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010911 - Overview: references essay archives

The Struggle of 010911 -- Notes and Comments

Rev: 01 Jun 2003.

Introduction

(As of January 2003, What is Bill Gates Doing? is a good summary of my overall thinking.)

In September of 2001 I created a web page to help me understand better what was happening in the world. Since then, this essay and the associated references page have changed focus a few times. For a while I focused on Afghanistan and fundamentalism, on economics, political science and social transformation. All along, I've tried to focus on root causes, rather than get caught up in the daily details of the struggle.

From the beginning I have been concerned about the falling cost of high tech weapons and tools, and the resulting collapse in the "price of mayhem". We problably should have taken more note of this in 1995, when a Japanese cult introduced nerve gas into the Tokyo subway. Around the same time Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was another warning. Imagine how many he might have killed had he embraced even the relatively limited technology of the early 1990s ^[23].

After a year of reworking this page, I increasingly think of the falling cost of havoc as our biggest single problem. Ultimately, it may drive us to surrender; but at least we'll have plenty of company. If the cost of mayhem falls far and fast enough, there won't be a 20th century nation state left anywhere!^[24]

Conflict and Participants - A Model

Historians may place consider this attack to be a sequelae of America's victory in the cold war, just as the cold war followed from World War II, and World War II from the Great War (WW I). That Sarajevo assassin has a lot to answer for! In the meantime though early analyses of the attackers and their milieu had two themes: Religious doctrine and Israel. Although most commentators have moved beyond these superficial items I'll address them with three points to consider:

Superficial Explanations

1. First Islam. I do include Fundamentalism^[21] in the model as a prime driver, but I don't think that there are necessarily unique aspects of Islam (as versus, say, the Klan or Scientology) that are critical to the model (see however The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror). It is true that Mohammed was no pacifist, and that there is much in the history and doctrine of Islam to comfort a warrior. At the same time a large portion of most Christian and Jewish rites invoke the Old Testament -- a record of bloody conflict and repetitive massacre. Hinduism has likewise many variants that glorify violence, and Shintoism was the state religion of 1930s Japan. Of all the major world religions, perhaps Buddhism has the only claim to a relatively non-violent path.
   
   So Islamic doctrine does not seem uniquely capable of inspiring violence. Islam, as opposed to Fundamentalism^[21] in general, have however important indirect effects:

   • Pfaff argues that Islam is less compatible with an industrial (technocentric) state than Christianity or Judaism. That may be true, but the comparison is tricky. Medieval Christianity had centuries to deal with modernization, modern Islam has had to swallow it in decades. Consider plate tectonics -- slow pressures allow continental plates to move smoothly, sudden shifts create earthquakes. Medieval Islamic states were more technocentric in many ways than their European equivalents.

   • Islamic doctrine may have an important demographic impact. Islamic doctrine, like Catholic doctrine (but the power of the modern Catholic church is very limited), is often quite resistant to "family planning" and the dissemination of effective contraceptive technologies. If Islamic theology is interpreted as reducing the educational opportunities and freedom of women this will also increase family size. The combination of a possible unique resistance to modernity, and a distrust of contraceptive measures, with modern vaccines, historically cheap food supplies, and public health measures produces a very large increase in population. Since many Islamic nations have harsh climates and limited water supplies, this may predispose to Malthusian collapse.

   • There are 1 billion Muslims, and they live in relatively poor nations with limited prospects. So if one accepts that relative poverty and social stress tends to produce terrorists, then there ought to be a disproportionate number of Islamic terrorists.

2. Next Israel and Palestine as the "justification" for terrorists. Imagine that large numbers of French Christians lived in poverty under the military rule of Italian Buddhists. Imagine that the two parties were locked in low grade warfare. In America the Christian right, I suspect, would be frothing mad, and a fraction would sign up to fight for the French. The vast majority of American Christians, however, would not go to war. They would sympathize, they would pressure those Italian Buddhists, they might seek a peaceful solution, but their lives are such that they would not seek conflict. Far fetched? Consider the support of some Irish Americans for the IRA ...
   From a quite different angle the Economist has also done a surprisingly good job of defending the balance of US policy between Israel and Palestine.

3. Consider extremists in America. Consider extreme 2nd amendment (gun rights) advocates, "right-to-life" terrorists, animal liberation activists, eco-terrorists, anti-globalist anarchists, anti-government anti-tax militias (McVeigh), etc. A reasonable person will see merit in the positions of each of these extreme groups, but there's a qualitative difference between the extremist and the principled advocate. My thesis is that the extremist tendency is more important than the issue, that if abortion were to disappear then anti-abortion terrorists would be terrorists with a different label.

The thesis is that humans are more similar than different. There are proto-terrorists in every culture. Even in a wealthy and lower stress culture (Sweden?) there will be some who by virtue of youth or genetics or misfortune will be drawn to terrorist activities. In a high-stress environment of poverty or war or misery (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, urban Detroit @1985, etc) the fringe terrorist group will go larger. Lastly, the more young there are, the more proto-terrorists under any circumstances (Remember the Weathermen?).

We have in 2001 a plague of terrorists, and each terrorist's power to harm has grown thanks to technology. What are the factors that produce these terrorists (root causes), what is their nature, and what do they believe? Each of these is addressed below.

Root  and Sustaining Causes

An outcome in a complex adaptive system is the result of a large number of interactions. Some might be considered "root causes", but they may have no ongoing influence. Others may be sustaining or antagonistic, direct or indirectly active. Its very difficult to model such a system, and the models cannot be easily tested.

