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."

what a nonsense

the germans did pretty good with old technology, and I think that even today they'd make most smaller countries think twice about attacking them if they 'only' had wwII era weaponry.

In fact all that tech is quickly becoming a weakness.

Think about South Korea, more afraid of North Koreas conventional weaponry and artillery then of their nuke (assuming they really do have one).

http://rndpic.com/ [rndpic.com]

Re:what a nonsense

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 [wikipedia.org]. 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.

Re:Machiavelli

That's why it's kind of mind-boggling to see the US fail so miserably in its imperialist occupation in Iraq.

Not at all. Great powers have been defeated repeatedly by insurgencies since Machiavelli wrote. Reading a slim tome on inter-state relations in renaissance Italy hardly gives one the understanding necessary to defeat a well-organized, well supplied insurgency in a hostile country. Also, characterizing this as an imperial action is stretching the term a bit... to the point that it seems you are using it for its pejorative value rather than as an actual characterization of the war.

the part where they disbanded the Iraqi army instead of giving them at least tokens of power is especially laughable in this respect

Hindsight is always 20/20 from our comfortable arm chairs. I can give you a dozen historical examples of where this strategy worked. (Germany & Japan in WWII, the South in the civil war, etc). I can also give you a dozen examples of where leaving the enemy's army intact in a token position backfired (Germany after WWI, Caesar after Pharsalus, etc).

it shows that Bush, along with his merry band of war criminals, is most certainly as stupid and ignorant as he looks.

Bush is not a war criminal. Please do not cheapen the term.

Machiavelli laid this out in The Prince [gutenberg.org] centuries ago. It's a very readable book

While it is true that Machiavelli is, along with Hobbes, one of the founding authors of what is known as the "realist" school of thought in international relations as a study, his thought processes are largely obsolete. A number of things have changed since then, including the rise of nation states and the institution of sovereignty, the advent of international institutions, and the increasing importance of trans-frontier relations in the day to day lives of people. Most importantly, in my mind at least, is the fact that he assumes an uncrossable barrier between domestic and public spaces, which experience has shown not to reflect reality. I would really recommend that you read "Anarchy is what states make of it" by Alexander Wendt, "International Institutions: Two Approaches" by Robert Keohane and, of course, "Soft Power" by Joseph Nye if you would like to see a more modern interpretation of power politics.

Re:Crime against peace

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.

That isn't exactly correct

That isn't exactly correct, and, more importantly, war doesn't boil down to just having the best tanks. What's more important is how you use them.

1. German tanks _were_ weaker. Yes, everyone knows about Tigers and Panthers later, but in 39 we entered the war with Pz-I and Pz-II. That was the bulk of the German army. The I series was little more than an armoured car with two _medium_ machineguns in a turret. They were intended to be training tanks, but got pressed into the war because of lack of anything better.

Plus a couple of better ones, half of them captured from the Czechs, but they were anything but the bulk of the army.

Most German soldiers were equipped with a bolt action rifle until the end of the war.

Where Germany excelled were the doctrines. I.e., how you use that equipment.

E.g., tanks were weaker, but that was ok, because they were only supposed to punch through or bypass, take some important position, then let the enemy attack you to take it back. And then you could use the 88mm FLAK gun to kill any better tanks the enemy might have had. That was Blitzkrieg.

E.g., the soldiers may have had bolt action rifles, but that was ok because the German infantry doctrine had the squad machinegun as the central piece, and the rest of the squad was mostly support for it. (By comparison, the Americans saw it the other way around, so they were saddled with the shitty BAR as a piss-poor substitute for a squad MG.)

2. The Soviet union was more technologically advanced than you seem to think, grasshopper.

The T34 was years ahead of anything anyone else had. The 76mm gun could break through any other nation's tanks' armour even with the high explosive round. And the front armour was just short of invulnerable to anything Germany had on a tank.

The T34 was one of the reasons why Germany rushed to attack the USSR early. Hitler couldn't risk waiting until it's produced in large numbers.

You know the (in)famous German Panther? Well, that was a shameless copy of the Soviet T34. Really. The initial proposal was to just start manufacturing T34s, but it was seen as a matter of national pride to not be that obvious about it. So they changed the gun on it and a few other details, but otherwise it was still just a modded T34.

