside world or
• developing ever more complex doctrines that appear to solve every contingency.

Instead, the answer is to train leaders to think adaptively.*  So, how do you accomplish this?  How do you train leaders to think adaptively?**  The best answer I have found so far is found in the work of Don Vandergriff.  He's done more deep thinking and generated more experience actually training adaptive leaders than anybody else.  Here's some links to his work on the topic:

First, his books:

• The Path to Victory America's Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs
• Raising the Bar  Creating and Nurturing Adaptability to Deal with the Changing Face of War  UPDATE:  Download Vandergriff Raising_the_Bar.
• Manning the Future Legions of the United States  Finding and Developing Tomorrow's Centurions

Here are some articles that use his adaptive leadership training methodology.

Assembly Article: No Approved Solutions for Asymmetric Warfare (Foster)

OBTE: Defining the Aim Point for Reconnaissance Leader Training

* I could go into a long explanation for why this is so, but frankly Don does a better job than I would.  

** I consider adaptive thinking is a requirement for all 21st Century organizations -- corporate, military, agency, NGO, or insurgent.  Even further:  the best organizations make adaptive thinking a requirement for ALL of its members.  

Here's his contact info for more info:

DONALD E. VANDERGRIFF  (MAJOR US ARMY RETIRED)
MAVERICK LEADERSHIP LLC
CELL: 571-229-0962
EMAIL: vandergriffdonald AT usa.net
WEB: http://www.donvandergriff.com

LINKS: 15 DEC 09

Some random items of interest:

• Mexico's Zeta's bunkered $715 m in oil from Pemex last year:  "The Zetas are a parallel government," said Eduardo Mendoza Arellano, a federal lawmaker who heads a national committee on energy. "They practically own vast stretches of the pipelines, from the highway to the very door of the oil companies."The Zetas earn millions of dollars by "taxing" the oil pipelines -- organizing the theft themselves or taking a cut from anyone who does the stealing, according to Mexican authorities. To steal the oil, Mexican authorities said, thieves sometimes use safe houses from where they build extensive tunnel networks leading to the pipelines. They fabricate powerful drills that enable them to puncture the highly pressurized steel pipes and extract the oil without causing spills or suspicious drops in pressure.   Sounds familiar.
• Charlie Stross makes a good observation re: the use of drug profits to maintain liquidity during the banking crisis:  What we've just seen, hidden in the euphemism here, is a confession that drug cartels and other organized criminals have gone on a $352Bn asset-buying spree — and the banks and regulators, world-wide, turned a blind eye to this because the alternative was to allow the banks to collapse. And the corollary is that these investments are now in the system, laundered, whitewashed, and legit. These narcodollars aren't neatly bundled up inside the mattress any more; they're in the system, doing their owners' bidding.
• Cory Doctrow's book Makers is available as a free download.  Good way to get a feel for the coming tsunami of micro manufacturing.  Thanks Cory.  Wish I could do this with my book.
• Government transparency in action (another crime hidden from view).
• In case you missed this:  Matt Taibbi has another fantastic editorial up.
• Blodget on how to make a billion without risk.

THE FOOD GAME

Most people wouldn't associate growing food with a game.  It's hard work (as the summers in my youth working on our family farm attest to).  Despite this preconception, gaming software (and particularly MMOs -- massively multiplayer online games), might be a way to supercharge local food production.  Connect these data points:

Analysis:  Farming as a MMO game

There's a new game (both my kids and some readers pointed this out to me), called Farmville, that's gaining considerable popularity.  It works as a Facebook add-on, and is easily downloaded via Flash.  It turns virtual farming (from planting to reaping to going to market) into a fun social experience.  The game now sports 60 million active users.

Analysis:  Permaculture

Permaculture, the use of designed ecosystems to produce food, might be one of the best ways to add food production (and a large variety of other outputs) to a resilient community.  Here's why.  Traditional farming is input intensive.  From manual work (both machine and human) to energy (pesticides to fertilizer), inputs drive output.  In contrast, permaculture uses natural ecosystem function to replace many of these tangible inputs to provide outputs on par with traditional farming.  The problem is designing the ecosystem of a permaculture plot to achieve high rates of return (output/input).   In short, brain work has the opportunity to replaced brawn but it's tough to do.

