I am finishing up the degree in International Relations that underpinned my research on terrorism and infrastructure in India, well-received big thinking on private military contractors, and an article in the international press. Have a deep understanding of the dynamics of future warfare that is applied on a daily basis to author the only open-source analysis available on India’s most pressing security challenge.
Also finishing up my tenure as V.P. of the student association where I managed $300,000 to build, revamp, and otherwise improve businesses and nonprofit organizations. I used my extensive web technology experience (honed while working with local, regional, and state governments) to accomplish these strategic goals. (Continued)
Sparked by PS . Understanding that:
5GW is what we label the emergent pattern formed by a distributed multitude of empowered individuals acting in concert by acting in their own self interest, without any collaboration.
Point: Understanding that warfare is not all that different from any other system shock. Value: you build systems that are resilient and able to handle all of them.
Logic: The more naturally unpredictable events you can deal with, the better. Examples: tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. (Differentiated from brute force attacks such as hurricanes or any kind of warfare utilizing tanks.) The commonality is the disruption of service delivery infrastructure, now able to be replicated by small groups or one individual. The tactical mechanics of warfare matter less in an era where anyone can do anything at any time from scratch. This means flat, lean platforms that are able to foster reactions to all system shocks effectively are key.
RC’s are the strategy until we can see or know more about 5GW (all we can currently know is in that paragraph), although I don’t think this core understanding will change.
Courtesy of Paterson and Richards: another Boyd-based conference. This one focused on RC’s and 5GW. I’ve fired off a statement of interest. You should too.
I don’t understand why Strategy Page is treated as a worthwhile or real resource by anyone, specifically Memeorandum. This article exemplifies the site.
Incredibly busy finishing the school thing. Posting will be this light until the 11′th or so.
( Still fleshing out the podcast idea on the back end. )
Jeff Vail spends hundreds of words getting at how to guide emergent thinking. In essence he argues for:
- Platforms to ‘Keystone’ ecosystems.
- Engineering by principle rather than by design (Consult Wiggins’ latest post on complexity.)
- Local systems as critical.
Sounds about right, but you have to be careful not to:
- Confuse guidance for control. In a real decentralized context (marked by an equal distribution of a critical level of empowerment) a multiplicity of goals and actions will emerge. You can call this guidance, but it will actually reflect the grounding of the system - the keystone platform and the system principle.
- Get hung up on terrorism. The test for ‘flatness’ is whether or not you can adapt to all storms - literal or not.
- Think the local community is the end game. It is all moving to one.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Strikes me as a bad idea . The implication is that you’re trying to shave off just a few cents to beat your competitors (they’re using the same infrastructure). In terms of resiliency, it’s a bad move, redundancy is critical and won’t be found in a system where all critical services are carried in the same pipe.
So far: no bugs and a sexy backend to boot. Finally as nice as it should be.
DarkReading has the details:
- At 400,000 bots Kraken is twice the size of Storm.
- Found at 50 of the Fortune 500.
- Undetectable in 80% of infected machines.
- Regularly updates its binary.
Kraken’s bots and command and control servers communicate via customized UDP and TCP-based protocols, he says, and the botnet has built-in redundancy features that automatically generate new domain names if a C&C server gets shut down or becomes disabled. “And the actual payload is encrypted,” Royal says.
Will be in the Salisbury, MD area for an academic briefing from Wednesday to Sunday if anyone wants to meet. Meal on me.