The KV-1 and KV-2 were a nightmare for the German army too. It took quite literally hundreds of hits to disable one. That was _years_ before the Tigers.

Add other advances, like rocket artillery, early semi-automatic rifles (and mass use of SMGs, far ahead of the numbers the Germans had), etc, and the Russians weren't technologically handicapped at all.

Heck, even their AT guns, Germany used any they could lay their hands on. There were whole series of vehicles built with captured soviet AT guns. That says something, doesn't it? They wouldn't have used something that's two generations behind.

3. Don't get me wrong, the USSR did have its own problems and handicaps. But it wasn't as handicapped as most people seem to assume anyway.

The biggest and foremost problem the USSR had wasn't technological at all. Their army had just gone through Stalin's purges, and was (A) lacking competent officers, (B) paralized with fear of being the next scapegoat if they show any initiative, and (C) put under the control of comissars who were there just for political reasons, not for any military competence. The USSR, including the army, also had a _massive_ morale problem. At least half the people (and almost all the minorities and non-Russian Soviet republics) would have been happier to fight against Stalin than for him.

_That_ is the main factor that almost doomed the USSR in the early days of Operation Barbarossa.

A second problem -- again, mostly because of doctrine and political idiocy, rather than technology -- was that the Russians didn't believe in using radios on their tanks. They had them in homeopathic quantities, if at all. So once they were buttoned up in combat, each tank was almost on its own and had no clue what the others are doing. Whole units just naturally lost all cohesion and turned into individual tanks as soon as the fight started. And one invariant of war, from the Greek phalanx to Roman legions to Waterloo to WW2, is that the unit which loses cohesion first loses.

There were technological issues too. The steel in Soviet tanks was marginally weaker for example. (But they compensated by having extra-thick armour anyway.) The optics on Soviet tanks were slightly poorer than those on German tanks. (But the 76mm projectile had a flatter trajectory, so it wasn't _that_ horribly big a disadvantage.) The APHE ammo used by the Soviets had inferior penetration compared to the APCR rounds everyone else used, and the charge tended to detonate prematurely anyway. (But it didn't matter until later, because even the HE round could tear a Pz-II or Pz-III a new one. And later they did switch to better ammo.) Etc.

Sure, those made some difference too, but still, not that decisive.

Nah

Nah, most of their tanks came from Tankograd [wikipedia.org], a city they built pretty much from scratch around some enormous tank factories.

Microsofts marketing

I can see Microsoft's new marketing campaign now. "PS3's are for terrorists"

You what?

Need a missile-guidance system? Buy yourself a Sony PlayStation 2. Need more capability? Just upgrade to a PS3.

Because it's well known that all Sony consoles have missile-guidance software built in to their firmware!

Seriously, WTF? How does a Playstation have any benefits over other smaller, cheaper, lighter computer hardware for guiding missiles? How does cheap computer hardware have any benefits at all when you don't have the software to run on it? How would hardware and software have any benefits at all when you don't have any guided missiles in the first place, and if some rogue state (or the CIA, depending on whose side you're on) wanted to supply you with them, they could just supply you with guidance systems at the same time?!

Oh, I'm sorry...

the cheap, inexpensive, but clever ways that militants are adapting to modern warfare.

I'd thought guerrilla wasn't exactly a new concept...

/* BTW inexpensive == cheap */

Pitchforks anyone?

The premise seems flawed. It's not open source that's enabling militants to intelligently fight armies, it's the militants' own intelligence and adaptability that lets them use whatever happens to be there to fight the occupying forces: centuries ago it was pitchforks, now it's open source, tomorrow it will be flying cars.

Re:Pitchforks anyone?

exactly. It's like my friend (a vet) says, he walks in to a diner and sees weapons everywhere,

Wow.

I didn't know veterinarians were so militant.

Though I can see the rationale... if you're going to spay (or bathe) a cat, you'd better be learned in the arts of war.

We are in effect training them how to fight us.

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?

PS3 is too much work for a guidance system

I dunno, maybe you could make it run on DC...Prolly could get away with a power inverter. Still though, would you don't really want moving parts and it's a lame way to do it.

http://www.u-nav.com/picopilot/picopilotn.html [u-nav.com]

$500 gets you a solid state autopilot programmable with GPS waypoints. It also already has a interface to servo's.

