US soldiers in Iraq can use social software to fight insurgents, by adding to a collaborative mapping platform. TIGR is designed to surface information in bottom-up, web 2.0 fashion.
John Arquilla offers a good critique, noting that the institutional structures within which soldiers work haven't changed. A familiar issue to educators, yes?
(via Nicholas Carr)
The Middle Eastern internet cable cut is eliciting a series of theories, which are interesting to examine. They reveal a spectrum of political fears, with some flavoring of the fearsome internet.
Reports claim a variety of sources that might have incapacitated the cables, from the U.S. Secret Service, to Islamic fundamentalists, or other military exercises. Others maintain the damage signifies retribution for the impending opening of the Iranian Oil Bourse, which will allow trading in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, potentially diminishing the value of the dollar.
Other theories touch on America preparing for a strike on Iran through information warfare. Some name al Qaeda directly. Wired finds more:
Professional terrorist fear monger Annie Jacobsen says Middle Eastern governments are lying about the real reason for the cuts. 9/11 truthers suggested the cuts came in preparation for a U.S. government-faked terrorist attack on the Super Bowl. Bloggers have suggested that the cuts are cover for the NSA installing taps on the lines using the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter.
The news cycle has advanced rapidly, leading to parodies of these theories. The Wall Street Journal, for example, while ruling out head-mounted shark lasers, blames Gamera.
The causes largely remain mysterious. The number of breaks, and Egypt not finding video evidence, add to the puzzle's allure.
Previously on this topic: John Robb considers the cuts as if they were a probe.
One way of looking at this week's quartet of internet cable cuts is to consider them as an attack model. John Robb notes that such an attack is actually inexpensive, and hard to repair, given the sheer length of cabling and the complexity of their layout. It was also make for a good capabilities test, he adds.
There's a military version of the ad technology whereby voices are beamed right into the mark's head. LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) was designed for ship-to-ship communication. But rumors from Iraq are that some US forces are using the weapon to project an interpreter's voice into a target's head, speaking as if they were Allah or Mohammed. I do like the idea of realizing a giant warship is speaking to you, personally:
With LRAD, you just aim it at a member of the crew, and have an interpreter "speak" to the sailor. It was noted that the guy on the receiving end was sometimes terrified, even after he realized it was that large American destroyer that was talking to him. This apparently gave the army guys some ideas, for there are now rumors in Iraq of a devilish American weapon that makes people believe they are hearing voices in their heads...
It appears that some of the troops in Iraq are using "spoken" (as opposed to "screeching") LRAD to mess with enemy fighters. Islamic terrorists tend to be superstitious and, of course, very religious. LRAD can put the "word of God" into their heads. If God, in the form of a voice that only you can hear, tells you to surrender, or run away, what are you gonna do?
(via Signs of Witness)
Is the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood blogging movement falling apart? Marc Lynch notes that one of those involved sees the energy being tamped down. A "personal thing" attracted notice last month, but has become a faction, which the leadership doesn't appreciate.
Interestingly, it's not a simple generational divide:
[T]he greatest pressure, I hear, actually came from the more radical and salafi youth who vehemently opposed the relatively liberal trend embodied in the blogging experiment.
Perhaps the movement will return to personal activities, underground.
(via Reason)
Another population has started blogging: more than one hundred members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Marc Lynch, Middle East scholar and author of the fine Abu Aardvark blog, notes that this subsector of the blogosphere now constitutes an online pressure group within than Islamicist organization.
a novel feature of the Brothers’ “true face” began to emerge: sustained criticism of the platform posted by young Muslim Brothers on their personal blogs... “Is this the platform of a political party or a religious organization?” queried one youthful blogger, ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Mahmoud. The posts, in turn, generated another sharp debate, not only about the platform, but also about what it means to be a member of the Brothers and the limits of public dissent...
Their jibes at the draft platform, along with those of secular commentators, were undoubtedly one reason why the draft party platform was withdrawn for revision in late October...
We might be seeing the emergence of a new generation of the Brotherhood, one attuned to a different form of information warfare:
Muhammad Hamza, a Muslim Brother and a blogger, identifies his as a “generation of the 2004 movement,” shaped by the information revolution—satellite TV, cellular phones and the Internet—and the appearance of human rights organizations.[7] Armed with handheld technology, this “2004 generation” obtains and analyzes information, and communicates with fellow Brothers and activists with other leanings, with rapidity and ease.
These blogs are also oppose people outside of their organization, namely other Egyptian bloggers with different political stripes:
Until quite recently, Arab political blogging was dominated by liberal voices, often writing in English, with little representation for the powerful Islamic trends in society. In Egypt, blogging became virtually synonymous with the Kifaya movement. Innovators like Wa’il ‘Abbas (misrdigital.com), ‘Ala’ ‘Abd al-Fattah (manalaa.net) and ‘Amr Gharbiyya (gharbeia.net) were at the cutting edge of Internet activism, offering platforms for political debate and posting firsthand accounts of Kifaya demonstrations replete with video and photographs. Kifaya members used blogs to spread information, coordinate protest activities and communicate with each other.
As the Reason post and comments point out, these bloggers also blog about life in a non-party-discplined way.
(thanks to Jesse Walker)
"Open-Source Warfare" is IEEE's look at the ways irregular groups rapidly develop practices and share information. It's a good introduction to the topic.
In e-Qaeda terms, the major use of the internet in this article is for obtaining and sharing information about devices and technique.
Along those lines, there's a perfect information literacy exchange in the middle of the article, grist for the mills of those favoring or opposing Web 2.0. It turns out that the information most jihadists and insurgents have access to is, ah, imperfect:
...the technical information that goes up on such sites is not always to be trusted, notes Michael Kenney, an assistant professor of public policy at Pennsylvania State University in Harrisburg. “Some of the terrorist instructional manuals and online chat rooms that have received so much attention in the press are, in fact, littered with basic mistakes,” Kenney says. He had one of the world's leading explosives experts review some online training manuals. The expert found that “for every four or five recipes, one may work, [but] only a trained eye can catch” the errors, Kenney says.
Can social networking and social sifting help?
...terrorist groups are proving to be fast learners. They're able to change their activities in response to practical experience and technical information, store this knowledge in practices and procedures, and select and retain routines that produce satisfactory results. As they gain experience, their learning cycles will only continue to shorten.
(via John Robb)
The Russian government is expanding information operations in cyberspace, according to the Washington Post. The article describes Russian citizens' increasing use of the internet for political information-sharing and organization, which may be eliciting a Putin response. The latter seems to include organized pro-government content promulgation, and perhaps impending legal action.
(via Instapundit)
Will NATO take the Afghan war to YouTube? Good question.
Senior NATO spokesperson James Appathurai was in the room when the footage was shown to headquarters staff in Brussels.
The Toronto-born public affairs specialist, envisioning a YouTube coup, asked for permission to release the video immediately.
Permission denied. It is classified, after all...
(thanks to Randy McCall)
CNN reports that American programmers managed to remotely shut down a power plant. The "Aurora" exercise was proof of concept, and realizes a favorite information warfare scenario.
How much of this is FUD or a play for local advantage? Hard to say. There's a lot of stage management in the report.
Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
Nick Montfort: Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction
Daniel J. Solove: The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
David Weinberger: Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
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