Skilluminati Research

Dreaming 5GW: Invisible War

2009-05-03T20:55:00Z

"Whoever finds me will kill me." --Gen. 4:14

5GW and marketing have a great deal in common. The one similarity I'd like to emphasize here: effective techniques are constantly mutating so fast that written theory is basically an autopsy. By the time we can recognize a pattern or strategy, it will be useless to actual 5GW operatives. It's hard to overstate the speed of the turnover here -- basically, what worked in 2008 will not work in 2008.

My Personal Dream of 5GW

The core tenet of Invisible Warfare is this: circumstances dictate. This is not a cop-out, but a rigorous challenge to expand your personal power, because most of the time, what circumstances dictate will involve skills you don't currently have.

That core tenet contains the first imperative: situation awareness. Circumstances can change in a second and you need to maintain focus and awareness. This more complicated than merely "paying attention" -- our human brains have built-in biases and design flaws that are hard to counteract, even after we've become aware of them. What you see is seldom what you're looking at.

"Thanks to telegraphs and modern communications, commanders are flooded with a tsunami of almost meaningless facts."

--Naval manual from 1949

It's impossible to achieve situation awareness when we're constantly distracted, and unable to isolate the important details from the meaningless noise. There are several aspects of warfare and power projection, all taken for granted as nescessary, that I believe are counter-productive although not useless: secrecy, violence, and intelligence.

Secrecy only matters when secrecy matters. In my own experience, it seldom does. Bear in mind that real secrecy is extremely difficult to maintain -- an intensive demand on time and resources.

Violence is only nescessary when violence is nescessary. Again, it can usually be averted or avoided, and more importantly every non-violent resolution you can create will increase your network and your strategic power. Rather than destroying your enemies, make them tools, if not allies.

Intelligence-gathering should be critical, and I'm not advocating that you run around blindfolded. I am cautioning against the downward spiral of paranoia, the disinformation hall of mirrors, and most of all, the delusion that your assumptions and information are correct. Awareness of the present moment trumps any and all models, patterns and beliefs that exist in your monkey head.

The Death Spiral of Containment and Control.

Here's one more common mistake, which is both counter-productive and useless: the strategy of containment and control. Government power is achieved through their population base: citizens generate the income, obey the laws and serve in the military, voluntarily or otherwise. Because of the extreme strategic importance of maintaining this power base, governments spend an absurd amount of resources on the containment and control of their civilians.

Fortunately for those of us on the recieving end, containment and control are both impossible goals. We're raised to imagine a grid of defined nation-states with precise borders, but in reality the entire system is riddled with tunnels, shortcuts, criminal networks, secret alliances, holes and cracks and just plain blindspots nobody's noticed yet. Perhaps you will.

Centuries after the myth of entropy first took hold, people are still catching up to the common-sense work of Ilya Prigogine, who demonstrated that "closed systems" exist nowhere in nature. By interacting freely with our environments, we free ourselves from the heat-death of entropy, but modeling our communities after a closed system is a literal death sentence. Endless books have been written about the advantages of collaboration, freedom of speech, open source development and globalization. Actually applying that logic is difficult, opposed by the powerful vested interests of those who have become wealthy and powerful protecting the sheep.

The containment and control system is dangerously stupid, and free humans have an imperative to disable that system wherever possible.

Invisible Warfare

The definition of warfare is being reconsidered, but the discussion among generals and academics is secondary to the more hands-on approach of global terrorists, field commanders, organized crime, religious cults, tech companies, and upstart corporations.

There is an evolving martial art of systems disruption that is radically skewing the power balance between individual humans and the existing control and containment system. Put bluntly, with open knowledge and legal tools, you personally can fuck shit up on a catastropic scale.

Global civilization is inevitable, and terms are being negotiated as you read this. Most of the humans on Earth are not part of these negotiations -- only a vanishingly small minority of powerful, connected and wealthy people. This is inevitable, too: why would the powerful negotiate with anyone else?

As officers Dunlap claim in their recent essay America's Greatest Weapon:

"There is really no escape...Today's captains carefully cultivate information sources among the locals as the Army’s new counterinsurgency manual teaches them to do. Schooled in the manual, such captains deliver offers the insurgents can’t refuse: be captured or be killed.

These are exactly the kinds of dilemmas the U.S. military loves to impose upon our enemies."

Systems disruption changes the containment and control game by offering a third choice: stalemate. This is somewhere between a Masada self-sacrifice and Mutually Assured Destruction. The social contract needs to be radically re-negotiated to accomodate citizens who are capable of crippling society itself.

Containment and control is no longer an option because of this precise problem of empowerment. You only need to protect citizens who are incapable of defending themselves -- the entire complex of "homeland security" and border control relies on ignorant, disempowered citizens -- helpless normal folks. This is not written for them.

Without the excuse of protection, government control and intervention become a naked power play. The choice is presented to you as "be captured or be killed." Submission equals life, resistance equals death -- the Military of a "free country" parroting science fiction monsters like the Borg. Systems disruption offers a third choice, but at great cost. Frankly, it's pretty stupid, but nescessary, because it brings us to a higher synthesis...

Invisible Warfare as Militarized Nomad TAZ Dowsing

In the interest of the proliferation of dangerous ideas, I'd like to propose a fourth alternative: organized groups of friends forming mobile TAZ units -- camouflaged as a circus, a business, or a music group if need be...but better yet, disguised as nothing at all and functionally invisible. Military manuals refer to this core discipline as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) and these TAZ units would be able to scatter into individual parts, disappear from view and recombine elsewhere.

This obviously involves a high degree of planning, training and reliable tools and technology. All of which translates into "hard work."

Barring a well-placed shot to the back, the classic rhyme is true: "He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day." However, it's important to know which way to run. When you are attacked by either domestic law enforcement or foreign counter-insurgency, their approach will be the same: using a spearhead unit to chase you towards a larger ambush unit. In other words, the first agents you see are the weakest line of defense, and your exits are probably covered.

