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Technology Leveling The Playing Field In Modern War
The IEEE spectrum site has up an article written by the author Robert N. Charette describing the 'empowerment of the individual to conduct war' through technology. In the piece, entitled Open-Source Warfare, Charette describes the cheap, inexpensive, but clever ways that militants are adapting to modern warfare. "As events are making painfully clear, [counterterrorism expert John Robb] says, warfare is being transformed from a closed, state-sponsored affair to one where the means and the know-how to do battle are readily found on the Internet and at your local RadioShack. This open global access to increasingly powerful technological tools, he says, is in effect allowing 'small groups to...declare war on nations.' Need a missile-guidance system? Buy yourself a Sony PlayStation 2. Need more capability? Just upgrade to a PS3."
The real problem with expending your military might in an endless fight is the same as abusing antibiotics. You train your enemy how to adapt to your attacks and how to generate new ones against you. This is one reason why we had the Powell Doctrine. You attack with a clear goal, a clear exit strategy, and overwhelming force. This is what we learned in Vietnam. Powell & Armitage were the only members of the Bush administration who were in the army and we told to shut up by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Cheney. Now we have trained a new generation of Mugahadin on two fronts how to bleed the US Army. In fact this was Bin laden's stated policy. He said he could run a $100,000 opperation against us and in turn we would spend billioins to fight him. At the time of this post "The War in Iraq Costs $471,396,995,064. Wow Bush et. all could not have done a worse job of responding to asymmetrical warfare. This is how Afghanistan defeated the U.S.S.R. and in some ways Afghanistan was the straw that broke the camel's back. Now we as a country have run up or credit cards only to run up or mortgages on s speculative bubble only to run up of national debt to what end. The dollar plunges, the rate of abortions goes up, and the federal government expands its powers. For what?
We now are the German army. We still use their weapons as spoils of war. We have become the grand masters of the blitzkrieg. We have mastered tank warfare and air supremacy. Ahhh but what good is it against insurgents? Nothing. We would be better of withdrawing from Iraq waiting two years and invading again. (kidding/serious)
In the piece, entitled Open-Source Warfare, Charette describes the cheap, inexpensive, but clever ways that militants are adapting to modern warfare.
Such as? I couldn't find much at all in the article except for some vague references to IEDs and cell phones, terrorist manuals found on the internet (most of which, according to TFA are terribly inaccurate) and ridiculous comments such as the one about PS2 being used as a missile guidance system. Sounds like someone came up with a new buzzword "open source warfare" and thought it was so cool that it warranted a 5 page article. People have used guerrilla tactics forever and I don't see anything terribly new here except perhaps detonating bombs remotely using a cellphone.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Cheap terrorism becomes "global warfare".
Calling the World Trade Center attacks an "Attack on America" just upgraded a couple of lunatic terrorists to warfaring guys that can attack a nation.
What a bunch of bullcrap. But good for the security industry. They can sell a bunch of crap on that. The Iraqis are now used to live with a big one every week. America turned into a bunch of pussies because of one lousy (OK, it was pretty good, but it was still just one) attack. I am from Germany and we went through this before. The RAF formed in the 70s and the whole nation went ape shit crazy. Anti-Terrorism-legislation went unanimously through parliament that was against basic rights and the constitution on many accounts.
I think this makes terror work in the first place. If we don't pass legislation. If we don't go ape shit. Then we win against them. The loosing starts by calling them terrorists. They are a bunch of lunatics that badly need to be put behind bars. Nothing more, nothing less.
"Modern warfare"? This article marks just another loss.
"Open Source" is so 1995. Good lord, he even makes reference to "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." Could this article be more hackneyed? Time to update the buzzwords at least. This is Warfare 3.0! (Or is that too 2002?)
The insurgency has an advantage in that all they really need to do to win is continue to create a lot of chaos. That's a somewhat more modest objective than invading and occupying another country on the other side of the globe, which no number of PS3s and radio shack components will enable any guerilla army to do any time soon. They aren't particularly high tech, unless you were naive enough to think Iraqis didn't have cell phones and the Internet prior to the war. So technology isn't really leveling the playing field at all; it's just the nature of counter insurgency warfare.
It's a shame we lost a $100,000 robot to disarm a much less expensive IED, but that's why we built the robots. Ideally they'd come back from every mission, but if they don't it's quite an improvement over losing a solider, as we might have done in Vietnam.
yeah, especially seeing as it has been a success beyond even their most wildest fantasies. A better description would be "super fantastic."
How we know is more important than what we know.
Discussions about the morality of the war aside, there's a crucial difference between these two episodes and nazi contra-insurgency: Let's assume Haditha and Abu Graib is equivalent to past nazy military actions (And it's not, but I disgress), even so, it's clear that if nowadays americans did the same the nazi did on WWII, it's not an acceptable state policy. People has been punished because of those abuses, and it's more or less clear that the Republican will lose the next elections. On Nazy Germany those acts where standard ROE, for the modern US army, the same acts are seen as abuse, and when uncovered by media or by investigators there's punishment and lots of changes.