Just because you could build a guidance system from a game system, doesn't mean it's really going to have any advantage in the real world.

It's not the technology, it's the men

Sure, technology helps. But what you really need is to find some way to inspire men to kill. As present experience shows us, as long as you have that ideology that inspires men to plant a bomb in a market packed with people, that's all that matters. Dynamite is a 19th century invention. As is throwing bombs into crowds.

Bruce Simpson

on the subject.. remember Bruce Simpson and his DIY cruise missile that various governments stamped on?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3302763.stm [bbc.co.uk]

http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/ [interestingprojects.com]

He's talented and not afraid of controversy and his part in the infamous "jet carts" episode from Scrapheap Challenge is excellent. I always thought he had a point about this one.

btw. I always though IE D from the article was a very misleading term - many of these devices are NOT improvised the insurgents pack them out on a factory line and some of them are relatively advanced in the design and detonation system - as far as I can tell from the news reports.

Long article, not much in it

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.

That's what you get for declaring "War on Terror"

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.

Its fear mongering, don't fall for the bait.

Its an article written for the people who think the devil is in the computer. Its needless fear mongering, so don't fall for the bait.

To summarize the article:

Despite America's best efforts to bomb the guerilla fighters into the stone age, they are still managing to get hold of cell phones and laptops. In theory, we blame thier new fangled abilities to communicate on a broad scale for America's inability to adjust to asymetrical warfare waged by non nation states. We threw in the bit about using PS2s to fly cruise missles to mislead you, its worked before. Consumer electronis are the new weapons of mass destruction. So are you afraid yet? Vote Republican or the terrorists win.

Whee! This article is buzzword compliant!

"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.

Those open source terrorists!

Well it was about to happen..

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.

Re:Those open source terrorists!

Given their extremist political views, I'd think they'd use Subversion instead of CVS.

I resent that

I resent the association between war and Open Source. It's bullshit.

This is a good thing

Guerrilla warfare is never waged without the support of the people. Now that guerrillas have gotten so effective we should not fear any invasion, as it will be sent home with its tail between its legs in short order.

Forget the PS2

If you need a PS2 or PS3 to run guidance algorithms, you don't know how to write guided missile control software. A 68000 is more than most missiles have.

What surprises me

I a total lack of reference to The Anarchist Cookbook [wikipedia.org] which seems like a natural for an article that references re-purposing tech for war and making stupid associations with the Open Source Movement.

"United by that vision, they exchange information and work collaboratively on tasks of mutual interest."

I mention the latter because the association is tenuous at best, and could as easily be made with any other information sharing that occurs. In other words, it's not Open Source, it's the connectivity itself. It seems to me that virtually any group sharing situation utilizing the internet would apply, including MMRPG teams, Teacher-to-Teacher networks that develop course ware for some subject or other, and pimp-my-ride or mod-my-box communities.

A horde of PS2-guided missiles? Really?

I seriously doubt we will see many cobbled-together anti-aircraft missiles with Linux guidance programs in the near future. The testing phase alone (to make sure it wouldn't lock onto something else, like a tree) would carry too much of a risk of discovery. It is far more effective for them to load a truck full of fertilizer, propane, or fuel, and drive it into a building. Oh, and even if they do pick a government building as a target, it's doubtful to be a military building. Those are too much of a hard target. They would go after an office building full of civilian government employees.

Look at that. Doesn't sound like warfare, does it? Sounds more like run-of-the-mill terrorism and defending against that is incredibly difficult without adversely affecting Liberty itself. The price of not living in a police state is that, sometimes, bad people will manage to do bad things. Horrible cost, but that's life. Anybody who tells you differently is selling something.

Maybe our children's children will finally find a solution. It is not going to be our generation; so do your best to teach the children the value of life and freedom. At the very least, they can push forward some more and will not spend their time trying to build missiles out of their PS2.

Oh dear God!

...and the know-how to do battle are readily found on the Internet and at your local RadioShack.

Dear God, if they can wage battle with RadioShack, please keep them from knowing about Digi-key http://dkc1.digikey.com/us/en/pdf/Current.html [digikey.com]

Parity isn't that important

At first glance, spending $100k to take out a cheap IED doesn't sound that useful, but there are two really important things to remember. First, that the insurgencies need to pay people $500 to $1000 (roughly) to plant those bombs. There's also risk that either someone gets caught or an innocent party gets killed (both which can cause serious problems for the insurgency). And second, the insurgencies have far less resources than the US government does. Two orders of magnitude spending difference may be sufficient for the US to beat these insurgencies.