That does not make the problem hopeless however. Murder rates in US cities is an outcome of a complex adaptive social and economic system. We can identify contributing factors (weapon availability, unemployment, drug use, child neglect, family breakdown); and even if the model is not complete actions can be taken against the sustaining factors. Since the system is non-linear, a dramatic drop in murder rates may occur even if the true "root causes" are very difficult to address.

Similarly one may create many simplified^[14] models of the contributing factors leading to the Warm War. Each model will show a number of potential contributing factors that one may act on. Even if the root cause is not addressed (indeed it may no longer be relevant), actions on the contributing and antagonistic factors may cause a change in the overall system configuration (and hence, hopefully, a decreased risk of future attacks).

The sources for this contributing factors shown here are diverse, but Overview and Implications includes some relevant references.  Several of the contributing factors in this diagram are described in more detail below. Money doesn't appear as a distinct contributor, even though attacking al-Qaeda's money supply is important. Funding is a broad enabler for acquiring technology, funding communications, marketing etc, but at least for now it feels to me like a less fundamental input. Many of these operations are inexpensive, since labor and lives are donated. (see also PowerPoint original.)

There are four of the above causes, and a fifth variant, that are detailed below:

1. Technology and the Cost of Havoc
2. Modernity and Technocentric Society
3. Demographics and Environmental Collapse: The Ghost of Malthus
4. Abiologic Natural Selection
5. Poverty Reduction and Social Engineering

See also What do they believe?

Technology and the Cost of Havoc

Over the past century technology has increased destructive power more than it has increased defensive capabilities. Technology, including communication networks and knowledge distribution, has brought to individuals and small groups (micro-powers) the capabilities once limited to nation states; the cost of acquiring and deploying nuclear and particularly biological weapons has decreased substantially. It has increased the harm potential of individuals and small groups. I sometimes call this the AIM problem, a pseudo-acronym for Affordable, Anonymous Instruments of Mass Murder. Our technologies are lowering the cost of the havoc, and the new weapons can be deployed anonymously. Anonymity means invulnerability. We cannot be anonymous, so we are are at an enormous disadvantage -- eventually contending against an invulnerable opponent with irresistible weapons.

How much has the cost of havoc fallen? A few examples over the past century:

The logical (hopefully absurd) extension of this is that on day a single schizophrenic person (a number of al Qaeda operatives appear to be shizophrenic) may be able to destroy a civilization.

As of 10/01 I model this as:

harm potential = number of enemies squared * harm potential per enemy

• where number of enemies is squared due to network effects
• number of enemies is a complex function of time involving transition to modernity (reduces in long term but increases in short term), birth rate, and external interventions
• harm potential/enemy is a product of technology. Equations for information technology growth over time are frightening (see SETI, the Fermi Paradox and The Singularity ....), often of the form y = exp(yt) or a less supra-exponential growth rate. Non IT technologies fortunately grow more slowly.

See also Nuclear and Biological Weapons. Of course technologic innovation is one cause of social disruption, with war often resulting from that disruption. Historians have made a strong case that the proximal cause of the American civil war was the Cotton Gin.

Modernity and Technocentric Society

I first explored these concepts @ 1981, but others (including, in a sense, Karl Marx) have covered them before and since; the term "technocentric" might be mine, though as of 2001 it turns up in many web pages. The globalization debates also tend to cover the same ground.

The basic thesis is quite simple, and it is an extension of the old idea that the "means of production" influence culture. Human's are all^[15] stuck with the genes of hunter-gatherers, but we have the potential for abiologic cultural adaptation. That adaptation can be recursive (culture influences culture), communicative (memes, including religions, may spread), or adaptive to local conditions. I fall in with the group that thinks adaptation wins out over time.

If you live in Afghanistan, local conditions are things like human threat, the weather, food supplies, etc. In other words, the "natural world". If you live in urban Minnesota those things are important -- but they don't dominate people's lives and their cultural success. The things that matter are in a wealthy urban industrial culture are handling technology and equipment, managing knowledge, handling relationships (some things haven't changed), etc. For the industrial world the environment that determines cultural adaptations is non-physical. It is, fundamentally, technology. Hence the term "technocentric society".

Cultures can vary quite a bit (local adaptation is not everything), but some variations are less sustainable than others. The Amish, for example, run into problems with land distribution.

So, in the language of Darwin and natural selection, social structures are akin to individuals that can reproduce themselves or mutate. They have built in variability and they're embedded in technologic structures. The variations that are better suited to the "means of production" (technology) flourish, others wither. The characteristics we think of as "western" are just a variation on a technocentric society; it's an accident of history that industrialization occurred first in Europe^[6].

Societies that adopt technology become "westernized", or, more correctly, technocentric. It's not a conspiracy or a diabolical scheme (though I think social engineering, such as micro-loans to women or educating women accelerate the transformation), it's just what happens. I think the only way to prevent it is either to keep technology out altogether or to have an incredibly effective totalitarian society. Interestingly the Taleban are trying both maneuvers.