That's just a single, specific example of the counter-intuitive logic of...well, reality. All power plays and confidence tricks are designed to distort your situation awareness, and you need to discipline your mind to remain calm. If a stance mentality leads to failure, can constant mobility (and invisibility) prevent that -- or does "no stance" just become a stance of it's own?

I'm advocating mobility through national borders, as well. Randomly swinging through small asian nations and undermining the containment and control machine with an unpredictable broadside will do a great favor to the natives. In the aftermath you will create large avenues of escape, and resources previously devoted to domestic repression and genocide will be turned towards a paranoid quest to defend against a threat that will never return.

9. Lurk! Withdraw! Upon them! this is the Law of the Battle of Conquest: thus shall my worship be about my secret house.

Superstruct Review: Unplayable, Unwinnable, Still Awesome

2008-12-02T19:53:00Z

Although I was disappointed with Superstruct, that's mostly because of my own expectations. My first impression made me think the game was a much Fuller system -- more grounded in simulations based on actual data, more complex and testable. This is partially my cognitive biases at work, filling in details based on my own ideas. It's also because of the blog echo chamber that amplified the project in stature, from a cool narrative online experiment to a serious attempt at fixing world problems.

I'm writing a Brainsturbator article about the game that Superstruct should have been -- a game that still needs to be designed. I also think it would be unfair to focus on Superstruct too much during that article, so I'm publishing my short review here instead. Superstruct is not an Earth simulator, and in no way resembles an updated version of R. Buckminster Fuller's "World Game." On it's own rights, and by it's own modest goals, Superstruct was a valuable success.

As Sean Ness clarified for me, though, Superstruct was never promoted as a MMOG -- a Massively Multiplayer Online Game, which involves a continuous environment that's "inhabited" by thousands of players who all occupy the same space.

Unplayable and Unwinnable

First problem: the Superstruct website is a usability nightmare. Don't think I'm a grumpy critic, though: the background and layout was truly badass, very cool looking. It just didn't work. For instance, if you'd like to browse people's submissions, which include detailed plans for solving specific global problems, you'll need to navigate this:

Frame nightmares are easily avoidable -- and if you're paying someone money to make a website, this should not be happening at all. To scroll through all the contributions, you need to scroll down the frame to the left, then click on the "Struct" you'd like to read. Now, unfortunately, you're going to read it while it's crammed into the frame at the right.

Considering user-generated content is main attraction and asset for this website, I'm amazed that the designers went through such pains to make it inaccessible and unappealing. I know there's ways for competent Internets Users to get around that, but it shouldn't be necessary to out-smart bad web design in the first place.

The scoring system is downright cynical. Basically: get a bunch of people to sign up on our site and we'll declare victory. If that sounds like an unfair summary, here's how they describe it:

A three step process? Sounds complicated, which usually means it's not. "SEHI" is just their term for a user profile page, and "survivability points" are just based on SEHIs. So basically, they rename "number of users" three times and call that a process. Perhaps I should be writing this review at Pizza SEO, because there is surely some good business advice to be found here. In terms of the seed content, there was actually very little on the table beyond a few videos and enthusiastic word-of-mouth promotion. Fortunately, that's all they needed to launch a remarkable crowdsourcing project, which brings me to the subject of What Actually Worked.

Still Awesome

The reason I opened this with the Nick Douglas joke -- aside from the fact I thought it was funny -- is the fact that all of the best content from the Superstruct project grew outside the original petri dish. Most of the best brainfood wound up growing on the Tumblr platform, which makes sense...I would especially recommend The Gupta Option.

In fact, the Superstruct information works so much better on other platforms, I'm kind of confused why they'd take the time to code up a clunky site in the first place. Check out the Reconstruct Ning page -- it handles every aspect of usability and information design better than the actual site. Much like the Obama campaign, the best thing to come out of Superstruct is the community that it created. To me, that's awesome enough to still give Jane McGonigal, Jamais Cascio and the rest of the folks at IFTF credit for a job well done.

Please hire better web designers next time, though....or just use Ning. It works.

The Unlikely Green Revolution of the US Military

2008-11-15T03:41:00Z

The best argument for "green" anything has never been morality -- it's just better business. When environmentalist genius Amory Lovins started his consulting group, the Rocky Mountain Institute, he probably never figured his clients would include Wal-Mart, Monsanto and Lockheed Martin. Massive scale leads to massive costs, though, and corporations are learning that their bottom line improves as their waste gets eliminated.

When it comes to massive scale, nobody beats the United States Military. Maintaining over 700 bases with 577,000 buildings worldwide and waging two simultaneous wars consumes over a trillion dollars per year. Despite a reputation for corruption and $900 toilet seats, the US Military is actually a very efficient machine. Through subsidiaries like DARPA and the Army Engineers Corp, they're also no strangers to experimental and fringe technology. If something works, they'll be interested -- and it's increasingly clear that gas power is not working out:

The rising cost of fuel has the Pentagon pressuring the four branches of the armed services to cut their energy bills wherever they can. It's easy to see why—every US $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil costs the Air Force, for example, an extra $600 million. The Army, Navy, and Marines, too, are tearing through their budgets. In response, energy managers at bases across the country are reevaluating how they light, insulate, heat, and cool their buildings. The most ambitious of these managers have begun aggressively adopting renewable-energy technologies. Together they have emerged as a distributed network of clean-energy advocates...

This movement is even more impressive because it's decentralized. As consultant Thomas Morehouse bluntly states: "There is no energy policy. There is no coordinated Defense Department program for renewable-energy deployment and no single office in the Pentagon that tracks it."