Synthesis:  The MMO + Permaculture Bootstrap

So, as with most activities/industries that have replaced brawn and physical inputs with brain work and ideas, it probably needs some software to get it going (where Moore's law and network dynamics can help accelerate its productivity over time).  

Unfortunately, the current state of software that aids the design of permaculture plots is pretty dismal.  The best people can do is cobble together mapping software, 3D landscape modeling software, and some auto CAD.   Of course, it is possible if the resources were available (my team of developers could do it), to build software that enables people to design, optimize, and share permaculture plots, that misses a great opportunity.

The real opportunity is to build a learning system via software, one that naturally trains the people that use it, gets better and more sophisticated over time, and is fun.  The only way I know how to do that is build a game.

One of the first things to do, is build a simple Farmville type social game that helps people learn permaculture design principles:

• Conservation.  Efficiency of inputs.  
• Repeating functions.  Redundancy.
• Stacking functions.  Multiple uses for the same thing.
• Reciprocity.  Outputs of one part of the system are inputs for another.  In other words, cascading processes maximize the energy yield of the system.
• Local scale.  Minimal organizational overhead.  Match production to local need.
• Diversity.  Lots of different ecosystem participants increases resilience.

As the game grows, it could move to a much higher level.  For example, gaming software that offers the ability to add connections to the real world (satellite imagery/topography of actual plots), has high end graphics (for more immersive and detailed plot design), and provides models/simulation (to test new configurations).  In fact, if done through a game, the upfront training requirements for using this new functionality would be nearly zero (for new and existing users).  I could go on and get much more detailed on this, but I suspect you get the picture.

ON WAR #326: Finis (William S. Lind)

Bill Lind is retiring and calling it quits on a his On War column (at least for a little while).  He recaps #325 columns and gives a book recommendation.  Read Bill Lind's Finis in its entirety.

NOTE:   I'll see what I can do to get him publishing again. ;->

LINKS: 14 DEC 09

Some very random items of interest:

• TOR project.  A P2P networks that allows anonymous browsing.  Essentially, it bounces your browsing activity through a network of peers to protect your identity (hundreds of thousands of members already).   A good way to get around gov't firewalls that block this site and potentially a mechanism that can be replicated within a bot-based communications network.
• Black Globalization saved the global economy in 2008?  Lots of people sent me a link to this news item.  Thanks much.  In short, the UN drugs and crime czar said that hundreds of billions in profits derived from drugs/smuggling was one of the only big pools of liquid capital available during the financial crisis of 2008 -- this capital prevented the system from melting down.
• Patriots.  A novel on a militia based survival scenario in a post crash US.  It's selling well, #725 on Amazon.
   
• Secondary bombs on the rise in Afghanistan.
• Men in Hijabs.   Using new media to turn a government effort to demean a political prisoner into an opportunity.
• Surgically changing fingerprints to evade immigration controls.  China/Japan.
• Crisiswire.  Building tools for citizen journos.  More.
• Wired.  DIY book scanners.
• Tech Review.  Harnessing cloud computing for hacking.

JOURNAL: Resources for Small Group Superempowerment

This doesn't seem to have received much attention, but the world's most powerful supercomputer entered operation recently... This may be the first time that a top 10 supercomputer has been controlled not by a government or megacorporation but by criminals. The question remains, now that they have the world's most powerful supercomputer system at their disposal, what are they going to do with it?  Peter Gutmann TOP500.

In theory, according to Peter Gutmann (the academic that rates the speed of world's biggest corporate supercomputing clusters at TOP500), the most powerful supercomputing cluster in the world (by one to two orders of magnitude) is a private criminal network called the Storm botnet.  As a reminder, the Storm botnet was built through the propagation of a beautifully designed computer worm.  Why do I think it is beautiful?  It's an instantiation of open source warfare in software.

