John Robb's Weblog

4GWers Unite!

I got a very nice call from Bill Lind today. He's been reading my online work in printed form and apparently likes it.

We agreed that our problem is that there aren't enough of us that really get what is going on to stop the decay already well underway.

Creeping Security State

Facial recognition in bars... Bruce Scheier: It's rarely the initial application that's the problem. It's the follow-on applications. It's the function creep. Before you know it, everyone knows that they are identified the moment they walk into a commercial building. We will all lose privacy, and liberty, and freedom as a result. One more attack and application development hits the afterburners...

Meanwhile at the Pentagon

Confusion reigns... The recent explosion of violence in Iraq is forcing a debate inside the Pentagon about whether the U.S. military can proceed with plans to cut the number of troops in Iraq, Defense officials said Monday.

Perceptions of civil war

I was thinking the same example yesterday: The denial in question is why most of the US media and the Bush Administration persist in refusing to accept the reality of the civil war already well underway in Iraq? What do we need in order to be convinced? Guys wearing blue and butternut squaring off in an apple orchard in Gettysburg?

I think the problem is that this is a civil war of a modern type. There isn't going to be modern conventional armies facing each other on the battlefield. There also won't be any winners. The fight will last decades.

Swarming Behavior

Christian Jacob. “A decentralized system has several important advantages over a centralized one, most notably robustness and flexibility” and “What I find intriguing is the fact that very similar principles seem to apply to swarm-like systems regardless of scale" (thanks Weldon). Think about this within the context of a dynamically unstable world. Which system wins?

Frontline

Frontline delves into the Iraqi insurgency. What's interesting is that Kalev Sepp, their counter-insurgency expert concedes that this insurgency is different than our historical experience. Unfortunately, despite the fact that it is completely different, he fixates on classic counter-insurgency doctrine as a solution (which is the basis for his optimism).

What's funny is that almost all of the knowledgeable people in this space fall into this same trap.

V is coming

I've read the graphic novel and watched all the trailers. This movie is going to be a social event.

Oil Traders

Amazing that so many oil traders are operating on bad analysis (must be Cordesman, who appears to do lots of for fee research for the Kingdom):

``We now know that there are fewer al-Qaeda militants around to attempt another attack,'' said Kyle Cooper, an analyst with Citigroup Inc. in Houston. ``There are valid concerns about Saudi Arabia because it's such an important source of oil, but they foiled the attack. The Saudis probably have some of the best security in the world.''

Trust, Transparency, and Ports

Bruce Schneier, writing for Wired, hits the nail on the head: But when it comes to government, trust is based on transparency. The more our government is based on secrecy, the more we are forced to "just trust" it and the less we actually trust it.

Prep Time

Iraq is already in civil war, nothing was averted over the weekend. The apparent lull is just prep time. Christopher Allbritton agrees:

For the last 18 months, we’ve been in a low-grade civil war. The Askariya bombing kicked us up to “medium-grade,” I guess you might call it. Both Sunnis and Shi’a I’ve spoken with are waiting and preparing for it, and that very preparation might make for a self-fulfilling prophecy. For to many Iraqis, it’s only a matter of time.

The Controlled Chaos Exit window is closing quickly

The interesting thing is that the US military, caught in the bind of US domestic politics (can't retreat, etc.), isn't able to make the appropriate strategic decisions necessary to optimize our situation there. We should be in the process of withdrawing from Iraq all but a small contingent troops. This would allow us to participate in the process yet it would mitigate our exposure. The absolutely worst case situation (which is increasingly possible) is that the supplies to our troops are cut off and we are forced to fight our way out through a combo of guerrillas and militias. Smart decisions, made now, will prevent this situation from careening in that direction.