Up Front:  

• I'm currently proof reading, and enjoying immensely, the new book "Kill Decision" by my good friend Dan Suarez.  It's about autonomous drones.  That's legendary timing for a new book (on top of that, his approach to the genre blows away Clancy at his best).  So, as you can see, I'm particularly jazzed about this topic right now.
• I've done some consulting with Northrop Grumman on the future of drones.  
• Finally, if you want to get ahead of the curve on this, read some of my older posts on drones and supermpowerment over the last four years.  

Onto the post:::

Here's the future.  Courtesy of Northrop Grumman.

It's an autonomous aircraft/drone that has a full weapons bay (4,500 lbs).   Say that word again:  autonomous.   That's the breakthrough feature.  This also means:

It can make its own "kill decision."  Again and again and again.  That decision is going to get better and better and cheaper and cheaper (Moore's law has made insect level intelligence available for pennies, rat intelligence is next).

It isn't vulnerabe to a pilot in Nevada directing it land in Iran. Oops.

It will eventually (sooner than you think) be the "Queen," making decisions for thousands of smaller swarmed (semi-autonomous) drones it lays on a battle zone (aka "city").   

In sum:  It allows an unprecedented centralization of conventional violence.   

Granted, it will be possible for small groups to put together systems like this on the cheap.  For offensive or defense reasons.

However, I'm much more worried about their ability to automate repression, particularly if combined with software bots that sift/sort/monitor all of your data 24x7x365 (already going on).  

Hey folks.  I've started up a site focused exclusively on resilient communities.  I'm still ramping up the site's content, but it's going to be very cool.  

The goal of the site is to do deep and original research on resilience.  

I'm currently doing that and the fruits of that effort will be in the first reports.  You can keep tabs on what I'm doing by subscribing to the site.  

Why am I writing it?  I think we are headed for something pretty bad and I found myself in a position to help people get through it.

____________

ON another note, I should be ramping up Global Guerrillas again soon with more of a focus on conflict/warfare.

What happens when a government hollows out?  

Answer:  Private interests take control of the machinery of state to enhance and protect their profitability.  

In some cases, this results in simple looting (like the US mortgage fiasco and EU meltdown).  In others, Byzantine laws and rules are enacted that crush innovation and trample personal rights.  

Unfortunately, based on this measure, the US and the EU is well on the way to becoming hollow.  There's no going back.

Take today's example.  At the behest of the Copyright Cartel, the US Justice Department's FBI raided the offices, seized the assets, and criminally indicted/arrested the senior management of the Hong Kong based firm, Megaupload.  The crime?  Copyright infringement MAY have happened on this extremely popular file sharing site. 

What?  

And this was on the heals of the attempt to pass the global censorship bills SOPA/PIPA.  Here's an amazingly lucid video, by the new media professor Clay Shirky, on what those bills actually do and the contorted thinking behind them.  

The first example Clay provides has the feel of the last days of the USSR.  A government/private enforcement regime, so intrusive, it stops kids from doodling on birthday cakes.  Wow!

I'm currently writing a short e-book on open insurgency.  Most of the way through with it.  The majority of the effort isn't the amount of writing I need to do.  Writing is easy.  

Deleting words to squeeze the thought into the smallest package possible isn't.  For example.  One chapter is entitled, "the promise"  It's divided into three sections:  

1. Simple.
2. Proven.
3. Plausible.

Very sparse structure.  Very concise/cogent explanations for each section.

Will let you know when it's ready.  

A war with Iran has three drivers:

• It is building a nuclear weapon.  The Israeli security lobby is going nuts. 
• Iran is sitting on top of the world's 2nd largest reserves of natural gas (behind Russia).  Given how important natural gas is to future global energy needs and the need to hedge Russia's control over the global market, this can't be allowed.
• The US defense industry needs a new way to drive spending now that bin Laden is dead.  Iran is now at the top of the list (China/Cyberwarfare is next on the list). 

With these drivers in place, all that is needed to is to remove barriers to a conflict.

First, and this is a prerequisite for any state vs. state conflict in the 21st Century, Iran needs to be disconnected from the global economic system.  That is now happening.  New sanctions (shades of Iraq) are truly disconnecting Iran, even from China.

The last impediment?  An international mandate for a war with Iran (or at least, a major bombing campaign to destroy facilities and infrastructure).  That effort is in process, but it's not going so well.  China apparently doesn't like the idea (it's hard to get China to agree on stuff like this when they are being used by the US Defense Industry as its next boogeyman).  