It's important to note that this estimate of computing power is just theory.  The software necessary, like Grid, to turn it into a decentralized supercomputing platform may not be in place.  However, the ability to do so is real.  If it is installed, it could provide the resources necessary to analyze vast amounts of structured and unstructured data (for intelligence/opportunities), run business software of incredible capacity (if they were properly constructed: market systems beyond the capacity of the NASDAQ or supply chain software well beyond Walmart's), decrypt the most sensitive communications or access control systems via brute force (for example, it could blast through the defenses of any financial network in the world), etc.  Another interesting aspect of this is that Storm is only one of example of many existing botnets, and it is nearly impossible to eradicate (it is resilient).  

I anticipate that the first group to use a supercomputing network like this to grow, as a movement/community rather than merely as a parasite, has the potential to zoooooom past nations/companies of a much larger size.

LINKS: 10 DEC 09

Some random items of interest (I put today's date on yesterdays links, so I'm just going to continue to add to them today, sorry for any duplication):

• Here's some big picture thinking:  If the top poker player in the world treats the competition as a 'video' game -- why can't we reengineer complex economic activity inside a 'video' (or more properly an MMO) game.  I think it is not only possible, but probable.  This could be the basis of the ultimate 'start-up' (at least it has been an entrepreneurial dream of mine for a decade):  a complete, self-referencing real world economic system that operates as an online game.  From zero to a multi-million player 'economy' in a couple of years.
• Male employment in the US.  See graph.  Lowest on record.  Global financial capitalism has engineered a massive 'put' on western wages/lifestyles in anticipation of rapid and prolonged decline (down to global norms) -- unexpectedly, it may turn into a 'call' on a plethora of new parallel systems (many of which could be evolutionarily superior to the status quo).    
• Quote that sums it up.  Yves (one of the smartest analyst/insider of the financial markets I've found that actually owns a moral compass): I am not sure whether Potemkin reform is worse than no reform at all, except the latter makes it abundantly clear that America is in the hands of a corrupt plutocratic elite.
• Here's a press release from an IT security firm that incidentally has some good analysis on hacking trends.   "There is a clear definition of roles within the hacking community developing, forming a supply chain that starkly resembles that of drug cartels: 1) Botnet growers / cultivators whose sole concern is maintaining and increasing botnet communities 2)Attackers who purchase botnets for attacks aimed at extracting sensitive information (or other more specialized tasks), 3) Cyber criminals who acquire sensitive information for the sole purpose of committing fraudulent transactions."
• IEEE Spectrum podcast.  Big government IT projects are failing around the world.  Not only are the big government contractors mediocre providers of IT services, the size of the big systems (or systems of systems) envisioned aren't workable.  The only way to handle systems of that scale is through an organic, decentralized approach (that loosely interconnects) using simple standards. 
• COIN dynamics (TPM).  A systems analysis of American COIN strategy.  Absolutely hilarious (click on chart below for larger view).  Simply, confused military theory (I've found groups that do futures work in the US DoD, but nobody that does military theory) yields confused strategy.
• 
• American Apocalypse.  A fictional description of D2 (the second great depression).  If the author, "nova," sends me a copy, I'll give it a review here since it looks interesting.  Why is it interesting?  When resilient communities (RCs) finally arrive, their emergence will be sporadic not ubiquitous (everywhere), since there won't be a government mandate nor a global market dictate (instead, we can expect opposition from these quarters).  As a result,  I suspect that RC growth will likely be very dispersed geographically, as individuals and small groups opt-in in -- starting with a trickle.  Stories like "American Apocalypse" are useful in describing the economically broken environment within which they will emerge.   UPDATE:  Book is en route!  Thanks Nova.
• Techcrunch on Google goggles.  This is early augmented reality that you will be able to use soon.  Basically, if you have an Android phone, you can load an application that will match pictures that you take with the phone to similar objects found by Google's search engine.  Click the link for a better explanation.

JOURNAL: Fighting an Automated Bureaucracy

When the Taliban arrive in a village, I discovered, it takes 96 hours for an Army commander to obtain necessary approvals to act. In the first half of 2009, the Army Special Forces company I was with repeatedly tried to interdict Taliban. By our informal count, however, we (and the Afghan commandos we worked with) were stopped on 70 percent of our attempts because we could not achieve the requisite 11 approvals in time. Jonathan J. Vaccaro NYTimes OP-ED.

