Retreat to Hoth

[mattd]

The fight for the future makes daily headlines. Its battles are not between 
the armies of leading states, nor are its weapons the large, expensive 
tanks, planes and fleets of regular armed forces. Rather, the combatants 
come from violent terrorist networks like Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, drug 
cartels like those in Colombia and Mexico, and militant anarchists like the 
Black Bloc that fought back during the Battle of Seattle. Other 
protagonists - ones who often benefit U.S. interests - are networked 
civil-society activists fighting for democracy and human rights around the 
world.
 From the Battle of Seattle to the "attack on America," these networks are 
proving very hard to deal with; some are winning. What all have in common 
is that they operate in small, dispersed units that can deploy nimbly - 
anywhere, anytime. All feature network forms of organization, doctrine, 
strategy, and technology attuned to the information age. They know how to 
swarm and disperse, penetrate and disrupt, as well as elude and evade. The 
tactics they use range from battles of ideas to acts of sabotage - and many 
tactics involve the Internet.
So far, across this new landscape of conflict, the edge has gone to the 
networks. Hierarchy-oriented states must learn to transform themselves 
along networked lines, or they will face the increasingly daunting prospect 
of struggling against a rising tide of both civil and uncivil networks 
enabled, and impelled forward, by the information revolution.

"Punk was much more than fad or fashion; it demonstrated the fractal effect 
in culture, showing how small events, the acts of a few people, can cause 
ripples around the world."