The proposals outlined are remarkable: massive computer-controlled solar plants at Nellis AFB, "tactical biorefineries" that convert food waste into fuel and energy, wind power investment throughout the US, and one of the world's largest geothermal stations in the Chocolate Mountains of California. The military's timeline is more ambitious than anything the civilian government would attempt, too: several of the bases profiled in the article plan on being completely self-sufficient by 2015. More importantly, it's working. McGuire AFB in New Jersey has cut their electricity usage by 14% in a single year. As these small breakthroughs get high-profile attention, expect to see a snowball effect as bases around the world try to emulate the domestic trailblazers.

As Don Juhasz, chief of energy and utilities for the U.S. Army, puts it, "There are enough of us deep within the DOD who see that, long term, if we're going to be here 50 years from now, we need to be leaders and drive the country towards the future we want. We need to set the example."

Source: IEEE Spectrum, one of the best science magazines today.

“Changing Images of Man” in PDF Format

2008-11-13T14:53:00Z

UPDATE 11/11/08: Apologies to those readers who've been trying to get ahold of this fascinating document. We switched servers recently and neglected to transfer a lot of PDF files -- entirely my mistake. This is the single most-requested item in the Library, so here's an OCR scan of the 1974 forgotten classic:

DOWNLOAD PDF NOW

Changing Images of Man is the stuff of legend -- but the actual document is way more interesting than the conspiracy theory that surrounds it. It's an undeniably weird document, though, and even the most airbrushed versions of it's origin and history make for mind-expanding reading.

Changing Images is especially interesting today because the "future crisis" it was written to avert is now coming to pass. The Stanford Research Institute gathered a diverse group of brilliant thinkers and asked them to imagine how to change the entire world. Today it makes for occasionally challenging but rewarding brainfood.

When I first got ahold of this document, I thought it was the blueprint for world government and Willis Harman's beloved "Global Mind Change." There's no secret formulas here, and no admissions from the secret society. There is a robust and still-valuable body of work about how to change human culture for the better -- I'd like to think that's more useful. Let me know if you agree.

Newt Gingrich on Using Language for Social Control

2008-10-27T22:09:00Z

NOTE: this is all verbatim from GOP documents

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that "language matters." In the video "We Are a Majority," Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates, we have heard a plaintive plea: "I wish I could speak like Newt."

That takes years of practice. But we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases.

This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that, like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used....

...third time I've said that. (Laughter.) I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)

--source link

Contrasting Words

Often we search hard for words to help us define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

decay... failure (fail)... collapse(ing)... deeper... crisis... urgent(cy)... destructive... destroy... sick... pathetic... lie... liberal... they/them... unionized bureaucracy... "compassion" is not enough... betray... consequences... limit(s)... shallow... traitors... sensationalists...

endanger... coercion... hypocrisy... radical... threaten... devour... waste... corruption... incompetent... permissive attitudes... destructive... impose... self-serving... greed... ideological... insecure... anti-(issue): flag, family, child, jobs... pessimistic... excuses... intolerant...

stagnation... welfare... corrupt... selfish... insensitive... status quo... mandate(s)... taxes... spend(ing)... shame... disgrace... punish (poor...)... bizarre... cynicism... cheat... steal... abuse of power... machine... bosses... obsolete... criminal rights... red tape... patronage

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it."

-- Edward Bernays

Optimistic Positive Governing Words

Use the list below to help define your campaign and your vision of public service. These words can help give extra power to your message. In addition, these words help develop the positive side of the contrast you should create with your opponent, giving your community something to vote for!

share... change... opportunity... legacy... challenge... control... truth... moral... courage... reform... prosperity... crusade... movement... children... family... debate... compete... active(ly)... we/us/our... candid(ly)... humane... pristine... provide...

liberty... commitment... principle(d)... unique... duty... precious... premise... care(ing)... tough... listen... learn... help... lead... vision... success... empower(ment)... citizen... activist... mobilize... conflict... light... dream... freedom...

peace... rights... pioneer... proud/pride... building... preserve... pro-(issue): flag, children, environment... reform... workfare... eliminate good-time in prison... strength... choice/choose... fair... protect... confident... incentive... hard work... initiative... common sense... passionate

Editor's note: this could easily be re-titled "A Guide to Sarah Palin's Entire Working Vocabulary." It's worth sitting down with Wordle and a couple of her speech transcripts. For example...

Edward R. Murrow on Television, Entertainment and our Doomed Culture

2008-10-15T16:00:00Z

50 years ago on this very day, Edward Murrow gave a speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association. Murrow was simultaneously ahead of his time, and far too old-fashioned for television. Although he won many awards in his lifetime, journalists and television executives were always wary of Murrow, because his primary allegiance was to Truth, not his employers, not his profession. In this speech, he passes a sadly accurate warning to the current and future newsmen of 1958 about the real effects of entertainment journalism on American culture. It's unfortunate that he was proven so totally right.

What follows is the most insightful and prescient highlights from his rather long speech -- the full text of which is available here.

Edward Murrow, October 15th, 1958

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.

I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry's program planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is--an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate.

I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation. Heywood Broun once said, "No body politic is healthy until it begins to itch." I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers. It can be done. Maybe it won't be, but it could. Let us not shoot the wrong piano player. Do not be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their networks. They all have better taste. All are responsible to stockholders, and in my experience all are honorable men. But they must schedule what they can sell in the public market.

And this brings us to the nub of the question. In one sense it rather revolves around the phrase heard frequently along Madison Avenue: The Corporate Image. I am not precisely sure what this phrase means, but I would imagine that it reflects a desire on the part of the corporations who pay the advertising bills to have the public image, or believe that they are not merely bodies with no souls, panting in pursuit of elusive dollars. They would like us to believe that they can distinguish between the public good and the private or corporate gain. So the question is this: Are the big corporations who pay the freight for radio and television programs wise to use that time exclusively for the sale of goods and services? Is it in their own interest and that of the stockholders so to do? The sponsor of an hour's television program is not buying merely the six minutes devoted to commercial message. He is determining, within broad limits, the sum total of the impact of the entire hour. If he always, invariably, reaches for the largest possible audience, then this process of insulation, of escape from reality, will continue to be massively financed, and its apologist will continue to make winsome speeches about giving the public what it wants, or "letting the public decide."