From an insurgents perspective (key to understanding the issue), the US military's command and control system is a gift from God.  It's lethargic.  Key aspects of why this is so include:  

• Risk mitigation trumps initiative every time.   Careers are more important than victory.   Risk evaluation moves upward in the hierarchy.  Evaluation of risk takes time, particularly with the paucity of information that can be accessed at positions removed from the conflict.

• The US military is extremely top heavy.  Why?  It's staffed for great power war.  This means that it has the middle management and 'leadership' to absorb millions of conscripts.  As a result, internal competition for 'inclusion' in combat ops is fierce (for promotion and 'validation of value' purposes).   This also leads to extreme specialization of bureaucratic function -- lots of different types of oversight.

• New communications technology isn't being used for what it is designed to do (enable decentralized operation due to better informed people on the ground).  Instead it is being used to enable more complicated and hierarchical approval processes -- more sign offs/approvals, more required processes, and higher level oversight.  For example:  a general, and his staff, directly commanding a small strike team remotely.

Avenues of exploitation that slow decision making of counter-insurgency strike teams include:

• Shorten the duration of the exposure to operate within the long OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loops of the opposition.  
• Pinpoint specific decision making processes for disruption.  Knowledge of oversight requirements (the 11 different approvals described) enables multiple points of failure in the decision making system.  Why?  Due to an overstaffed organizational design, there are many specialized (single issue/process) sign offs, which are relatively easy to block if known.  
• Introduce new factors (staggered over time) that force a new series of approvals.  New data needs to be sent up the chain, discussed, and reviewed. 

ON WAR #325: How the Taliban Take a Village (Lind/Sexton)

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a guest column, written by a reserve NCO with Special Forces, Mark Sexton. It is based on his personal observations in Afghanistan. It represents his analysis only, not any position taken by DOD, the U.S. Army, or any other agency of the U.S. government. In my opinion, it represents exactly the sort of intelligence analysis we need but seldom get.  

How the Taliban Take a Village 

A current method used by Taliban in Afghanistan to gain control of an area deemed of strategic interest to the Taliban leadership operating from safe havens in Pakistan or within Afghanistan is to identify and target villages to subvert. The Taliban have recognized the necessity to operate with the cooperation of local population with the modus operandi being to gain their cooperation through indoctrination (preferred) or coercion (when necessary).   

Read the full article on the LIND site.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND INSURGENCY

Does unemployment drive insurgency?  That's a big question that hasn't been studied much.  Despite the lack of data, unfounded assumptions abound.  These assumptions are the basis of grand strategic theories to multi-billion $$ counter-insurgency programs (such is the intellectual poverty of US military thinking).  One interesting statistical study, Do Working Men Rebel by Eli Berman, Joseph Felter, and Jacob Shapiro (NBER), attempts to answer this question (November 2009).  

They conclude that unemployment is actually negatively correlated to insurgency.  They posit that the most likely explanation for this is that the government's counter-insurgency efforts are cheaper/easier to accomplish, since they can buy intel on insurgent locations more easily.  The other (less likely) potential conclusion is that high unemployment is an artifact of successful counter-insurgency efforts that restrict movement and increase isolation.  In either case, the idea that opportunity costs etc. (the standard theories regarding unemployment and insurgency) drives insurgency doesn't appear to be valid.  Another ancillary conclusion of the paper is that high unemployment typically forces a shift in tactics towards stealth area of effect attacks (IEDs, and other methods that connote relative weakness rather than strength) that produce high levels of collateral damage.

