Global Guerrillas

Journal 6.26.2016 Brexit to ISIS

Some items to think about:

• Brexit is a true black swan.  Nobody in the mainstream, including the Leave camp, saw it coming.  Even now, based on the analysis being written, few people understand why it won.  Why did it win?  The cosmopolitan, financialized elites saw their incomes grow with globalization, but the deals they struck to "earn" those gains required throwing the bottom 60-70% of the country under the economic bus.  In fact, nearly all of the fast rise out of poverty seen globally was achieved by economically damaging the working populations of the developed world (particularly in the US and the UK).  That lopsided deal is a bomb of anger that has been growing for years.  A bomb that is now going off in the US and the UK.  Strangely, nobody in the establishment is willing to do what is necessary to defuse this bomb.  This means it will get much worse before it gets better.
  
  
• The response to Brexit will damage nation-state legitimacy.  Efforts to ignore the vote, delay the effects of the vote, and water down the effects of the vote will achieve only one thing:  it will show that the remote technocrats have more legitimacy than the vestiges of democracy that are left. 
  
  
• A doctoral student at the Univ of Cincinnati built an auto-fighter-pilot AI that runs on Raspberry Pi (a $35 computer).  It was so good, it beat retired US Air Force fighter pilot, Lt. Col. Gene Lee, in three engagements.  

  Lee:  "I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed." He added that with most AIs, “an experienced pilot can beat up on it (the AI) if you know what you’re doing. Sure, you might have gotten shot down once in a while by an AI program when you, as a pilot, were trying something new, but, until now, an AI opponent simply could not keep up with anything like the real pressure and pace of combat-like scenarios.”

• Apparently, the FBI has found that Omar Mateen wasn't gay and that all of the evidence to the contrary was false.  
  
  
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Bot Platforms and the race for Nation-State Advantage

Bots will transform warfare, from guerrilla warfare to conventional state conflict.  

Before I get to how bots will enable the automation of terrorism (a truly transformational development), let me spend a bit of time on how it will transform nation-state militaries.  

The most important thing for nation-state militaries (US, China, Russia, EU, and India) to understand about bots (both hardware and software) is that it's imperative to get the underlying platforms and standards correct first, before we waste billions on standalone systems.

These platforms include:

• Cloud based learning/sharing for bots.  When any bot learns something, it can then share that "understanding" with every other bot connected to the cloud.
• Decentralized standards for physical and logical interconnections between bots (NASA is working on this right now for drones, but the FAA and state DMVs are doing their best to hold the US back).
• Big Sim and Real World Sandboxes for training and teaching autonomous bots for use in the field.  From crowd training/turking to mission certification.

PS:  Incidentally, the nation-state that is able to set these platforms into motion first, is likely to get the same five year economic, security & technological headstart the US enjoyed with the emergence of the Internet.  

 

The Orlando Transcript and a Renewed Terrorist Threat

Enemies innovate, particularly open source networks like ISIS.  

That's a given.  It's what you do in response to that innovation that matters.

That's where we are at right now.  As I've been writing (1, 2, and 3), it appears that ISIS has found a way to solve the biggest problem with networked terrorism.  A reliable way to span the gap between online support and physical action that isn't easy to detect.  A online zero to terrorist "hero" ritual.

They accomplished this by building a formalized ritual that combines initiation (a self-planned attack) and a public pledge (a formal lifelong, irrevocable pledge of fealty to the Caliph), and acknowledgement (redemption, acceptance, and honor).  It appears to work.  For example, here's what Omar Mateen said on one of his telephone conversations.  Note how important the pledge is to Omar in this public record of the call.

Orlando Police Dispatcher (OD): Emergency 911, this is being recorded.
Shooter (OM): In the name of God the Merciful, the beneficial [in Arabic]
OD: What?
OM: Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [in Arabic]. I let you know, I'm in Orlando and I did the shootings.
OD: What's your name?
OM: My name is I pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State.
OD: Ok, What's your name?
OM: I pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may God protect him [Arabic], on behalf of the Islamic State.
OD: Alright, where are you at?
OM: In Orlando.
OD: Where in Orlando?
[End of call]

The same process was seen a day later outside Paris by an attacker who killed two senior members of the police.  

A New Wave of Terrorism?

With this methodology in place, ISIS has the ability to bypass the security procedures that were effective against attacks from the remnants al Qaeda, and strike US and EU targets.  Let's dive into the numbers.  According to a George Washington Univ study from December 2015 on ISIS:

• 300 active "recruiters" online in the US.
• 250 have been stopped, attempting to leave the US to join ISIS in Syria.
• 900 active investigations into ISIS supporters in the US.
• 71 have been charged, 56 in 2015.  Of these 86% were male with an average age of 26.

