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Overview
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange has been branded “public enemy number one” by some in the United States for posting material on the World Wide Web that concerns airstrikes in Iraq, US diplomatic communications, and other sensitive matters.
In Wiki at War, James Jay Carafano explains why these and other Internet-born initiatives matter and how they are likely to affect the future face of war, diplomacy, and domestic politics.
“The war for winning dominance over social networks and using that dominance to advantage is already underway,” Carafano writes in this extremely timely analysis of the techno-future of information and the impact of social networking via the Internet. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of history and defense strategy, Carafano creates a cogent analysis of what is truly new about the “new media,” and what is simply a recasting of human warfare in contemporary forms.
Wiki at War is written in a lively, accessible style that will make this technological development comprehensible and engaging for general readers without sacrificing the book’s usefulness to specialists. Outlining the conditions under which a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind, detailing how ancient wisdom can still apply to national security decisions, and examining the conditions under which new expertise is required to wage effective diplomacy or successful military strategy, Carafano casts in stark relief the issues that face political, military, and social leaders in trying to manage and control information, in both the international and domestic arenas. Wiki at War affords stimulating thought about and definitive discussion of this vital emerging topic.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781603446587 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Texas A&M University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/28/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 562 KB |
About the Author
JAMES JAY CARAFANO, author of Waltzing into the Cold War (Texas A&M University Press, 2002) and other titles, is deputy director of the Heritage Foundation’s international studies institute and director of its Center for Foreign Policy Studies. He is also a regular guest analyst for major US network and cable television news organizations, including ABC News, FOX News, MSNBC, and Al Jazeera. He lives in Washington, DC.
Read an Excerpt
Wiki at War
Conflict in a Socially Networked World
By James Jay Carafano
Texas A&M University Press
Copyright © 2012 James Jay CarafanoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60344-658-7
CHAPTER 1
MONGOLS AND MULLAHS
Neda Agha-Soltan wanted freedom for everyone.
Neda was not alone. Many joined her in the street protests following the disputed Iranian presidential elections. The vote on June 12, 2009, became a referendum on the country's controversial sitting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Decades after a popular uprising that swept the shah of Iran from power in 1979, the people still fretted over the future course of the Islamic Revolution—a choice between integration with the West versus an extremist vision of religious zealotry and a return to ancient Persian glory. For Ahmadinejad the notion of any accommodation was anathema. Choosing him meant choosing the hardest of the hardliners.
The government chose to leave nothing to chance. Claims of irregularities emerged even before the vote, including reports that the regime had distributed 400,000 tons of free potatoes to poor people, an apparent effort to bribe voters. This prompted campaign chants: "Death to potatoes!" The opposition only intensified when Ahmadinejad claimed victory only hours after the polls closed. Large street demonstrations escalated in the days following.
Still, when Neda took to the streets on June 20, she was far from afraid. She had been to protests before. They seemed more like a carnival than a clash. The young woman dressed casually—sneakers, jeans, a short-sleeve black top, and a kerchief covering her dark hair.
On this day, thousands flooded the avenues of Tehran, stranding her cramped Peugeot 206 in a snarl of traffic. Sweltering heat prompted her and two friends to abandon the car. They walked a short way to get a closer look.
They sauntered.
The crowd seemed peaceful enough.
Until Neda Agha-Soltan was shot square in the chest.
She bled—and died—on the street.
Most of the verifiable "facts" surrounding her death come from the usual sources expected from a scene of chaotic protests and government censorship. These included a handful of media reports offering details, such as the BBC Persian service interview with Caspian (Kaspeen) Makan, described as her fiancé. She had never meant to be a martyr, Makan asserted. "She was not politically affiliated with either side of the current struggle," he added, "Neda wanted freedom, freedom for everyone." Makan contended that she was principally a bystander to history rather than an activist herself.
