Center for a New American Security

I am rather busy today, traveling around looking for answers to some of the security-related questions I posed in Part I of my Egypt Trip Report (see below). I want to briefly share, though, an interesting wrinkle to a rather polarized debate that has developed concerning the role the Internet and social media played in the protests in Egypt and the eventual downfall of Hosni Mubarak. Both sides of the debate, a friend told me last night, are essentially correct: yes, the Internet, Facebook and Twitter played a terribly important role in mobilizing the Egyptians who filled the streets of Egypt to protest the regime. But yes, too, it took ACTUAL BODIES out there in the streets and not "Facebook Revolutionaries" just re-tweeting the struggle from the comfort of their homes. One interesting piece of analysis I have now heard from several smart observers is that by shutting down the Internet and the cellular phone networks, the Egyptian regime actually *increased* the number of Egyptians on the streets protesting. Not only did shutting down the Internet force people to leave the house and physically connect with their fellow protesters, but one friend noted that if you really want to piss off all of Egypt, a good way to do so is by shutting off cell phone service. More than Facebook or Twitter, cellular phone service unites Egyptians in a virtual community. And by shutting down cellular phone service, you're sure to anger Egyptians of all generations and classes -- and not just the college kids with Facebook accounts. So score one for the enduring power of 20th Century technology, perhaps.

It's very hard work to run an organization, let alone one that's constantly being spied upon and sued.

Julian Assange, on why his organization does not publish donor information.

What is the over/under on current or former U.S. government officials who read that sentence in today's Wall Street Journal and choked on their coffee? 2,000? 5,000?

It's obviously pretty rich to hear Julian Assange admit that sometimes, secrecy has advantages. Assange wants a standard of transparency where he alone is the arbiter of what remains secret, and I suspect he has a pretty black and white view of things: big governments, bad; plucky leftist internet interests, good. The former have little to no right to secrecy, while the latter have all that they themselves deem necessary. The hypocrisy, here, is on full display.

There has been a lot written about the failure of large organizations, governmental and non-governmental, to adapt to the internet age. But the more I look at internet-age organizations, they more it looks as if they too can't quite figure out how they themselves fit into the world. I was reminded of a friend who spoke with some executives at Google and asked why they posted this or that image of U.S. military installations on Google Earth. "Hey," the answer came back, "information wants to be free."

Okay, my friend asked, then why don't you publish the exact locations of your data centers? His question was met with nervous laughter.

At the moment, the street-view imagery on Google Earth is causing a controversy in Germany, where folks are less enthusiastic about their homes being photographed and put on the internet in high resolution than we Americans have been. Reading about the controversy in the FT over the weekend, I was struck by this quote from Peter Schaar, Germany's data protection chief:

I sometimes get the impression that Google in some areas still acts like the quirky garage start-up that's driven by the sheer enthusiasm of its founders.

This will be cold comfort to governments around the world, but it's becoming more and more apparent that the organizations that should feel most comfortable in the internet age are having as much trouble adjusting to it as everyone else.

Due to scheduled maintenance by our internet gremlins, Abu Muqawama will be out of commission this afternoon...

Will McCants sent me an email this morning about my piece in the New Republic:

Great piece. One of the interesting things I've learned about the forums is that many of the participants are both active militants and forum participants. My silly term for them is "forum fighters". For these sorts of participants, the forums are like CompanyCommand.army.mil.

This mirrors an argument that I have been making, which is that if our tactical leaders are using fora like companycommand and platoonleader to trade TTPs, we should expect the other side's tactical leaders to be doing much the same thing. Bottom-up innovation is like the Loch Ness Monster for us geeks who study military transformation theory. (Most of the literature covers examples of top-down innovation.) So it's always exciting when we see it.

I made a mistake in the TNR piece, though. I did not correct the following sentence when it was edited:

The foiled 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, for example, was allegedly plotted almost entirely within the confines of my old neighborhood in East London. And while some terrorists--such as Mohammed Sadiq Khan, who is believed to have masterminded the 7/7 bombings--travelled to Pakistan and trained in militant camps, the common denominator that has emerged from domestic terror threats in places like the United Kingdom is that their staging ground was actually on the internet rather than in a physical "safe haven."