What are the characteristics of "technocentric societies"? They use technology effectively within the market framework, so they share the attributes usually ascribed to globalization (I think globalization is a bit misleading here, since the changes would occur even in an isolated nation). For example:

• high investment in education
• optimal use of human capital including education, training and employment of women, diverse ethnicities, etc.
• a varying allegiance to empirical measures and semi-scientific means of establishing proof ^[16]
• tolerance of ideas and cultures, which ends up looking something like 19th century liberalism
• the set of behaviors once known as the "protestant work ethic"
• representative democracy
• robust legal systems and contract law.
• low birth rates

My focus on technocentricity and cultural impact may seem odd, but there are others with great credibility who say much the same thing, but with somewhat different terms. In particular see:

• The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror, which asserts that the intellectual basis for Islamic terror began in the 1930s when it was apparent that adopting western ways would change Islamic cultures.
• Islamic Reformation: Salman Rushdie with an optimistic possibility.
• Robert D. Kaplan and his writings.
• Reducing poverty: The prescriptions for reducing poverty internationally can be interpreted as a program for accelerating the transition to technocentric social structures.

As described further in Beliefs, not necessarily delusional the Taleban, like Tokugawa Ieyasu and Sayyid Qutb (Signposts on the Road, 1964 - "This is the most dangerous jahiliyya [barbarism] which has ever menaced our faith. For everything around is jahiliyya: perceptions and beliefs, manners and morals, culture, art and literature, laws and regulations ..."), correctly recognize the threat that technocentric transition presents to their culture. Their great error is to think that there's anything "western" in its origins.

Demographics and Environmental Collapse: The Ghost of Malthus

It's been said that "young men are the tinder of war" (see Huffington). I suspect that the high death rate of Afghan men from 1970 to 1990, combined with typical "third world" birth rates has produced a demographic profile dangerously weighted towards many young men under the age of 25. More broadly the entire Islamic world has a demographic profile heavily weighted towards young men. This is the result of relative prosperity (natural resources) without the modernity that tends to reduce birth rates and rebalance the demographic profile.

The poverty of the region and lack of opportunities for young men to mate or find employment makes this situation much more severe. (The same problem applies to Egypt and Pakistan and is equally ominous.)

More importantly, I am amazed that a small nation as barren and harsh as Afghanistan ever supported anything close to its population of 25 million (presumably less now, I think this is an older number). I very much wonder if Afghanistan's population has not risen sharply in the 20th century, to the point where it exceeded the carrying capacity of the countryside (carrying capacity is technology dependent, high-technology cultures are much easier to sustain than low-technology cultures).

In addition to this seemingly large population, Afghanistan has suffered at least five years of drought. Most of the topsoil has turned to dust, and it seems to blowing over south asia. I have not been able to learn if this is a typical fluctuation, whether there is an ongoing warming trend there, or whether overpopulation has exacerbated desertification.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s I remember hearing of Rwanda in the context of overpopulation and a potential Malthusian Collapse. When Rwanda succumbed to ethnic war and genocide I did not see any connection made to earlier predictions. It is commonly assumed that Malthusian collapse manifests as starvation or disease, but war seems more likely.

Abiologic Natural Selection (not the biological version)

Why would we end up struggling with a diffuse polymorphic terrorist network based in the most inaccessible and most defensible terrain on the planet earth?

Natural selection. No, I'm not talking about biology or genetics! Natural selection is a system-level behavior (emergent behavior) that occurs when there's "reproduction with inheritance", variation, limited resources, and "predation". Terrorist organizations have all of these attributes.

All of the above mentioned factors are producing an ongoing stream of terrorists from many parts of the world. They are constantly experimenting with a variety of organizations and funding mechanisms (variation). They are subject to selection pressure (military and police action). The "unfit" organizations in less defensible domains (Red Brigade, Baider-Meinhoff, etc) are eliminated. Natural selection ensures what remains is particularly hard to "kill". It's the same phenomenon seen in medicine; bacterial resistance to antibiotics.

Poverty Reduction and Social Engineering

The most successful poverty reduction programs change social structures. This is not something poverty reduction programs like to admit, but I think the evidence is quite strong. It is difficult to reduce poverty without this de facto social engineering. In Bangladesh, for example, success has had a price.

Poverty reduction implies the adoption of modern technocentric structures and this has unintended side-effects, including breeding a resistance movement by members of society that have power within an impoverished social structure.

Ending The Struggle, however, will require poverty reduction and its inevitable social engineering -- even though this will worsen the situation in the short term it is ultimately the only way to "drain the swamp".

The Nature of the Attackers

For the terrorist is like anthrax: once you understand how it works, its components and pathology, it ceases to inspire the same fear.
The Times of London.

Kaplan describes the leadership of the Attackers as combining purity of thought with total naiveté and severe trivial codes. The attackers themselves seem to resemble Timothy McVeigh more than Joan of Arc, and Moonies more than Crusaders (though maybe the Crusaders were cultists too).

They seem to be men who felt they had failed in life, men who thought of themselves as "losers" and who loathed and despised themselves. They found redemption in an apocalyptic organization with a messianic leader, a place where they could feel wanted, valuable, powerful. They could drink alcohol and use prostitutes (not characteristics of most devout Muslims), since a peculiar religious interpretation granted special dispensations for martyrdom.

The NYT Oct 11, 2001 writes of the European investigation (links and emphases are mine) of the Attackers:

... most of these men embrace a radical form of Islam that revolves around two groups — the Egyptian movement known as Takfir wal Hijra [jf: Anathema and Exile, Vanguards of the Conquest, Armed Vanguards of Conquest, or the New Jihad Group, members are Takfiris] and the Algerian movement known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. Neither bears much resemblance to older, better-known Islamic terrorist movements, which often had nationalist aims. The newer groups believe that for the sake of Jihad, or holy war, they can jettison the usual practices of devout Muslims... the Takfir wal Hijra ... appears to be led by ... Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Salafists, the intelligence officials said, work closely with Mr. bin Laden's organization but have their own leadership.