That was his story. But such reporting was not how most of the world found out about Neda or how they interpreted how she died. Traditional media were late to the game in turning her death into a global event and a symbol for the Iranian opposition movement.
YouTube Martyr
From a media perspective it might have seemed like the shooting would be an ideal story. Writing on election violence, Robert Meadow argues, "Suffice it to say that the old adage 'if it bleeds, it leads' underscores the premium news media—and especially electronic media—place on vivid violence." He may well be right. But, on June 20, there was no journalist present at the shooting. Hence there was no news.
The day after the shooting, a Google news search elicited no returns for keyword "Iran" matched with keyword "Neda." The fact that the Google search engine did not recognize a relationship between the two reflected the lack of mainstream reporting on the incident.
Nevertheless, the death of Neda still went global. That's because something else was drawing attention online. Bystanders had captured her collapsing and dying on cell phone cameras. The files were uploaded to the Internet, becoming little less than the video shot heard round the world.
Twitter (a social networking site where users can exchange messages of 140 characters or less) offers one means to track the influence of the images. Exchanges about Neda Agha-Soltan became one of the "trending topics" by the end of the day. The process by which this occurred offers an example of the capacity of social networking tools to focus a crowd. Tweets (postings on Twitter) used the # symbol (called a "hashtag") before the word "neda" to mark the subject as one they were interested in following. Hashtags are user-generated coding for searchable terms, a feature that was first adopted by some Twitter users employing protocols that had been developed for Internet Rely Chat (IRC), a form of Internet text messaging used between specific groups or "channels" exchanging communications on line. Twitter facilitated the convention by listing the most popular topics on the margin of its home page. By clicking on a particular topic, followers see all the postings that include that hashtag. The list not only reveals what topics are of most interest, but also generates more interest as users click on the link to read the posts or add their own comments. The popularity of hash-tags reflects one of the key desirable attributes of effective online social networks—a simple, widely adopted means to gain information of worth to the user. On June 20, users wanted to read about #neda. The widespread recognition of the term suggests the growing number of Twitters who had either seen or heard about the videos of the shooting.
The impact of social networking online became quickly apparent. On June 21, a Wikipedia user created an entry titled "Death of Neda Agha-Soltan." On June 22, an Associated Press report appeared with the first news service details of the shooting, based exclusively on Internet sources, including postings on Facebook, YouTube (the file-sharing service that allows users to post and watch short videos), and commentary posted on various other websites. It was only after these initial stories that traditional journalism, including efforts to interview witnesses, began. Then, even as the mainstream press offered increasing coverage of the story, commentary and tributes proliferated in all forms of social media.
Within days Neda Agha-Soltan had become the recognizable symbol of Iran's "Green Revolution." (Green was the campaign color of the major opposition candidate). The news of her death and its galvanizing impact on world opinion became a global headline. There was, however, another big story: social networks were now considered an acceptable, legitimate source for news. Furthermore, users not only focused the attention of many on a specific topic on social networking sites, they significantly affected the coverage of news on conventional media websites, as well as broadcast television, radio, and print media. The impact was dramatic. In February 2010, Long Island University announced that it would award "the efforts of the people responsible for recording the death of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan," with the prestigious George Polk Award for Journalism. The line between traditional journalism and the cry of the street had vanished.
In many ways the incident serves as an affirmation that Stanley Milgram's research has direct application to social networking practices. This was clearly a case where a few influenced the many. Further, the reports proved influential because they were widely accepted as authoritative. Indeed, they proved overwhelming.
True, some counter narratives did appear on the Internet in the wake of the "video going viral" (users directing others in their social network to sites or material on the web). They even received mainstream press coverage. One Iranian government official, for example, claimed that Agha-Soltan had been shot by a CIA sniper, an announcement covered by CNN as well as other television and news outlets. The Washington Post reported the statement of an influential Iranian cleric in a sermon that "evidence shows that [protesters] have done it themselves." None of these or other "questioning" narratives, however, matched the rapidly growing belief inside and outside Iran that Agha-Soltan was a martyr of the Iran opposition movement.
