Global Guerrillas

RC LINKS: Mid July 2009

2009-07-16T13:47:00-04:00

Some items of interest on the road to becoming super-empowered:

DIY hydroponic window farms. Leveraging windows (which is of particular use in urban settings) for food production. An example Bruce Sterling calls favela chic -- an oxymoron that's an appropriate description of cultural methodologies that are essential to completely bypassing the impact of perpetual global depression/breakdown.
Easy to use cutting machine for local fabrication (extremely slick commercialization of one of the tools needed):

Rob Hopkins releases the initial results of a "Transition towns" analysis on the ability of a town to "feed" itself. Nice use of Google maps to map local arable land and food footprints.
DIYbio. A DIY project to create a professional grade machine for Gel electrophoresis (a commonly used tool in microbiology) for only a couple hundred $$.
More en route.

JOURNAL: Robocrime?

2009-07-15T13:01:03-04:00

This year, the USAF will train more drone "jocks" than fighter jocks. That's only the start. The upsurge in drones wasn't coincidental. It was driven by rapid improvements in Moore's law -- which states that the "power" of computer chips will double every two years.

The important milestone in that improvement curve is that we just recently passed the computational equivalence of insects (Moravec's scale). This means that commercial and DIY robots (now with military equipment, although that advantage will fade) will soon be able to handle basic functions required for stability, motion, maneuver, etc. required for operation in complex environments. The fact that we crossed this milestone explains the rapid uptick in the utility/usage of drones and other robotics. However, it doesn't mean that these robots can think at a level required for complex tasks, intelligence gathering, and warfare (much of that will arrive by 2020 as we reach rat equivalent intelligence). As of today, and through the next decade, that capability is delivered to the robot through telepresence (drone "jocks" that rent their brains to robots).

What's next? Robotic technology will shrink and cheapen quickly (stiquito, Botfest). Applications (driven by open platforms and modular programming) will begin to flow from the commercial and open source sectors until they reach a torrential level. Additionally, robotic and "complex sensor" telepresence will, by the next decade, be as easy as in Internet connection and a Web application. Add swarm management (the ability to manage massive swarms of micro-robots that work as a single entity, much as we see with software "bots" in the cyber-crime space) to the mixture of inexpensive robotics and simplistic telepresence (accessible to ten/hundreds of millions of people), and you have another technological avenue for open source warfare. It also likely means that the heady world of cybercrime will soon be able to access the physical sphere ---> robocrime?

DIY drone tech:

AerialRobotics EasyUAV Scenario 1 using RVOSD and FPV from Krzysztof Bosak on Vimeo.

GG LINKS: Mid-July 2009

2009-07-13T08:33:18-04:00

Some items of interest:

The La Familia "mini-cartel" launched a series of hit and run commando attacks on Mexican military/police positions in Michoacan (to protest the arrest of a founder). The 10 hour spree, replete with assault rifles and grenades, left five dead and a dozen wounded.
Naxiliate global guerrillas (nominally marxist) killed 27 police in India.
Old Russian tech. Mobile nuclear power plants.
MEND: "The plague of sabotage descended heavily on major Shell and Agip crude trunk lines in Bayelsa state."
GGs in Canada. EnCana natural gas pipelines under attack. The Royal Canadian Mounted police, unable to find the individuals/groups launching the attacks, are getting aggressive. Pics of blast sites.
Militia hacking group broadcasts their message against exploit disclosure by hacking an image hosting service. One method of modern broadcasting is to turn all the links of a image hosting service into links to your image (although, in this case the image was lame).
Something Awful vs. Sarah Palin. Pwn pics of Trig. Hacking politics is going to be a participatory sport.
Teen media habits. Right on.
Preventing another Mumbai, pg. 4 (Sullivan and Elkus). Highlights: Need for a police "operational art" vs. tactical focus. VoIP command and control node (via NJ VoIP provider, Vonage?) for Mumbai attackers. The use of swarm "pulsing" -- rapidly changing point of attack -- to confuse police.
Crashing Tehran's electricity grid.
Cyber attack? The US government, Stratfor and others are hyperventilating, claiming it to be the work of the North Korean Government. Essentially, there is a 50,000 PC botnet (using old software) in Asia doing the DDoS attacks against US and S Korean websites. This is most definitely something a single individual could pull off (old thinking: only a government could do this... new thinking: superempowered individuals are more than capable). The government/consultant cyberwar crowd can't seem to move beyond the state vs. state vision of cyberwarfare (not sure how you fix this mindset, it's so pervasive with those over 40 -- exactly the same guys about to spend tens of billions of a cyberwar boondoggle).
Egypt: al Qaeda cell of 26 engineers and technicians were arrested in conjunction with a planned attack on the Suez canal and a major oil pipeline. Again, searching for global systempunkts.
Jeff Vail might want to spend some time on Cyberwarfare -- given his talent at writing about global guerrillas in Nigeria.
French car workers threaten to blow up plant.
Shake and bake meth -- single container/mobile cooking.
Video game, Modern Warfare 2, includes working Night Vision goggles in its prestige edition.