Oh, look! Everybody is a terrorist.

I realize everybody here is probably well aware of how this game works, but it's still important to call the lies when you see them, cuz they're certainly not going to shut up and hand their heads when you point our their psychotic bullshit.

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. [. . .] members of the group don't report to a central authority; they operate relatively autonomously, and they tend to be well educated, media-savvy, and comfortable operating in a globalized, high-tech world.

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

Caveat

When you buy that PS2 don't forget to pick up the "missile tracking" module as well, or it won't do you much good.

BTW: where can I find a Radio Shack in the vicinity of Iraq or Libya?

Ozzy is to blame

I think it's Ozzy's fault!

This Topic Is Not A Joke

For all the people making fun of how technology levels the playing field, all you need to do is look at how the Iraqis use cell phones to remotely detonate IEDs. Apparently other technologies are being adapted and used as well.

Think you need an actual rocket for a guided missile? How about a big model airplane and a GPS? Did you know that one group of hobbyists a couple of years ago built a model airplane that flew autonomously across the Atlantic ocean? It used a GPS, gyros, and had a satellite radio uplink to report its location http://tam.plannet21.com/ [plannet21.com].

How about model airplanes that give you the view from the cockpit for remote piloting to the intended target? http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2237947353453839215 [google.com]

All the little gadgets and gizmos that are out there give the creative terrorist a lot of possibilities. Think this article is sensationalistic and stupid? Think again. This stuff isn't hard to do any more.

Level playing field?

Targeting/hiding behind women and children is not a level military playing field, its terrorism. The only reason these technologies are effective against modern warriors is because they are used against a country that has some sort of conscience. You can debate how strong that conscience is but the fact is the playing field is only leveled because one side can hide behind women and children and the other side has qualms about simply annihilating who ever stands in the way.

The reason the playing field is leveled is because of tactics, not technology.

Similar presentation at DEFCON 15

There was a military guy who gave a similar presentation (I didn't read TFA) about terrorism and Iraq and open-source warfare. That is, how terrorists are sharing tactics with each other and therefore adapting and evolving their tactics very quickly and effectively.

PS2 and PS3?

I'm thinking more along the lines of tasers and mace. Hi tech is cool an' all, but far too sensitive(a nice, strong EMP will take care of that), and good old "lo tech" chemistry and electricity come in pretty handy, and these kind of weapons are easy for anyone to produce out of their home. An army of ants can bring down an elephant.

He has some good points

Example: the last page in the latest MAKE magazine was an article about how a guy had put a LEGO Mindstorms in an R/C plane, and wrote some software, and now he could get it to fly to waypoints. My first thought, when I saw this, was "dude, cheap homebuilt cruise missile! Rock on! This'll piss off LOTS of people!" Guy down in New Zealand has a great set of webpages about building your own pulsejets, used to have one about how to add an autopilot onto one but had to take it down following government pressure -- but the knowledge is there.

You might ask why I'm enthusiastic about this. One: I love DIY and geek hardware. Two: I think the point of the Second Amendment was to keep the government afraid of the people, because an armed populace could overthrow a hostile, intrusive government. Well, these days, that's clearly not going to happen -- people are outclassed by orders of magnitude, and the idea of a popular insurrection is pretty much hopeless. However, maybe technology will fill in the gap. It's already happened with cryptography. Individuals can implement privacy measures that the government can't break by force. Maybe another 20 years, even if we can't stand up for ourselves, we can at least keep the government scared enough to listen.

Preposterous

How does one judge the power of technology in warfare? Since the 'product' of war is killing, we can keep score by looking at kill ratios. Look at the numbers. If we examine historical conflicts and compare them with the effectiveness of the coalition invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I think we'll quickly see how lopsided the use of superior technology and training have made things. Iraq had the third-largest standing army in the world, yet the coalition was able to defeat this army in two weeks using a small fraction of the manpower they had. Coalition forces regularly manage 100:1 kill ratios [telegraph.co.uk]. The notion that availability of off-the-shelf technology makes things more level is unbelievably naïve.