European intelligence officials say they have divided the militants into two types. The first are those, mostly from North Africa, who fled to Europe to escape arrest, poverty and repression. They maintain criminal links with armed militant groups in their home country, supplying logistical support and weapons. They are on the wane.

The second group, most of them Takfiris, is made up of men French intelligence officials say are often second-generation immigrants from Algeria. That country won its freedom from French colonials after a war, but has been torn by a decade of civil war after its military stopped elections to prevent an Islamic militant group from winning. With no ties to any country, these men are devoted to radical Islam. Takfiri cells often assume specific tasks like forging documents or making bombs.

[jf: personally I think this assessment understates the The Saudi Connection.]

Behind the immediate attackers are bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri; Iraqi involvement is only a rumor. bin Laden seems to be a bit of a standard issue charismatic megalomaniac; in a historical context he resembles a kind of mini-Hitler. Zawahiri is said to be far more intelligent and perhaps more evil, more like Goering. As the Times writes:

... the intelligence community in Cairo is sure that Zawahiri’s “brilliant but twisted brain” is behind the US suicide attacks, part of a three-year plot to entice America into “a war with Islam”, intended to end in American withdrawal from the Middle East and the collapse of Israel. The roots of this terrorist network, in other words, lie not in Afghanistan’s mountains or even in Saudi Arabia but in Egypt.

But would Zawahiri really be "satisfied" with merely having America abandon Israel?^[12]

The Attackers and Their Milieu: Belief Systems

Delusional beliefs of the attackers and their milieu

I suspect that, like many extremist groups (John Birch Society, Scientologists, anarchists, anti-globalization extremists, some Evangelicals - possibly including President GW Bush) they shave a range of fixed beliefs that are not amenable to disproof. More sophisticated variants of these beliefs, and critiques of the very concept of disproof, are common in some academic postmodernist and postcolonialist discussions.

As noted above the truth of the Arab/Israeli conflict would engender resentment (as with the mythical Italian Buddist oppression example), but the beliefs disseminated in the media of the Arab world are astounding.

• America is much more cohesive and coordinated than it really is. For example, the actions of non-governmental agencies (see Success in Bangladesh -- at a price) and US based corporations are directed by a central group.
• America is not really a democratic state, it is actually ruled by a power elite strongly influenced by Zionism.
• Zionism is a world power with tentacles controlling the US, UK and allied states. They truly believe, for example, in the Protocols of Zion. See also the The Covenant of HAMAS where the Lions Club is shown to be a Zionist conspiracy for world revolution. Not to mention the stories of Jews using the blood of children for religious rites ...
• America is both a secular state dedicated to hedonism and an agent of resurgent Christianity.
• Israel is a power of unlimited evil that would destroy the World Trade Center and frame the innocent al-Qaeda .
• America wants to crush Islam and rule the world.
• America's real intention is to capture Afghanistan to keep China out of the Gulf, it is using the attack of 9/11 as an excuse to do this.
• And, given the above, any seemingly benign things the US does (lead the effort to save Bosnian Muslims from genocide, provide charitable aid to Afghanistan) are actually deceptive cover for evil actions (vast mineral wealth in the Balkans, corruption of the Afghani people).

Footnote, Mar 2003
I wrote the above in 2001. Recently I've begun to wonder if, in some odd sort of way, some of these perceptions are distorted reflections of things that may be partly true. George Bush, in particular, is considered by some Evangelicals to be an incarnation of the "civil magistrate"; a sort of human agent of God's will. There is some evidence to suggest that Bush believes that God has appointed him to bring freedom and peace to the middle East in general, and Iraq in particular. Bush may believe the effort will succeed because it serves God's will.

I don't think Bush intends to convert the Islamic people, though he may feel he owes it to them to demonstrate the virtues of Christianity and to provide access to the "truths" of his religion.

Beliefs, not necessarily delusional

I suspect they also share some perceptions of America that are not entirely delusional. They see America as the pre-eminent example of a technocentric society (though they would not use those words). They see modernism, and particularly post-enlightenment liberalism as a threat to them, an insidious infection that once embedded in their culture will transform it utterly. The infection is all around them, but it they see America as the most dangerous vector. If America could be neutralized, then they could deal with the other sources of infection over time.

In this I think they are correct. See Success in Bangladesh -- at a price -- modernity will transform the culture in which they live and they and their ideology will not thrive. Removing America would not change this process, but it might slow it down a bit. To really slow the process down they would probably need to destroy most of the planet.^[1] They also likely believe that America is actively attempting to accelerate this transition, to infuse western values. This is also somewhat true; the US government is not shy about advocating its value system, and US NGOs often advocate values ranging from Christianity (bad enough) to European-style human rights for women (absolutely intolerable). (Indeed some version of deliberate cultural engineering may need to become part of our future strategies)

They may also hold another true perception: "Experts also say a note of desperation has entered their activities in recent years because the activists have failed to create an Islamic state, despite movements across the Arab world. (NYT 10/4/01)" In desperation they may lash out, because they believe they are doomed.

Consider what they want (below) and think -- what they would ask of America (become like us) is the same fate they believe the western world is offering them.

What they want

There is a belief among many Americans and Europeans that the attackers could be appeased ^[10] by essentially agreeing to the stated terms of the terrorists (appeasement is not always inappropriate, see Strategies and Responses). This might include dropping US support from Israel, leaving Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (Iraq would then take both nations), removing US NGOs from the Middle East and Northern Africa, ending US support for the Egyptian government, and removing Turkey from NATO. (Some in the US anti-globalization movement seem to think that eliminating the WTO and IMF is part of the terrorist agenda, but I think that's projection.)

