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Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

THE “BYZANTINE” EMPIRE STRIKES BACK !

Actually, it is just a calm, explanatory, rebuttal…but I liked the title. :o)

Steve DeAngelis responds in part of a post on Web 2.0 to criticism levelled by John Robb that ResilienceNet was a ” Byzantine” solution. The key excerpt from Steve’s post:

“Since the Esquire article about me appeared and the Institute for Advanced Technologies in Global Resilience (IATGR) was introduced to the world, there have been a number of posts made about whether the kinds of solutions we hope to work on will actually work. John Robb, for example, believes that things like ResilienceNet are Byzantine because they seek a centralized solution to a myriad of problems. Robb writes:

‘I contend that within exceedingly complex environments, the only true way to approach resilience is through decentralized processes. If you don’t approach the problem from this perspective (a philosophy of system design), the complexity overwhelms you and you fall into a cycle of rapidly diminishing returns.’

Robb is correct that our approach is to connect valuable information from varied sources and automatically analyze it using Oak Ridge super computers, providing the results of that analysis to those who with a need to know. He fails to recognize, however, that the system is taking advantage of decentralized processes to generate value added rather than trying to create a super system that stands on its own. Others are concerned that those super computers offer a single point of failure for such a system. Ultimately, I see the system using the power of grid computing to overcome this vulnerability. In much the same way, Web 2.0 is using mash-ups, our approach to security will present information in a much more meaningful and timely manner to those who must respond to prevent, mitigate, or recover from adverse events. In other words, what looks like centralized system is much more likely to be decentralized and distributed in ways that even Robb would agree were resilient. The entire conversation is worth following on Robb’s blog. Another blog worth reading on the subject is Shawn Beilfuss’ post on The Age of Resilience. “

I agree with Steve that the quality of discussion in Robb’s thread was exceptional. An interesting aspect was that all of the participants could be classified as proponents of engineering resilience into systems by technical design and political policy but clashed over what would constitute the ideal premise (or ” philosophy”) for building resilience.

I am currently multitasking; more thoughts later in an update.

UPDATE:

“scalefree” posted the following in the thread at John’s site:

“The way you build in strong & resilient structures is by taking the math of resilience into account. The math of resilience is the math of networks, which says (very very simplified) that when you want to make a system strong & resilient, you distribute, decentralize & make redundant its structures. If you want to do it properly you use some specific algorithms to figure out how it should be decentralized, but that’s the basic idea. “

True enough. Mapping out a network or analyzing an existing one is a mathematical process and the structure of the network establishes functional parameters. On the other hand, how many dimensions are there to the concept of resilience in play here ?

How a network may be used by external actors is not always a variable that may be anticipated. The internet is a case in point. The cultural evolution of message texting as related in Rheingold’s Smartmobs is another. The mathematical arguments hold true within the network itself but not always extrinsic to it. I’m not sure the two – user and network – can be cleanly separated or controlled by algorithmic logic.

I’m open to thoughts here from the math-science whiz crowd….

Monday, November 27th, 2006

“WHY THE U.S. LOSES SMALL WARS”

HNN has a great review of the history of Small Wars thought by Larry Kahaner, author of AK-47:The Weapon that Changed The Face of War. An excerpt that will sound a familiar refrain to many readers:

“The other, and much bigger obstacle to winning small wars, brings a moral dilemma. According to Callwell, to win small wars, mere victory isn’t enough, the enemy must be thoroughly and utterly destroyed to the last man, woman, and child – which means enormous civilian casualties. For citizens of most modern democracies, this is an unacceptable stance. The level of violence and barbarism it would take to beat an insurgent force — torture, wholesale executions, leveling of towns — is a place where most democracies refuse to go. This keeps victory out of reach.

….If Callwell got military scholars to think more clearly about small wars, a group of Marine Corps officers in the 1930s took it to the next level with production of the Small Wars Manual based on US experiences in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. While building on Callwell’s work, this landmark book published in 1940, points to what some say is one of the most important aspects of winning small wars – understanding the role of indigenous religion, ideology and tribal relationships. The manual not only talks about the military aspects of winning small wars – and yes, they can be brutal – but of more importance is a deep understanding of a society’s language, culture, religion, history, economic structures and mores. The manual is a hot seller from a much-clicked website, The Small Wars Center of Excellence, run by the Marine Corps, which advocates the use of simpler weapons and more complex soldiers in small wars – the opposite of current conventional wisdom. This is not the only take-away message from the manual, but it is a vital one.”

Read the whole thing here.

Sunday, November 26th, 2006

RECOMMENDED READING

Quiet day so far in the blogosphere…

Howard Rheingold at Cooperation Commons – “Wikinomics — Forthcoming book by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams

Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett – “Will Democrats build bridges or walls?

Critt Jarvis -” The Resilience Conversation: How big is this BOGGSAT?

Nick Carr -” Is Web 2.0 the wrong path?

Dr. Richard Florida -“War for talent” ( Hat tip to Eddie)

That’s it !

Sunday, November 26th, 2006

SUDOPLATOV’S NEW HEIRS ?

The assassination of ex-KGB spy and Putin critic, Alexander Litvinenko by a lethal dose of radioactive polonium 210 ( not it seems, irradiated thallium, a nasty KGB trademark going back to at least the 1950’s) sparked Curzon of Coming Anarchy to draw comparisons with the death of Leon Trotskii. Curzon’s timely post has opened up a number of further historical and contemporary angles. But first, an excerpt:

Trotsky’s Shadow

Deathbed accusations shouldn’t be taken at face value, but Litvinenko’s horrible poisoning, probably designed to 1.) make him suffer a painful death, and 2.) terrify other potential critics into silence, conjure up images of Trotsky’s assassination during World War II. The Stalinist dissident survived several attempts on his life before he was finally killed with an ice pick in Mexico City (Stalin was so delighted at the method that he gave all agents involved medals.)

