WikiLeaks and the Accused Leaker

Bradley Manning is the U.S. Army private who is accused of leaking information to the website Wikileaks. I have been sorting out my feelings on the Wikileaks controversy, torn between a desire for openness and freedom versus a desire for America's Government to be able to operate securely and effectively. I have quickly begun to lean in favor of prosecuting the guilty and shutting down Wikileaks. Considering the story of Bradley Manning led me in this direction.

First of all, I will concede that I do not know Manning and can not make any judgements about him. With that assumption, I can still justify an angry sense of ethical indignation against anyone who would take classified information and release it to total strangers. What he did was steal, and he stole something that belongs to every American, despite the fact that few of us can access it. Whomever revealed this information, they did so as a selfish act. They had no right to make that decision on their own, when so many other Americans were laboring tirelessly to secure that information and add value to it. This is a democracy where we make decisions through group consensus; the leaker of this information acted like a dictator when he made this decision without consulting a larger group of stakeholders.

Now what if Manning is guilty as charged? Assuming that most of what is written about him is true, Manning had a frustrating childhood, is socially awkward, and is gay. That leads me to believe that he is less a martyr for the cause, and more of an unstable personality using this opportunity to lash out at a world that never met his desires to belong and be accepted. If the stories of Manning's personal life are true, then I sympathize with him and wish that humans put a higher value on treating each other with mutual respect. However, that does not justify his actions anymore than it justified Jeffery Dahmer or Timothy McVeigh.

Leaking these videos and documents puts lives at risk, damages the reputation of a great nation, and diminishes or even nullifies the efforts of hundreds of dedicated professionals working for the causes of freedom and American interests. If he had a document that exposed a blatant act such as those that occurred at My Lai or Abu Graib, then this would be a very different conversation. In the case of Wikileaks, we just have a dump of data, the contents of which are unknown and the ramifications unconsidered. That is more than just unethical. That is treasonous.

The Meaning of Wikileaks

Wikileaks does it again, publishing material that was meant to be classified and protected. People have called it treasonous and recommended legal action. Others have suggested a cloak-and-dagger approach to punish the guilty. President Obama has called for agencies to review their procedures for handling sensitive material. The general consensus among those in Government and among those private citizens who oppose the action of Wikileaks is that we must stop the leaks somehow.

My opinion is that we can try sticking our finger in the cracked dike, but that will not stop all the leaks. What we need to realize is that it is a new world; it is an open world. In a flash, from anywhere in the world, I can publish a paragragh or a terabyte and make it instantly visible to the rest of the connected world. Iran and China have tried to block the more offensive addresses on the internet, but willful people longing to be free will find a way around the barriers.

Federal agencies should secure their secrets and protect the people mentioned within the secrets. However, I think the larger lesson is that we can no longer sustain large, secretive agencies. Overtime, the large federal agency will become irrelevant. The nature of the internet is to collaborate with total abandon. The rules of a nation-state are simply a hindrance to what will inevitably dominate the earth. We do not want more trade barriers or more wars; we want to be free to collaborate and compete globally.

As Thomas Friedman pointed out, there was a time when global collaboration and competition was driven only by nations. Eventually, the vehicle for global collaboration and competition was driven by the multinational corporation. Once the internet approached ubiquity, we found ourselves able to compete and collaborate globally as individuals. Some guy in a jungle on a remote continent can affect the thinking of a whole group of American suburbanites with one tweet. A talented wicker-weaver in the middle of nowhere can setup a global storefront and become a multinational corporation all by herself with little expertise or effort.

Unfortunately for some people, this is actually just controlled chaos. You can't herd cats, and you can't keep secrets easily. Now that we are all individuals playing by our own rules, we are are going to reject the rules around of others. Governments have an important role to play here to make sure that the wild west is kept on a level playing field--in other words, to protect us from the most selfish and greedy violators.

I am not defending or supporting Wikileaks here. They don't appear to be considering the ethical impact of their disclosures. As an individual, I wouldn't want my secrets revealed to the world. For instance, my SSN is a powerful number that needs to remain secret. My medical history may appear benign to my doctor, but in the hands of some people it may be enough to keep me from the job I deserve--therefore we keep it secret. I certainly don't want anyone to know what my spouse and I argue about, nor do I want to hear about your arguments. Some secrets are important.

What I am supporting is the inevitable. We can't stop the world from becoming more open. We don't want to. With more people working on a problem, the solutions become more creative and more efficient. Diseases like cancer may not be cured without openness, for example. We just need to realize that it is a different planet in 2010 than it was just 20 years ago. In 1990, if I knew a major secret I would have to go through the bureaucracy of a major publisher and it would takes weeks to get revealed if it ever was. Now I can expose it globally, for free, from the comfort of anywhere on the planet, all by myself or in collaboration with any one of the millions of individuals who would like to help me.