My suspicion is that the appeasement strategy would fail. As discussed in origins and causation the very existence of the rich liberal technocentric world is an intolerable affront to al-Qaeda and the Taleban. Unless the US remade itself in the image of Jerry Falwell it would still be unacceptable to our enemies. I suspect what they want is for the modern world to no longer tempt them or their peoples; and there's no way to remove that temptation short of removing modernity.

Most of all, Al-Qaeda would not have struck the WTC towers unless they were determined to wage war to the end. They have been attempting to obtain nuclear weapons for years. If they have them they will use them, if they do not have them they will continue to seek them out. That threat alone will drive the war until the bitter end.

Strategies and Responses

A discussion of strategies, from surrender to combinations of offense, defense, and prevention.

Surrender

We could give them what they say they want. We could surrender.

I don't think we'll need to surrender to al Qaeda; they can probably be defeated. (In fact, I suspect that if we did surrender to them, they would ultimately destroy themselves -- but that might take a while.) In the long run, however, we may have to surrender to someone or something else. Not because of guilt for past sins ^[11], or because it's a way to avoid the horrors of war, but because we may not have any other choice.

We are too vulnerable to attack, and in time most of our enemies will be able to purchase weapons that can do us terrible harm. These weapons will be anonymous, and they may be used with hope of impunity. I don't think we'll have great defenses against them. Even if we sealed our borders totally and completely monitored all activities of all residents of the US, infected birds could still deliver bioweapons.

Surrender in this case means withdrawing from the world, save for military action that could be deniable and anonymous. It means changing American society radically, dispersing targets and diffusing areas of vulnerability. The economy of the world would be utterly devastated.

Defense and Prevention

We have recognized fully that which we have only known; a modern industrial democracy is very vulnerable to terrorism. We have a large number of vulnerabilities, and limited defenses. The Emperor has No Clothes, from now on our vulnerabilities will be widely known.

Defense can be considered as following into two categories. The first is increasing the cost of a successful attack or decreasing the resources available for it. The second is reducing the desire to launch an attack, it includes preventive measures..

Increasing the cost of a successful attack or decreasing available resources

(This is the same as reducing the damage resulting from an attack.)

• Defense in Depth: all citizens are part of national defense efforts. For example all health care providers trained in disaster management esp. biological and nuclear responses. Selective immunization of first responders, esp. to smallpox.
• Massive increase in national guard size and scope.
• Intense and widespread surveillance. (a familiar response in totalitarian states)
• Reducing funds available to attackers
• bio weapon detection technology
• Garwin suggestions
• nuclear weapon detection ^[20]
• train citizens how to respond to radioactive dispersal from a dirty bomb. This can be as simple as basing behavior on wind direction, on removing clothes and showering, etc. It is appalling that almost 10 months after 9/11/01 this simple training has not begun.
• reduce worldwide use of oil, hence decreasing revenue streams that fund al Qaeda. This would require massive investment in a hydrogen economy, nuclear reactors, fuel cell research, massive conversation, reorganization of work, transportation, and living arrangements, etc.

Decreasing the desire to attack: General

• Deterrence: the elimination of governments that host terrorists is one example, in the most extreme case there is the The Samson Option
• Identifying root causes and acting on them
• Acceleration of technocentric transitions through social engineering. This may increase anger in the near term. See however Islamic Reformation.refs.html#IslamicReformation
• Research into the prevention and treatment of paranoid schizophrenia^[22] (anthrax mailer)

Blocking development of al-Qaeda Americana

The Root  and Sustaining Causes model implies that a large pool of underemployed and disaffected young men increases the threat potential. This pool is large in the gulf states, but the US also has a large pools of impoverished and underemployed young men. Some of these men and their communities may have conflicted loyalties. Law enforcement measures, and Ashcroftian assaults, may alienate entire communities.

If I were al-Qaeda, I would attack America where it is weak. I'd exploit the disenfranchised within America.

The best preventive measure is to recognize this risk and to attack the root causes of disaffection both at home and internationally.

Decreasing the desire to attack:changing US policy: implementation, marketing, goals

Critics of the US typically ascribe international hostility to US policy. There is much to criticize about US policy; like many Americans I think the embargo on Iraq has been a disaster (though alternative policies, such as assassination and war, are unlikely to be universally popular).

I suspect however that much of the international audience is incapable of distinguishing between the actions of the US government, the inevitable course of technocentric transition, and the actions of US corporations. It may be possible to lessen anger through modest interventions of limited cost with voluntary participation of US corporations including media groups. A national program funded by corporate and governmental donations could monitor reactions of local groups, isolate sensitive domains, and suggest ways to work around them. By itself such a strategy will have only a modest benefit, but it may be cost effective.

More significantly US corporations will decrease their direct exposure in the developing world, increasingly using local proxies. I believe this will harm the developing world much more than it will harm US economic growth, but perhaps distance will decrease enmity.

Other measures of uncertain preventive merit but with other merit:

• increased pressure towards establishing a Palestinian state, but this is unlikely to be to the liking of terrorists since it will not include all of Jerusalem nor will it include the destruction of Israel.

• greenhouse gas reductions: The Kyoto accord won't help, but it may be worth ratifying a modified version for political reasons. I don't know how the Middle East and South Asia will be affected, it could even be a positive affect, but any drought will be ascribed to US CO2 output. Real reductions in global warming will require a massive effort and/or new technologies.