The tale of Agha-Soltan is dramatic and tragic. It is not, however, unique. While what it might have to say about the changing nature of journalism in the modern world is noteworthy, in more fundamental ways what happened should seem as no surprise at all. Indeed, it reflects world historical trends as consistent as any in human history. Humans hunger for narrative—stories that have the power to explain and motivate action. Narrative is the comfort food of human knowledge. The relationship between the desire of people for a compelling story, the place of social networks influencing individuals and communities, the shifting impact of technology, and the adaptation of all three to the practice of human conflict is as ancient as humanity itself. Understanding the past of this complex relationship is part of understanding the present and future of wiki warfare.
Technology alone has never won a war. It does not make nations safe or unsafe. Machines cannot overthrow governments or start revolutions. They cannot take a hill or hold the high ground. The search for security neither begins nor ends in gears, grease, wires, or microscopic machines. Somewhere there is a human at a trigger. Humans fight for their future.
History's sweep of culture, economics, politics, and strategic choices dictates people's fate. On the other hand, technology has always been the handmaiden of security. Enemies always seek a competitive advantage. Often they look to machines to give them an edge. Technical innovation and adaptation have always been and likely always will be a wild card for human fate. In this toss and tumble world, arguably no technology has had greater impact on human security than social networking. It is a very old story. Indeed, the main objective of this chapter is to dispel the notion that war and social networking is a new topic.
Social Networking: A History
The points where communicative technologies and humans touch comprise social networks, the kinds of networks that can be used in shooting wars, wars in the street, or wars of ideas. Social networks that mix human emotions, thoughts, opinions, and knowledge with hard technology are not the product of computers and what we think of as the modern information age. They are a witch's brew that is ancient in origin, a theme constant in history, and a tale not well told. Their history matters.
"[T]he brain is not a blank slate," notes the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, a scholar consumed with understanding human consciousness and evolutionary biology. "[T]here are deeply embedded programs of prepared learning that guide people in their mental development," he adds. "It makes sense to try to understand the deep history of humanity." This understanding is nowhere more important than in grasping the role of networking in world history.
LANGUAGE AS TECHNOLOGY
A spoken word might not have been the first tool used by men and women. It would be difficult to argue, however, that language did not have a galvanizing impact on the formation of human communities or establish the foundation for new forms of social networks.
Language is a basic communicative structure comprising a lexicon (vocabulary) and a syntax (principles and rules for how words are strung together to express thoughts). In a language-enabled network the line between nodes (and nodes and hubs) represents a discussion—the technology for transmission of an idea from one person to another.
Language has proven powerful because it complements so well the basic structure of human thinking and learning. Thanks to modern advances in nonintrusive brain imaging, more is known than ever about how humans form complex thoughts and make judgments. While we are far from having a detailed understanding of how thinking works (there are about one hundred billion neurons in the brain synapses—a complicated network), we know there is a basic relationship between affect, cognition, and motivation. The brain uses the body's senses to scan the environment. The brain then goes through a process of pattern recognition. Responding to the stimulus, neural structures (collections of nerve cells on the surface and interior of the brain) are activated. This in turn triggers physiological responses. These could be anything from a physical motion to making an informed judgment or shedding a tear. In short, the conscious brain learns by recording patterns and then evaluating the environment and acting on what it thinks it knows, applying lessons learned to deal with the world around it. As a tool, language comes in handy because it allows humans to effectively share judgments with others. Sharing judgments expands the library of community knowledge, dramatically increasing the chances for the group's survival.
As the human brain evolved, language became hardwired as a social networking instrument. Much about what is known concerning the origin of language and how lexicons are learned remains a subject of vigorous debate and research. On the other hand, it seems commonly accepted that both genetics and culture play a role.