The Trotsky assassination had been a priority for Stalin and, despite a stable of NKVD killers with experience icing White generals in Paris and Spanish anarchists in Barcelona, it proved to be an operation that successive Soviet secret police chiefs had difficulty pulling off. Beria succeeded after having assigned it to Pavel Sudoplatov and Leonid Eitington. (Sudoplatov, who died a boastful and unapologetic Stalinist spymaster, published his colorful memoirs Special Tasks in the mid 1990’s with the help of scholar/journalists, Jerrold and Leona Schecter. The memoirs are revealing and entertaining, yet must also be parsed with considerable care). Ramon Mercader was the actual assassin who killed Trotskii with an icepick during a private visit, after previous attempts at armed frontal assault on Trotskii’s Mexican compound failed.

Medals notwithstanding, none of the assassins got off scott-free. Mercader suffered at the ungentle hands of Mexican police and penal authorities until his Soviet connection was revealed. Sudoplatov and Eitington were eventually purged as “Beria-ites” and were fortunate to escape execution, merely undergoing disgrace and imprisonment.

Curzon continued:

And Litvinenko isn’t alone. Recall the recent attempts on the lives of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the former being barely unsuccessful and the later being gruesomely successful. While it might seem absurd to murder these individuals because it has made their causes known far and wide, it undoubtedly has a chilling effect on other potential agents who are scared silent by the the consequences of turning their back on Mother Russia. And that should terrify all of us.”

Less the mores of the old KGB than of Al Capone. Which raises interesting questions about Putin and his siloviki regime.

The first thing to understand about internal politics in modern Russia and most of the post-Soviet states is that “good guy -bad guy” can be thrown out the window. Or at least be conceived in very relative terms. Corruption and gangsterism are pandemic and the actual liberals and democrats are unpopular and without real influence. Litvinenko was a brave man but certainly shady. The oligarch opponents of Putin are ” mobbed up” billionaires. Think George Soros crossbred with Tony Soprano. Ex-KGB are on all sides and available for hire to boot.

Putin is ruthless and authoritarian but his professional appreciation for well-executed tradecraft must be slipping if he signed off on this assassination. The Russians have quieter poisons. And his political timing as well, considering Litvinenko’s high profile death coincided with Russia’s arms deal with Iran. Not a great image juxtaposition for Russia. Perhaps Putin was going for the double middle finger toward the West or perhaps Litvinenko was simply played by some of his dangerous friends, knowing the political effect of a splashy poisoning. Putin issued an angrily denial, but who would give that any credence? The Russian president could hardly announce to the press ” We got the bastard!” while jumping in the air and kicking his heels.

I’m not excusing Putin’s government. It is entirely possible, even likely, that they bear the responsibility for Mr. Litvinenko’s assassination and the institutional legacy of wet affairs and of sinister killers like Bogdan Stashinskii in Russia is a very long one. One that makes the CIA’s history in this regard pale by comparison, so they are not boy scouts. On the other hand, with all the consideration of 5GW in the past year in this section of the blogosphere, we might pause to at least ask ” Who benefits?”.

ADDENDUM:

Kent’s Imperative -“Mokrie Dela

Jamie Glazov – “Symposium: To Kill a Russian Journalist

Saturday, November 25th, 2006

FICTION AND THE POWER OF COUNTERFACTUALS

I recently had lunch with Dave Schuler of The Glittering Eye and Lexington Green of Chicago Boyz, and during the course of the conversation, Dave and Lex spoke animatedly about science fiction author Philip K. Dick and his novel, The Man in the High Castle. Outside of Russian lit, I haven’t read much fiction since my teens and early twenties ( my last sojurn was re-reading The Catcher in the Rye and Babbitt in Jamaica last year) and I had not heard of the book that had made such an impression on them.

Lex was kind enough to lend me a copy, which I finished reading the other day. The Man in The High Castle is a fabulous read, and if you like science fiction or counterfactual history and have not read it, you might wish to pick it up.

I won’t spoil the plot, but the setting is in a world where the Axis utterly won WWII. America is divided into an East coastal United States occupied by the Third Reich; a Pacific States of America on the West coast under Imperial Japanese hegemony; and a nominally independent, lightly populated Rocky mountains- Great Plains state. The South, with an indulgent nod from Berlin, has reinstituted slavery for African-Americans. As Lex and Dave had suggested, an intriguing aspect of the novel is the depiction of Americans with the mentality of a conquered people, inadvertantly admiring and aping their foreign rulers despite themselves. A psychology that is entirely outside the American historical experience, excepting of course, in the old South.

As I have mentioned previously, counterfactual thinking is useful as well as entertaining. It leads us to give old ideas a second look in a new light. The greater the “realism” of the counterfactual scenario, the more attractive it is to puzzle through. Philip K. Dick did his homework with his novel, obviously having dipped into Hitler’s infamous “ second book“, unpublished in the dictator’s lifetime, records of his table talk and perhaps some of the Nazi-Japanese diplomatic exchanges. His scenario follows what Axis leaders speculatively sketched out for ” the next war” in the 1930’s when they were still planning the “limited “wars that set off WWII and ended their quest for world domination.

I won’t give away the specifics of the plot for The Man in The High Castle but the counterfactual aspect is worth your time alone.


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