Really man, you're insulting the memories of all those civilians who died on Europe because of german's hunt for insurgents. There's a fucking huge difference of scale.
Your ad could be here!
It's not talking about open source software, it's open source as a methodology. The author is using the term open source in terms of how knowledge of improvised weapons and tactics are being spread. That technically sophisticated terrorists have managed to shorten the learning curve. It's open source intelligence and the premise is not flawed. They're using the open source model very effectively. It's not that the pitchforks are all that much more advanced, it's the learning environment that's advanced. And it that regard the insurgents are running rings around the Pentagon. Although one could argue that's a pretty low bar.
But the real boon for terrorists is having a practical lab located conveniently in their own back yard.
The reason Iraq has proven to be such a rich learning environment for insurgents has more to do with practical, on-the-ground opportunities for learning that the fighting provides."
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Ghengis Khan did not build a government that could outlast the absence of his troops. His empire fell apart right after he died. The Khmer Rouge fell apart at the first sign of foreign intervention. The Germans did significant damage to their rear-area security on the Eastern front by terrorizing local populations and creating fertile ground from within which Soviet saboteurs could operate.
The Romans were mostly successful because they extensively employed the strategy of Pax Romana, which basically the antique equivalent of the modern concept of soft power. You see, for most of the peoples around the Roman Empire, war was endemic (for example, the Germanic tribes raided each other on an annual basis) and they knew that life would be longer, more prosperous, and more peaceful if they joined their larger neighbor.
There are many kinds of power (power being defined as the ability to influence events to your advantage). The ability to inflict damage is one, the ability to entice others to your position is another, the ability to bring economic factors into the game is another, political will is another, and so on. Also, power is non-fungible, that is, being powerful in one area does not compensate for a great weakness in another area. This is why the EU, which is a great economic power, is not considered a world power as it lacks the political will to act in concert. Similarly, India's large population and military might (they are a nuclear power) do not compensate for its economic weakness.
Fear works to some degree, but only in concert with other elements of power. You can only build a stable system if the majority of people within that system agree on its fundamental precepts (this is one aspect of political power). So, if we try to build a government in Iraq based on fear, we are going to run into problems that the power we exert in one arena (military might) will not compensate for our failure to exert power in other arenas, such as political will.
Developing a strategy that will bring several elements of power to bear is doable, but very difficult. That is why, in the future, we should avoid electing uneducated people (an MBA is not an education), or at least elect uneducated people who will appoint educated advisors and then listen to them instead of the veep.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
And so, here are a few of my favorite quotes from the article. . .
To understand open-source warfare, it's instructive to revisit Eric S. Raymond's 1997 manifesto, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, in which he describes how a large community of open-source software hackers created the operating system Linux. "Linux is subversive," Raymond wrote.
Wow. So there it is. Writing software in your spare time for the fun of it is now 'hacking', 'subversive' and linked to terrorism. They've been trying like crazy to connect those synapses for years now, but this is the first time I've read an article which says it with such bald-faced impunity.
In studying the behaviors of insurgencies in Iraq and elsewhere, as well as organized-crime syndicates and other groups, Robb noticed the many parallels to the open-source model in software. [. .
Well, thank-you Robb! You just described everybody living in an industrialized nation with an internet connection. He's not describing the community living in a bombed out Iraq or Afghanistan, where they can't even get running water with any reliability, let alone electricity and an internet service provider. Nope. He's describing you and me.
But this article isn't just about trying to make every day activities seem suspicious. The whole thing is a giant sell-job. It just takes for granted that terrorists are real, that brown people defending their country against invaders are our natural enemy and that defeating them is merely a technical problem requiring trillions of dollars. Little robots for detecting road-side mines which cost $100,000 each? Jeezuz. Give me a $100,000 and I'll build you a fleet of frickin' radio-controlled Tonka dune buggies with mini-Canada Arms. Those $100,000 robots are the best indication of exactly what this war is really all about. Money. Hoovering up as much cash from the over-taxed citizens as is possible. Money. You are a terrorist if you write your own software instead of buying Microsoft. (--Money, and that loony little Christian-cult-of-apocalypse-Christ-Rising-In-Babylon(Iraq) thing.) But we know all of this! I'm just repeating what has been said a few thousand times already. And guess what? I'll keep on repeating it whenever I see evil sell-jobs like this dumb article.
Here's a new term: How about, "Closed-Source Propaganda"?
Somebody is paying this 'counterterrorism expert', John Robb's bills. Now who in the great Homeland could that be?
Money from the top. He's not writing this shit in his spare time while panning for donations. He's a soldier for the Neocon Pathocracy. Those secretive bastards are as closed-source as you can get.
-FL
Wow. This post is incredible.
In summary, I think that your points are that Sept 11 was an inside job - a cover up to hide the fact that the government bailed out the rich invested in a hedge fund, and an excuse to cow the masses into believing that threats by outsiders to US national security are real so that the military industrial complex can make more money by waging a war which is actually no threat to our security.
I can't even begin to address how ridiculous these ideas are.
Building 7 was not intentionally taken down.