Allow me to offer a slight correction. The common denominator I was trying to talk about is internet-driven propaganda rather than the internet more generally. I should have caught this when the sentence changed during the editing process. My bad.

I bid farewell to Lady Muqawama this evening, who returns to the West Coast to go be smart and stuff. (Those of you who know L.M. know how ridiculously out-of-my-league I am.) Tonight I am catching up on my reading and writing. These two articles from the weekend caught my eye. The first is the article on Chinese hacking that I am sure you have already read. Rafal Rohozinski is a friend of mine, and I participated in a workshop with Ron Deibert, who is pretty much the world's leading expert in "getting around firewalls."

The second article is by another friend, Yochi Dreazen (C '99), who describes this piece as near and dear to his heart. All the same, this was a tough article to read.

Maj. Gen. Mark Graham is on the frontlines of the Army's struggle to stop its soldiers from killing themselves. Through a series of novel experiments, the 32-year military veteran has turned his sprawling base here into a suicide-prevention laboratory.

One reason: Fort Carson has seen nine suicides in the past 15 months. Another: Six years ago, a 21-year-old ROTC cadet at the University of Kentucky killed himself in the apartment he shared with his brother and sister. He was Kevin Graham, Gen. Graham's youngest son.

After Kevin's suicide in 2003, Gen. Graham says he showed few outward signs of mourning and refused all invitations to speak about the death. It was a familiar response within a military still uncomfortable discussing suicide and its repercussions. It wasn't until another tragedy struck the family that Gen. Graham decided to tackle the issue head on.

"I will blame myself for the rest of my life for not doing more to help my son," Gen. Graham says quietly, sitting in his living room at Fort Carson, an array of family photographs on a table in front of him. "It never goes away."

Carlos wanted to share a couple of moments from his Florida touch-and-go trip/talk. He shared the day with a journalist (a sort of internet/media day). It coincided with one hell of a Super Bowl. Carlos spent a year in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon (a brief flirtation with chemistry; it didn't work out), but had to cheer for the Cards (one year does not fandom make. The five points I got didn't hurt either). But kudos to both teams.

The talk went well, but with a majority of developing countries, there is frequently the talk over "who runs/controls the internet" and how to shut it down. One attendee asked if Bill Gates ran the internet (he wishes).

The journo followed, and if there's one thing that Carlos has noted in his time in PME, it's that no matter what national disagreements one has, one thing military folks from around the world agree on is that they all hate the media. This audience was no different, with everything from "you lie" to "bias" -- you all know the drill.

Which brings me to the quote in the subject line. That's from AMB Jeanne Kirkpatrick in the late 1980's. She was on a debate on Firing Line (her and Buckley on one side, Paul Nitze and I-don't-remember on the other). The subject was US foreign policy and it was a whole "realism vs. idealism" debate for you polisci types. Near the end of the talk, Nitze began with a series of facts, and AMB Kirkpatrick cut in with that line. I've never forgotten that quote, obviously.

So when are facts not facts? When they're not, apparently. Carlos said that these international audiences bond on their belief that the media lies/is biased. Then they disagree on what the bias or lie is (those facts are not facts). The case in point was the discussion over Pakistan (two Pakistan officers in the crowd). On the question over "what to do about Pakistan", the journo opined that some sort of Islamabad control needed to be extended to the FATA. She's interrupted by one of the officers with the spiel of "you have to understand, these are old cultures, yada, yada." She responded with "Well, is it Pakistan or not?" "Yes, it is, but we don't control it." (Well, that would be the definition of NOT a state or part of one (lack of monopoly of legitimate violence over a given territory).

So, okay, moving on...the audience is still on the "media bias" kick, and the US Army CPT in the class pops up with the "you know, the biggest problem with what went on in Iraq was the media lying about the lack of connection between Iraq and 9/11."