However, things are different on the Iranian side.  In Iran, the crunch has begun.

The effects of these sanctions has ALREADY created hyperinflation in Iran (which will soon unwind the entire Iranian economy and create political chaos).  Add to this a weekly drumbeat of special operations/drone assassinations and bombings/explosions aimed at Iranian senior personnel/facilities within the Iranian nuclear/missile program (which means they will be unlikely to build a bomb before economic disaster rolls them).

The only option for Iran?  

Diplomacy?  That isn't going to work.  Most of the world is already planning on the economic spoils a new Iranian regime would unearth.  They have no interest in saving the current regime.  

Stop developing a nuclear bomb?  That wouldn't work.  The train on a regime change in Iran has left the station and it won't stop until it happens.

Military action?  Nah.  Iran's military is a waste of money, given its status as a speed bump to western military action.  A move to block the straights of Hormuz would be a military disaster.

Systems disruption?  Yes.  A global effort to disrupt energy systems would put pressure on the west to relent.  The only real question is how they will disrupt it (without using overt military power).  

The Occupy Network/Brand is a perma protest against the future.  

Occupy's Cause of the day:  To express discontent with the "indefinite detention" provisions of the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act).   

Action:  Freezing Grand Central Station during rush hour.   

The classical definition of a darknet is: a private file sharing network.  That's a bit outdated (those of you that have been reading Global Guerrillas for a while are already way ahead of the power curve on this).  It's time to update/widen the term to accommodate a wider range of modern activity.  A darknet:

is a closed, private communications network that is used for purposes not sanctioned by the state (aka illegal).

Darknets can be built in the following ways:

• Software.  A virtual, encrypted network that runs over public network infrastructure (most of the US government/economy uses this method).  
• Hardware.  A parallel physical infrastructure.  This hardware can be fiber optic cables or wireless.  Parallel wireless infrastructures (whether for cell phones or Internet access are fairly inexpensive to build and conceal).  
• IN most cases, we see a mix of the two.  

Examples of Darknets:

• The Zetas have built a huge wireless darknet (a private, parallel communications network) that connects the majority of Mexico's states.  Most of the other cartels also have wireless darknets and there are also lots of local darknets.   
• Hezbollah (in Lebanon) runs its own fiber optic network. 
• TOR.  A voluntary, decentralized ad hoc network that anonymizes network connections.
• Botnets (up to 4 m computers strong) that can be used for global private communications.  
• Etc.  The list goes on  and on....

The future?  Darknets that power alternative economies.  A network layer for accelerating the dark globalization of the $10 Trillion System D.

Follow me as @johnrobb on Twitter. 

Many of us believe that networked resilient communities are the key to the future.  These communities are not only a way to survive the current global collapse, they are something more:  The next step in social/economic organization.  For those of us that are successful (by hook or crook) in building a resilient community, it will be a way of life so productive, vibrant and life affirming that will make our current lives look stagnant, backward, and feudal in comparison. 

Currently, our big challenge is to find ways to acclerate the shift to resilient communities as quickly as possible.  Why?  The ongoing and rapid delcine in the global economic and political environment I've been describing here for the last five years, will make it increasingly more difficult to make a successful shift despite a greater willingness to do so (as in:  finally seeing how truly screwed we all are).  So, how can we outrun the current collapse into economic depression and political chaos?  

One of the fastest ways to a) change behaviors, b) deploy tools, and c) route around bariers (political/economic corruption) is to do it digitally.  Digital deployment is the way to get the "networked" portion of "networked resilient communities" rolled out. Let me show you how fast it can be.  Here's the rate of deployment and adoption for new technologies over the last Century.  The chart from Peter Brimelow that I found on Rob Carlson's site:

Note that with each new product, particularly those with strong network effects, we can see two things:

1. the lag between discovery and deployment is dropping over time.
2. the rate of adoption has accelerated over time.  

Now that nearly everyone has a computer (either on a desk or in a smart phone), the rate of adoption for new tech has dropped from years to quarters.  There's almost no lag between development and deployment, and applications that represent major innovations can roll out to globally significant levels in months.  Here's a chart from Asymco that uses the most recent Android data.

 Wow.  Applications that run on these phones deploy even faster. Given how fast things move now, it's not hard to imagine that a new economic system (better design), decentralized financial wire service, or P2P manufacturing system could sweep the world in months, drawing in tens of millions of people into a ways of creating, trading, and sharing wealth.  In short, new digital systems that make the transition to local production within networked resilient communities easier and faster since they can help generate the wealth required to do it without starving/freezing and the vision of the future that motivates people to persist despite setbacks.