Implosion specialist's analysis, based on facts and scientific analysis
With respect to the "Trillion Dollar Bet" - it makes sense to me that if US investors have an enormous number of dollars invested in risky investments overseas when the overseas markets tank, the loss of those holdings could affect the market as a whole, and that could cause significant problems for joe sixpack.
Take a look at what is happening now due to the subprime mortgages issued to people who could not afford them. Our economy is on the edge of slowdown as a whole because of the significant decrease of transactions in the housing market. The fed needed to take action to protect the public, and it did.
Ideologues around the world have stated that they want to kill us. According to your view, how should we respond? Let them attack our ships, our embassies, our large cities, while we ignore them because the battle is economically disproportionate?
Wow.
*POO* IHBT!
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
He talks about Improvised Explosive Devices and that they account for half the US casualties. Right, eh so? These things are new? Pretty sure my field manual mentioned them, not just how to spot them and deal with them but including suggestions on how to make your own should the need arise. That was over 2 decades ago.
The vietnamese used a lot of IED's and even non-explosive traps. So did the Israeli's in their war against Britian (well would be Israeli's) the various occupied nations during WW2 became experts in it.
In the days of Sword and Bow&Arrow a flail was a dangerous weapon found on any farm. You would need to be very good with your sword to go up against a farmer with a scythe and ask yourselve, who has had the most training with their weapon.
The LIE is that somehow modern tech has changed this. It hasn't. So they use mobile phones now as remote detonators, is that really that different then a radio or IR detonator, how about a simple wire? A fuse? They all been used and plenty of others.
He then goes on to claim that you could use a PS3 as a missle guidance system. You probably could. Except missle guidance systems existed long before you had the PS3, so why do you need anything that powerfull?
It also doesn't explain where you get the rest of the tech, you know like the missle or the detection system. No, the IR sensor is NOT good enough to track a plane. Not by a long shot. What about the software?
It becomes even more silly when you then ask where these PS3 guided missles ARE? All the incidents involving missles involve regular missles bought on the blackmarket. I seen no story claiming that these SAM's were handmade.
If this stuff was so advanced you would think that by now Hezbollah could hit a target with it rather then having to fire at civilian centers because they are the only target big enough to have a change of causing damage.
If you want to see real modern tech you got to look at the propaganda war, every incident, there is a camera right there, recording it and its data gets out to the rest of the world with amazing speed. But the tech used is all of the shelf stuff. Nothing home grown or opensource.
No, this guy is just trying to use a buzzword to scaremonger. Iraq is nothing new, what is frightening is that the US was incapable avoiding it. That we still don't have any better way to deal with this. No I don't have the answer, except that perhaps they should have done another Gulf War 1, bomb the place back to the stoneage every couple of years but stay the fuck out of it. Really, hasn't history shown us that modern occupations rarely work well?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
Ignoring them as terrorists is the right answer.
They should be treated and convicted like any other criminals without acknowledging them as something special. As soon as you label them "terrorists", you give them the credit they want.
Bush is not a war criminal. Please do not cheapen the term.
Illegally declaring a war on false premises leading directly to the death of thousands of American soldiers, foreign soldiers, -and- civilians? He's no genocidal madman, but he's certainly no common criminal either.
Plus if he were the president of any other country (say if Iran were to invade another country to halt its nuclear weapons program, for example) the US administration and media would surely call him a war criminal.
That's the problem. You can't any more. Populations are higher. Occupations are labor intensive, and the US Army has very high labor costs compared to, say, the Janjaweed militia of Sudan. The ease of global travel and global communications compared to the 1940s means you'll just create a diaspora of pissed off refugees while millions more sympathizers get the video online. Meanwhile, those refugees could easily follow us home and launch terrorist attacks on high value civilian targets. Look at the Russians in Chechnya, a tiny country of barely a million people. They blasted the whole place into rubble and look what it got them.
All your points amount to NOTHING because Cheney stated exactly what would happen as well when he supported 41's decision not to invade Baghdad. Even Dick (the heartless devil) Cheney knew what would happen and told us clearly concisly and with conviction. Its not some self-fulfilling prophecy, it was the inevitable result of our actions. Clear to ANYONE who knew anything about Iraq, even some of the Vulcans; Cheney knew, Powell knew, and Armitage knew. Bush didn't even know who the Kurds, Shia, and Shite were when he invaded.
European opposition was like an adult saying to a teenager "don't drink and drive or you'll smash into a tree or worse kill some poor family who are driving home." Then the kid goes out gets drunk and smashes his Dad's suburban into a minivan full of kids at 95 mph. That's Iraq. That's not 20/20 hindsight. Just because you did not have the ability to model the results of a US invasion of Baghdad does mean other people didn't know what was going to happen.
If the EU is trying to "assert" themselves against us why is NATO in Afghanistan? Why because it was a legitimate target and one that needed attention. Iraq at the time was just another shit hole ruled by an asshole with limited ability to extend its power beyond its border. What poower it did have still acted as a counter balance to Iran.
Kill all who? The rest of the world? Do you seriously think the rest of the world would stand by and let a nation who considered genocide a valid form of foreign policy to exist?