Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
As a special Inkwell treat, we've asked John Robb of the Global Guerillas 
blog (http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/) to join us for a discussion of 
his work. The tagline for his blog describes his focus: "networked tribes, 
systems disruption, and the emerging bazaar of violence. Resilient 
Communities, decentralized platforms, and self-organizing futures." An 
author, an entrepreneur, and a former USAF pilot in special operations, 
John wrote the 2007 book _Brave New War_, wherein he describes "open 
source warfare" (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/15/opinion/15robb.html), a 
new kind of warfare/terrorism that's emerging in the 21st century. He was 
named one of the 2007 "best and brightest" by Esquire 
(http://www.esquire.com/features/best-brightest-2007/robb1207). John is 
currently working on a book about economic collapse and the emergence of a 
new economy - resilient communities that produce what they need locally 
and and open source global economy that connects them.

Leading the discussion is Christian De Leon-Horton, who made his pocket 
money growing vegetables for a farmer's market in high school. He went on 
to study horticulture at Cornell University before joining the US Army, 
eventually becoming an intelligence officer. After tours in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, he is completely convinced that the future of security lies 
in reorganizing communities along sustainable ecological principles. He is 
currently the co-host of the WELL's conference on Sustainability, Energy, 
and Ecology. 

A warm welcome to John and Christian - this will be a fascinating 
discussion.
  

    
Thanks for taking time for this conversation, John. Wikipedia
identifies you as a "military theorist
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robb_(military_theorist),"; and I'm
wondering if that's how you see  yourself? You seem as much focused on
the future of peace as the future of war.
  

    
Thanks Jon and it's my pleasure.  

I'm both.  I began in operations (Tier 1 spec ops) and and then became
a technology analyst (I was Forrester's first Internet analyst in
'95).  After that I started/ran a bunch of companies in everything from
professional printing to finance to blogging. So, as you can see, I
was all over the place.  

So, it stands to reason my current efforts would have a similar level
of diversity.  

I first spent some time figuring out how warfare would evolve over the
next decades.  That resulted in my work on open source warfare (which
has become popular with guerrillas around the world and ended up in a
scientific study that was on the cover of Nature magazine), violent
superempowerment, systems disruption.  

After I got a handle on that topic, I started to use the same approach
to work on ways of configuring society/economics to weather future
disruption/failures.  Essentially, strategies of peace.  Hope that
makes sense.
  

    
How do you define "open source" warfare, and what are a couple of
examples?
  

    
Open source warfare is a form of warfare seen in a world without
compelling ideologies.  A world where lots of small groups, each with
their own motivations for fighting (from criminal to religious to
nationalist to ethnic), can join together to take on a much larger
enemy (usually, a  nation-state).  In many cases, the groups involved
don't even know what they are doing when they engage in it.  They just
do it naturally, out of weakness.  

Open source warfare is a form of warfare where any group that wants to
fight can participate.  Every group can innovate.  They can try out
new methods of attack.  New targets.  If the technique works, every
other group copies it (as in, release early and often).  Groups share
info between each other freely since the other groups are co-developers
of the war.  The list goes on.. It's very similar to open source
development, but with lots of twists and some new rules.  I suggest
reading a more detailed explanation in my book, Brave New War or on my
blog: global guerrillas.  Here's a short compilation I put up:

http://tinyurl.com/ybs4tkm

Some examples?  In a violent conflict:  Iraq and Mexico.  Semi-violent
with lots of system disruption:  Nigeria.  Non-violent (at least early
on): Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Barhain, Syria, etc. (wrote lots about
this, and its amazing that it played out as anticipated).
  

    
This suggests coalitions of small groups with potentially different
goals for conflict. How stable are these coalitions? How do they build
and sustain momentum? (Or do they?)
  

    
That's the point that confuses many people.  These groups are held
together through a simple goal, a plausible promise.  In Egypt's case
that was the removal of Mubarak.  More and more people and groups, join
the effort and innovate, until the goal is achieved.  After the
plausible promise is fulfilled, the open source insurgency/protest
dissolves.

This has interesting side effects.  The open source protest/insurgency
has leaders.  But those leaders are restricted to people that advance
the effort to the goal.  When these leaders try to take control or
redirect the insurgency onto other goals (political, economic), they
are usually ignored and in some cases become the object of attack by
all the other groups.
  

    
This sounds entrepreneurial. The entrepreneur who is effective in
building a company usually isn't the best choice to run it, once it's
in growth mode. Is that an apt analogy - not just "open source," but
also entrepreneurial?

Also, a question about the open source characterization - this usually
suggests transparency about how something works - i.e. an open source
project builds software the source code for which is shared and
visible. Do these groups tend to build something with that kind of
transparency? (I don't think this necessarily suggests that the group
is politically transparent, but has an "open" deliverable.)
  

    
To be effective in an open source environment, you need to be
entrepreneurial.  YOu need to innovate.  Try things out.  

Question:  open source implies transparency for how things works.  