JOURNAL: Leveraging Information Terrain

2009-07-09T13:10:23-04:00

The Uighur protest/riot/crackdown in China provides some interesting data points on the uses of information terrain to disrupt social networks. Note the amplification.

Rumors led to postings on the Internet that two Uighur men raped a Han woman at a Toy factory in Xinjiang.
An angry mob of Han men lynch two Uighur men, killing them.
Pictures/video of the dead men are posted to the Internet. Here's one: "Chinese Commies Massacre Innocent Uyghur Workers 3"
Protest forms to march against the lynching.
Combination of angry protestors and a harsh paramilitary response (China has a 1 million man paramilitary force to squelch domestic unrest) lead to a riot. Cars, businesses are burned. 1,400 Uighurs are arrested.
Pictures of the crackdown by the paramilitaries are broadcast via the Internet/cell phones. Also real-time news via SMS and Twitter flows out.
The government restricts cell phone usage and shuts down Twitter and other social software systems in the area. Images and information on the crackdown are "harmonized" (the creepy term for Chinese censorship).
Pictures of Uighur violence against Han citizens (beatings, etc.) are allowed to spread and amplified by the official media. Han gangs roam the streets beating Uighurs. The army sets up curfew.
Official government media creates disinformation/information sites and equates the riots to terrorism. Many Uighurs flee to avoid Han violence. Tensions/anger on both sides is explosive.

JOURNAL: Chinese Exceptionalism

2009-07-08T10:34:23-04:00

The great part about being a Chinese dictatorship in a world with one rule set (Adam Smith's), is that your paramilitary forces can slaughter ~~140~~ 156 protestors without even a whimper from the global community. Western political elites just don't care because a) business with China is more important than human rights and b) China reacts like a spoiled child when chastised, which makes it not worth the hassle. Of course, the reaction we see today on Chinese repression may become the same we see when similar things happen in the developed world.

What's even more interesting is how the opposition is using the information terrain to help get the message out. From twitter (like Iran) to cell phone cameras, the images of the event were broadcast around the world. China's response? A combination of "shutdowns" of information systems and counter attacks by loyalist information militias. While the opposition is learning how to use information terrain better with each incident (this response was faster than what happened when China cracked down on Tibet), it still hasn't branched out into using those same tools to spread disruption (which is the only effective way to disconnect).

JOURNAL: The Switch to Local Manufacturing

2009-07-08T09:40:06-04:00

Here's a think piece that you may find of value:

It is likely that by 2025, the majority of the "consumer" goods you purchase/acquire, will be manufactured locally. However, this doesn't likely mean what you think it means. The process will look like this:

You will purchase/trade for/build a design for the product you desire through online trading/sharing systems. That design will be in a standard file format and the volume of available designs for sale, trade, or shared openly will be counted in the billions.
You or someone you trust/hire will modify the design of the product to ensure it meets your specific needs (or customize it so it is uniquely yours). Many products will be smart (in that they include hardware/software that makes them responsive), and programmed to your profile.
The refined product design will be downloaded to a small local manufacturing company, co-operative, or equipped home for production. Basic feedstock materials will be used in its construction (from metal to plastic powders derived from generic sources, recycling, etc.). Delivery is local and nearly costless.