The theoretical implications for insurgency are:

• If the loss of standard jobs are replaced by jobs/wealth derived from black market economies the insurgency is less likely to break down.  The wealth derived from these sources keeps the costs of obtaining information high.  We see this in Mexico and Afghanistan.
• The ability of the insurgency to provide basic services (food, energy, and shelter) blocks government/corporate efforts to force information transfer using the same method.  This is particularly true if isolation is induced. So, if insurgents promote self-sufficiency or generously support charity services offered by NGOs are less vulnerable.  
• Counter-insurgency theory already promotes the disruption of systems through checkpoints, walls, etc. to weaken insurgencies.  As governments become less wealthy/weaker due to globalization or more removed from the threat, we are likely to see much more counter-insurgency lite:  where the government avoids expensive or untenable checkpoints/walls/occupation and instead denies access to critical infrastructure, ala systems disruption, to create the same effect.  Israel is already using this.

NOTE:  an insurgency coupled with alternative wealth production (black globalization or resilient communities) gains not only protection against encroachment but the funding, processes, technologies, and motivation required for more sophisticated or aggressive attacks/defense.

LINKS: 7 DEC 09

Some random items of interest:

• ArduPilot.  Very nice autopilot assembly (sensors, board, etc.) for DIY drones. <$75.
• RAND:  Federal Paramilitaries.  This paper examines roles and costs.  This force is built to pacify areas that are too hot for regular police and too delicate for military force.  Of course, the stated use of this force is in counter-insurgency and stability operations outside the CONUS.  However, if classified as a police force, it can be used domestically (where, after first use, it would grow virally).  This is all part of a larger trend:  towards the militarization of police function.  To wit:  China, Turkey, Pakistan, and many other countries use paramilitaries to crush domestic unrest.
• The Gandalf moment.  I'm both humbled and inspired to do more.
• Can someone send me this paper plz, "Militias, tribes and insurgents: The challenge of political reintegration in Iraq"  Update: got a copy, thanks.
• US shifts from global contractors to locally sourced corporate militias to guard bases in Afghanistan. "The contractor shall hire a minimum of 50% of its guard force from within a 50 kilometer [30-mile] radius of the location requiring security"
• Global money laundering/smuggling switches to Euros.
• Augmented reality unconference at the "hacker dojo."  Looks like it was fun.  Might want to visit the next one.
• Interesting Times magazine:  Cyberpunk ezine out of Sweden.
• Chris Arkenberg riffs on all things related to augmented reality.  Nice.
• Sunlight labs:  Great American hackerthon on open governance.  12 Dec. in Boston.
• TED India.  Natural gestures + augmented reality + projected displays.  Pranav Mistry demos his SixthSense software (which he is open sourcing -- the prototype in the demo below costs $350 to build):

NOTE: Natural gestures as a controls interface makes sense and is inevitable. Projection displays a) get around the short term deficit in mobile AR visualization and b) allow AR enhanced individuals share data with those that aren't similarly enhanced.

JOURNAL: Reality + and Tribal Layers

One of the big coming waves in information technology is likely to be in what's called augmented reality.  It has been on my radar for years and it's only now getting tangible traction.  What is it?  It's basically an information layer for real life that's part of a larger trend that I call "Reality +".  The way it works is pretty simple.  Chips (like RFID chips or simple anchoring tags) installed into/onto objects, from static objects like buildings to mobile objects like car/bikes/dogs, or data derived from the Internet based on GPS coordinates (and potentially pattern matching/optical character recognition) is used to provide information to mobile users via wireless connections.  

Browsers, like the Layar browser* that runs on Android phones, allows you to navigate that information in a similar way in which you navigate web pages.  Essentially, an unlimited number of information "layers" can be added to any object or space.  Many of the these layers will be private.  In less than 5 years or so, Reality + will likely be as well known as the Web was 2000.

Tribal Layers

As this rolls out, there is going to be a window of opportunity, for those with the inclination to create tribal layers that display information and augment the views of group members.  This can be used to accelerate:

• Group cohesion.  It allows reinterpretation of surroundings through the group lens.  Bruce Sterling calls this a potential "Nazi Layer" if it is abused.
• Training and education.  Faster loops of learning through higher levels of group knowledge retention.
• Warfare.  Target ID and avenues of attack/egress.  Recon notes.  With biometrics enemy/friend recognition.  Etc.   Storage of this data on decentralized bot nets would make it secure.