In this case, the source code is the tactics/methods.  The sharing is
done through demonstration.  Media coverage.  Network interaction.  For
example: IED recipes were shared between groups in Iraq.
  

    
Note to those of you who are not members of the WELL: if you have a
comment or question, send to inkwell at well.com, and the hosts of this
discussion will post it here.
  

    
Back to the discussion: the Internet is thought to be resilient
because your can route around damage to the network. Are the networks
you're talking about similarly resilient? They seem to be headless, how
is leadership distributed so that they stay on point?
  

    
Definitely.  People that attempt to control the movement are seen as
damage.  They are ignored (or in al Qaeda's case in Iraq, destroyed).  
 

Leadership is defined by an ability to advance the movement towards
the goal.  A new protest.  An innovative tactic (new IED design or
weakly defended target).  Etc.  Innovation is rewarded with attention
and copycats.  
  

    
By the way.  Just as a reference.  Here's my connect info:

My blog:  http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/
Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/@johnrobb
Google +: https://plus.google.com/114328322682441788310/
  

    
Interesting discussion - I'm looking forward to following.

So, on the side of peace, what would be (or are?) some examples of the
simple goal, the plausible promise?
  

    
John, thanks for doing this.  I've been a big fan of your blog and
book and shove them at anyone I can.

My background in open source goes back to before we really knew what
we were doing and what effects it would have; my current interest is
in open source digital fabrication.

One of the things I'm finding interesting now is how money is starting
to seriously change the open source movement.  I'm thinking of
MakerBot and Arduino, the former getting serious venture capital the
latter having trademarked logos and such; both being for-profit
operations with a great influence on the market.  MakerBot can
potentially "drive" the 3d printer community based on the decisions it
makes on what technology to support and what software to release or
what projects to sponsor in terms of competitions.  At the same time,
MakerBot and Arduino both rely upon proprietary hardware -- Atmel CPUs
-- for their open source hardware.

I was wondering what your thoughts are on how money and ownership of
tools relates to opensource warfare and resilient communities.  Is
there a "core CPU" to these groups that might still be under the
control of governments or corporations, say mobile phone services or
fuel production?  The shutdown of mobile phone networks was tried by a
couple of governments, did it really make a difference in the end?

For that matter, what is the "global guerilla's" version of the Maker
Faire?  Or do they just go to Maker Faire like the rest of us?  Is
there an "X Prize" for IED development, peer-to-peer mobile phone
networks that bypass cell towers, or secure packet-switched networking
over RF?   
  

    
We saw it recently in the Arab spring uprisings.  From Tunisia to
Egypt to Syria to Libya.  It looks like most of them will succeed. 

In each case, the simple goal was to remove the dictator.  

My personal goal is to build a plausible promise around new
local/virtual economic systems.  I still have found the right way to do
it yet, but I'm working on it.
  

    
Eric, my pleasure.  

Are there ways to shut down open source movements?  The biggest
vulnerability is always communication networks.  Of course, doing that
is self destructive.  If you shut them down, you foster the development
of alternatives, and you harm your own economic/social system
(increasing the level of dissent).  There's evidence that even if you
did that, it wouldn't last for long.  The protest movement might
quickly morph into an insurgency, for example.  

Is there a way around the corporate takeover of the maker revolution? 
Working on strategies for this.   
  

    
Can you discuss those strategies now? 
  

    
One of things I've been working on is a way to organize
ventures/businesses on an open source basis.  Nearly all of the "open
source" businesses today are based on the same hierarchical
dictatorship model prevalent since we first created companies at the
end of the middle ages.  

This new model is called an open source venture.  I've worked on the
theory behind it and done some practical experimentation.  I'll try to
explain it as best I can (there's a video out there with me talking
about this):

An OSV is a very narrowly defined business.  The rules are published
up front (as to how it allocates reward and what it does).  Very little
variation is allowed (by charter) on how these formulas work.  IF a
new business opportunity is found, a new OSV is formed.

There isn't any classic ownership. The ownership is held in trust once
it is set up.  It can't be sold.

Open source ventures have a founding team.  This team shares a
percentage of the revenue based on months of contribution (full or part
time).  

If the OSV uses crowdsource labor, it shares income with these
participants with very specific formulas. Feedback, etc. and other
methods are used to prevent people "gaming" this.  The use of
crowdsourcing has the potential to allow millions of participants
(think people that add to an OSV wikipedia) based on simple rules and
roles.

External financing doesn't confer ownership, nor is it debt
(traditional approaches are focused on gaining ownership control). 
Instead, financing is provided a percentage of the gross revenue.  This
persists for a set number of years or until a set return (5x or 10x
the investment) is achieved, whichever is sooner or later (depending on
your agreement.  It's also possible to combine this with crowdsource
financing.

My experience with this model (to date) is that it's tough to generate
financing using traditional channels.  Most capitalist financing is
focused on gaining control of the venture.  Crowdsource financing using
this model is problematic because the laws prevent it (they are geared
towards traditional participants/methods and thereby preclude
innovation).