Er, no.

Repeat after me: more people die in police custody than at the hands of terrorists.

shameless editing

Oh my, a $100 000 PackBot unit (Brought to you by iRobot Corp, of Burlington, Mass.), reduced to pieces by what was probably a few dollars' worth of explosives (God, what a waste...), in an open-source warfare, which is bogged down because any request for equipment is first given a congressional review, which takes up to a month. However, the Pentagon is now granting its projects "rapid-acquisition authority." Good, we should clearly make a sustained attempt to create

• an insurgent-resilient model of acquisition

- to protect and serve the expensive equipment.

"We have to look outside the normal bureaucratic way of doing things"

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates

Yee-haa !!

Article mostly hand-waving

Need a missile-guidance system? Buy yourself a Sony PlayStation 2. Need more capability? Just upgrade to a PS3.

Yeah right. All you need to do is connect your missile's engine to the PlayStation Missile Guidance Port, right? </sarc>

Puhlease. Asymmetric warfare might be becoming more widespread, but it's not because of videogames. It's because it's cheap when you can rely on a bottomless supply of expandable human detonators, better known as suicide bombers. Who needs a sophisticated warhead delivery vehicle when you can load a dozen 155-mm rounds on a truck and give the driver a dead man switch for him to release when he crashes on the target?

Very few IED attacks or terrorist bombings use clever hacks and brilliant designs. Those don't reliably work, can't be duplicated by untrained workers, and don't scale. Remember, warfare is a number game. You need do perform your attacks cheaply and often.

This is true for clandestine organizations, but also for established governments. Look at the Germans during WWII. The sophisticated MG42 machine gun was the ancestor of today's assault rifles, but it cost a fortune because it was overengineered. Look at the Me262, the mot brilliant piece of engineering ever flown at the time, yet too hard to build and not widespread enough to make a difference. Compare and contrast with the crude but reliable American standard equipment, mass produced in huge quantities.

Cheap production and good logistics beat clever engineering most of the time. Of course, politics is subject to different rules, and it has a greater influence on warfare than all weaponry.

Meanwhile, in other news ...

...terrorists kill dozens by dropping container loads of unsold Zunes on a local village.

attack of the bad analogy terrorist ..

What the hack does software hackers have to do with Insurgent groups, answer .. nothing. Why is it when you set off an IED, you're a terrorist, while if you drop white phosphorus on a civilian area, your a war hero.

"During the past four and a half years, the United States and its allies in Iraq have fielded the most advanced and complex weaponry ever developed. But they are still not winning the war"

Haven't the US learned anything since the Vietnam war, a low tech highly motivated guerilla army can defeat a so called hi-tech modern army.

"What we are seeing is the empowerment of the individual to conduct war,"

No what you are seeing is a highly pissed off populations defending their own country against an illegal and immoral occupation.

'Robb calls this new type of conflict "open-source warfare [ieee.org]," because the manner in which insurgent groups are organizing themselves .. bears a strong resemblance to the open-source movement in software development'

What a complete load of tripe, have you noticed that anywhere there is 'terrorost' activity, it usually follows a period of oppression by some government. Are we supposed to forget why the Islamists are so pissed off at the US, it's to do with the Palestinian issue, the second and third generation refugees being a prime source for next years 'terrorists'.

"The resurrection of al-Qaeda is a good example"

There IS no al-Qaeda, just a bunch of severely pissed off ethnic Islamists. Like you drive a tank down my street and then have me ejected and forced to live in some refugee camp, that's gonna make one pissed off Arab.

"Given the structural changes that were required of al-Qaeda to adapt to its loss of Afghanistan as a safe haven,"

Bin Laden was sent into Afghanistan by the US to create an insurgent group that later on become known as al-Qaeda to fight the Russions. The one thing the Taliban did was reduce Opium production to zero, it is now back at its highest level ever. The implication that Afghanistan is now somehow not safe for 'al-Qaeda' is totally bogus. The coalition forces have no control there. As well as large areas of north Packistan are virtually no-go-areas for the Packistan government. Is this Rand fella living on the same planet as the rest of us.