Offense

No surprises here, as of Oct 2001 some of this is now conventional thinking. Offense is also related to defense; unfriendly regimes are digesting the lesson of the Taleban. As of Nov 2001 American military power appears to be rather greater than even many experts assumed. The ability to deploy air power without a proximate base is remarkable (though not unprecedented -- remember Pearl Harbor?) and the use of small ground forces to direct air power may be truly new.

• Overthrow of non-cooperative governments sheltering terrorists through
  • proxy forces with Allied (initially US) air support
  • economic warfare: embargoes, cessation of economic support, economic support of regional rivals
  • covert action (assassination, funding of internal dissent, etc)
  • airborne destruction of military resources and of economic resources belonging to ruling elite
• Special forces actions
  • acquisition of prisoners who may provide information in exchange for freedom or funds
  • acquisition of data from terrorist sites.
  • disruption of training sites, data centers, etc.
• Development of new warfare and surveillance technologies.
• Preemptive War

Outcome scenarios

Scenarios and Outcomes

These vary from actually (relatively) very good (so good that it might one day be said that bin Laden saved the world), to pretty bad, to "makes World War II look pleasant". Personally I think the odds strongly favor very good to moderately bad, I'd put Scenario III's probability at < 3% as long as Pakistan's nuclear weapons remain consolidated.

The 21st century will not be the multipolar world of the 19th, or the bipolar and (briefly) unipolar world of the 20th. It will be a mega-polar; innumerable micro-powers coming and going, each with the potential to devastate conventional nation states. The times they are a changin ...

Notes

bin Laden saves the world

Will we ever look back and think, in a sick way, that bin Laden murdered thousands of children, women, and men, destroyed immense wealth and extended horrible poverty in many parts of the world ... but also "saved the world"? The reality is that we have been incredibly vulnerable for decades, and that the original attack on the World Trade Center demonstrated that our enemies had both intent and capability. The attack of September 11th 2001 was terrible enough to awaken the US and rally the world, but it did not kill millions. It is possible that from the struggle ahead a better world will emerge. Even the possibility of Scenario II and III may concentrate minds enormously. If Pakistan and India were to agree to a peace treaty ...
If we stay with Scenario I, then it is possible that a hundred years from now someone will visit the memorial at the World Trade Center site, and think how much worse things might have been ... if not for Osama bin Laden.

Defense in Depth

Creation of an extensive US and internal civil defense network including national inoculations against common germ warfare pathogens (anthrax, smallpox) and extremely widespread multidimensional surveillance (primarily of neighbors by neighbors). This network has characteristics of various totalitarian social control groups (e.g. KGB), but its severity depends on how long the conflict lasts and what scenario applies.

Nightmare Attack

One can imagine several variations, but an example would be the simultaneous deployment of walking disease vectors ^[8] across the American heartland about 1 week prior to detonating five nuclear weapons within the holds of large ships in the harbors of Los Angeles, London, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo, Boston, Manhattan, Chicago, and Atlanta and large trucks in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, etc.

The Samson Option

The Samson option is a horrid variant of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD). It is useful only if the targets no that it is operative. In the Samson option the US would inform all nations that it felt harbored threats that should the US lose its major cities then the US strategic arsenal would destroy the major cities of all governments that were felt to be "hostile" irregardless of whether they had anything to do with the attack on the US. This is a brutal form of blackmail, and is terrorism on a massive scale. It would motivate Iraq, for example, to savagely control any terrorist organization to stay below the "World War III" level.

Preemptive War

In March of 2003 the USA invaded Iraq. Although many in the Bush administration believe Saddam Hussein played a role in the 9/11 attack, and some have suspected Iraqi involvement in the anthrax episdode ^[25], I don't think those were the primary reasons for the invasion. Obviously the US did not invade Iraq to to protect the dignity and mandate of the security council; not even Fox TV believes that. Nor did the US invade Iraq because Saddam is an evil, vile tyrant, a kind of dwarf-Stalin (though he is). Nor did we invade to free the Iraqi people and change the dynamics of the Middle East. We didn't do it for the oil (really), and we didn't do it because Iraq was "easy" (though, compared to North Korea, it may be).

All these things played a role, but fundamentally this is (was) truly a preemptive war. There have been other preemptive wars, but nothing quite like this one. The reason the US invaded Iraq, is because the US is simultaneously fantastically strong and fantastically vulnerable. No other nation in history has had a comparable strength/vulnerability ratio.

The falling cost of havoc, and the inability to (currently) secure an technocentric non-totalitarian nation, makes US vulnerable. Within 5 years, for example, massively lethal bioweapons may be available to just about any small terrorist group. A totalitarian nation with substantial technical expertise, such as Iraq, could even today anonymously bring the US to its knees.

Other industrialized nations are equally vulnerable, but they may be less of a target than the US (for the moment). More significantly, they do not have immense military power. Only the US has such an extreme mixture of vulnerability and power, combined with a multitude of enemies, a militaristic culture, and a recent experience of two massive terrorist attacks (9/11 and anthrax).

In this context it is easy to understand why the US has invaded Iraq. It is a logical outcome of the strength/vulnerability ratio and the unique threat posed by Iraq. Only through full exposure could Iraq have made its threat manageable, and Hussein chose not to do that. He may not have understood the strategic imperative that drove the US.

Logically any nation that does not fully expose itself to US inspection and that has a motivation to harm the US may be subject to preemptive war. This is Pax Americana. It is not what I would have advised, but it is not irrational.

Fragments and Misc Notes

Bits of information to plug into our calculations.

