Global Guerrillas

LINKS: GG news

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?

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

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

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

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

Matt Taibbi 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

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

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

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?

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

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?

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.

RESILIENT COMMUNITY: ENERGY/FOOD IRA/401K

Here's a think piece on how to generate the huge funds required for a shift to resilient communities.  Still need to work this through, but it offers some amazing opportunities for financially bootstrapping local organizations working on community resilience.  

________________

The American consumer is likely dead.  A new frugality has swept the nation in an attempt to ward off lower standards of living in the future.  The question now becomes: what comes after frugality?  The answer is based on the following observations/assumptions:

• High debt (up to 375% of GDP, 85% over the peak in 1929, in the US and still growing) and the death of the American consumer will lead to slow or negative growth in GDP for years to come.  This means that liquid financial assets will generate low returns for as far as the eye can see.
• Financial markets are only suitable for sophisticated participants (despite claims to the contrary) and not accessible by the average citizen. Scams, booms/busts, and all sorts of predatory behavior abounds -- and the government has become completely unable to mitigate it.   
• Costs, for most basic elements of life such as food/energy, will rapidly increase over the next decade.  Whether it is peak oil (or its cousin, faster growth in demand for energy than supply is able to provide), out of control inflation (the fed attempts to inflate our way out of our debts), a weak job market (which depresses incomes), etc. these costs will likely outpace incomes.

The solution on an idea that should be apparent, but maybe not to most.  Simply, that the ownership of productive assets (essentially, those assets that generate goods/services that can be sold) is vastly superior to ownership their financial derivatives (stock funds, retirement accounts, etc.) -- we once were a nation of entrepreneurs, now we are a nation of indentured servants.  

A Real Ownership Society

The judo move to pull this off is the creation of community -- county, town, neighborhood, etc. -- funds/mechanisms that enable individuals to move a portion of their tattered/depleted tax protected savings in IRAs/401ks into accounts that build/own/operate local solar energy production and food production.  At the entry level, the capacity required is only aimed at one customer: the investor.   With the long lead time and preferential treatment of tax deferred retirement savings, this mechanism has the ability to offset the extremely long payoff cycles of local solar/food investments and thereby turn cost centers into savings vehicles.

The typical solar transaction would look like this (I'm using aggressive numbers):

Cost per kWh:  $0.20 

Installation of a 8,400 watt solar PV system (able to generate 10,000 kWh per year in New England):  $62k after tax treatment

Return on investment (if retail rates are paid):  $2,000 per year or 2.4% on the investment.

If the payment to the account for the electricity is tax deductible (assuming a 20% bracket) as an investment, that return jumps to:  $2,400 or 3.9%.

Not a bad rate of return, if you can achieve it, particularly if you consider the benefits of turning a cost center (the money you pay for electrical energy currently) into a savings mechanism.  Further, as returns accumulate, it makes possible new investments in productive systems with additional cash flow opportunity.  

Apply the same methodology to lawn gardening or farm "shares/subscriptions" and the same results are likely to apply.  Food expenses are turned into savings.  Ownership of local food production is the result.

Please feel free to critique this concept: or provide new insight that could make it better. 

NOT CYBER COMMAND, NETWORK COMMAND!

Here's some thinking on the mission of Cyber Command that may be helpful. I've had more than a few concerns about the idea of Cyber Command (which is about to suck in tens of billions of $$).

Conceptually, it seems malformed and it doesn't appear to comport to the real world mission environment. Worse, it also seems that the defense contractors will soon enter this environment, and with their entry (which will focus on selling the legacy systems and skill sets that they currently own or are building) any hope of rationalizing our spending with strategy will become remote. 

IF that happens, we will be caught in a funding loop, and redirecting existing spending (allocated to systems, people and thinking that have little applicability to the mission environment) to real world strategic and tactical needs will be impossible. Here's the conceptual problem. Cyber defense and offense doesn't occur in a vacuum. It is actually only a part of a much more important part of warfare: the defense and disruption of networks. 

The big difference between warfare in this century and the last is that we now live in an interconnected world. There are physical and logical networks that underly our most basic functions -- from DoD to government to economic. Further, there are information and social networks that underly our moral and psychological cohesion (rumors, viral stories, etc can blast open holes in our social fabric and create non-cooperative centers of gravity). The upshot is that the US should be building a "Network Command" and not a Cyber Command. 

Here's a quick summary of its four focus areas: 

• The defense of physical and logical networks that underly organizational and commercial function. This not only means the defense of US networks, but global and targeted local networks (i.e. Iraq) as well. The vast majority of the most damaging attacks on networks that have occurred have been physical. Physical attacks on critical networks shut down Iraq's economy for nearly 3 years. Recently, in Mexico, two physical attacks on a natural gas pipeline system cost the Mexican economy $2.5 billion. Therefore, the ability to accurately map, monitor, and rapidly secure (after being invited in) these networks from both physical and logical attacks is paramount (external: from small hacker/guerrilla groups, internal: from employees intent on sabotage). Securing critical networks involves everything from physical/logical security of critical nodes to sensor grids/UAVs that secure transmission networks (think in terms of how you would secure Saudi Arabia's infrastructure during a crisis -- to prevent a catastrophic shutdown during a period of turmoil). 

• Offensive network operations involves both physical and logical attacks on a target countries critical networks. Dominance of these networks is critical to victory in any conflict. Network dominance of infrastructure networks through both physical and logical attack. This rationalizes the ideas behind "effects based operations" and once fleshed out can be used to eliminate the "fluffy" thinking that EBO thinking is plagued by. 