* Despite its innovation, Layar appears to be making a Microsoft style platform play at this space.  Free to use, but closed ownership/IP.  This form of early damage inflicted by early innovators might slow the growth of the space. Please correct me if I'm wrong. 

NOTE:  Another way to access Reality + is through remote video feeds on a standard personal computer.  Lot's of people miss this avenue of approach.

LINKS: 6 DEC 09

Some random items of interest:

• Thingverse.  Techporn for makers.
• DIY (do-it-yourself) CNC machines.  Patrick Hood-Daniel has an impressive collection of tutorials and kits.   Very slick site.
• Nice:  Underlying geographies of Wikipedia.
• Does anyone have access to this paper by the NBER that they could send me?:  Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Iraq and the Philippines.  UPDATE:  Got it, thanks.
• New and used DNA synthesizers for sale.
• Biowar for Dummies.  Paul Boutin.  2006.  Oldie but goodie.  We might not have long to wait. Every hands-on gene hacker I polled during my project estimated they could synthesize smallpox in a month or two. I remember that game from my engineering days, so I mentally scale their estimates using the old software manager's formula: Double the length, then move up to the next increment of time. That gives us two to four years—assuming no one has already started working.   Already in the window for this.  I'd like to see an update to this.  How about it Paul?
• Loss of purpose/connectivity.  Losing a job.  Jason Reitman re: the making of  the movie 'Up in the Air' :  "The statement that I wasn't ready for, that everybody said, was, 'I don't know what I'm supposed to do.' If you'd have asked me before I made this film what's the hardest part about losing your job in this kind of economy, I would have said, well, the loss of income certainly. But no one talked about that. All everyone talked about was this loss of purpose, this, 'I don't know why I'm supposed to get up in the morning.' "  A critical part of resilient communities is to replace that lost connectivity/meaning, which was tenuous at best, through tribal/community connectivity and participatory governance/economies.
• Scahill still hounding Blackwater.  The Nation article 1 and 2.  Vanity Fair profile of Eric Prince.
• SSI.  YouTube War. Between June and roughly November 2007 (roughly the period corresponding to the “surge”), American forces captured eight media labs belonging to AQI. In these labs they found a total of 23 terabytes of material that had not yet been uploaded to the web.
• Surviving civil war -- Lessons from Tajikistan.  Broken english, but a good read nonetheless.
• The introduction of outsourcing platforms that makes worker productivity portable and portable global capital leads to global labor arbitrage (which neatly guts the theories of comparative advantage upon which belief in the beneficial effects of modern trade theory is based).  In short, exploiting the differences between the wages of the western middle class and those in developing economies is now costless and risk free (which makes it an arbitrage opportunity). Arbitrage opportunities, once found, typically reset to zero quickly (the differences in prices are brought into parity).   The result in this case will be a globally normalized wage where the same price is paid for labor no matter where it is located geographically.  Almost certainly, given what we are currently seeing right now, the biggest shift will be in the collapse in the incomes of the Western middle class instead of upward movement among low wage competitors. The income stasis of the last three decades is already being replaced by rapid decline.  One potential political result of the collapse of our short experiment with financially empowered individuals (a rising tide lifts all boats scenario in Western democracies) is likely a creeping global neo-feudalism of indefinite duration (decentralized and autocratic stasis held in place by fluid globalized markets).  The lesson:  the ability to bootstrap resilient communities, and a new social contract, using locally derived resources will decline rapidly over the next decade. 

NEW BOOK: FREEDOM (TM)

Click, don't walk, to pre-order Freedom TM, the new book by Daniel Suarez.  This is a continuation of his first book Daemon (also a great read, and worth reading before you get this book).  

In short, it is a fictional account of the next American revolution (AR 2.0) using resilient communities, open source warfare, systems disruption, individual super-empowerment, parasitic predation, hollow nation-states, etc, (all staples of global guerrilla thinking) as central themes.  Very cool.  

Granted, this is a work of fiction.  It does contain some future, yet to be developed, tech (although this is limited, in large part, to near term advances in augmented reality) and some plot devices (mad genius) to advance the story.  I happen to enjoy that, but even it you don't, it in no way takes away from the quality of the reading experience.  It's fast paced, compelling, and fun.  For people thinking about the future of warfare, society, economics, etc. :  this book will get you thinking in new and useful ways.