Asymmetric Struggle

A bit like the immovable object and the irresistible force, see also Strategy and Response:

• the more powerful entity is the more vulnerable: very difficult to defend, many points of vulnerability, target rich
• the weaker entity is target poor, difficult to identify

Afghan Ethnicity

I've seen very different numbers on the ethnic group percentages, and very little data on the religious background of the ethnic groups. This estimate is based on the NYT Interactive data and the Britannica. The ethnic groups have a reputation for slaughtering one another.

The ethnicity data suggests why Iran may have a very strong interest in the region, many of the non-Pashtun groups speak Persian-based languages. It is curious that while Iran is Shiite, most of the Iranian ethnic groups in Afghanistan are Sunni. The Persian languages are Indo-European, Pastho is South Asian; so the language, religious and cultural barriers in Afghanistan are formidable.

Note that most news sources erroneously state that the majority of Afghans are Pashtun. That is not correct, at least if one counts Pashtun living within Afghanistan. They are the largest minority.

Afghan History

Afghan history dates to the 7th century (though the area has been populated indefinitely) and Afghans to about ACE 982, but modern Afghanistan is, like modern Italy, a recent creation. From The Britannica (emphases mine, but almost every word is significant today).

The British finally withdrew from Qandahar in April 1881. In 1880 ‘Abdor Rahman Khan, a cousin of Shir ‘Ali, had returned from exile in Central Asia and proclaimed himself amir of Kabul. During the reign of ‘Abdor Rahman, the boundaries of modern Afghanistan were drawn by the British and the Russians [jf: The little finger of Afghanistan extending into China was created to separate warring tribes.]. The Durand Line of 1893 divided zones of responsibility for the maintenance of law and order between British India and the kingdom of Afghanistan; it was never intended as a de jure international boundary. Afghanistan, therefore, although never dominated by a European imperial government, became a buffer between Tsarist Russia and British India.

‘Abdor Rahman exerted his influence, if not actual control, over the various ethnolinguistic groups inside Afghanistan, fighting some 20 small wars to convince them that a strong central government existed in Kabul. ‘Abdor Rahman was so successful that, at his death, his designated successor and eldest son, Habibollah Khan, succeeded to the throne as Habibollah I without the usual fratricidal fighting. ‘Abdor Rahman can be considered the founder of modern Afghanistan.

and on the Durand Line

In the mid-20th century the area on both sides of the line became the subject of a movement for Pashtun independence and establishment of an independent state of Pakhtunistan. In 1980 approximately 7.5 million Pashtuns were living in the area around the Durand Line.

and some older history

• Harat, in Hazari/Persian Afghanistan, has been settled for over 5000 years. It was said to have the most fertile soils in Asia.
• Before Islam came to Afghanistan it, like Iran (Persia), was Zoroastrian. I wonder if that lingers in the more remote areas?
• The Mughal Dynasty (a.k.a. Mongol empire 16th to 18th centuries), which in time produced the Taj Mahal, was born in Kabul Afghanistan. From his base in Kabul Babar built an empire that over time extended throughout modern day Afghanistan, Kashmir, Pakistan, Bhutan, other smaller states and the northern half of India. This was an Islamic state, though the first few rulers were relatively tolerant of their predominantly Hindu subjects.

Nuclear and Biological Weapons

See also Nuclear Weapons references, Scenario III and Nightmare Attack. Smallpox is probably the greatest threat of all, but even the Taleban may hesitate to use a weapon that would wipe out 1/3 of the persons under 30 in the Islamic world. Nuclear weapons are probably harder to acquire and use than Smallpox, but they are indeed potent weapons of war and terror. It is hard to imagine an effective defense against even a 1945-class weapon. North Korea seems, as of November 2002, to plan to generate revenue selling nuclear weapons. Ultralight airplanes can deliver medium sized weapons inexpensively, they may be immune to detection.

Does Al-Qaeda possess a nuclear device? The evidence suggests a medium to high probability that they have radioactive weapon (e.g. "dirty bomb" or a conventional weapon seeded with radioactive material) but it seems that they do not currently have a true nuclear bomb. Note however, that according to Washington post Pakistan considered storing their weapons with the Taliban.

It is certain that Al-Qaeda has sought nuclear weapons, and logically they should not have started a war with the US without already possessing a weapon. If they started this war because bin Laden was dying or because they feared disintegration,¹⁹ then it is most likely that they do not have a nuclear device. If they started this war because all their preparations were complete, then it is likely that they have at least one nuclear device. If that is so then they will use it.

The US has been preparing for terroristic use of nuclear weapons, France has had a national network of 178 radiation monitoring systems for many years.

Of biological weapons Anthrax has been shown to be quite effective, but Smallpox is a weapon of extraordinary power. It could remove a substantial fraction of persons under 43 years of age (older persons have some immunity from their old vaccinations). The drawback of Smallpox from the Taleban's perspective is that it cannot be restricted to the US, if unleashed it would spread worldwide. Whatever immunizations were available would be used by the wealth nations, poor nations would have no protection. Anyone who is HIV positive would die within weeks of the outbreak. Many African nations would lose over half of their population.

In the longer run, see Technology and the Cost of Havoc. Nuclear weapons may always be still somewhat expensive to build (though North Korea may drop the price), but in a few years it may be possible for a small team of biologists with limited funding to create designer bio-weapons. As of April 2003 The Economist estimates a designer virus could be produced from off-the-shelf components for about $1 million USD. Evolution tends to limit the lethality of diseases, for a virus that kills all its hosts has a limited future. Those constraints do not apply to designer organisms

Biological Weapon Detection

Antigen tests for Anthrax are on the market, but developing devices that will detect a wide variety of pathogens will be challenging. One possibility is to use genetically engineered rats with human immune systems as early warning devices. The smaller animals would respond to a viral or bacterial pathogen mor quickly than a human, and would give an early warning. They could, of course, also become great disease vectors. The rats that would be distributed as "pets" would have to be sterile, female only, and genetically engineered to require non-natural foodstuffs.