Yeah...um, WTF?? We still have folks going after that chestnut?

Carlos stresses to his students that despite the fact that we talk about Strategic Communications and how to do it well, the most vital point of the equation is the one we do not control--how the message is received. And if the audience thinks the speaker is not credible, then how it is said (even in the language of the listener) is not going to help. (Though it is the philosophical conundrum. You know, the one where the speaker says "Everything I say is a Lie." Is that a lie?)

Finally, Carlos had what he has to call a "Gian Gentile" moment (and he hopes the good Colonel will take that as a compliment): In the middle of his lecture, Carlos called FM 3-24 the "Counterinsurgency Novel." :)

Okay, Carlos is going back to slacking off. He's gone until the end of February. He's going to Hawaii and has no plans to find connectivity. Aloha 'til March, all.

Yes, Carlos has been absent these last few...yeesh, that long, huh?

Well, he got buried under grading assignments, and taking advising Master's students, and a few other things. But mostly, he's been tweaking his new toy.

(Of course, you'd think that would have given Carlos greater connectivity and time on the 'net, and you'd be right. He's just not been hanging out at the AM section of cyberspace).

So, how do decompress after all that work? Road trip, baby! Carlos will be giving a talk on terrorism and the internet just a few hours away from Tampa, Florida. (He's typing this draft in the airport lounge right now, though the wireless network seems a bit wonky, it might not get posted until after. Shall he see if the expense account will pass a Super Bowl ticket? Let's not, but let's dream).

On “Terrorism and the Internet,” Carlos had been tempted to pull the “terrorists use the internet for exactly what everyone does—to find cheap airline tickets and free porn.” But no, he likes these occasional trips, so he'll keep the wise-assery to a minimum. Though really, the idea that the use of the internet is something special for terrorists should have gone out with acid wash denim. Terrorists want to pass information secretly. They need to send lots of information quickly. They want to pass both open messages and closed ones, and they need to do so with relative anonymity. If geeks and Al Gore hadn't invented the internet, terrorists would have had to.

(One of Carlos' favorite cartoons remains the “classic” 1993 New Yorker cartoon. This is truer on most dating sites, but holds as a general rule).

In terms of passing funding and information, Carlos had thought about being a little circumspect here, but this is more out than not, and might be of interest to readers here.

For moving lots of data, virtual drives/web storage are obviously great. Connecting them to torrent sites is even better. Most torrent sites (think Napster for more than music for you somewhat old-school folks) are all about copyright violations (movies, programs, music, you name it), but there's a ton of other stuff out there, buried but relatively easily to find. Carlos first came across torrents when he was looking for a PDF of the classic Marine Corps Gazette publication The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him. His search pointed him to a massive file of guerrilla warfare publications. While many were classical historical type texts, there were a few “how-to” pubs included as well.

(The scariest thing about the torrent world isn't even, sadly, the copious copyright violations, but a fair amount of what looks to be child porn, and no, I'm not even going to joke about that. But with most of these sites and servers outside the US, I'm not sure what can be done there).

Moving money? Lots of non-tech ways to go, but how about ways that aren't connected to cash at all? The site Second Life is where people can create “avatars” of who they, well, want to be and lead “second lives.”(We'll leave the social commentary aside for now). “Enhancements” on the basic avatar, as well as things like property and other possessions, can be bought in Second Earth, with real funds transferred to Second Life banks. (The largest bank recently had a run and had to shut down when people were taking money out of Second Life to buy things for, um, real life). The point being of course is that one can deposit money into Second Life and have it withdrawn from someone, somewhere else.

What this all is, bottom line, is another manifestation of the “better mousetrap, better mouse” syndrome. Or its lesser-known but no less powerful variation: Just because you made it for something, doesn't mean it won't get used for something else. Case in point: Carlos' Christmas present linked above. The models for these ultra-mobile PCs were for the whole “One Laptop per Child” campaign intending to “link the world” (a whole Tom Friedman wet dream), and while they still are working in that area, the main market for “netbooks” today are techno-geeks like yours truly.