The switch to local manufacturing is being abetted by the following factors:

Ever more expensive energy and raw materials as far as the eye can see, although every time the economy slows, those costs will drop sharply. This means that the costs of global transport and mass production (overproduction, failed products, etc.) will become too costly to maintain for all but the most valuable and difficult to manufacture products.
The collapse of generic demand. The debt-deflation fueled process of economic collapse has just begun in the developed world. It will continue for decades as incomes globally normalize (become equivalent in all "connected countries"). This means that the critical mass in demand necessary to support a global production supply chain won't exist in most localities. Centrally shipped e-commerce will fill some of the gap, but it will be expensive. As a result, the diversity of consumer products we currently enjoy will fall initially, but will soon be completely eclipsed by a torrential supply of virtual designs for every product conceivable.
Local fabrication will get cheap and easy. The cost of machines that can print, lathe, etch, cut materials to produce three dimensional products will drop to affordable levels (including consumer level versions). This sector is about to pass out of its "home brew computer club phase" and rocket to global acceptance.

JOURNAL: New article on "Containing Chaos" at the WPR

2009-07-07T10:53:54-04:00

I have a new article at the World Politics Review entitled "Containing Chaos." It's about systemic threats and the systemic solutions needed to solve them (although I don't touch on environmental threats, the threat profiles/solutions are similar). There's a free trial subscription if you want to read it. Here's the intro:

In 1946, George Kennan keyed the famous "Long Telegram," which identified the Soviet Union as an enemy of the United States. In 1947, the original telegram was reworked and published in Foreign Policy magazine as "The Sources of Soviet Conduct." Together, these documents formed the codex for the U.S. Cold War strategy of containment, and thereby the basis of the eventual U.S. victory in that conflict. Here's what a "Kennan" might have written for the 21st century....

QUOTEs that sum up the economic mood

2009-07-05T12:37:56-04:00

We must overhaul everything. We cannot have a system of rentiers and social dumping under globalisation. Either we have justice or we will have violence. It is a chimera to think that this crisis is just a footnote and that we can carry on as before." Nicholas Sarkozy.

NOTE: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing for the Telegraph, connects the dots between the collapse of the debt-fueled economic system and widespread social fragmentation/disorder. Employment, incomes, time worked, are all tanking. Choice quote:

The Centre for Labour Market Studies (CLMS) in Boston says US unemployment is now 18.2 %, counting the old-fashioned way. The reason why this does not "feel" like the 1930s is that we tend to compress the chronology of the Depression. It takes time for people to deplete their savings and sink into destitution. Perhaps our greater cushion of wealth today will prevent another Grapes of Wrath, but 20m US homeowners are already in negative equity (zillow.com data). Evictions are running at a terrifying pace.

LINKS: GG news

2009-07-02T12:09:19-04:00

Interesting items of interest:

Efficient markets and entrepreneurial guerrillas: CNN. "This soldier and three Afghan soldiers were captured by low-level militants and then quickly "sold" to the clan and network led by warlord Siraj Haqqani -- believed to be deeply involved in the action."

The new counter-insurgency "beltway think tank" at CNAS (the Center for New American Security) gets some push-back from Bill Lind and The American Conservative. The reason? They abhor the idea that military, armed with a "new" counter-insurgency doctrine bulked up by social welfare programs, can manufacture democratic capitalists in every corner of the world. Essentially, they think this is merely a reprise of the now thoroughly discredited neo-con theory (as in, all you need to do is topple the government and the people will immediately become democratic capitalists auto-magically), and doomed to failure/tears.

One more point on CNAS. Isn't this organization really the brain child of Tom Barnett given the sys-admin approach to foreign policy they are promoting? I believe it is.

Samuel Logan, fresh from his new book on the MS-13, thinks that looming leadership crisis/rift between the Gulf Cartel and the growing Zetas, will spark widespread violence/death not only Mexico, but in US cities.

JOURNAL: Financial Capitalism's Failure?

2009-07-01T20:59:02-04:00

Here's an article from the premier financial newspaper in the world, the Financial Times, on a situation that I believe is catalyzing the current crisis (hoisted from Paul Kedrosky's blog).

Just why is there so much debt in the Anglo-Saxon world? Bankers and regulators know well that it is in nobody’s long-term interests to have allowed borrowing to escalate to a position where the US now owes far more, as a multiple of the economy, than at the start of the Great Depression.
The answer is capitalism’s dirty little secret: excessive lending was the only way to maintain the living standards of the vast bulk of the population at a time when wealth was being concentrated in the hands of an elite. The amount by which the elite has benefited is startling, and illustrates the problem with lightly regulated free markets: the rich get much richer while the rest do not get richer at all. According to Société Générale economists, the inflation-adjusted income of the highest-paid fifth of US earners has risen by 60 per cent since 1970, while it has fallen by more than 10 per cent for the rest. As was recently pointed out in the New York Review of Books, the Walton family, of Wal-Mart fame, is wealthier than the bottom third of the US population put together – about 100m people. These are staggering statistics, confirmed by measures such as the US and UK’s ever-rising Gini coefficients, which estimate income disparity. Another way of putting this is that the share of profits in gross domestic product is at a 100-year high, or was until very recently.

