Tag: Robb

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John Robb: Open Source Warfare Never Goes Away (Right) — Boston Bombing Was Open Source Warfare (Wrong) + Boston Bombing RECAP

Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Politics
John Robb
John Robb

OPEN SOURCE WARFARE never goes away

Boston is a reminder that:  Open source warfare doesn't ever go away.

It can be revived with a terrible suddenness, as we saw at the Boston Marathon.

The grievances and motivations  for attacks never die.  They can always find a corner of the Web to fester and grow, in groups too tiny to ever control.

The information needed to conduct attacks will always be available, and with each round of incidents, the information improves through testing.

Due to excessive industrial urbanization, the targets both in terms of people and infrastructure are thick on the ground.

Any single attack has the potential to ignite a series of additional attacks by other groups with similar, but different, motives.

Due to technological and behavioral factors, the quality of the attacks can better very quickly once a a conflict ignites.  Weeks can yield significant progress instead of years.

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John Robb: Community Supported Everything

Design
John Robb
John Robb

Community Supported Everything!

By John Robb

How do you build resilient infrastructure in the 21st Century?

One good answer:  make it opt-in. It's already happening.

Farmers are doing it with CSA programs.  Businesses and artists are doing it with Kickstarter.

We're finding that once you cut out the middleman (Wall Street and Big Box Retail) and connect with customers directly, we end up with much more choice, innovation, quality, and success (the people doing the innovating/making actually get paid, an event that is actually quite rare in this economic system).

Here's a smart spin on this concept that may work.

This little fashion company called Gustin got its start on Kickstarter.  Gustin is now using this customer/community supported approach to sell everything.

Here's how it works.

  • They design something.
  • They ask the community if they want to fund it.
  • If a sufficient number of people buy into it, they make it.

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John Robb: How Drones Can Recharge from Power Lines and Remain Active for Years

Drones & UAVs

John Robb
John Robb

How Drones Can Live off the Land for Years

Cyberweapons and synthetic biological weapons (GMOs) can self provision.

They have the ability to live off the land (hosts, like human bodies and PCs) once they are unleashed.

NOTE:  In many cases, they can also make perfect copies of themselves (copies in the trillions).

But what about drones?

Aren't they limited by quantity of energy in their batteries?

Yes, drones do have the capacity to self provision too.  One of the more elegent ways is for a drone to use power lines to “induct” the energy it needs.

drone forever croppedA drone that can recharge itself from a power line has the potential to operate for years — monitoring, relaying, etc. — without returning to base.

If the decision making software is good enough it could source its energy and target data for years without referencing any command system.

In fact, with wireless access to the Internet (including RSS feeds), GPS, and other easily accessible data sources… it decision making can be very dynamic.

Here's a video showing some US DoD contractors working on making that a reality, right now:

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John Robb: Life in a Networked Age

Advanced Cyber/IO

John Robb
John Robb

Life in a Networked Age

Posted: 02 Mar 2013 02:08 PM PST

Here's some idle thinking for a sunny afternoon at the end of winter.

To access it, let's make a simple assumption that economics, politics, and warfare are all a function of the dominant technological substrate.

A technological substrate is the family of related technologies that we rely upon.  In the 20th Century, we were clearly reliant on an industrial substrate.

The challenges posed by industrial age technologies dictated the development of two management forms:  bureaucracy and markets.   Bureaucracies and markets are both decision making systems. These management forms dominated economics, politics, and warfare for centuries.

Neither system of management is sufficient as a solution for industrial economics, politics, or warfare.

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John Robb: Four Things Every Community Should Self-Fund

Knowledge, Resilience
John Robb
John Robb

Couple Uses Massive Lottery Payout to Build Community Infrastructure

By John Robb

Here's a great story.

Mark and Cindy Hill, from Dearborn, Missouri, recently won a quarter billion dollar lottery payout.  What makes them different from the typically lottery winner is that it doesn't look like they will spontaneously combust due to excessive consumption.  Instead, from all accounts, they plan to continue to live modestly and will continue the small town routines that they currently enjoy.  As smart as that is, what makes Mark and Cindy really different is that they plan to invest their money in community infrastructure.  Here's what they are putting their money into the following:

  • A new fire station with better highway access.
  • A ball field for local kids.
  • A sewer treatment plant.

I liked this story a lot.   It got me thinking about what I would community improvements I'd invest in if I had a boatload of extra cash to do so.  I'd do things a bit differently than Mark and Cindy.  My investments would be in productive, 21st century infrastructure.  The type of infrastructure a community needs to have in order to prosper in the future.

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What would that include?  Here's some of suggestions I've covered recently:

I've got LOTs more.  Lots of ways to enable people to do more locally while connecting to the world to find out how.  Thing is, it doesn't take winning the lottery to build this infrastructure.  Almost everything I've listed is something that can be done relatively inexpensively as a bootstrap.  What would be on your list?

Join us.  Become resilient.

Yours,

JOHN ROBB

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John Robb: Cyber-War with China — Wrong Answer (and Robert Steele with Better Answer)

IO Deeds of Peace, IO Deeds of War
John Robb
John Robb

Cyber Deterrence against China? The only route left is an Open Source Approach

Is there a way to deter cyber attacks?

Yes. Two ways. One takes a moral high ground.

I won't waste any time discussing that option.

Why? After flame/stuxnet, and the unilateral escalation of the cyberweapons arms race by the US, that option is now closed.

The only option that's left is down and dirty open source warfare.

The key is understanding that large cybercrime networks (more) and significant government black ops programs (less) need government permission to operate at any meaningful scale.

Lots of governments (China, Russia, etc.) see permitting these activities as advantageous. They get economic benefit and they develop/perfect a level of expertise that is potentially useful in the future.

So, how do you deter this activity?

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