It may be that the present system, with no modifications and no experiments, can survive. Perhaps the money-making machine has some kind of built-in perpetual motion, but I do not think so. To a very considerable extent the media of mass communications in a given country reflect the political, economic and social climate in which they flourish. That is the reason ours differ from the British and French, or the Russian and Chinese. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

The 2008 US Election is Not About the Issues.

2008-09-04T19:14:00Z

The title of this piece is not an original statement, it's actually a direct, and verifiably real, quotation from Rick Davis. Rick Davis, believe it or not, is a (currently still employed) campaign manager for John McCain. The response I've seen has mostly alternated between disbelief and cheering victory -- my Democratic friends took that quote as a tacit admission of failure on behalf of the McBush campaign. I'm here to say that it's not: Rick Davis was telling the truth.

Welcome to post-reality. I don't expect anyone to get used to this anytime soon. Even CBS News is reporting on how most of the military footage from the Republican National Convention was paid actors in a stadium somewhere -- this is the real 2008 Election:

The soldiers were actors and the funeral scene was from a one-day film shoot, produced in June. No real soldiers were used during production.

The footage, sold by stock-film house Getty Images was produced by a commercial filmmaker in Chicago. Both Getty and the production company, Mr. Big Films, confirmed that the footage was shot on spec and sold to the Republican National Committee.

One of the actors, Perry Denton of Chicago, IL also confirmed that he was hired on a day-rate as an actor for the shoot and told CBS News he was surprised to learn the footage was shown at the convention.

Remember the Last Post?

Previously on Skilluminati, I did a simple post juxtaposing the podium for the 2004 Republican Nation Convention with the podium for the 2008 Democratic Nation Convention. I also posted this a number of times as a myspace bulletin. In both experiments, I got some highly entertaining and insightful responses. Specifically, I found out that people were responding to something that only existed in their own heads. I provided no commentary, yet people had created -- confabulated, really -- a whole explanation for why I would post the photographs, and they responded to that.

So why did I post the photographs?

Of course, as one commentator noted, the design is hardly original. Not only that, the design is actually done by the same company in both instances. They're the same company that pulled off the 2008 Olympics Games ceremonies, and this reflects a long-standing interest of mine in the business of staged ritual and mass spectacle. The power of mass spectacle is well known, and it's dangerous. No matter what the cause, it's a clear-cut form of deliberate manipulation.

Bob's First Rule of Power

We live on a planet with 6 billion humans, and most of them are uninformed and ignorant. Here in the United States, despite high standards of living and abundant material wealth, the situation is no different. In 2006, during coverage of the manufactured debate over "Intelligent Design," Newsweek conducted a national poll about scientific literacy. All of the participants were adult residents of the United States. The results were astonishing:

Fewer than a third of those polled know that DNA is the molecule of heredity

Only 10 percent know what radiation is

20 percent think the Sun revolves around Earth.

But of course, that was from 2006, and Bush's educational reform program has probably improved things considerably since then. I truly hope so, since that same year an even more disturbing poll was conducted by the Washington Post:

While the country is preparing to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attacks that claimed nearly 3,000 lives and shocked the world, 95 percent of Americans questioned in the poll were able to remember the month and the day of the attacks, according to Wednesday’s edition of the newspaper.

But when asked what year, 30 percent could not give a correct answer. Of that group, six percent gave an earlier year, eight percent gave a later year, and 16 percent admitted they had no idea whatsoever.

This memory black hole is essentially the problem of the older crowd: 48 percent of those who did not know were between the ages of 55 and 64, and 47 percent were older than 65, according to the poll.

The Post telephone survey was carried out July 21-24 among 1,002 randomly selected adults. The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

I'm Not Pointing Fingers and Laughing

Don't mistake this for crowing about how dumb people are. This is a serious and intractable problem. The vast majority of voters in the United States are dangerously ignorant and easily manipulated.

Here's the moral quandary: is it ethical to use deception in order to control these people? If you don't do it, guess who will? Karl Rove. Rick "not about the issues" Davis. The same paid operatives who have been running the real power structure of the United States since John Rockefeller and Edward Bernays were alive.

Here's the logistical problem: how can you and I compete against multi-million dollar budgets? The business of spectacles, like any other, is a business that runs on money. Those who have money shape the spectacle, and the rest of us are consigned to...well, meaningless critiques on obscure websites.

Obama and Bush: Two Pictures, No Comment

2008-08-28T21:26:00Z

Republican National Convention, 2004: George Bush II

Democratic National Convention, 2008: Barack Obama

The Hidden Flaw in AI Research

2008-07-28T06:33:00Z

My media diet lately has consisted of Nick Cook's The Hunt for Zero Point and a re-reading of all Jacques Vallee's books. I also picked up his published journals, with the rather cheeseball title "Forbidden Science." It was an excellent read and gave me a new appreciation for Brother Jacques. I especially dig this short, tangential passage...so much that I'm posting it here. Enjoy.

"On Wednesday I went to Princeton. I was kindly received and the seminar I gave on information retrieval met with polite applause. Then a man with intense eyes and silver hair took me aside. We sat on the benches in the lab next to the lecture hall.

He said, "There is a fundamental fallacy in artificial intelligence, and you're falling into it like everybody else."

"In what respect?" I asked with the feeling that this discussion was not going to conform to the usual exchange of generalities heard at most professional meetings.

"Artificial intelligence is trying to emulate nature, it wants to approximate what man does."