The war in Iraq has demonstrated that the old way of fighting wars will no longer work. The enemy will dress like a civilian, live with civilians, and not be seen when he detonates the IED. If you are dressed like a Marine and driving down the same road you always do in an unarmored Humvee, you will not have the chance to defend yourself when you are attacked. Fireteam formations and raw aggression are useless against an insurgency. The military is adapting to the new rules. Now our diplomatic and intelligence agencies will have adjust to their new rules too. One of those rules will be: support individualism and reduce or eliminate inefficient bureaucracies.

A New Favorite Blog

I have a new favorite blog, thanks to the excesses of TSA. Johnny Edge's blog is a rambling list of Libertarian-leaning opinions focusing on the economic effects of idiocy. At least, that's my take on it. I never would have seen this blog if TSA hadn't demanded to touch Johnny's junk. I followed a link on twitter to his post, and have been fuming ever sense.

Here the gist of it: if TSA demands to touch your genitals and you refuse, then they can fine you $10,000 dollars and bring a civil suit against you. I am not a Constitutional scholar so excuse my ignorance, but doesn't that run against the idea of the Fourth Amendment? That is one step beyond illegal search and seizure, into the realm of tyranny.

Here's a funny TSA story: I was cleaning out my laptop bag and found a small bottle of alcohol-based (i.e. flammable) hand sanitizer. This is supposed to be taken out of your bag and put in the gray bucket, but I had it at the bottom of my laptop bag for two months now, and have flown almost every week during that time. San Francisco , Reagan International, Dulles, Midway, Tampa, and Kansas City airports all have failed to detect my concealed flammable item numerous times, and that's even with a few bag checks. I am sure you have heard similar stories of missed knives, liquids, and other crap.

This morning, as I boarded my flight in Kansas City I attempted to bring a scanner through. Right now, printer toner is being singled out because a terrorist allegedly tried to ship a bomb from Southwest Asia in a toner cartridge. That logically means that every American carrying a printer is part of the same profile (note: sarcasm). My scanner doesn't print, and there is no place to put a toner cartridge, but that didn't stop our crack TSA team from delibberating for several minutes over the offensive item.

Then the supervisor asks me what size toner cartridge is in this thing. I am an engineer and am certified to work on laser printers, but I confess I do not know my toner sizes. Unfortunately, they are not sold that way. I simply stated that it was a scanner, not a printer, and didn't have a toner cartridge. Here's where I get mad: They let me take the scanner at that point, never opening it to check for a toner cartridge and never using their fancy wipes on it. I hope no one tells the terrorists that TSA will just take your word for it when you say that it's not what they think it is.

National Opt-Out day is coming up on the heaviest travel day of the year. If just 10% of the travelers participate, I know for sure that there will be delays nationwide. I saw it with my own eyes just a few months ago. There is a group called Honor Flights that sends veterans on a trip to thank them for their service. A few months back, they booked a flight out of Kansas City heading to Washington DC, and were full of WWII and Korean War Vets. Whether they were wheelchair-bound due to combat or age, I don't know. What I do know is that they couldn't just roll through the metal detectors. Each one had to be hand-screened (groped and humiliated) before they could board their flight.

We're talking about 30 or 40 veterans, each one taking several minutes to fondle. The plane was delayed for an hour, and the next plane scheduled for that gate had to be diverted to another gate. The ramifications of one delayed flight can be pretty bad once it hits two or three other airports and is combined with weather and maintenance delays on other planes.

Besides that, if a man is willing to lay his life on the line for his country in combat, we can give him the benefit of the doubt and leave his junk un-fondled.

The War After Armageddon; Plus a Word: Obstreperous

I just finished reading The War After Armageddon by Ralph Peters and have to recommend it. This is a book written by a retired Army officer who spent enough time researching the Marine Corps to make the language authentic. The title grabbed me first. Armageddon is supposed to be the last war ever, so I was instantly drawn to the question "What else is left to fight over after Armageddon?" I was in the mood for a fast, entertaining read and I usually do well with a war drama. This book fit the bill for me perfectly.

The author knew more than just military terminology and structures. It was apparent to me that he knew the secret languages of Army staff officers and Marine grunts. He understood the pride that motivates every Marine, the values that cause an NCO to maintain an inhuman discipline despite adversity.

Ralph Peters understands more than just how to talk like a professional soldier and Marine; he understands what motivates two sides of an extreme. While his book is a prophetic warning against religious extremism, Peters was able to authentically write the thoughts and speech of Fundamentalist Muslims and Christians. I don't know much about the Koran, but I know that he often made authentic references to scripture that even extreme Christians will appreciate.

This is a dystopian novel about a United States that has swung far to the Christian Right at war against an Islam united under one Caliph. In the same tradition of 1984, Farenheit 451 and Brave New World, Peters uses an unlikely scenario to demonstrate the dangers if we allowed certain ideas to grow out of control.