I've also found that the project does need a small funded team of
people to run it during the early phases.  Write the b-plan and do the
initial work.  A big team, early on, devolves into endless discussions
of what to do and how to share the spoils without getting any actual
work done.

This model is workable and can provide a way for open source projects
to actually pay the participants.  Someone is going to get one of these
up and then it's off to the races.
  

    
I'll add one more thing.  A kind of overview of what we are trying to
do.  

In short, I believe that it is possible to build an economic system
that works like the Internet.  Very simple rules of interconnection. 
Based on these conversations about this, here's a protocol stack that
Anthony developed:

http://www.miiu.org/wiki/The_economic_stack

Give it a read and think about it.
  

    
Isn't the primary reason an investor seeks ownership control to ensure
that the company stays on the path to profitability? In the model you
propose, wouldn't potential investors want some leverage so that if the
company veer of course, they would have the power to make a
correction?
  

    
That's a legacy problem.  It assumes the venture continued existence
is primary -- that the venture is a living entity that is more
important than the function it accomplishes.  This assumption is due to
the difficulties associated with forming a business (think Coase).  

I think that this assumption is false.  Given current levels of
venture automation, it's not that hard to form and or operate most
ventures.  They can be assembled quickly, even virtually.  As a result,
it's possible to form businesses that focus on a specific task and
limit its activities to performing that task (with few degrees of
freedom).  

Once you update that assumption, the idea of financing a venture with
a limited function is not only plausible, but likely superior.  It's
just that the financial mindset hasn't caught up with reality.
  

    
Questions emailed by Bryan Alexander:

1. Most of the social/cultural/technological discussion swirls around
urban issues these days.  "Urban" is sometimes a code word for
"suburban", but it's not a bad focus, given the slim if growing
majority of humans live in cities.  But what about the countryside? 
What do you see as the special affordances we rural dwellers have in a
world of increasing dysfunction?  How does open source organization +
resilience uniquely work in the country?

2. How can schools* best take advantage of new ways of organizing? 
Are we going to shift to primarily digital, distributed organizations?
*I picked "schools" rather than learners, because it's easy to see
that this is a learner's game.
  

    
Sorry I'm coming late to the game on this folks...I've had some
unexpected connectivity issues today, which is kind of ironic
considering the discussion at hand. 

In fact, as some of the initial concepts of OSW have been covered in
this topic already, I'd like to start dwelling down on some specific
examples. Communications are obviously key to the open source
strategies of both war and peace that the Global Guerillas blog covers.
As we've seen recently, one of the first moves in any dictatorship
attempting to quell rebellion is shutting down the internet. Even here
in the UK there have been recent discussions of locking down
communications nets in the wake of the unexpected London riots. 

So how does a good global guerilla adapt attempts to kill
communications? The blog has covered several adaptive efforts in the
past (most recently the LifeNet ad-hoc network.) Are there any other
good tools you see available now or just over the horizon? 
  

    

#18 - opensource venture - kickstarter.com is an approach to crowdsourced
financing with no ownership for funding

however, it's for a point in time rather than ongoing ventures
  

    
Christian,

Yes, communications networks are very important to OSW.  There are
lots of ways to adapt to a comms shutdown:

Use the fact that a comms shut down works both ways.  If you remember,
during most of the counter-insurgency in Iraq, the #1 complaint people
had about the new government was: they can't keep the infrastructure
working (nothing worked and economic activity slowed to a crawl as a
result).  People were so angry about this, that the legitimacy of the
government was called into question.

To utilize this fact, guerrillas should use the comms shutdown itself
as the weapon. 

1)increase the duration and breadth of the operations, in order to
spread the pain of a comms shutdown to as much of the population as
possible (particularly wealthy areas) 
2) for as long as possible,
3) across as many different types of comms as possible.

For governments monitoring comms channels (Facebook/twitter
monitoring) use spam and misdirection.  This was used pretty
effectively in China's "Jasmine revolution".

See: 
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/04/the-jasmine-revol
ution.html

Essentially, the group used common words used in business
conversations (Jasmine is used for lots and lots of companies/products)
to force the government to block and/or monitor the word.  They also
called for flash mobs/etc. to assemble in crowded areas (like shopping
areas where kids hang out).  This forced the government to rush there
and arrest/accost people (can't have that pesky democracy breaking
out!).  NOTE:  if you are going to do this, you need to be outside of
the county and using a fake account.

Finally, there are work arounds to the shut down of cell phones. 
Flags on top of buildings.  Runners.  However, the more likely
alternative as governments seek to control standard wireless is P2P
wireless.  Mesh networking.  P2P wireless changes the entire game.  


NOTE:  For guerrillas, shutting them down usually is only done if part
of a very specific effort.  For example, Naxalite (Indian Neo-Maoists)
use communications shutdowns as part of a Bandh against cities/towns. 
A Bandh shuts down all connections between the city/town and the
outside world for ~3 days.