"What other inspiration is there?"

"Imitation of nature is bad engineering," he answered patiently. "For centuries inventors tried to fly by emulating birds, and they killed themselves uselessly. If you want to make something that flies, flapping your wings is not the way to do it. You bolt a 400-horsepower engine to a barn door, that's how you fly. You can look at birds forever and never discover this secret. You see, Mother Nature has never developed the Boeing 707. Why not? Because Nature didn't need anything that would fly that fast and that high. How would such an animal feed itself?"

"What does that have to do with artificial intelligence?"

"Simply that it tries to approximate man. If you take man's brain as a model and test of intelligence, you're making the same mistake as the old inventors flapping their wings. You don't realize that Mother Nature has never needed an intelligent animal and accordingly, she has never bothered to develop one!"

I could only greet this stunning thought with silence. He went on:

"When an intelligent entity is finally built, it will have evolved on principles very different from those of man's mind, and its level of intelligence will certainly not be measured by the fact that it can beat a chess champion or appear to carry out a conversation in English."

With his piercing eyes on me, I had a brief vision of what an intelligent machine might be. If Nature has never needed an intelligent animal and hasn't evolved one, I kept wondering, then what are we? In our feeble attempts to handle the information we call our life, can we trust the creations of our dreams? Are we perhaps nothing more than the process through which another form of intelligence is evolving?"

Further Brainfood

I randomly came across a free copy of the IEEE Spectrum's special issue on The Singularity. It was very entertaining and interesting stuff, and even though I'm deeply skeptical of techno-worship, I highly recommend checking it out. I found Rodney Brook's essay "I Am A Robot" to be the real standout from the collection. Also excellent: The Consciousness Conundrum looks at the circular nature of trying to build something we can't even define, and The Economics of the Singularity was a good visionary workout.

Strange Loops and Disinformation: Readings from Robert Anton Wilson

2008-06-10T19:28:00Z

The Shroedinger's Cat Trilogy, pg. 380

"Knight knew what most people only vaguely suspected -- that Intelligence Agencies engage in both the collection of valid signals (information) and the promiscuous dissemination of fake signals (disinformation). They collected the information so that they could form a fairly accurate picture of what was really going on; they spread the disinformation so that all their competitors would form grossly inaccurate pictures. They did this because they knew that whoever could find out what the hell was really going on possessed an advantage over those who were misinformed, confused and disoriented.

This game had been invented by Joseph Fouche, who was the chief of the secret police under Napoleon. British Intelligence very quickly copied all of Fouche's tactics, and surpassed them...by the time of the First World War, Intelligence Agencies everywhere had created so much disinformation and confusion that no two historians ever were able to agree on why the war happened, and who double-crossed whom...

By the time of the Second World War, the "Double-Cross System" had been invented -- by British Intelligence, of course. This was the products of such minds as Alan Turing, a brilliant homosexual mathematician who (when not working in espionage) specialized in creating logical paradoxes other mathematicians couldn't solve, and Ian Fleming, whose fantasy life was equally rich (as indicated by his later James Bond books), and Dennis Wheatley, a man of exceptionally high intelligence who happened to believe that an international conspiracy of Satanists was behind every conspiracy he didn't invent himself. By the time Turing, Fleming, Wheatley and kindred British intellects had perfected the Double-Cross System, the science of lying was almost as precise as Euclidian geometry, and nearly as lovely to the detached observer.

What the Double-Cross experts had invented was the practical political applications of the Strange Loop. In logic or cybernetics, a Strange Loop is a set of propositions that, while valid at each point, is so constructed that it leads to an unresolvable paradox. The Double-Cross people drove the Germans bonkers by inventing disinformation systems that, if believed, were deceptive, but if doubted led to a second disinformation system. They enjoyed this work so much that, at times, they invented Triple Loops...

These Strange Loops functioned especially well because the Double-Cross experts had early on fed the Germans the primordial Strange Loop. "Most of your agents are working for us and feeding your Strange Loops."

Many German agents, it later turned out, had managed to collect quite a bit of accurate information about the Normandy invasion, but many others turned in equally plausible information about a fictitious Norwegian invasion; and all of them were under suspicion, anyway. German Intelligence might as well have made its decisions by tossing a coin in the air."

--Robert Anton Wilson

Wars, on Drugs: Highlights from “Drug Intoxicated Irregular Fighters”

2008-06-04T19:34:00Z

I wanted to share some highly memorable excerpts from Paul Rexton Kan's excellent paper "Drug Intoxicated Irregular Fighters: Complications, Dangers and Responses." You can download a PDF copy here. It's a very readable study of the role drugs play in asymmetric warfare around the world.

The first two quotes are entertaining, but the real brainfood is in the third part.

Really Bad Ideas

"Drugged conscripts have been a danger to their own forces; a soldier stationed near the Russian border with Georgia shot and killed eight of his colleagues (and wounded five others) during a hallucinogenic fit brought on by eating magic mushrooms."

Zombie Insurgency

"Combatant behavior is often influenced by an individual’s state of intoxication. For example, U.S. Marines reportedly had to change their tactics when notified that the insurgents in Fallujah were probably high and thus less likely to be stopped by standard shots to the torso. One Marine stated that “on the second day of the fight, word came down to focus on head shots, that body shots were not good enough,” while another compared it to “‘Night of the Living Dead’, people who should have been dead were still alive.”

Secret History of Vietnam

"During the Korean War, American servicemen stationed in Korea and Japan invented the “speedball,” an injectable mixture of amphetamine and heroin. U.S. troops in Vietnam preferred marijuana, but when subject to a sudden marijuana ban, they turned to heroin. Discipline problems quickly rose; as one commanding officer lamented 2 years after the marijuana crackdown, “If it would get them to give up the hard stuff, I would buy all the marijuana and hashish in the Delta as a present.”

