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John Robb now has a Facebook page for Global Guerrillas, where he posts quick snippets of big ideas. It seems to be a replacement for his old, informal, personal blog which served a similar purpose some years back. In any event, John had a spectacular picture of Mexico City and an intriguingly dystopian caption:

Mexico City. 

Future of warfare. Megacities + millions of drones.

I wandered into a Mexican shantytown once, back in the 1990’s . Not sure I would care to repeat the experience at the present time.

Robb’s facebook post started me thinking. If drones of all sizes and functions become ubiquitous someday, it creates a great incentive for the powerful, at least to safeguard their privacy, to apply human ingenuity toward concealment, countermeasures and postmodern “citadels”.

All the moreso, if “megacities’ are all girdled in vast seas of slums. Imagine the LA or London riots with 20 times the underclass population. The bloody experience of the New York City Draft Riots during the Civil War taught the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age to support the building of public and private armories to defend the gentle classes from the great uprising that never came.

Fortification is something of a lost art, but it was up until recent history, a critical military capability. After castles went into a temporary decline with the advent of cannons blasting apart their high walls, post-renaissance architects redesigned European fortifications to endure the new bronze siege guns and defense again triumphed over offense. Military engineers like Vauban were more valuable than field marshals and kings staked their strategies on the strength of chains of fortifications and arsenals.  Obsolete by the time of the Napoleonic wars, massive fortresses nonetheless enjoyed a long twilight march to military irrelevance, ending in WWII with the ignominious capture of Belgium’s mighty Eben-Emael fortress by 75 lightly armed Germans and the utter uselessness of the extremely expensive Maginot Line during the Battle of France.

Fortification began to receive renewed interest as governments sought defensive measures to allow their leadership to survive a nuclear attack, such as the Cold War era secret bunkers for USG officials at Greenbrier or Raven Rock or efforts by rogue dictatorships to build facilities carved deep into a mountain to protect their leadership or nuclear weapons programs from American attack. The ancient arms race of defense and offense continues with the designers of “bunker-busters” as a peripheral military activity.

Governments and occasionally corporations and superwealthy individuals will continue to build and tweak these doomsday bunkers but as strategic investments they do not offer very good ROI. For one thing, if your national leadership is cornered fifty stories underground, it will be little comfort to you and your fellow citizens as the nuclear bombs are exploding; the game is pretty much over at that point. Secondly, the ultimate risk they are hedging against is far more remote and the benefits infinitesimal compared to what rethinking fortification as a concept would do to minimize more mundane and probable risks faced by the rest of us.

A great fortress conjures the idea of impregnability and, ironically, usually achieves eternal fame for falling or being breached – the walls of Constantinople,  the Great Wall of China, Masada, Alamut, Murud-Janjira and the aforementioned Maginot Line. “Impregnability” is a misnomer, what a good fortification really does is raise operational costs for adversaries, hopefully high enough to discourage them from making the effort to attack in the first place. Raising costs for those who bear us ill-will by adaptation and a priori design should be our paradigm.

What are the primary risks we will face in coming years as individuals and societies? Erosion of privacy and the security of our persons, property and data at the hands of criminals, avaricious elites, government and private surveillance and bouts of civil disorder, all in a number of forms. For example

• Drones: As John Robb suggested in his FB post and at Global Guerrillas, drone usage could potentially become ubiquitous by governments, corporations and individuals with an axe to grind or an interest in stalking, terrorism or committing mayhem.  Imagine the Unabomber or Osama bin Laden with a drone swarm controlled from a laptop – superempowerment will go robotic.Drones will/are becoming semi–autonomous. They are easily modified to carry cameras, recording/SIGINT devices, imaging systems, weapons, toxic substances or explosives.
• Civil Unrest: The UK Riots were an excellent reminder that, as with the LA Riots, in the case of dangerous criminal-class rioting, elites will be unable to reestablish order or rescue law-abiding citizens until their reticence becomes a political debacle (and they may, as in Britain, initially restrain law enforcement personnel from suppressing the rioters). This contrasts with elite willingness to mobilize vast police and paramilitary forces against mere embarrassing political protests.
• Cybersecurity: This adds a new dimension to fortification that is not limited to a physical space and place, even securing your home networks, but to your identity.

How might we adapt individually and collectively to these risks?

First, we are managing risk within reasonable costs and means while living a normal life. If you imagine something to hold off  an angry mob indefinitely or that will allow you to defy the US government then you need to come out of fantasyland or have a Bill Gates budget to play with. Here are some more practical possibilities:

Privacy architecture: Building design embedded with the idea of  promoting privacy, adjusted to the surrounding environment, which today includes thwarting advocates of a panopticon society. You want a structure that breaks clear fields of vision from the outside to the interior. Overhangs, angled exterior surfaces, material surface to reflect heat and light, ornaments/catwalks/netting and  landscaping to break up spatial fields. Perhaps layered walls of different materials to diffuse or mislead spectral/thermal imaging. This could be incorporated in public spaces in neighborhoods or campuses improving both aesthetics as well as privacy.