"Unfortunately, the traditional weapons acquisition process .. is simply not designed to operate on such a fleeting timescale"

No, it's because you can't put enough troops on the ground to effectivly engage the enemy. In vietnam all it took was a bunch of barefoot gooks, a kalashnikov and a bag of rice to defeat the most powerfull and technologically advanced nation on the planet. You see they were prepared to sacrifice a hundred as against your one. Robots aren't much good in a war, as they don't hate people enough to travel half way round the world to kill people they have never met.

Who's gonna defend us against you ...

SAM R&D

The IRA did a little Surface to Air Missile R&D in USA in the 80s, but they were caught.
In the end heavy duty machine guns were used to take down a few helicopters.
 

The Point of the Article was Missed Here

Firstly, the author was not saying that open source is a form of terrorism. What he was saying is that the rapid and open communication model used by open source is much more efficient than the closed encrypted compartmented model used by the U.S. Military Industrial Complex: Terrorists communicate on open websites in near realtime while the military communicates through channels with huge delays. A single terrorist can read the terrorist literature from anywhere and change tactics appropriately. A single U.S. soldier neither has access to the up-to-the-second information on new tactics nor the authority to act upon it.

In terms of acquisition, a terrorist can cobble together any sort of armament with any materials available and if it doesn't work, they try again very rapidly. A single U.S. soldier must generally wait for new specially designed equipment to come from the U.S. to combat a given problem. This can take months when lucky and years when not lucky. While the new special equipment likely works very well, the need may have gone away by the time it is delivered. It's not the danger of consumer devices the author was pointing out; it the fact that the enemy has simple cheap and brutally effective weapons based on consumer devices where we have nothing that is either that cheap or nearly as cost effective for the battle at hand. The point about the PS3 was not that the bad guys have PS3 based missiles it's the fact that say a blackberry's processor is just as capable of running a cruise missile as a 1 million dollar circuit card on a cruise missile. That's not to say that the terrorists have the software, it only points up the fact that we ought to question why it takes the U.S. a million dollar control board to do the same thing you could do with a PS3.

What I think the author was trying to say is that we should have the Industrial portion of the Military Industrial Complex cranking out cheap equipment from off the shelf parts designed to meet the need at hand rather than designing multi-million, multi-billion, or multi-trillion dollar systems that take months, years, or decades to field. Why send in a $100,000 packbot to look for explosives if you can send in a $1000 wheeled vehicle made from R/C car parts. With the availablity of cheap explosives on the part of our adversaries, there is no way we can hope to solve the problem with money when there is a 1:100,000 disparity in the cost to us to take out insurgent weapons.

I work for a company that develops quick off the shelf systems for the U.S. military. One system I worked on along these lines ran linux and consisted of lightly modified PC's combined with other special gear. I think we spent 6 months just performing the environment tests to show that the equipment would survive multiple trips to 40 below zero, explosive decompression of an aircraft around it, salt spray etc. It took over a year to get this expedited product out the door.

While the testing was was justified in the case I worked on, I don't see a reason to worry about antarctic applications of tiny cheap and disposable robots for use in the desert. Even if the lifetimes of a lot of this special purpose equipment are short, I think it would be better to put out more cheap equipment faster. A crate of mostly working robots for examining IED's designed as the 90% solution,ON THE GROUND TODAY (with the soldiers), is worth a lot more that a perfectly tested triple checked crate of indestructible robots delivered after the squad they were supposed to protect has perished.

False premise and lack of military comprehension

What has changed is the ability of an individual or small groups to have access to information and communication methods more so than in the past. That is true for EVERYONE. Additionally, "offensive" actions without responsibility to protect a geography are always and have always been far "easier" and far less expensive than defensive or state-protective actions. The premise of the article is nothing new. The same applied to the crossbow which the Pope declared would be so horrible a weapon that wars would cease, or metal projectiles or machine guns or trains or ... you name it. The more technology is available, of any type, the more technology can be used for "warfare". You can make poison gas in large quantities from items bought at any grocery store. BFD. The only people who would be stunned by the "revelation" of this article are the people who still think human wave assaults are used or that drug-addicted illiterates are tricked into military service. In the 1960s there were lenty of methods for distributing information (mimeograph machines, etc.) and lots of improvised munitions used for terrorist activities. The same was true in ... every war which proceeded all current wars ... and various civil situations. WTF, don't schools even mention the haymarket riots or assassinations any more? This article is as precient as those warnings on citrus-based cleaners not to drink them.