More GG posts that relate to this topic:

Open Decision Making.

America's Economy and Open Decision Making.

Parasitic Predation.

Economic Cancer.

NOTE: The reason I posted about this and think it is interesting is simple. Like Kennan (the intellectual architect of Cold War's "containment" policy), it's important to recognize what really generates a long term victory in a protracted conflict. Then, like now, real victory requires a long term improvement in the quality of life -- from incomes to wealth to societal trust to fairness -- of the maximal number of people (to slow/reverse communism in his case and to slow/reverse disorder in ours) while at the same time, blunting the kinetic advance of the collective opposition at the least possible expense/disruption to the first goal. We appear to be failing at both of the goals required for long term victory. Incomes and societal trust are evaporating while we spend tens of millions to kill each insurgent (of which there is an endless supply, particularly if you seek them out).

JOURNAL: Resilience Judo

2009-06-30T14:07:26-04:00

There are growing signs -- from a black swan in savings/debt reduction to massive debt loads to quarterly trillion dollar losses in personal wealth to stagnant/falling consumer purchases to persistently low consumer confidence -- that the parasite ridden American "consumer" is finally dead. If this is true, the economic model of the latter half of the last Century is likely dead too, and that will mean wrenching change. It's my belief that the dominant solution is to prepare for a local future to ride out this storm. Here are some of my random (more random than I would like) thoughts on what you should do to prepare:

Ruthlessly reduce debt. Nothing on credit. Pay off every loan. Strategically walk away from underwater assets (like homes that are worth less than the mortgage). This will allow you to stay one step ahead of the death throes of the old economy.
Turn your hollow home into a productive asset. Most homes are devoid of any productive capacity. Adding energy, food, etc production to them turns them into real, productive assets. Get your assets out of financial derivatives (stocks, bonds, etc.) as fast as you can and put them into productive assets (not commodities) you can touch.
Make everything you can yourself. Grow your own food. Produce your own energy. Make/repair your own clothes. Turn costs into savings. Reskill to do this. The new "fashionable trend" isn't what you can buy, it's what you can make. Anyone that buys "designer or branded" anything is a fool.
Work online. Convert your skills into something that can be sold electronically (most of my complex work is done this way). Develop the skills necessary to work as part of a virtual team. Telecommute whenever possible (and push to do this, even if it means less money), reduce the number of cars/dress clothes/etc you own in synch with this conversion (and move to a less expensive locale when possible!). Always have two jobs going at the same time.
Build a local business. Own assets that produce and sell that production locally. Even if it is small, it will help down the line via contact networks/experience (a new spin on modern "networking"). Develop the niche skills that sell locally. Group/tribe up when possible to tackle larger opportunities.
Barter. Cashless trades. Convert what you have to what you need. Skill set bartering is amazingly effective. Become part of a local barter network (the backchannel).
Bring your family home. Grow your home to accommodate more people. Bring back parents and grown kids (with their families). This will allow you to pool incomes and radically reduce workload/costs. It's also beneficial for security. NOTE: I've found that consideration/compromise is the best way to handle an expansive family home environment.
Suggestions welcome!!

This change doesn't require cute and crunchy notions about "lifestyle" environmentalism. It's all about mitigation of stresses in the short to medium term as living conditions deteriorate, while at the same time preparing to ride the resilient community wave to rapid and sustained long term success/wealth.

JOURNAL: Taliban Cohesion

2009-06-30T09:17:45-04:00

Most people consider the "Taliban" an ideologically and hierarchically cohesive movement ala 20th Century insurgency. It's not. Instead, it's fragmented, highly entrepreneurial, tribally cohesive at a local level, and open source in structure. Until recently, its successes have led to divisions and a multiplication of goals (from efforts in Swat to Afghanistan). The recent US coerced push (to relieve pressure on Afghanistan) by the Pakistani military into Swat did push back the Taliban faction there.

Open source counter-insurgency would dictate that at the point Swat was regained, pressure should be removed (de-escalation) and divisions exploited to promote infighting between factions. However, exactly the opposite happened (an attempt to achieve maximal goals). The Pakistani military began to extend it offensive operations and US stepped up drone strikes.