Underground: Increasing useful space by building down to sub-basement level gives you more possible points of egress, protection from surveillance technologies, storage and living quarters while concealing the true extent of your property from street level view. Best of all, it usually does not count toward your property tax assessment. Substreet complexes, like the system at Disneyworld, could easily planned into the development stage of residential and commercial construction.

Unobtrusive but Unconventional:  Attracting large amounts of attention is helpful in commerce or branding but generally disadvantageous to security. A home should be designed to frustrate opportunistic predators and delay determined ones with the most interesting elements reserved for the interior and (if possible) the rear with the street view presenting a target that is visually more bland than adjacent structures and also unattractive for forced entry. Windows should be treated to make it more difficult to see in or observe when residents are home vice away.

Defensive Security: This is something to consider individually and cooperatively. I once lived in a house in a town with a modestly high crime rate but never had a problem because the house was in a cul-de-sac with a wide oblong court and a long bottleneck entry. The neighbors knew one another and it was impossible (unlike on a conventional street) to not notice a strange car or pedestrian as every home faced the court.  Aside from alarm systems, simple things like better quality doors and locks buys you time to react. If multilevel, you should have at least two ways to escape from an upper floor (when I designed my second home, there were three) which also increases the interior complexity for an unfamiliar intruder. First floor windows should be out of easy reach from ground level.

Manage your Connectivity: Aside from normal cybersecurity precautions, you might consider managing, blocking or at least being aware of your geolocational activity by being selective about tracking devices (like smart phones) and your exposure to “the internet of things”. Do you really need to hook your fridge up to the internet or pay for everything with a debit card?

Fortification is largely about thinking ahead to put objects and systems between yourself and the world.

[ by Charles Cameron — futurism, making, printing, printable guns, time of your life, intersecting timelines ]
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We only have one mouth, so we’re linear speakers, confined to speaking one thought at a time. And we only have one body, so we tend to think of our lives along a single timeline — although other people with their own uncontolled timelines are constantly crisscrossing our paths and making things better (hey, thanks!) or worse (damn it!) or just plain interesting (okaaay) or boring (unhh)… but the world itself includes the crisscrossing of all those paths in its own timeline, and what this means in practice is that linear thinking doesn’t catch the drift.

Which is why it’s interesting that the most important blog-piece on the Aurora tragedy today doesn’t mention Aurora once.

It’s by John Robb, and it’s about printing these:

And it’s important because the world-line it talks about will cross the path of the Columbine > Virginia Tech > Utøya > Aurora timeline at some point.

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It begins like this:

Printing Weapons at Home for Fun and Mayhem

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It’s now possible to print functional weapons at home. This is going to progress rapidly now.

Think: global file sharing of designs for servicable weapons, from pistols on up to ?, that can be printed at home. What you can print — from the materials to the size/quality of the object to the completeness (snap together construction) — is already moving forward quickly. The weapons effort will just be along for the ride.

But read the whole thing. And read Duncan Kinder and the other comments there, too.

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That’s John Robb’s message for the day — and apart from the fact that it talks about reliable home-printed weaponry, a line of development which will I suggest will cross that Columbine > Virginia Tech > Utøya > Aurora line some time in the not too distant, there’s one unremarkable little remark in there that’s well worth remarking on. John says:

The weapons effort will just be along for the ride.

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Along for the ride. Side effects. Adverse reactions. Serendipity. Unintended consequences. Unknown unknowns. Black swans.

We have a variety of terms we use for the things that blindside us, for better or worse. Our future is full of them, our past is littered with the results…

So it’s interesting that if a bunch of us are thinking along the broad line of maker-printables, a few will be thinking printable guns. A bunch of us will be making films, a bunch more will be going to the movies to see them. And some will have far darker thoughts in mind.

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Crisscross your thinking. Weave your world with care for the future, please.

[ by Charles Cameron — one bead from NASA for the glass bead game as rosary ]
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photo credit: Norman Kuring, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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Consider her sacred, treat her with care.

Embedding games in education and everyday life.

[ by Charles Cameron — exploring a possible parallel between the interpretation of prophecies and the simulation of irregular operations ]
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Well, not exactly, but you get the drift…

We seem to have been in the business of prophesying or predicting the future, especially with regard to warfare, for millennia. Wargaming and scenario planning are at least arguably just the latest souped-up, hi-tech versions of an age-old trade…

1.

The other day on Zenpundit, I quoted Bernard McGinn, the dean of apocalyptic studies, contrasting Martin Luther‘s approach to interpreting Revelation with that of such earlier eschatologists as Joachim of Fiore:

Earlier interpreters, such as Joachim (but not Augustine), had also claimed to find a consonance between Revelation’s prophecies and the events of Church history, but they had begun with Scripture and used it as a key to unlock history. Paradoxically, Luther, the great champion of the biblical word, claimed that history enabled him to make sense of Revelation…

Translating that into contemporary terms – does the believer scour the news media in search of evidence of “where we are” in an already defined end times scenario based on Revelation, or search Revelation to find a way to make sense of current events and breaking news?

That may seem a tricky question, and the empirical answer may be that believers shift back and forth between scripture and news, constantly adjusting their interpretation of each to fit the other.