"Drug use was so severe among American troops in the later stages of the Vietnam War that more soldiers were evacuated for drug problems than for battlefield wounds."

"The addiction rate of returning troops has been of constant concern to average citizens as well as elites. In November 1971, New York reported nearly 10,000 heroin-addicted Vietnam veterans which, as discussed in this monograph, was the result of the U.S. military’s clamp down on widespread marijuana use by troops.

Heroin use among Vietnam veterans created societal fears of rising crime and disorder. Time magazine reflected the public mood by reporting that “the specter of weapons-trained, addicted combat veterans joining the deadly struggle for drugs in the streets of America is ominous...the Capone era of the ‘20s may look like a Sunday school picnic by comparison."

Stepping Out of the 5GW Debate: Peace Out, Thanks Much

2008-05-31T05:22:00Z

I had a great time doing it, but my interests have moved beyond 5th Generation Warfare and I really have no more to contribute. My vision is too wide and too weird, and I'll be moving my future writing on the subject to another venue, which will be launching soon. What I laid out in Invisible Warfare is something I'm going to let ferment for a few weeks.

It's not fair for me to keep discussing these concepts as "5GW," and it's not smart, either. I can only accomplish 2 things: first, confusing my intended audience with excess terminology, and second, infuriating those who were already covering 5GW years before I started writing about it.

I would like to thank the following authors: Tim Stevens, Bryan Finoki, Mark Safranski, Shane Deichman, Chet Richards, Fabius Maximus, John Robb, Purpleslog, Subadei, Curtis Gale Weeks, tdaxp, Smitten Eagle, Wiggins, and everyone at Coming Anarchy.

MEANWHILE: I'm building a thinking aid called the Invisible Experiment with the goal of "rethinking conflict and remixing concepts." I'm taking single "slices" of concepts and data and using a tag cloud to navigate. Currently less than 100 entries and I'm aiming for 333 before I'll consider this puppy operational.

Up Next

Rather than put the site on hold, I'll be returning Skilluminati to it's roots -- the study of social control. I'm working on a physics approach, considering social conformity as entrainment. I'm hoping that's still interesting and useful to the folks who've been reading. I'm very thankful for all the feedback and brainfood from you folks.

5GWhat? The Meaning of “Warfare” in 2008

2008-05-22T20:03:00Z

A number of Skilluminati readers have voiced the concern that calling benevolent 5GW campaigns "warfare" is misleading or outright wrong. As Bruce Scanlon puts it:

WE have a great deal of choice about which scenario we will end up in, and WE have the power, within the scope of our own lives, to make significant contributions to these different scenarios.

I am not saying you can get the whole world to do what you want it to do, but I am saying that you can make your part of the world/find a part of the world a lot more to your liking-- and that you have a lot more power to do this than most people think.

This sizable power for change to me deserves more than to be categorized as “warfare,” 5th generation or not.

Is war merely overt violence? If you subdue your opponent using judo or aikido, is it still a fight? Bands of primates go to war, and I'm hoping humans can do better than the hunt-kill method. (Then again, maybe not: recently Israeli general Yossi Peled said "The only effect I know in warfare is to kill the enemy.") So first, let's take a look at my own cognitive biases...

Aikido Anarchism

My interest in warfare was awakened by the article Neocortical Warfare, which I immediately wrote a Brainsturbator article about. (I go into more depth about my vision for 5GW in a recent Wishtank interview.)

I suspect, but I cannot prove, that human beings can greatly amplify their personal power by aligning their goals and techniques with natural design. By fighting on the side of Life on Earth, we've opted for the most powerful available ally on the planet. Advances in human technology are based on principles decoded from nature, and nature remains vastly more sophisticated and robust than existing human technology.

So although my friendly local wikipedia has a detailed article on the history and theory of war, I find the "spectrum of conflict" and "measures short of war" drivel to be mostly intellectual apologies for the naked exercise of state power. We're all grown-ups, and we all know that power kills people every day. C'est la vie for better or worse, and it's obviously worse. Let's set academia aside and ask some questions instead.

Pointed Questions

Can you wage war without your opponent knowing it? Well, Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfield were both totally shocked by 9-11, weren't they? The concept of planes as weapons was utterly unthinkable, despite the fact they were both repeatedly briefed about exactly that. You can view that as proof of conspiracy, or just another example of how cognitive bias blinds all humans equally.

The concept of the secret war is not new to 5GW, and I refer the reader to earlier and excellent reads from dan tdaxp, dan tdaxp again , and Zenpundit.

Is blogging warfare? According to the Department of Defense, the answer is "Yes." See, us independent media types are engaged in Information Operations (IO), formerly known by the less friendly and ambiguous term "Psychological Warfare." As John Rendon so eloquently put it: "Information is an instrument of national power, just as military, economic and political. Like any weapon or tool, the United States Government needs to use it or cede the 'battlefield' to someone else."

Is activism warfare? According to the White House, absolutely. All you non-violent liberal types are engaged in "Low-Intensity Conflict."

Low intensity conflict a political-military confrontation between contending states or groups below conventional war and above the routine, peaceful competition among states. It frequently involves protracted struggles of competing principles and ideologies. Low-intensity conflict ranges from subversion to the use of the armed forces. It is waged by a combination of means, employing political, economic, informational, and military instruments. Low-intensity conflicts are often localized, generally in the Third World, but contain regional and global security implications

Are domestic law enforcement operations warfare? It's an armed conflict, there's casualties involved, and the parallels between domestic law enforcement and foreign counter-insurgency are striking. Lethal use of force by police is legally justified, but does that nescessarily make it legitimate? (Every non-civilian casualty of war is legally justified, too.)