The book also demonstrates the very real threat of nuclear weapons held by people who are not deterred common rational ideas such as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Growing up in the 1980's, we lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation from the Soviet Union but were pretty sure that neither our own military nor the Soviet military would ever launch their weapons because neither side could truly win. My kids are growing up under different assumptions: that there aren't ICBM rockets being trained on American targets anymore. What we try not to think about is that if a religious fanatic is willing to strap TNT to themself and detonate it in a public place, why wouldn't they be willing to detonate a thermo-nuclear weapon if they are given the chance. While the Soviet Union refrained from attacking us because they did not want to live in a post-Nuclear world, it is not apparent to us that the terrorists who threaten the United States understand or even care about their future on this Earth. They are willing to die for their ideas and firmly believe that the afterlife will be far greater than this current life.

Ralph Peters has an impressive resume as a military analyst and strategist, who understands the systems and issues at play globally. That not only contributed to the authenticity and texture of the story, it added another important issue to be considered as part of the dystopian thesis: a dependence on electronic systems at the expense of fundamental military skills may expose our military in a future battle. The battlefield Peters describes is heavily dependent on electronic systems for communication and navigation, but the enemy has several weapons and techniques available that render a fully armed unit with a full compliment of physically-fit men unable to move forward, seek out, and destroy their enemy. Today, electronic systems prevent "friendly fire" incidents, deliver real-time pictures of the battlefield, and many other functions that were unimaginable just a few years ago. However, this is a fragile toolset that could be taken away by a capable enemy in the future. If we depend on GPS and never learn how to triangulate our position, determine an azimuth, and navigate over terrain using a map and compass, we may find ourselves completely lost and hopelessly defenceless in a war. The technologies exist, all we need is a determined enemy.

I learned a new word while reading The War After Armageddon: Obstreperous. It was used to describe an old man being detained in a crowd, but I couldn't tell from the context exactly what the word meant. According to dictionary.com it means either to be unruly and resisting restraint or to be boisterous and clamorous. That's a good word to stick in your back pocket and pull out to make a sentence more interesting later.

Patriot or Progressive?

Are you a Patriot or a Progressive? Can you be both?

All too often lately, I am seeing intellectual and political dissonance among my sphere of influence, but I seem to be the only one aware of it. I hear conservative friends complaining about welfare, people receiving money without being required to earn it and how it reduces competition while increasing reliance on Government. Uh-huh, the same people who gave us TARP, Airline bailouts, deregulation, subsidies, innumerable tax cuts and loopholes for corporations, etcetera.

I heard an Obama conspiracy-theorist rail on about ACORN and how it was a corrupt money machine. This was in defense of BP, whose Political Action Committee (PAC) is continuously fighting against the interest of Americans who enjoy tourist economies, clean and safe seafood, and beautiful shorelines.

My right-wing friends are consistently surprised that, as a veteran Marine I can be proud of my service and our history, but against the war in Iraq. Um, why would I support a war that is making my nation broke, making our former Vice-President and other war profiteers rich, killed thousands of Americans in unarmored vehicles, and has never found the smoking gun that we were assured was everywhere. (Well, the people closest to the situation including U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Scott Witter were 90-95% sure that WMDs were eliminated, but what would he know. He only spent 7 years working on the problem.)

Some people hear me talk about holding corporations responsible and punishing those which threaten the greater good, and they assume that I am a Socialist or worst. They hear me praise companies that make environmental and social goals as important as profits, and they assume that I am a Communist. In fact, I am neither. I am an MBA, with a hard-won degree from Baker University. I spent several years and over $20,000 studying business, profitability, and the fundamentals of Capitalism-in-action. I love making money, I own stock and real estate, and do not intend to hand my assets over to anybody without a fight.

As an MBA with extensive experience in Corporate America, I am here to tell you that Corporations do not exist to improve people's lives. They exist to make money for a non-human legal entity. The legal entity (the corporation) must prosper at all costs. If that means that rivers are polluted, people are laid off, entire towns are destroyed, and innocent people are stripped of their possessions, then so be it. You know all those movies where machines become intelligent enough to enslave their human creators? That is exactly where we are at with the corporation.

The only incentive for a corporation to act responsibly is to avoid Government fines and avoid bad publicity. Legally, the only real incentive to a corporation is when they are profitable. If they take an action that is responsible to a stakeholder but unprofitable, they can be sued by their shareholders for a breach of fiduciary duty. That needs to change, and B Corporations go a long way towards that end. What is really needed is constituent demand for a change in Capitalism: we need to demand responsible Capitalism where people receive the priority, the environment is cared for and protected in the interest of sustainability, employees partner with employers for mutual gain, and the world is left in better shape than it was found by each corporation, each person, each generation.

Word of the Day: Obbligatists

You know those boxes that appear on web pages during registration that ask you to type the work you see, and it is usually a non-sense word displayed with background noise and distorted letters? The one I filled out today asked me to type the word "obbligatists" which sounded like it might be a cool word to stick in my back pocket. Dictionary.com had never heard of it, and suggested "abblactate" instead, which means to wean. Not helpful.

A quick Google (the verb and the noun) helped me observe the word in context. Not as exciting or useful as I expected, obbligatists are apparently artists to play the oboe. If I ever find the oipportunioty to smoothly inject this word in conversation, it will probably be a depressing moment. Not that there is anything wrong with oboes or obbligatists, it just isn't a fit with my self-image. ;)