• The defense of social and information networks is critical to maintaining social/psychological cohesion. This efforts works to shore up our own networks as well as extend them (to allies). It also works to shut down emergent viral vectors (information) that can cascade through social/information networks wrecking havoc. 

• The offensive version of this type of network warfare is to break the cohesion of the social systems of the enemy through impeding their ability to keep their network cohesive and introducing viral information that causes their networks to cleave. This type of social/information warfare rationalizes the ideas behind Information Operations and Strategic Communications. 

Anyway, this is a high level view of a way forward that is both understandable (by everyone involved) and applicable to the real world mission environment. It also finds a home for what are now disconnected and essentially adrift efforts (IO, SC, Cyber, etc.).  

JOURNAL: UN online University

Essentially free tuition.  Able to handle 15,000 students for $6 m a year (~$400 per student).  There's absolutely no reason, with the right level of execution, that this effort can't produce:

"An Ivy League level education for $20 a month..."  See Industrial education.

PS:  College/university education at the undergraduate level is now merely credential farming (the value achieved based on the value of the school's brand).  Worse, easy debt drove scintillating inflation rates in higher education.  Now, nearly the entire value of a degree (improvements in lifetime earnings), has been captured by the educational industry.  

JOURNAL: Rat Intelligence

See this brief, "Of Rats and Superempowerment" to put this into context.  It implies that the following is inevitable:

PhysOrg Article, "The future of robots is rat-shaped."

"The autonomy of robots today is similar to that of an insect," snorts Guillot, a researcher at France's Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR), one of the "Psikharpax" team. 

Rather than try to replicate human intelligence, in all its furious complexities and higher levels of language and reasoning, it would be better to start at the bottom and figure out simpler abilities that humans share with other animals, they say. These include navigating, seeking food and avoiding dangers. 

And, for this job, there can be no better inspiration than the rat, which has lived cheek-by-whisker with humans since Homo sapiens took his first steps. But the European researchers believe that Psikharpax is unique in its biomimickry, sophistication of sensors and controls and software based on rat neurology. Data from these artificial organs goes to Psikharpax's "brain," a chip whose software hierarchy mimicks the structures in a rat's brain that process and analyse what is seen, heard and sensed.

By the end of the next decade, rat intelligence equivalent software that can interact successfully with complex environments will likely be an ubiquitously available low cost commodity.  In robots (worse, in software bots on "captured" PCs) or not, this allows for torrential levels of self-replication and thereby individual super-empowerment.  LOL:  Willard redux?  

Think:  Navigating complex defenses, seeking vulnerable systempunkts and causing cascades of failure.

STANDING ORDER 11: co-opt, don't own, basic services

On a roll with a Roger's Rules or Sun Tzu approach to post-industrial insurgency.  Probably will roll these up when I'm done, expand the discussions for each, and put them into a PDF.  Refinements and critiques are always welcome.

_________________

Open source insurgencies typically don't supply basic services (within the nation-state context, political goods) or assume any responsibility for their delivery, to controlled autonomous zones and their resident populations.   Instead, they parasitically ride on a degraded form of the global/national economy's corporate and public services -- from electricity to water to food.  Within controlled zones, the objective is to:

...co-opt, don't own, basic services...

Co-option of basic services enables a steady stream of income from taxation/theft.  The ongoing flow of these services enables a relatively normal functioning of the underlying social construct.  It also enables global guerrillas the flexibility to focus exclusively on member/group enrichment and its ongoing war to hollow out the nation-state.  In the event that broader disruption has forced the creation of black market services (as in an alternative power grid, as we saw in Baghdad), this alternative service is operated within the confines of a protection racket and is not owned directly.  

Alternative services, that are owned and operated by the insurgent group, are typically not advisable unless no other alternative exists -- as in, a completely hollow or deeply failed nation-states.  

STANDING ORDER 10: release often and early

Innovations, from tactics to weapons, should be released as soon and as often as practicable.  Perfectionism, sclerotic planning processes, excessive secrecy, risk aversion, and other plagues found in hierarchical organizations are the enemy of success.  The rule is:

...release early and often...

Make the attack to demonstrate the innovation and generate the coverage (media).  Let the other members of the open source insurgency advance the ball.  Remember, with many minds looking at the problem, no bug/deficiency/defect is too difficult to overcome.  

STANDING ORDER 9: share or copy everything that works

In open source warfare, there is no pride in exclusive ownership.  Everything that can be shared, should be shared.  Everything that can be used, should be used.  In sum:

...share or copy everything that works...

Small insurgent groups don't have the capability to advance and innovate, over the long term, solely through internal efforts.  They must rely on other groups to advance the ball for them.  To continue to improve, the group must be quick to copy improvements that appear to work, regardless of the source.  Further, since the success of a single group increases with the success of the whole open source insurgency, every innovation must be shared the moment it is put into use.  

STANDING ORDER 8: self-replicate

This is a hard point to grasp, but it provides a substantial amount of leverage for small groups.  It's important to manufacture copies of yourself that can advance your goals whenever possible.  In short:

...self-replicate...  

This can take a direct physical form in the case of technological copies -- this includes everything from software bots (which can reach millions of "hacked" computers) and genetically engineered contagion.  These technological copies will only get smarter and more responsive as technology improves.  

Another method is to create socially engineered copies of your organization through the use of social media.  Basically, this means providing the motivation, knowledge, and focus necessary for an unknown person (external and totally unconnected to your group) to conduct operations that advance your group's specific goals (or the general goals of the open source insurgency).  All forms of self-replication will rapidly improve with advances in technology and connectivity.