If ISIS has developed an online ritual that can turn supporters into active attackers without exposing itself to security services (travel, planning, chatter, etc.), how many new attacks might occur?

How bad could this get?  

If only 20% of the people who were stopped travelling to join ISIS in Syria to risk their lives as fighters conducted this ritual, we could expect 50 new attacks.   A mere fifty percent of people who have already chosen active participation and were willing to put their lives at risk, that would mean 125 new attacks.  I suspect we could see many more than that if this takes hold.

Posterior Armor

Unfortunately, the US government (with the media's support) has been defensive.  It is claiming that ISIS was not involved -- mentions of ISIS, Islam and al Baghdadi were redacted from the Orlando transcript   It is even making the case that this is merely a run of the mill "postal" (insanity + easy access to guns) attack.  The reason for this?  The US government doesn't want to admit that the US counterterrorism strategy has been on autopilot for a decade and that it has now failed.

This isn't the answer.  There is only one response to an enemy's innovation.

Adapt.

Have fun,

John Robb 

Disruptive Robocalling

Three months ago, I wrote up a worst case scenario for how the US could end up in a civil war this fall.  Unfortunately, nothing has changed.  The conditions that make the scenario possible are still valid.  

In fact, in one way it has gotten worse:  one of the theoretical methods of disruption that I featured in the scenario was recently used in the real world.  In my scenario, robocalling was used to shut down polling places to skew election results and plunge the US into chaos:

Robocalls pour in to police departments and polling places in heavily (Rep or Dem) polling locations with bomb/terrorist threats. Widespread poll closures occur. Calls continue until late.

This speculation became reality last month when threatening robocalls were used to shut down dozens of schools in at least 21 U.S. states: Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. As many as 10 schools received the threats in some states.  Further, in the UK, several schools received a 90-second recorded call from a voice with an American accent promising that "shrapnel" would "take children's the heads off," according to multiple news reports.

This was the first time we've ever seen a nation-wide/international use of this technique.  It's also likely we'll see it again since:

• it works,
• there isn't a clearing house for threats of this type,
• responders/bureaucrats are extremely risk averse (even more so since Orlando and San Bernardino), and (most importantly)
• the US phone system is easy to hack.  

Let's expand on that last point.  The reason the US phone system is easy to hack is due to the pervasive influence of the US direct marketing and collections (bad debt) industry.  These industries lobby hard at the state level to ensure full hackable access to the system.  However, this means it's easy for attackers to exploit the system to do real harm.  

Here's an example:  It's possible to dynamically change the caller ID used on every call you make.  This means an attacker can insert fake caller IDs such as "FBI" , "Atlanta Police" etc. to make their calls seem more credible and increase the disruptive impact.

Sincerely,

John Robb 

PS:  bots will make it possible to automate terrorism....

ISIS has found a way to pierce US counter-terrorism defenses

The lone wolf terrorist does not exist.

The lone wolf terrorist is a fiction. He doesn't exist.

The reason is simple.

People don't engage in terrorism as individuals.  They do it as part of a social group.  They need the social meaning a group provides to justify the personal risk and the act of violence.

This need for meaning may be even more true for blood and guts terrorism, given the high mortality rates and public disapproval involved. This creates achasm between cheerleading a violent cause and an actual act of terrorism. Crossing this chasm requires an extensive social investment.

This chasm makes it extremely hard to activate terrorists remotely. The online and offline grooming required to activate any single individual can be easily detected by security forces.  We've been lucky this is true. Groups like ISIS have tens of thousands of active online supporters in the developed world and if they could self-activate even a small percentage of these supporters, we'd be in deep trouble.

Unfortunately, it appears our luck has run out.  The attacks in Orlando and outside Paris have demonstrated that ISIS has found an innovative way to cross the chasm between online cheerleader and active terrorist.  A method made possible by instant and global access to social media and a method that can easily pierce US counter-terrorism defenses.

These attacks show it's now possible to turn online supporters into a self-activating terrorist without heavy investments in individualized social grooming.  This is accomplished by:

• turning the effort required plan, prepare, and execute a terrorist act into a ritual of initiation.  Initiates are expected to undertake this effort on their own, without support.
  
