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.

Web 2.0 and the President of the United States

Like him or hate him, you have to be at least mildly curious about the President posting on YouTube and other web 2.0 mediums. The idea that a message from the most powerful office on the planet could "go viral" and be seen by millions within minutes of recording, without the expense of live TV, is going to be huge. The President can post a video in forums that allow commenting, and generate discussion among billions of people about his video.

If you trust Obama, then you can be excited that he will be able to get his message out and counter any criticism far more effectively. If you do not trust Obama, then there may be something to fear. Someone who is good at manipulating the masses now has a method of doing so on a grander scale and perhaps more thoroughly.

The ultimate question: will this new method of communication allow a manipulator to dupe the masses, or will this lead to greater transparency and make it harder to "spin" the message? What would ahve happened if either of the Bushes used this medium, or Reagan, or Clinton? Consider how Iran/Contra, Monica Lewinsky, The Bay of Pigs/Cuban Missile Crisis, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence could have been managed with access to Web 2.0!

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Can You Live Without China?

When I was learning to use Linux, I was challenged by a mentor to use Linux exclusively for thirty days; I was not to use Windoze for any reason at any time. I accepted the challenge, loaded a Red Hat partition on my laptop and on my home PC, and did not boot into Windoze for a month. I learned to get email, edit spreadsheets and .doc's, play games, surf the web, everything I would normally do on the the Beast of OS's. Unfortunately, this is a Windoze world and I was dragged back to reality kicking and screaming. Eventually, I was assimilated back into the Windoze world for personal computing and Linux returned to being the backoffice mistress of servers. The experiment served an important role in my education, though. I learned that I could make do without Bill Gates, and that some of the solutions are as easy and are much sexier than the unaesthetic crap offered to the average PC abuser. Sara Bongiorni is at least 12x braver than I am: she tried to go a whole year without China! After another materialistic American Christmas, she realized how much of the holiday was "Made in China". Upon further investigation, she found that most of her home was imported from China. She got her whole family to live a whole year without China, and found out that they had to do without on many items. For instance: they were unable to replace their coffee maker (ouch) when it broke, without buying a Chinese model. For their children, they found that pretty much the only toys available to them were Lego's. As a woodworker, her hubby had trouble buying tools. The story from Foreign Policy is here. She wrote a book about her family's experience also.

Globalization 3.0 and Iraq

One of my favorite books, one which I occasionally re-read, is “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig. In this book, the narrator writes directly to the reader in what he calls a “Chautauqua”. In this style, he explains a concept or event to you informally, like one-on-one with your favorite teacher or your father. This is similar to the style of writing in “Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About”, and it leads to a very engaging read, one in which the reader can relax, trust, and lose themselves in the text. I think I shall borrow from this style.

And, dear reader, it is this style that I will use to introduce Thomas L. Friedman’s book to you, and then use it as a springboard to launch myself onto my own electronic soapbox. Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat”, is so chock full of ideas, wisdom, lists, and stories that I could blog on it for years.

Friedman breaks the history of globalization down into 3 upgrades. Globalization 1.0 lasted from 1492 until 1800. In this era, the world’s economy was driven by nations. You did not trade, or even travel, internationally without the initiative of a national government. In the 1800’s, through 2000, the era of Globalization 2.0 meant that multinational companies became the primary agent of change. International trade was primarily initiated by multinational companies. The national government became less necessary for ideas, products, and services to compete globally. We now find ourselves in Globalization3.0, and it is the individual who has become the source of power on a global level. I no longer need the benefit, initiative, consent, or protection of my government to compete on a global scale. I no longer need my multinational corporation’s marketing, manufacturing, operations, and capital. All I need is a good idea and the Internet and I can compete as effectively, or at times more effectively, as a multinational corporation or government institution.

So while thinking about this, I started thinking about Al Qaeda. Below is what I wrote for an online class I am taking called “Cross-Cultural Risk Analysis”:

Since we are in Globalization 3.0, it really isn't about nations anymore when it comes to trade, so why wage war at the national level? The reason so many Americans, Brits, and other allies have died in Iraq and Afghanistan is because Al Qaeda is fighting on an individual and small group level, while we still wage war on a national level. Al Qaeda knows where to find us, what we will be doing, and how we will react because we do so on a trained, uniform basis. Moreover, they constantly evolve their tactics and weapons while we continue to walk in a column of twos and drive unarmored hummers down main street. There are Navy Seal and Green Beret teams who are having some success (how much success is classified, but National Geographic and Discovery have been allowed a couple of stories) who are not waging war "like Americans". They drive different vehicles. They use different weapons. They use different tactics. They grow out their beards, wear different uniforms, and generally approach military life from a different perspective. Most importantly, they work in smaller but more empowered units. In this manner, it appears that they are inhibiting many attacks and gathering more intelligence than a standard infantry unit would. Therefore, I think we will be forced to redefine "peace" in the coming years, as we are redefining war today. When the 18th century American colonists sniped at formations of British soldiers from behind trees and rocks, it changed warfare forever. Al Qaeda, Hammas, Timothy McVeigh, John Muhammad & Malvo, and others are now demonstrating what war will be in the future: disassociated individuals in small, concealed groups that can and will attack without warning. Though nations with Mickey-D's may be less likely to strike, any Mickey-D's employee or customer could be a threat. Which is all the more reason to lock down nuclear programs in nations full of disassociated people.

Larry Slobodzian Sedit qui timuit ne non succederet