<nettime> Thing Memo 3

[ricardo dominguez <rdom@thing.net>]

Thing Memo:
Beyond Infowars.


      "What are we going to do, nuke them for turning off our
      TV's?
      --DOD official

      "Make your enemy your spy. If you can't do that-- just
      kill them, quietly."
      --Ian Flemming


      Command and control systems (CCS) within the
      informatic state have been re-shifting their
      definition of war for sometime. That
      surveillance would become a priority is no
      surprise. The NSA (National Sercurity Agency)
      and the (NRO) National Reconnaissance Office
      have been working on implementing new functions
      for themselves since the end of the post-Cold
      War.

      They had to re-invent themselves into
      hyper-surveillance networks that can accomplish
      defensive intelligence gathering and rapid
      containment missions for the lowest possible
      cost. Since then IW (Information War) has become
      the dominant concern. It is now more important
      to attack an oppenent's information
      infrastructure, than it is to destroy its
      armies. Gulf War type actions are now only useful for
      limited screenal political gambits.

      The new functions of dematerialized power fine
      that it is now more effective to command
      ,control communication, computers, and
      intelligence systems (C4I) of an oppenent's
      civilian information infrastructure. The enemy
      is now hosted by global public commercial
      networks. IW systems now maintain a
      constant analysis of all information flows and a
      contiunous tracking of all the backbone routes in
      search of the most effective way to bring down
      specific zones of resistence within an enemies
      network infrastructures:

      1. Commercial communication systems.
      2. Broadcasting networks.
      3. Financial data systems.
      4. Transportation systems
      5. Internet Server networks.

      Of course one of the problems faced by IW
      tactics is that both miltitary and intelligence
      systems are also routed within the public
      commercial lines. Jamming by cells of highly
      trained ideologically driven netwarriors could
      systematically disrupt wide areas of sensitive
      networks. These micro-squads could slip basic
      disturbances into the chips bought by the U.S
      military-entertainment complex from foreign
      countries. Many of these elements are part of a
      wide range of defensive and offensive weapon
      systems--that could induce general disfunction
      in performance at a pre-set time.

      The scenarios of possible implosions faced by
      the decentralization of command and control are
      increasing at a co-equal rate with the speed of
      accesss to hardware, software, and trainning.
      Late-capital demands that this equation grow
      even faster and to the farthest reaches of the
      globe. The necessity of the rule of association
      and strategic coalitions between military and
      intelligence networks with mega-corperation
      webs, universities, independent ISP's,
      electronic political cells, individual research
      and analysis creates a general state of
      pananarchy.

      Thus IWW (Information World War) has already
      started and it is haunted by its own shadow.
      Electronic command ,control, communication,
      computers, and intelligence systems (C4I) must
      face the task of dealing with what it must
      become. "The only way to counter networks, is to
      become networks.":

      1. Bottom-up architecture.
      2. Multiple distribition points.
      3. Memetic networks (MMN): independent networks
          which coordinate without the unification of a
          central command.
      4. Nonliearity and complexity effects: where
         simple interactions lead to unpredictable
         outcomes.
      5. Constant states of emergency: all systems are
         always already not enough and must be constantly
          upgraded.
      6. Soft Power Systems (SPS): these structures
          are caught in the speed-economies of
          late-capital demassification makes SPS volaitle,
          vulnerable and open.

      This is why reasearch and intelligence (RI) is
      rapidly moving toward more direct methods of
      information tactics--specifically "neo-cortical
      warfare." Why try to define and control unstable
      electronic systems, why not just go directly to
      the root of the problem. RI is now investigating
      and developing methods of direct action against
      individuals and groups that fail to follow the
      bottom-line of Late Capital.

      Human capital as agency (or agent) is much more
      open to C4I tactics than networks are or have
      been. The gamble that the War Machine is now
      takening will have little to do with the
      electronic community. They have already lost
      that battle and must now mimic it in order to
      survive within it--now it is seeking the rapid
      development of meme based weapons and
      micro-genetic weapons.

      If one can stop individuals and groups, a
      priori, with pre-programmed meme-engines the
      necessity of any sort of battle will never
      emerge. Adversary information warriors are now
      being defined and treated as "memoids--people
      who are so possessed by a meme that they can
      justify any deed, while feeling that neither
      their own nor their oppenent's survival matters
      as long as the meme goes foward." Strong
      "neo-cortical" meme tactics are now being
      developed with the aggressive focus that the
      Nuclear Bomb was in the Fifties.

      Better yet kill the root of the problem by
      stopping the reproduction of specific individual
      human captial or problematic collections of
      bodies. A final solution for a new century. Gene
      Based Wepon Research (MBWR) moves beyond Infowar
      (IW) to the next level beyond surveillance and
      meme control as it goal: the development of
      command, contagion, containment, and control
      virus systems (C4VS).

      C4VS will seek out specific genetic registers
      for erasure. As Sun Tzu states, "if the root is
      cut, the tree will not grow and bear fruit."
      Thus command and control issues will move beyond
      infowar in the next decade and over come the
      problematics of electronic (C4I) related
      conflicts.

      http://www.thing.net





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