  
• turning the act itself into a forum for a public, online declaration of fealty -- an extremely potent medieval loyalty pledge made by knights to their lords -- to the Caliph of ISIS.  This pledge is made public (both attackers used Facebook to publicly pledge fealty to al Baghdadi) at the moment of the attack to maximize the meaning to the attacker and the audience.  Think of it as social media performance art.
  
  
• immediate acceptance into the ranks of ISIS.  Inclusion in the group and acceptance as a vassal by the Caliph.  In other words: ISIS has found a way to provide social belonging and meaning through an online activation process.

This method is nearly opaque to US counter-terrorism efforts:

• the marketing funnel for this process of activation can be done in the open, in vanilla forums.  Everything required is within the realm of free speech protections. 
  
  
• all of the detectable preparation for warfare is done by the initiate by himself, which makes it very hard to detect.
  
  
• it has zero barriers to participation. Anybody can undertake the initiation and pledge loyalty, from the criminal to the self-hating homosexual, and they will be accepted (their past will be washed away) upon pledging during the act.  

Even in its raw form, this method of activation has yielded two successful attacks (Orlando and Paris) over a couple of days.  

Now that this form of attack has been demonstrated we are likely to see many more.   

Have fun,

John Robb

PS: The primary national security challenge for the US following the collapse of al Qaeda in 2008, was to prevent the establishment of another global terror network that could find new ways to attack the US. We failed at that. Not only have a new, bigger, badder terror network (ISIS), it has now found a way to attack us again, again, and again.

PPS: The media and the government will spend the next couple of months finding "motives" for Orlando in order to avoid connecting this to ISIS. That's a waste of time. This process of activation, is open to all other motivations for an attack.  All that matters is that initiation and the ritual occur according to script.

 

Online Fealty

The ISIS Caliphate is using online fealty as a way to recruit jihadis around the world.   It's a powerful recasting of an ancient concept that goes well beyond modern expressions of loyalty.  

The way ISIS has constructed its brand of online fealty makes it globally scalable.  The  only barriers to entry are:  conduct an attack and publicly pledge fealty.  The most common platforms for a public pledge?  Social media, 911, etc.

For example, when Omar Mateen pledged fealty to ISIS during his deadly attack, it provided him with the following:

• It instantly gave him permission to conduct an attack in the name of ISIS.
• It instantly accepted him into the ranks of ISIS as a proven holy warrior.
• It cleansed his previous sins (particularly his conflict over his sexual orientation).

This recasting of fealty is interesting within the context of open source insurgency because it might provide ISIS with a way to construct a globally scalable, segmented network of terror.  

That's a very new innovation.   

Have fun,

John Robb

 

Fealty and Modern Terrorism

During his deadly attack on a packed Orlando nightclub where he killed 50 people and wounded many more, Omar Mateen called 911.  

On the recorded call, he pledge his loyalty to ISIS.  

A day later, a terrorist outside of Paris, used Facebook livestreaming to pledge his loyalty to ISIS while stabbing a police chief and his wife to death.

What's going on?

The answer is that these pledges aren't simply expressions of loyalty, they are expressions of fealty, a much more powerful means of connection.  

Fealty is something we haven't seen since the middle ages.  ISIS became capable of employing fealty once it rebuilt a barebones Caliphate and it is using it to transform modern terrorism.

To understand this, let's dig into fealty a bit. 

• Fealty is a strict, lifelong pledge of loyalty from a vassal to a lord.  It's public and irreversible.  (If you watch Game of Thrones, it's why everyone hates the Kingslayer, even if he was justified in his actions)
  
  
• Fealty obligates the vassal to act in the service of the lord, without any need for specific direction.  It also gives the protection of the lord to the vassal (in a religious context, salvation and redemption).
  
  
• Fealty made it possible to build large, geographically segmented networks in a world without instant communications and rapid travel.    

Fealty allows ISIS to get around some of problems of modern open source insurgency.   For example:

• A potential terrorist shouldn't express fealty until the attack.  Benefit: This prevents discovery during the grooming process.
  
  
• A public expression of fealty (FB, Twitter..) provides them with instant acceptance by the "lord"  Benefit: this provides them spiritual protection for the attack and maximizes the publicity for ISIS
  
  
• A Jihadi, or their local network, shouldn't ask for permission, planning, or support.  They should act on their own.  The attack itself is a demonstration of loyalty.  Benefit: this reduces chances of discovery and maximizes the innovative potential of the global network.

The more I think about it, fealty is an extremely useful way of harnessing and directing the power of an open source insurgency (aka, herding cats).