Genes are the portion of cells that control hereditary characteristics, information that is copied and carried to new cells when they are formed. Gene expression is the process by which genes create a product (like a protein) which in turn can affect the activity of the cell and ultimately the entire organism. In particular, genes affect the unique ability of humans to both speak and learn languages, in effect turning organs that were designed to eat and breathe into a means to communicate thought. The FOXP2 gene, for example, expresses a protein that appears to signal other genes to express themselves in turn, helping to make the brain language-ready. FOXP2 is suspected to play an important role in language development in part because mutations in the gene coincide with the incidents of autism and other speech disorders. Without a correctly functioning gene, individuals appear to have difficulty learning to use language.
Both cultural and genetic influences stimulate language learning in young children. The brain starts to recognize patterns associating the specific lexicon and syntax of a language with things in the real world—kin, fire, food. For most human brains, the capacity to easily learn a new language then turns off at a young age, essentially locking in the language they will communicate in for the rest of their lives. Perhaps the best explanation for this adaptation stems from the conditions of the last Ice Age, about 70,000 years ago. In this harsh and challenging environment, hunter-gatherers had to band together to survive. Language would not only have helped immeasurably in coordinating group activities—particularly related to food and security—but also helped bond the individual to a tribe and served as a tool for extending bonds of kinship to other tribes.
The legacy of tribal language as a social network persists to this day. Though the human brain stores a lexicon of many thousands of words, it manages to form sentences and express thoughts with great speed and efficiency. One research effort tried to understand this process by graphing the co-occurrence of words in sentences. The closer the words, the stronger the co-occurrence. Many words, it turns out, have a co-occurrence distance of one, such as "'red-flower' (adjective-noun) ... [or] a distance of two, e.g. 'hit the ball' (verb-object)." Even though a lexicon may be large, the study finds, a few words are used the most and they co-occur the most often. The research concluded that "[i]n spite of the huge number of words that can be stored by a human any word in the lexicon can be reached with fewer than three intermediate words on average." Since the brain can make the close connection between words, stringing them together to produce thoughts, speech takes place quickly. Even words used less often are only a short distance away and can be accessed when needed. What that means is that language can be both rich in content and produced fast. The brain can do this because the lexicon and syntax of language are structured to function like a network, one that follows the power law as well as exhibiting the attributes of small-world patterns described by Stanley Milgram. Additionally, language has all the characteristics of a desirable social network. It is comparatively easy to use, widely adopted, and offers immediately apparent and desirable value for the user. It is a perfect social networking instrument.
Since the human brain is wired to love language and networking, it seems odd that there do not seem to have been networks everywhere right from the start and that these networks did not rapidly transcend local tribal groupings. Perhaps they did. Perhaps we don't know about them because we have not looked for them. David Wengrow, an archaeologist at the University of London, writes that there is "an army of specialists in ancient languages and material cultures who rarely look beyond one region or cultural tradition, or in some cases even beyond one chronological period; of course many universities are structured to promote that kind of specialization." That is not the best way to organize research if you want to search for evidence of social networks. If more scholars looked into the depths of our historical and prehistoric past they might find signs of ancient human networks that carried cultural transfers and material exchanges over great distances. Still, for now, how language and networks proliferated in deep history is still mostly guesswork.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Wiki at War by James Jay Carafano. Copyright © 2012 James Jay Carafano. Excerpted by permission of Texas A&M University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Cover,Copyright,
Prologue: Mad Scientists and Fighter Pilots,
1 Mongols and Mullahs,
2 Star Trek and Superhighways,
3 Dragons, Bears, Cutthroats, and Criminals,
4 Keystone Kops and the Fog of War,
5 Cheerleaders, Pornographers, and Unemployed Engineers,
6 Anciens Régimes and the Government after Next,
7 Weird Science and Dark Horizons,
Epilogue: The Art of War and Wiki War,
Notes,
Index,
Interviews
Washington D.C.