A recent announcement and an ambush that killed 16 Pakistani troops in North Waziristan by a Taliban faction headed by guerrilla entrepreneur Hafiz Gul Bahadur suggests the opposite is occurring. His actions, in combination a broadcast of intentions by another faction headed by Maulvi Nazir, imply a focus on a defeating the Pakistani military and a closing of ranks/cooperation. The Washington Post has more:

"These two, Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, they were focused on Afghanistan," said Mahmood Shah, a security analyst and retired Pakistani army brigadier with experience in the northwestern tribal areas. "What we've heard is they've called back their fighters from Afghanistan and are bringing them to Pakistan."

While this may seem to be good news for operations in Afghanistan, it will certainly come at a severe price to Pakistan, particularly if the Pakistani army is forced to withdraw bloodied and more territory is lost. Even worse: this new cohesion opens up the opportunity for the insurgency to go viral in Pakistan.

LINKS: Energy Disruption

2009-06-30T08:22:34-04:00

Trends in energy production are higher costs of extraction (lower EROI, meaning more energy to extract energy), higher security costs (exogenous US military security efforts and more effective GG disruption), growing domestic consumption by energy producers (export land model), and depletion (peak oil, etc.). In sum, prices will continue to increase, likely spiking with each attempt at economic recovery. Some interesting items on the disruption front:

Bunkering. Mexico's paramilitary/criminal group, the zetas, are moving into bunkering oil from PEMEX pipelines.
Nigeria's oil output, under withering attacks by MEND, is losing 1.26 million bpd in production. Recent attacks on Shell facilities have been driven the global price for oil past $70 a barrel. Interesting that a disruptive shadow OPEC envisioned back in 2004, may through higher oil prices (abetted by hedge funds and investment banks), overcome government stimulus efforts to revive the economy.
The misapplication of Chinese stimulus money (it's been flowing into speculation in commodities markets instead of jobs/companies), is likely to lead to China owning much of Iraq's oil. China, given it's laissez faire approach to genocide in Sudan (a major source of Chinese oil), might be a welcome primary economic/security partner for the Shiite government in Iraq given its need to ruthlessly stamp out Sunni militias (the awakening movement).
The global guerrilla innovator Henry Okah to be released?

JOURNAL: Hollow States and Global Financial Predators

2009-06-29T11:18:21-04:00

Matt Taibbi (he spent 10 years as a journalist in Russia covering the rise of the oligarchs there) has done it again with another viral article, "The Great American Bubble Machine." (Rolling Stone, the link is to a copy). It's a must read. He's constructing a narrative of popular discontent that could gain traction as the rate of economic descent steepens again this fall.

A couple of global guerrilla themes here: incessant and morally bereft financial predation at the global level (financial tribalism?) and the emergence of hollow nation-states that serve merely as vehicles the enrichment of these predators.

NOTE: It's also an interesting reprise of the current carbon trading scheme -- essentially, instead of responding to environmental stress with real solutions (a push to create local resiliency) we get another big rip-off that will line the pockets of global banksters.

RC JOURNAL: Square Foot Gardening

2009-06-29T10:02:42-04:00

One of the most obvious and critical first steps toward community resilience (in tandem with ruthless debt reduction) is to start a garden. This provides you with:

Fresh, low cost, and high quality food during the growing season.
The skills and the head start needed to deal with systemic breakdowns in the agricultural supply chain or rapid price inflation of foodstuffs.
Income potential/community connection through your local farmer's market.

Unfortunately, many of the skills/tricks that our grandparents used (at least the smart ones) have been lost and the methodologies associated with traditional line gardening (rototilling, soil reclamation, constant weeding, etc.) is very difficult and time consuming. The best method I've found that will get you gardening with a minimum of hassle/time/money, produce high quality results, and will teach you many of the skills/tricks needed in a easy to learn method is called square foot gardening. Mel Bartholomew (many of you, hopefully, already know about him) has perfected a method of gardening over the last few decades that radically improves on traditional approaches.

You can access the entire approach through his new, and easy to read book: "Square Foot Gardening" Highly recommended.

What would be interesting is to do an ROI calculation on this method. Essentially, compare the investments in time/money etc. vs. the output (and the equivalent cost in food from grocery stores). Given the ease of installation, almost zero reliance on tools, and low mx requirements.. I suspect it would do very well. This method also looks fairly interesting for lawn gardening entrepreneurs (as in, everyone currently selling lawn mowing services should also be offering low cost garden services).