If You Want My Opinion

Resource shortages are manufactured and wars are not nescessary. However, in 2008 there exists a global power elite -- probably less than 100,000 of them altogether -- who posess far too much power and abuse it at will. As a result, millions of human beings around the world are suffering on a daily basis. Is that something worth fighting against? Would you term that conflict a "war?"

That graffitti basically sums up my outlook for 2008-2012. Every single human community on Earth has expanded exponentially and bumped shoulders on an abruptly crowded planet. Communities need to rethink everything and rebuild for a global future -- anyone trying to force a top-down solution is either willfully evil or catastrophically stupid. This applies from Al Gore to Vladimir Putin to Hugo Chavez to George Bush: you need to stop looking up to your leaders and start looking around to your neighborhoods.

Last Word: Smitten Eagle

Smitten Eagle said "I’m not sure I necessarily buy into the 5GW frameworks yet. Trying to nail 4GW Jell-O to the wall is hard enough. 5GW is like nailing said Jell-O while it’s still liquid." His explanation of this is some of the best writing on 5GW I've found so far -- from a comment at Chicago Boyz:

As far as 5GW goes, I don’t think there is even a solid framework to rely on. Some have referred to 5GW as tactically being about changing the enemie’s Observation in the OODA loop to make him think he’s not even in conflict with the enemy. For me, this is too close to the political end of the Policy-War continuum of violence to be considered warfare.

Others have spoken about the role of the Super Empowered Individual (SEI) as a major actor in 5GW. I’m afraid that lone gunmen, in my conception of warfare, do not qualify as “organized violence.” For violence to be “organized,” it requires an Organization. An Organization of One is not an organization. I think there has to be more to organized violence than a single pissed-off dude with lots of cunning.

Finally, for 5GW to actually exist, it needs to have a strong track record of convincingly beating 4GW fighting forces. I’m afraid there really hasn’t been any evidence to support this. (Unless, of course, my denial of 5GW is evidence of it’s success…but if that’s the case, I think we’re getting a bit too close to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to speak anything authoritatively about 5GW, or any xGW for that matter.)

A great example of the circular reasoning and collapsing logic of Invisible War. My next post is what I've been working on this whole time -- a thinkpiece on how to wage war in a Universe that actually runs on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Since that's the Universe we happen to live in.

Two Cautionary Tales From the Front Lines

2008-05-17T16:04:00Z

This article is entirely indebted to the ongoing work and original research of Cryptogon. One of the very best sites online, if you're into "being informed."

This article might appear to be mere pessimism. To the reader with a good imagination and better common sense, though, I'm advocating an entirely different angle from the traditional binary trap of Fighting Against Power Elites vs. Fighting For Power Elites.

Humans fight -- let them. (Seriously, trying to stop a fight is dangerous and stupid 99% of the time, unless it's kids who are smaller than you.) The 5th Generation Warfare angle we'll be pursuing at Skilluminati is based on leveraging the existing fault lines, ongoing conflicts and profitable culture wars that we live within today.

I'm not advocating that we should stir up more bullshit -- I'm suggesting that we practice the martial art of invisibly exploiting the bullshit that's already here. To do otherwise is to ignore history -- here's a look at why.

Those Who Would Overthrow Them

Let's bypass Kent State, the fate of the Branch Dividians, disappearances in Chile, Argentina and everywhere else in Latin America, and the assassinations of Archbishop Oscar Romero, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, since none of them were actually advocating the overthrow of the United States government, they just happened to get in the way.

Let's focus on a single event which is much more recent, and far more relevant to the inept would-be "5GW warriors" among us.

This is the story of a federal agent who tried to get three hippies to commit to a plan -- any plan -- to blow something up and break Federal laws. It took her many months of prodding, lots of pushy confrontations, and a lot of her FBI money, but they finally managed to frame their targets. Yep, that's the story in two sentences -- here's a great article that explains it detail if you want more narrative backgroun. I'm going to be exploring the tactical insights here. What amazed me most: how "Full Spectrum Dominance" applies to the surviellance of activists.

On January 10, the four toured the Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville, using fake names and posing as college students for a tour. They were under surveillance the whole time by FBI agents and agents of the U.S. Forest Service.

On the morning of January 13, the FBI was keeping a close eye on a cabin in Dutch Flat, about a half-hour north of Auburn. The government had the cabin and its four occupants--two men and two women--under 24-hour surveillance for nearly a week because the group was suspected of plotting acts of domestic terrorism in the name of the Earth Liberation Front.

The four left the cabin at around 10 a.m. in a 1997 maroon Chevy Lumina and traveled about 30 miles to a Kmart in Auburn. There were agents inside the store, watching them shop.

Hippies are the butt of jokes for a reason, and these kids were basically stumbling around in a minefield. Lesson: Effective 5GW is a process that takes total surveillance for granted. It must be exceedingly subtle and executed in plain sight.

YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING, as I was, how exactly Federal agents justify the dirtywork they do undercover, and there is a precise answer. It's referred to as a Tier 1 Otherwise Illegal Activity when an agent breaks the law in order to catch someone breaking the law. The question of legal rights and entrapment is far too boring and irrelevant to pursue, though, so let's move along.

Since this is a cautionary tale, it's worth remembering the overall rules for how punishment is distributed. Here is how a 4-member cell being set up on a Federal level will fare, on precedent:

Zack Jenson, age 20, spent 6 months in prison, then agreed to testify against McDavid.

Lauren Weiner has an unfortunate last name, but at least it was a wealthy one -- she's been free on bail with her family and also agreed to testify against McDavid. She was also 20 years old.

Eric McDavid was sentenced to 19 years and 7 months. He's 28 and got logically framed up as the dangerous ringleader. (Note to Derrick Jensen fans: shave the beard.)

And as for Anna? The article says she made out alright: "According to testimony from Sacramento-based FBI Special Agent Nasson Walker, she got paid at least $75,000 for her work."