War, end it or be in it, is the Q&A ....

The 'empowerment of like minded individuals joined together to conduct war' through technology is a fact.

"No one nation, individual, ideology ... can win in technology warfare" without the full support of like minded and skilled individuals globally to conduct the technology cyber-war. In such a war, I suspect, Human Ideals will kick the ass of feeble fractious feudal greed/myth.

US, EU, China, Russia plutocrats ... and Christianity, Islam ... delusionist could not win. If pushed to war by US, EU, China ... Maybe M$, Halliburton-Blackwater, Walmart ... and ... could win, but far more likely is that humanity science and technology warriors/SF would eventually force the unconditional capitulation of all corporations, religions, governments, plutocrats ... to avoid our species extinction.

I think the point is maybe ..., warfare ain't what it was during the present and recent feudal times. Advanced armor, weapons, countermeasures ... are far more expensive and capable, but the on-delivery-target-kill capability is far more impersonal and less precise (a house/car is never the "target"). Inability to confirm "target availability and kill" is a big failure for the highly structured military and surgical strikes. Advanced armor, weapons, countermeasures ... can be effect-marginalized, obtained and used, or neutralized at tactical levels by SciEng-technology specialized enemy forces.

The asymmetric para-military is still focused on personally seek-&-kill the target (not strength in SciEng-technology). These targets are not (strong in SciEng-technology) shrouded in political-agenda, value, intrigue, doubts, questions ....

War is about the practical and achievable. Conflicts (political, religious, dogma ...) are about some nebulous pragmatic dogma/mythology.
Focus on one (War or Conflict), you will lose both. Focus on both, then maybe you will win, but always at a terrible cost to all.

Presently, the USA is involved in a conflict with megalomaniacs who have an asymmetric para-military, and use religious radical ideology (not patriotism) for global recruiting and technology GIG organization. The megalomaniacs are fighting a war with practical and achievable goals. The USA is (as in Vietnam) concerned with the "Domino Theory" of world domination, by other then Christian Crusaders. Religions can cause conflicts, but religions/politics only win conflicts with sever attrition and genocide. Victory in War always depends on the practical and achievable. Patriotism, political, religious, dogma, ideology, mythology, god, money ... are great for recruiting, and can (for all involved) be equally valuable for losers and winners.

Iraq is an ideology conflict (like Vietnam and Crusades), started by BinLadin-&-Bush. The Iraq conflict is not a war with practical and achievable objectives of (1) unconditional surrender (of nations, individuals, ideologies and ...), (2) personally seek-&-destroy (the nations, individuals, ideologies and ...), (3) end it (forever with no restitution/revenge for anyone).

US, EU, China, Russia, France ... and other faux-democratic, pseudo-representative, and propaganda-populist governments proved to be consistent competent failures for the last few centuries. Christianity, Islam ... other idol-dogmas (economic, political, cultural ...), after a few draconian millennium, are becoming recognized as evil-agents/agencies that blame others, take wealth and lives, then provide nothing of value to humanity.

The few exceptional leaders in history are not the rule, and their great-image is always exploited by those that seek to rule humanity.

I see little difference in character or value to humanity among historical creeps

Let the troops build their own!

I think the appropriate response would be to supply our troops with portable fabs which would let them build their own weapons and give them greater autonomy to determine their own tactics. Of course, the overall strategy would have to be better defined, but that's true in conventional warfare as well. I'm sure we could provide them with more and better raw building materials than what the jihadists have access too, and they aren't any dumber!

Ted Kaczynski

Isn't this what the unibomber was complaining about? Advances in technology would enable a single terrorist to destroy civilization?

As has been noted...

The more complex the technology of warfare becomes, the more Achilles heels accumulate in the designs. The fact technical items at some point become so complex that one cannot possibly test all possible failure or vulnerability scenarios against it, even with advanced computer modeling and such. If we can build cheap, disposable robots to replace human troops in one-on-one gunbattle in the streets of Western al-Bumfuck, Iraq that would be a major advancement though.

Re:That's is?

Hate to break it to you, but you do know that computers were around before 2002, right?

& /. groupthink says *Christans* are irrationa

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, [implosionworld.com] 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!