Robotics, War and SensorNets

The Predator and other airborne devices represent early use of robotics in warfare. As this war goes on the US will develop and deploy a wide range of robotic devices; including devices that mix robotics and bio-detectors. Mosquito antennae, for example, could be coupled to an airborne robotic device to locate humans in cave systems by heat and CO2 emissions. Small airborne robots would be fearsome devices in cave warfare, and they could be used to detect persons across very rugged terrain. Other technologies that may be deployed include sensor nets (ground or airborne) that can relay video or specific sounds (such as the sound of a gas generator) or smells (ex. diesel fuel). See also Strategy and Response for a description of current methods, including detection of caverns by gravitational measurements.

SensorNets can be coupled with the Internet to provide distributed surveillance, either domestically or in the war zone.

Misc

• The variant of Islam practiced by the Taleban and the Pakistani Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam is Deobandi Islam, a particularly harsh variant of Islam founded @ 130 years ago in Uttar Pradesh, India. Among its least curious tenets is a reluctance to be photographed; there are few if any photos of the Taleban elite. The Times discussed some other attributes, including:
  • extreme misogyny, or "gynaeophobia"
  • "In Kandahar, the custom of seclusion had given rise to a rich tradition of homosexual passion, celebrated in poetry, dance and the practice of male prostitution. Heterosexual romance, by contrast, was freighted with the fear of broken honour, the threat of vendetta and, ultimately, death by stoning. In Pashtun society, man-woman love was the one that dared not speak its name: boy courtesans conducted their affairs openly."

  • Many of the Taleban "mullah" are in fact military figures who seem to wear the title as a cloak of convenience

• The Taleban punish homosexual behavior by live burial. Not a few commentators have suggested that this combination of extreme homophobia and extreme misogyny is a recipe for profound unhappiness.

• The US war on terrorist fund raising has not, thus far, included NORAID.

Communication and Collaboration

I'm soliciting ideas and feedback. I'm particularly interested in links to personal sites with similar or contradictory views.

1. SpyonIt.com can be used to notify you of changes to a web page such as this one. I've never used it.

2. You can email feedback, ideas, etc to me at jfaughnan@spamcop.net. If your email address is not recognized you'll get a message back that will ask you to click on a link; this shows you are a human being and not spam software. I get a fair bit of email and I cannot respond to all messages. I do not accept attachments or dynamic html email (spamcop filters them out).

What is Bill Gates Doing?

In January of 2003 I posted a submission to Slashdot entitled: What is Bill (Palladium) Gates doing about Osama and the Falling Cost of Anonymous Weapons of Mass Murder? (It was rejected by Slashdot, I can't image why :-). Although my posting went unpublished, it's a good summary of where I think things are going in 2003.

Bill is a metaphor for any number of ultra-wealthy individuals; I posted because I was wondering how the ultra-rich (and powerful) are responding to these threats. I do wonder what Gates is doing, and how much Palladium is driven by national security concerns vs. plebian "digital rights management".

Like a few people, I've wondered what can be done about the security challenges of the post-industrial state. These challenges are symbolized by al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but I think most analysts have come to feel that Islamic fundamentalism, demographic shifts, globalization, or environmental degradation, are secondary concerns. The more fundamental issue appears to be the technology driven falling costs of anonymous mass murder, including widespread dissemination of low cost techniques.

It may be, for example, that within 5 years one may be able to purchase a moderate yield nuclear weapon on the black market for somewhere around 30-75 million dollars. That amount of money is available to many organizations. One can only speculate on the consequences of an affordable fusion (hydrogen) weapon, or of designer bioweapons.

Most visions of how this conundrum may be managed involve variants of David Brin's (very prescient) Transparent Society: deep and pervasive surveillance of everything from biomarkers to anomalous radiation sources to data to people. Today we are aware of Poindexter's Total Information Awareness initiative. I wonder, however, what Bill Gates is up to -- besides Palladium.

Gates is well read, and is known to be closely read the Economist. He appears to enjoy life, and he has a young family. Even critics of his software company's products (like myself) do not deny his brilliance, cunning, perception and ruthless drive. He is believed to have above-average personal economic resources. He does not his concerns to the strictly technical. His friends include Warren Buffet, who perceives great risks ahead.

If I were in Bill Gates position, I would be quite interested in these security issues. I would be employing consulting groups and funding think tanks. I would identify key technologies (Palladium?) and promote them in every possible way. I would work behind the scenes in multiple angles, from looking for an HIV vaccine (reduce the future misery of Africa and the terrorism that misery will spawn) to funding detection technologies. I would adjust my political interventions to include security as well as corporate concerns, both in the US and internationally.

I suspect Gates is doing all of the above, yet in my reasonably serious media monitoring on this topic I've seen no mention of his activities. Have Slashdot readers seen evidence that Gates is actively addressing the security concerns of the post industrial age? Knowing Gates positions and power, what do you think he would be doing? Where would we look to find evidence of his interests?

Footnotes

Metadata - Keywords

Since Google does not use indexing information stored in meta tags, I've reproduced some of the meta tags here to facilitate indexing.

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