Follow me as @johnrobb on Twitter. 

As a store of value or an asset Bitcoin's shady.  Here's why:  since the supply of bitcoin is limited and knowledge/use of it is growing (potentially virally) it's the perfect breeding ground for a speculative bubble.  In a world awash with scams and financial speculation (a defining characteristic of our time), it was only a matter of time before the pump and dump mobsters moved in. So, for those of you with the stomach to take bets with eastern european mobsters and US financial boiler rooms or if your willing to bet on the fickleness of viral adoption, you might be interested in taking a look at bitcoin as an asset.

The Bitcoin Bubble  June 2011, when Bitcoin was trading at nearly $20

Naturally, the Bitcoin bubble collapsed.  It hadn't found a true use yet and the entire rise was based on mania.  Also naturally, (when the tide goes out you get to see who is swimming naked) the collapse also revealed a large number of scammers.  

When the price hit ~$2 a coin or ~$18 m in market capitalization, the big question was: would it recover because it had some intrinsic value or would it collapse to zero.  My call was that it would hit a bottom and that's exactly what it did.  It's now trading up around $4 a coin.  This bounce might actually be the answer to its use as a currency:  does Bitcoin have any intrinsic value?

The Currency Test

My friend Doug Casey points out that Aristotle once defined the 5 essential elements of currency as:

1. Durable.   Yes.
2. Divisible.   Yes.
3. Convenient.   Yes.
4. Consistent.  Yes.
5. Valuable (intrinsic)  Who knows?  
6. Doug also adds that a good currency shouldn't be arbitrarily inflatable.  Yes.

Aristotle's test is still the best way to test the viability of a currency.  Both Doug and I have looked at Bitcoin using this test and the only test it failed was:  is it intrinsically valuable?  Did it have any intrinsic value, like gold's use in jewelry/electronics or the value the dollar derives from protection afforded it by the US government?  Until last month, that was an open question.  Now, it appears that the answer to this question is, drum roll please...

YES.  Bitcoin appears to have intrinsic value as a P2P transaction system.  

A P2P (person to person) transaction system can be used to for many different things, least of all as a currency for retail transactions.  One of the more interesting of these uses is it growing use as a wire transfer system like Western Union for the $10 Trillion and rapidly growing System D, the world's shadow/black economy.  Why is a P2P transaction system perfect for this?  It isn't reliant on trusted third parties to run/operate the network (which is good, since in today's environment, they are impossible to find in government or finance).

Bitcoins future?

Bitcoin may never be worth much as a speculative financial instrument.  Since the bitcoin system is both highly decentralized and a free market (two attributes that are in short supply in today's environment), it's likely that bitcoin will remain efficiently priced at between $3-4 for quite a while.  A price just over the cost of providing transaction verification (servers cost + electricity).  That's a good thing.  This price stability will make building an open source wire service for System D, much easier to do.  There's a big entrepreneurial opportunity here.

Follow me as @johnrobb on Twitter. 

Over half of Air Force UPT (undergraduate pilot training) grads are now assigned to pilot drones rather than a real aircraft.*  The big question is why are drone pilots, guys that fly robots remotely from a computer terminal, going to a very expensive year of pilot training?  I can understand why the Air Force has chosen to send drone jockeys to pilot training:  

• A shift to piloting drones rather than real aircraft is an assault on organizational culture of the Air Force.  In the Air Force, pilots do the fighting and as a result take most of the leadership positions.  
• A transition to robotics upends that arrangement, and is why the USAF has strenuously resisted taking control of the drone mission until recently.  
• In this light, sending these drone jockeys to a very expensive year of UPT is an attempt to ease the cultural transition.  

However, culture aside, is it the best training?  

Drone Pilots Today

I suspect it isn't.  Here's why.  The assumption that combat with drones is going to be the same as combat without them is flawed.  It's going to be VERY different.  So far, it's hard to see that.  Most engagements today involve:

• a drone flying leisurely over a village in Pakistan controlled by a pilot at a terminal in Las Vegas/Nellis, 
• waiting for five or more armed men to assemble in a single house (which is a terrorist "signature" that green lights authorization to eliminate the threat), and 
• then pushing a button and holding a cursor over the house until it disappears.  

That's not going to last long.  

