Update on One Man vs. the World
When I wrote Brave New War back in 2006, I made this aggressive projection on how rapid technological change would change warfare:
The threshold necessary for small groups to conduct global warfare has finally been breached, and we are only starting to feel its effects. Over time, in as little as perhaps twenty years and as the leverage of technology increases, this threshold will finally reach its culmination — with the ability of one man to declare war on the world and win.
It seems that we are on track with my projection. Recently, we saw individuals leveraging the power of computers and networks launch (open source) protests that toppled governments. It didn't end there. Edward Snowden (love him or hate him) proved it is possible to wage a one-man information war against the biggest, most powerful national security establishment in the world. The US government. A country that spends more than all other countries in the world combined on national defense. He was able to:
- steal the crown jewels of the US security system by himself,
- initiate an information war against the entire US national security bureaucracy while eluding capture, and
- initiate economic disruptions that have done billions of dollars in damage to US corporations (from Boeing to RSA).
However, his successes don't end there, he's winning the war. This support from the editors of the New York Times indicates that he's already achieved most of what it takes to achieve a “moral victory” against the US government. Of course, this type of revolutionary change due to technology isn't isolated to the world of conflict, terrorism, and war. It's also going on in our economy.
In the economy, this superempowerment is destroying something else. Jobs. More on that at HomeFree America …
Phi Beta Iota: Brother Rob is focused on the destructive or displacement power of the single individual (e.g. the Koch Brothers). Creative power is the oposite — it takes a community — a collective — to create sustainable infinite wealth. At this time the industrial era financial powers have successfully isolated creative individuals and marginized all reformist. Missing is the seed crystal — the precipitant — for a public overthrow of predatory captialism and its accommodating corrupt governments, corrupt media, corrupt churches, and corrupt academic insitutitions. John Perry Barlow nailed it at OSS '92 — the rest of the world is now routing around the US Government. The US Government has become not just the major threat in the eyes of the rest of the world, but a laughable impediment to be scorned, not feared. We have not given up on America the Beautiful and restoring the Constitution and the Republic, but it is going to take a mass mobilization such as the USA has not experienced since 1776.
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