On War #324: O = W (William S. Lind)

“O=W” is a bumper sticker beginning to show up on liberals’ cars. After the President’s speech Tuesday night at West Point, I suspect it will spread rapidly. 

For eight years, conservatives endured the agony of watching President George W. Bush attach the label “conservative” to a host of policies that were anti-conservative: Wilsonian wars, American empire, vast budget and trade deficits, increased entitlements, and the subordination of America’s interests to those of foreign powers. Now the shoe is on the other foot....

Read the rest on the "Lind" blog.

LINKS: 3 DEC 09

Some utterly random items (and thoughts) that may be of interest:

• Elizabeth Warren:  America without a Middle Class
• Bernanke  in trouble in the Senate.  I particularly like this statement from a Senate source:  "It’s great to see everyone come together – Democrats, Republicans, progressives and libertarians, against this Federal Reserve, which is not federal, and not a reserve, just a group printing money and giving it to their buddies."
• Broken strategy.  Reuters.  Surge goal:  400,000 Afghan troops and police.  The end game will be open source counter-insurgency (hyper-local militias).  Not sure they will get there before the money runs out.
• Micro P2P phone networks.  OpenVoIP overview.  Wiki.  Nice.
• In general, if you can turn the process structure used to make a product into more of a problem of information manipulation than physical work, you are likely see very rapid cycles of innovation and productivity improvement (due to Moore's law and open source tinkering).  That's what makes conceptual products like MIT's "food printer" interesting to me.  It's also why permaculture (as a replacement for traditional agriculture) is very interesting.  Your productivity in generating food using permaculture is a function of your ability to design better ecosystems and not how much energy or work you inject into the system.
• Party crashers and assassination opportunities.  Besides the implications of the lax security that allowed the Salahi's entry to a White House party without vetting, the funny thing (in the same way that you laugh about misfortune to lighten the burden) is that entry to the event was only a function of money.  They could have bought a ticket to the White House party.
• Wired.  How much does it cost to get access to your private communications from service providers?  This implies that the only difficulty in gaining access to say, real-time geo-location information on ALL of the cell phone users in Pakistan (for example), is what the service provider would charge you.  Sure, you could steal it, but with that much data and the need for real-time updates, it would be counterproductive to do so.
• Nigeria.  Lawfare aimed at the Oil Companies is picking up where MEND left off. Cool.
• Neo-Feudal Capitalism.  Is this model potentially viral?
• More on a rapid ice age (Gulf Stream break down).  Previous evidence from Greenland ice samples had suggested this abrupt shift in climate happened over the span of a decade or so. Now researchers say it surprisingly may have taken place over the course of a few months, or a year or two at most.   That's my experience with complex systems that enter catastrophic turbulence.  Change is fast.   Not sure if this is going to happen, but the ride looks very interesting.
• Robert Brenner on the failure of capitalism.  I have problems with modern, accepted economic theory.  It smacks of religion and not science, and that's a problem for decision making.  Some of my gripes:  It has failed to deliver predictive results, as we saw with the financial meltdown.  Worse, it has problems explaining historical results:  It can't explain why western economies haven't delivered any improvements to middle class incomes in three decades, despite rapidly rising productivity and growing GDP.  It can't explain the rise of Wall Street, the ongoing rush of assets bubbles, and our current ziggurat of debt.  It can't even explain why "free trade" works, for anyone but the low wage provider, in a world where all evidence points to the fact that information technology makes productivity hyper-portable.  Some effort to paper over this failure (in prediction) has been undertaken by followers of the Austrian school of economics, but that explanation is too narrow (it merely describes why the financial pneumonia killed you and not the economic AIDS that made you vulnerable).  Brenner, albeit a neo-Marxist, takes a stab at providing a more useful model.  Not sure he accomplished this, but it is more interesting and systemic than most of what I have read.  He makes that case that global capitalism as we know it is over and nothing is ready to replace it.