2.

And yet there are some issues where the question comes more sharply into focus. If the 1948 creation of the State of Israel is a significant marker in the prophetic timeline –- as it is both for many Christian readers of apocalyptic literature and for many Muslims too -– then certain other things must happen.

Thus J. Daniel Hays and colleagues write in the Dictionary of Biblical Prophecy and End Times (Zondervan, 2009):

One of the more popular views among Christians in the United States and Canada is that the creation of the modern state of Israel is a literal fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. In this view, a literal understanding of the Old Testament prophecies of the end times demands a physical state of Israel in Palestine; thus the creation of this state after hundreds of years is seen not only as a fulfillment, but as a sign that the end times are drawing near.

Many writers, primarily classic dispensationalists, state that with the formation of modern Israel, the world political stage is set for the unfolding of end-time events (see DISPENSATIONALISM, CLASSICAL). Some early writers went so far as to argue that when Israel was created in 1948, an end-times “time clock” began that would be fulfilled within one generation. They derived this understanding primarily from Mark 13:30, where after speaking of the end times, Jesus stated that “this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened.” Some writers believed that the end would come before 1988, or forty years (ie, one generation) after 1948.

3.

In line with this, Hal Lindsey discusses the fig tree parable of Matthew 24.32-34 in his best-selling Late Great Planet Earth, published in 1970:

Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

Lindsey then writes:

But the most important sign in Matthew has to be the restoration of the Jews to the land in the rebirth of Israel… When the Jewish people, after nearly 2,000 years of exile, under relentless persecutiomn, became a nation again on 14 May 1948 the “fig tree” put forth its first leaves.

Jesus said that this would indicate that He was “at the door,” ready to return. Then He said, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matthew 24:34 NASB).

What generation? Obviously, in context, the generation that would see the signs – chief among them the rebirth of Israel. A generation in the Bible is something like forty years. If this is a correct deduction, then within forty years or so of 1948, all these things could take place…

Within forty years or so of 1948 — and now it’s 2012.

4.

Indeed, one of Lindsey’s readers quoted Lindsey’s Late Great Plan Earth in his own book, The Day of Wrath, published at the tun of the millennium in 2000:

The large Jewish presence in Palestine which has not been seen in two thousand years. Hal Lindsey says in The Late Great Planet Earth that before the establishment of the State of Israel none of the future events were clearly understood, but now that that has occurred, the countdown has begun for the occurrence of the indicator events connected to all of the types of prophecy, and on the basis of the prophecies, the entire world will focus on the middle-east, and especially Israel in the last days.

That reader was Sheikh Safar al-Hawali — a writer known to bin Laden, who had read at least one of his earlier books — and in The Day of Wrath al-Hawali, using techniques of scriptural interpretation he borrowed from Hal Lindsey, calculated that the victorious armies of the jihad would re-take Jerusalem in 2012.

Which would fit nicely with a certain hadith — al-Hawali does not mention it — which describes a victorious army sweeping from Khorasan to Jerusalem under black banners …

Happily, both authors are wise enough to note that their own scriptures declare that “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24.36) and “Verily the knowledge of the Hour is with Allah alone” (Qur’an 31.34).

5.

And all this is what sprang to mind, when I read NDU CASL roundtable and talk in Rex Bynum Rex Brynen‘s fine PAXsims blog today.

Perhaps that’s not so surprising: the human mind is still the human mind, still driven by what al-Hawali calls the “innate yearning of mankind to unveil the future”.

6.

Bynum Brynen’s post describes Mike Markowitz of the Center for Naval Analyses talking about some research CNA had been doing into wargaming “irregular operations” and notes:

In his presentation, Mike drew a distinction at one point between simulation “modeling” and “representation,” the former more appropriate for the physics of kinetic operations, while the latter highlights the importance of narrative (as well as the inherent “fuzziness” of diplomatic, social, and economic factors — especially in irregular warfare). A large part of Joe’s presentation also touched upon the challenge of validating simulations of insurgency with their substantial DIME (Diplomatic/ Information/Military/Economic) or PMESII (Political/Military/Economic/Social/Infrastructure/ Information) elements.

We’re getting pretty close to the qualitative modeling or mapping of thoughts here, which interests me a great deal as the designer of “thinking games” — so Bynum Brynen definitely had my attention here.

But it was his next point that seemed to me to offer a close parallel to Bernard McGinn’s contrast between Joachim’s and Luther’s methods of interpreting Revelation:

With regard to gaming COIN, then, one is faced with a challenge. Does one build dynamics into the game that reflect doctrinal assumptions about the way the world works? Or does one build a model of the world and then see how doctrine (or alternative doctrinal approaches) work, thereby encouraging original, critical thinking? In the former case, how does one avoid building a simulation that confirms existing approaches because it is, in essence, biased from the outset to do so? In the latter case, where does one derive that alternative model from?

7.

Obviously, in both cases it’s best to find a shoe that fits the foot, rather than to shoe-horn a foot into a shoe that really doesn’t fit it.

But the same question needs to be answered in each case: which is to be the shoe, and which the foot?