Drone Combat

How does the addition of drones change the nature of combat/conflict?  Why?  The tech is moving too fast.  Here are some of the characteristics we'll see in the near future:

• Swarms.  The cost and size of drones will shrink.  Nearly everyone will have access to drone tech (autopilots already cost less than $30).  Further, the software to enable drones to employ swarm behavior will improve.  So, don't think in terms of a single drone. Think in terms of a single person controlling hundreds and thousands.
• Intelligence.  Drones will be smarter than they are today.  The average commercial chip passed the level of insect intelligence a little less than a decade ago (which "magically" resulted in an explosion of drone/bot tech).  Chips will cross rat intelligence in 2018 or so.  Think in terms of each drone being smart enough to follow tactical instructions.  
• Dynamism.  The combination of massive swarms with individual elements being highly intelligent puts combat on an entirely new level.  It requires a warrior that can provide tactical guidance and situational awareness in real time at a level that is beyond current training paradigms.

Training Drone Bonjwas

Based on the above requirements, the best training for drones (in the air and on land) isn't real world training, it's tactical games (not first person shooters).  Think in terms of the classic military scifi book, "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. Of the games currently on the market, the best example of the type of expertise required is Blizzard's StarCraft, a scifi tactical management game that has amazing multiplayer tactical balance/dynamism.  The game is extremely popular worldwide, but in South Korea, it has reached cult status.  The best players, called Bonjwas, are treated like rock stars, and for good reason:

• Training of hand/eye/mind.  Speeds of up to 400 keyboard mouse (macro/micro) tactical commands per minute have been attained.  Think about that for a second.  That's nearly 7 commands a second.
• Fight multi-player combat simulations  for 10-12 hours a day.  They live the game for a decade and then burn out.   Mind vs. mind competition continously.
• To become a bonjwa, you have to defeat millions of opponents to reach the tournament rank, and then dominate the tournament rank for many years.  The ranking system/ladder that farms new talent is global (Korea, China, SEA, North America, and Europe), huge (millions of players), and continuous (24x7x365). 

Currently, the best Starcraft bonjwa in the world is Flash. Here's his ELO rating.  

Nearly all of the above would likely apply to cyber warfare too.  

Follow me as @johnrobb on Twitter. 

Lots of people seem to be getting value out of these posts on personal resilience, so I will keep adding them.  

Question:  

Do you know of any service that will check a person's exposure on the web? I wasn't always as careful with my online activities as I'm trying to be now, and it'd be nice to know what sort of damage control I'm looking at in terms of going forward with my personal brand.

Answer:  

Type your name into Google.  Take a look at the first 3-5 pages of links you get (as well as the images).  If you don't see that much, don't worry about it.  If you see anything that you control and can delete, do it now. It will take a couple of months, but it will eventually fade away.  Other than that, there isn't much you can do about it.  

Here's what I recommend:  The BEST way to deal with old info is to ignore it. Focus on the future. Put up info on what you are doing every day (if possible).   Put up project updates, pictures, short paragraphs on something you are working on, etc.  It's something, once you get the hang of it, you can do in ten minutes. Something you can do every other day or so (think of it like exercising, it's a long term investment in your future).  In a short period of time, you will have so much info on the Web about you, that anything that came before it is, for all intents and purposes, invisible.

Like life.  Don't waste time trying to fix the past. It's a waste of time and nobody really cares anyway. It is what you are doing now that matters.

What do you think of the following:  YouTube has an "informal system" that allows companies with copyrights to automatically scan all uploads for potential violations.  If the software detects the "possibility" of a violation (image, tune, trademark, etc.), it automatically tells YouTube to delete the content.  This software is so automated, it can censor millions of uploads a day without human intervention.

Here's an example of how this censoring system was used to block speech that Universal music found objectionable:

1. A site called MegaUpload, a "large file" sharing service based in Hong Kong, is targeted by copyright holders, including Universal Music, for shutdown.  They believe the site makes "copyright piracy" easier.  
2. To fight back on the media front, MegaUpload, a popular (50 m users a day), pays $3 million to  produce a music video that promotes the service.  The video features big name musical talent.
3. MegaUpload posts the music video to YouTube to share it with a global audience.
4. Universal Music, uses special access it has the to the YouTube system (inappropriately named the "content management system") that allows it to scan all videos posted to the service for potential uses of Universal musical content or the mention of or likenesses of artists it has under contract.  
5. Universal Music identifies that several of its artists are in the MegaUpload video.  It automatically signals YouTube to remove/take down the video.  YouTube complies.  It does so automatically and without verification that Universal even has a valid claim to the copyright.  Why? 
6. YouTube built this "management" system to make it easy for big corporate copyright holders (99.9% of copyright holders don't get access to this system, they get a form) to easily remove content. The reasons is clear: Current law says that upon notification from a "copyright holder" that some hosted content is in violation of copyright, a service provide (YouTube in this case) must immediately remove the content or face up to $150,000 in fines per violation.  So, rather than risk this fine, YouTube has decided to let big copyright companies directly censor contributions to their site.  
7. MegaUpload decides to challenge the takedown. Universal Music fights back by claiming that some of their artists (Will.i.am for example) did not authorize the video and this video is a clear violation of their rights.  This proves to be a lie.  After a substantail amount of legal wrangling, it's proven that all of the artists in the video signed releases.
8. YouTube finally reinstates the video.  MegaUpload is told it can't sue Universal for damages because the system that deletes content from YouTube is based on informal notifications of violations from copyright licensees (fake notifications vs. real, valid, and legal ones?).  You should expect to see the same type of "informal" censorship with SOPA, except with ENTIRE sites and domains.

Follow me as @johnrobb on Twitter. 

Hi John

There's a revolution going on in biotech.  The market for biotech is booming (from drugs to products) and it's getting much less expensive to do.  How much less expensive? The cost of the equipment needed to build a functional lab has dropped to something an individual can afford to put in their basement.  That's GREAT news for those of us thinking about a resilient future.

A recent discussion on Twitter with Dr. Rob Carlson yielded some sharp insight how biospaces (shared biolabs at the local level) might impact resilience.  It was so good I immediately thought I'd share it my compatriots on Global Guerrillas.  

I've pointed to Rob's work on rates of productivity growth in biotech, aptly named "Carlson Curves" before.  It's great analysis.  He also runs an informative blog.   For example:  Check out this tour of well appointed biolab in a silicon valley garage from a couple of years ago.  Anyway, enough introductions, onto the discussion.  If you haven't read a twitter message before, the message begins with who the message is to.

@rob_carlson Hey Rob, what's the status of garage bio and/or biohacking spaces?
@johnrobb Well, *my* garage bio lab is bumping along. Hard to say how widespread they are. Have visited many, but no good systematic data.

@johnrobb @genspacenyc and @biocuriouslab seem to be thriving. Also a lab in LA, and perhaps one starting in DC area. Depends on people.

@johnrobb The FBI/#DIYbio workshops are always full, but not clear how many attendees are actually hacking.

@genspacenycNYC
The first community biolab in NYC! Come say hi and learn to design new organisms! (We're not kidding)  http://www.genspace.org

@biocuriouslab      Sunnyvale, CA
BioCurious? Experiment with friends! A Bay Area hackerspace for #biotech, equipped for professional science and #DIYbio. Join at biocurious.org!

Paula

____________________

Paula,

This a great question and there isn't any way I'm going to be able to do it justice in this post.  

Let's start: You just lost your job.  You don't have any savings.  Ok.  

Frankly, almost everyone I know has been in that situation before, and before online brands were possible it was 10x tougher to recover from it.

If you actually do have an online brand, you should have been leveraging that network for opportunity/income well before your offline world fell apart.  That amount of income/job loss typically doesn't happen overnight.  There are signs, but you need to pay attention to them. 

Let's say you have been preparing for this day by building an online brand (profession/interests/hobbies/etc.).  If so, you are ALREADY connected to people in your area of interest and a significant amount of credible online documentation related to what you can accomplish.  

1. Optimally, you have already found ways to generate some income (even if it is just a little bit) from your network.  If that's the case, you already know some what it takes to make money on your own.  Time to ramp it up.  
2. Ask your network for advice.  Swallow your pride and tell them what you are looking for and remind them of what you have to offer.  Don't complain about be broke or desperate (it doesn't help you one bit).  In most cases, this will generate job/gig leads (good online communities of interest that you have participated in can generate much more work than you think) and almost always great advice relevant to your situation.
3. If you have services or a product to sell, leverage your brand to sell them.  Every area of interest/hobby/etc. is valuable in some way.  Use your network to spread the word.  It's never been less expensive to sell anything today (you can publish a book or pamphlet for free now via on demand publishing, you can set up a storefront for peanuts, advertising networks are everywhere and potentially lucrative if you have traffic...) If possible, use all of them at once!

Hope this helps.  If you do find and decide to take another standard job, make sure you keep as many of the online income streams you can.  

Sincerely,

John Robb