The reader could be forgiven for thinking I'm telling some sort of moral story -- perhaps implying that "Anna" is down with 5GW and one of the cool kids. NAY. "Anna" is just a servant of power -- and those who serve power historically fare no better than those who oppose it. Which is the subject of my next cautionary tale.

Those Who Would Work For Them

Let's just bypass Paul Wellstone, Vincent Foster, the assassinations of JFK, RFK and the strange fates Roberto Calvi and Frank Olson. The past is dead, and the news has given us a even-more interesting example.

Roland Carnaby was a company man -- a veteran of the CIA, although that's a matter of some dispute. The other publicly known facts about Carnaby are not disputed, though, and they're eye-opening. At the age of 52, he was shot in the chest, handcuffed, and left to bleed to death while Houston Police officers watched. The image above is real -- I cribbed it off a Fox News website and it was taken from a news helicopter. My own interpretation of facts is obvious and predictable -- Carnaby either knew too much or threatened the wrong people, both essentially the same problem.

When you serve power, you cannot protect yourself from those who protect you. Of course, when you fight power, you're left with the exact same problem again, and I apologize for making resistance sound futile.

It is, though. Resisting the momentum of your culture is absurd. Who can seriously talk about fighting globalization? You might as well resist the Pacific Ocean.

"All of this other stuff (about Carnaby's mysterious life) is all very interesting, but it is of no consequence when you consider a man is dead and he died handcuffed and nobody tried to stop the bleeding or anything," Brooten said. "You know what you call that? You call that an assassination."

Jett defended the officers at the scene, saying they are not trained to assist people with serious gunshot wounds.

"We would handcuff people and try to get them comfortable, but we're not paramedics, and most officers don't know about giving first aid like that other than CPR, and you don't want to give CPR to a gunshot victim," he said.

Investigators later found three weapons in Carnaby's car, police said. One pistol was under the passenger-side floormat. A second was between the seats. On the back seat floorboard lay a pistol-grip shotgun with a round in the chamber and the safety off.

No Moral to the Stories

This is only food for thought, of course. Things are going to change a lot in the next decade, but archetypes will repeat like always. We will always rationalize our actions, no matter how callous or brutal. I'm sure you think you're a good person, too.

Here in the 21st century, talking about warfare is essential. Our planet is being turned into a slaughterhouse and Control is going to be a lot more elusive for everyone -- especially those in power. We've seen a nearly infinite array of permutations of "kill the enemy" -- 5GW is something new. Harmonize with the enemy, control the enemy, use the enemy.

Next week: my first Dreaming 5GW contribution, working out the details of my own theory, beta version though it may be. Sorry for the long lead-up, and thanks for all the brainfood from everyone commenting, especially Eric Patton who's been a huge help behind the scenes.

A Dose of Informed Optimism from the Tellus Institute

2008-05-13T03:20:00Z

I don't want the reader to think I'm a cynic or a violent extremist...or a fucking moron. I realize the claim that 5GW has a role in positive cultural change raises eyebrows, and I'm working on an article explaining this in some depth. Meanwhile, I came across some truly potent brainfood that states it all better than I could.

What follows is an excerpt from the Marjorie Kelly and Paul Raskin essay How Food Riots, Pricey Gas and Home Foreclosures Point to a Better Future -- a highly recommended read. Mostly for this section here:

Transitions announce themselves in the language of crisis. We are in a time of turbulence as old patterns give way and new ones form. The multiple crises today signal a system transformation operating at the scale of the planet. Transformation is distinct from adaptation, which is the normal process of incremental adjustment to new conditions. Transformations are rare moments in history when dominant societal structures cannot cope with emerging developments and change in fundamental ways. With the converging lines of crises we face today, we may be entering a perfect storm of destabilizing stress.

We cannot predict the future. It may be good, bad or ugly, depending on how events unfold and how we respond. But scenarios can help us envision alternate futures, and our organization has -- with the aid of an international group -- crafted four scenarios of possible futures. In a "market forces" scenario, the United States continues with business as usual, other nations converge toward American lifestyles, economic growth remains the sine qua non of development, and environmental strain and cultural polarization intensify. In "policy reform," government seeks ambitious policies to protect the environment and reduce inequity; but with the ethos of consumerism unchecked, the reformist path could be overwhelmed by unsustainable trends. In "fortress world," reform fails and problems cascade into self-amplifying crises as the affluent retreat into protected enclaves amid oceans of misery.

In a "great transition" scenario, mounting crises lead not to breakdown but to breakthrough into a sustainable culture, where we shrink our environmental footprint, not only because we must live lightly and equitably on this small planet, but because quality of life matters more than quantity of stuff. It is a world where global interdependence -- as both a fact of history and a moral imperative -- replaces the heedless pursuit of self-interest as a guiding ethos. Such a resilient, just and livable world order is possible, though not inevitable. We do not offer facile hope. Large-scale social transformation does not come from small-scale woes: A time of troubles lies ahead.

Nevertheless, there is a case for hope. In the turbulence of transition, small actions can have big effects. We stand at a moment of unparalleled creative opportunity that calls for bold leaders and engaged citizens to articulate new visions of a 21st century social order and to mobilize a global movement to bring these visions to reality. Our world today generates more despair and resignation than vision and action. But it would not be the first time that an effervescence of popular political energy arrived unexpectedly to shift the direction of history.

We are beset today not by random bad luck, but by a systemic crisis that could -- on the other side of calamity -- open the way to hopeful transformation. It is up to us.

But remember: random bad luck still happens, at every level of scale. Big "thinkpiece" on Wednesday....where do you guys put the probability between those four events?

My best guess: "fortress world" 40%, "great transition" 40%, "market forces" 15%, policy reform 5%. I obviously have no faith in top-down government solutions, and I'm fundamentally neutral on the moral character of human nature. We do what we do -- hopefully, we do the right thing.