Indirect and Direct components to strategy for the Long War

[marct]

Hi Selil,

Currently on about Friday of next week I'll be reading "Leaderless Jihad", don't know much about the book, but the concept of leaderless organizations does intrigue me. The organizational structure has definite impacts on the ability to effect desired outcomes.

You know, for most of our species history we have been "leaderless" in the current meaning of that term. Back when we were Hunters and Gathers, we had what is now called "situational leadership" - it shows up now in management texts on "matrix organizations".

On the transnational level of crime and terrorism (which I disagree with Steve Blair it has been around a lot longer than the anti-Globalists e.g. Yakuza, Tongs, Mafia). I would suggest that there is an element to leadership and organization that is starting to emerge due to the hyper-connectivity of current communications/technology structures.

Well, on the transnational level, I would add in the early (~1550+) TNCs such as the Hudson's Bay Company, the British East India Company, etc. Given their history of acting as if they were nations...

Tilly (<-- sociology classes are paying off to argue with MarcT) would argue that this is a form or resource mobilization in contrast to Durkheim and the break down theorists. I would suggest it is a wholly new form of organizational structure eclipsing earlier societal network structures and illuminating a neo-Marxism of the new hyper-connected/communication model.

IMHO, Tilly has been reading too much Castells . This is one of the key problems with Marxist and neo-Marxist theologians... oops, sorry, "theoreticians" - when reality doesn't match their prophecies, they build a new prophecy and explanatory framework. I always wondered if Althusser was a reincarnation of Ptolemy! This neophilic theological system of theirs really does reinforce why it is so difficult to make social sciences into sciences .

On a less-Marxist bashing note, it really isn't a "new" form at all - it is just about the oldest form of social relations we, as a species, have. The fact that it doesn't mesh with the creation myths of the Marxists is irrelevant; at least for me.

Several authors and academics have looked at the "Copyright Wars", and digital copyright issues, the "Hacker Code" and other meritocracy type organizations of the hyper-connected and identified the forming and dissolving of these groups. This is truly more than the Internet as hyper-connected takes in ALL forms of communication's (cell phone, pda, instant messenger, etc.)

Oh definitely! Add in On*Star, chips in your appliances that call for repair, the dating ####s advertising your sexual proclivities and availability, etc, etc., and the interconnections are ruly mind boggling.

The question I can't answer is will society enforce the dictum of currency (perhaps convention as MarcT illustrated elsewhere), or will the evolving communication model (distributed, less ideology driven, loosely coupled or uncoupled) expand to effect and change the "whole" of society? If the expansion and assumption of normalcy occurs then it will have substantial and long lasting effects on conflict. If it doesn't occur and is relegated to a "phase" then it will be more a symptom rather than a disease.

There are so many possibilities that I, literally, can't think of them .

Marc