From a reader: My wife recently compelled me to buy a house in the 'burbs, tear up the sod from the front yard, and build several raised beds for square-foot gardening. At first "there were concerns" among lawn-loving neighbors, but now that it looks nice and is brimming with heirloom vegetables, herbs and flowers, neighbors regularly stop to exchange seeds, transplants, produce, compliments, gossip, favors, etc. Vegetable gardening in the front yard turns out to be a powerful way to forge ties of mutual support with others in your local community.

RC JOURNAL: Spin Economics

2009-06-24T11:47:16-04:00

When authorities resort to ~~propaganda~~ confidence building instead of substantive action in response to an actual crisis, you know you are in real trouble (Katrina, Iraq, etc.). We are seeing this again today in regards to the global economic crisis, with media amplified whispers of green shoots and bald pronouncements of immanent recovery.

It won't help. The underlying fundamentals are toxic: US gross debt as a percentage of GDP (currently at 375%) is still climbing, housing prices are still falling (wealth destruction as far as the eye can see), un/underemployment is still rising (an inability to service debt), the financial industry is back to its old tricks (bonuses are shooting through the roof again, etc.), China is still manipulating its currency (dashing prospects of future jobs), commodities (higher costs for daily life) are shooting up again, etc. Worse, what action has been taken is largely short term masking of symptoms and not a cure. Our government "brain-trust" is using all of its financial powder on deprecated 20th Century economic measures to prop up the industries that got us into this crisis: like the greasing of palms in the bloated construction industry (what relation that industry has to our future prosperity is a big mystery) and the flooding of a failing oligopoly (the financial industry) with free money.

In short, the economic decline we just experienced is being primed to continue (perhaps with greater force), when the spin eventually fails to convince. Without a means to rectify our course except for spin economics, the trend towards a post-Westphalian century replete with neo-feudalism and global guerrillas is on an inexorable march.

JOURNAL: Dual Use Technology

2009-06-23T08:36:39-04:00

BBC: "Hi-tech helps Iranian monitoring" 22 June 2009

Nokia Siemens, a joint venture between the Finnish and German companies, supplied the system to Iran through its Intelligent Solutions business, which was sold in March 2009 to Perusa Partners Fund 1LP, a German investment firm. The product allows authorities to monitor any communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging, instant messages, and web traffic.

Here's an interesting spin on dual use technology. Typically this term is used to describe how technology developed in the collective West can be used by terrorists and totalitarian regimes as weapons against the same. However, the lesson of Iran provides a different interpretation (obvious to some, less so to others). It appears that the technologies that Western governments demand for "enhanced law enforcement" such as systems that enable governments to monitor/archive all cell phone text messages are the same technologies that totalitarian governments use for repression (forensic analysis using these technologies will be used to torture and imprison dissidents in Iran).

Basically, if Western governments didn't provide the demand for "technologies or repression," they wouldn't be turned into products and sold to these regimes (or if they were, they would be much less functional and very, very expensive).

JOURNAL: Nigerian Amnesty?

2009-06-22T08:59:34-04:00

MEND's (an open source insurgency) campaign against the oil companies in the Niger delta continues to generate substantive results. Nearly a million barrels of oil production (per day) has already been shut down. Nigeria's government is facing a 32% shortfall in revenue (from lower oil prices and disruption) which is likely to increase unrest. Chevron has shut down onshore operations and most of the rest, from Agip to Shell, have removed non-essential personnel. Ukrainian weapons continue to flow in. Bunkered oil continues to flow out.

Tactically, MEND continues to innovate (already adept in standing orders 1, 2, 3 , and 4). With their most recent attacks against Shell, they have expanded their operations into the eastern part of the Niger Delta (relatively untouched to date). Note, the expansion of systems disruption (at the operational/strategic level) is a dominant strategy for post-industrial insurgency since it yields high ROIs, thins government forces, drains government/corporate coffers, generates limited popular opposition, etc. This is in stark contrast to the expansion of the low yield "blood and guts" terrorism that Taliban factions and their open source allies are using in Pakistan.