LINKS: 2 DEC 09

Some items of interest:

• Robert Young Pelton in a Daily News Op-Ed is on the right track with:  Abandon the 'mini-surge' and "...go back to what works: Empower the local tribes, enlist Afghans eager to fight the bad guys, don't force them to support a corrupt central government or bow to foreign forces - and keep picking off Al Qaeda with Special Operations troops and drones."  Sounds similar to what I told the Armed Services Committee ('... let's just skip to the end game.')
• Some nice conflict maps (Africa) from International Conflict Research in Zurich.
• Piracy Markets (community based).  Very cool.  LOTS of people sent this in to me (thanks much) since it is a great example of a global guerrilla staple:  'a bazaar of violence'....   '"Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 'maritime companies' and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking," Mohammed said.  'The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials ... we've made piracy a community activity...  Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out after one of the gangs freed a Spanish tuna fishing vessel. "I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation," she said, adding that she got the weapon from her ex-husband in alimony. "I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the 'company'."    Wow.  Very cool to see my theory meet up with reality.   ;->
• Call for Boyd Links.  If  you have a paper, book, video, etc dealing with the theoretical work of John Boyd, plz let me know.  I'll post it to the John Boyd site. 
• This is one of the coolest government debt clocks I've seen.
• Sullivan, Elkus:  Global Cities, Global Gangs.

OPEN SOURCE AUTOMOBILES

A guy I once knew, bought the factory purchasing experience for a high end automobile.  The experience was similar to a luxury vacation, except that he (with his wife in tow) visited the factory where the car was made, took some laps on the race track with his new purchase, and then drove it across Euroland (Autobahn driving) to the Netherlands (where it was shipped back the US).  Obviously, I thought it was very excessive (I get much more value out of my laptop than my car at 1/50 of the price, but hey, things don't have much of a hold over me), but it reflected an intellectual and emotional investment in a big purchase that you don't see very often.

That level of investment is one reason why the open source automobile start-up called Local Motors is interesting (unfortunately, their website needs a complete overhaul).  It's a decentralized car manufactory that invites the prospective owners to help build the cars, from the selection and customization of the design to actually joining the team that builds it (or doing it yourself if you have the inclination).*  That creates a connection between customer and product that you don't see often, and is very much in line with the "maker" spirit we see growing out there:  you actively build what you want rather than take what is sold to you.

The other reasons that open source automobiles are interesting is that it overcomes the slowness of innovation we see in traditional traditional car manufacturing.  The designs are open sourced.  This means that designers from around the world are able to generate innovation either alone or in teams with others and deploy them as plans that have the potential to get built (including electric vehicles).  The other is a factory free manufacturing process.  The company has a community directory of vetted mechanics/builders that will either build it for you or help you build it.  

I've had a little experience with decentralized manufacturing.  My team built a decentralized and global (30 countries) manufacturing system for a start-up in the professional print industry a couple years back that will likely serve as an early model for open source manufacturing and 3D fabbing.  One of they keys to making this work, is to build a platform (a system that regularizes and centralizes commonly used processes).  From this perspective, some things I'd like to see include:

• A better software enabled process for adding, modifying, and advertising designs.  A template process works well here to ensure all bases are covered.  A process of forking the designs would be interesting too.
• Review processes.  From safety to integrity to efficiency.  This can be partly crowdsourced.
• Standards.  In most cases, open source manufacturing in any industry requires the use of standards -- a minimal rule set -- from design to production.  This not only speeds things up, it reduces costs.  
• Manufacturing automation.  A ticketing and quality control process for decentralized production centers.   It sounds easier than it its, but it's essential.

Once the platform elements are cracked, this has the potential to revolutionize the industry.  Add in standardized, low cost and commoditized chassis/drive trains/software (or better yet, standard designs that can be inexpensively fabbed locally), particularly for electric vehicles, and the rest will be history.  Goodbye GM, Toyota, Honda, and Tata.

NOTE:  Granted, this may not be the company that cracks this opportunity space, but it's interesting to see it in motion.

* This is similar to the kit plane community that sprung up due to the failure of the small aircraft industry (it died due to lawfare: insurance/liability).