To combat the rise of MEND, the Nigerian government first attempted a classic crack down. Unable to locate leadership (most of the coordinators are out of country) or groups (hired and virtual) to bribe/kill, the army failed in its objectives. Now, the Nigerian government is planning to fund an amnesty program for Delta guerrillas. In a classic fashion, the amnesty program envisioned spends the bulk of its money on internal operations (rife with graft) with only a modest payments for participating guerrillas (~$250), minimal thought on reintegration/retraining, and vague notions of "reconstruction." It's doomed to failure. MEND is completely intact (not under substantive pressure by competitive groups), has strong sources of income/arms (due to connections to the global economic system), and continues to generate successful attacks (low casualties and high ROIs). The open source war Henry Okah started against global oil companies will continue.

JOURNAL: Stability Operations

2009-06-18T11:21:51-04:00

It should be clear that we are moving towards a world of increasing instability. In short, we will see an increasing number of black swans (see the brief: "The Increasing Frequency of Black Swans.").

What's interesting is how this should impact the current debate over nation-building and counter-insurgency (it isn't). Here's the problem. Both of these strategies are typically initiated as a response to an extreme event. However, both strategies dictate that we engage in operations that:

take a long time (often decades),
are very expensive,
utilize extremely sophisticated processes.

However, in a world where we see lots of extreme events that generate potentially catastrophic local consequences, we may be better served by strategies that focus on a return to minimal stability. This means that instead of focusing our efforts to create a functioning government, vibrant economy, and extreme safety that is less than one standard deviation from "normal averages" we should be doing the minimal necessary to prevent catastrophe. Essentially, bringing the local environment back to a couple of standard deviations from "normal" or what is sufficient for organic processes to repair local function.

CENTRALIZED OR DECENTRALIZED ENERGY?

2009-06-14T15:40:43-04:00

There's little doubt that the centralization (the current approach) of alternative energy production is more efficient than decentralization. It enables location optimization (better wind/sunlight), less management/industrial overhead per kWh, etc. It also leverages the existing industry design. However, this efficiency gain comes at a potentially fatal cost (which implies that most of the money currently being invested in this area, is going to be wasted). Here's why:

In order for alternative energy -- particularly solar PV -- to reach its potential, it must go through a rapid series of generational improvements in technology. Each generation will be much more economical than the preceding generation. Since, the volatility of energy prices has already dried up investments in new drilling in the oil sector: is little reason to doubt that it wouldn't be even worse in the alternative energy due to technological risk (as in, the tech used will go rapidly out of date in a handful of years). Given both sources of risk, corporate angst goes off of the scale.
Centralized generation requires the construction of vast amount of electrical transmission infrastructure. The combination of NIMBY (not in my back yard) opposition and a legacy of negligible investments in new electrical transmission infrastructure over the last 30 years, implies that this unlikely.
The costs of centralized production can only draw on government and corporate financing. Even if we see another financial bubble emerge (unlikely), it's uncertain whether there will be remotely enough financial capital necessary for anything more than a minimal transformation in mid to long term time horizons. The government is tapped and the financial system is on life support (it's rife with zombie banks).

In fact, this situation is very similar to something seen in the computing industry, and why a decentralized model emerged. In that previous situation, there were attempts to centralize all computing and provide terminals to end-users (France's Minitel and Oracle's Network Computers). There were also attempts to provide interactive multimedia through boxes that provided interactive TV (ala 1994). However, in all of these cases the rate of change, the amount of required investment, the speed of end-user innovation, etc. doomed these attempts to failure. The same is likely true for alternative energy. The best approach, and the only one likely to succeed, is the decentralized model. To goose it, a variant of the following should occur (with, or without, official sanction):

Personal decision making. Capital, currently tied up in malfunctioning financial markets, must be unleashed at the individual level. The energy IRA/401K is a dominant approach since it combines long time horizons, a massive pool of capital, and the ability to turn existing costs into revenue. Further, since decision making is decentralized (rather than being routed through a predatory financial system), the allocation of this available capital will be much more efficient than centralized approaches (to new methods, tech, etc.).
A network. Use of the existing transmission grid at the local level must allow free riders. In the very same way the early Internet rode on the back of the telephone system, decentralized alternative energy must be able to ride freely on the back of the existing local transmission grid (microgrids). The goal: "plug-n-play" utilization.
A platform. Finally, a standardized modular approach to the elements necessary for alternative energy must be established. This would allow improved technologies, particularly new PV modules, to snap into existing installations. We should use the way standards developed and were codified on the Internet as a starting point for this effort.

Again, critical responses are welcome.