“Competitive Control”: How to Evaluate the Threats Posed by “Ungoverned Spaces”

That non-state groups are increasingly able to meet the demands of a governance starved populace should be alarming. In Afghanistan, the Taliban routinely engage in “shadow governance,” developing effective and sophisticated governance structures that truncate the reach of the central Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Demonstrating capacity and an exceedingly capable political program, the Taliban are providing a viable, if illegitimate, alternative to what is often perceived as a corrupt and out-of-touch government that is incapable of providing essential human services, civil justice, and security requirements at the local and village level.

Ungoverned spaces are not limited to the physical world. Complete virtual economies, and in fact entire virtual ecosystems, have developed online in the form of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. Terrorist organizations, Drug Trafficking Organizations, and criminal subversives are all increasingly availing themselves of the internet as a viable medium for recruitment, operational planning, money laundering and financial exchange, as well as the spread of ideologies and tactics.

Prison: A Training Ground

Jihadists have promoted the leaderless model in their calls for resistance, but this method has one notable flaw: It shortchanges grassroots extremists when it comes to learning terrorist tradecraft. This deficiency often leads to attackers struggling to make successful strikes. Or it can lead to their reaching out for help with bombs or other weapons and ending up being snared in government sting operations. This is where prisons come into play.

Inmates often share tips and techniques, and it is not unusual for them to get instruction from other inmates in the martial arts or on the use of shanks and other simple weapons. They are also taught how to disarm law enforcement officers — this is why officers are trained on weapons retention. Indeed, such prison tutoring may have helped Herman prepare for his attack on the police officers in Liege.

Actually Yes, the Left Can Defeat The United States Militarily

This new world might mean the death of the “revolution” as envisioned by Maoists, Leninists, and other card-carrying party members. This is not 1917. Nations are an old idea that is quickly becoming outdated. Fight against chaos and you’ll be torn to pieces like a cheap-ass trailer in Ft. Pierce during a category 5 hurricane.

But in an Egoist sense, a claimed zone of territory made lawless and effectively ungovernable, too chaotic for any one force to hold the upper hand…much promise in that. Disrupt. Discredit. Militias and communes defining themselves town by town, street by street, aligning and breaking apart as they see fit. No one person to corrupt, arrest, or even kill. Put that on a generational track. Such zones could become infection points, cancerous bulbs on the body politic spreading “no-go” zones and destabilization. Bring Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya home. Read shit like this and start putting it to use where you live. Carve out new lives, new dreams, from the rotting carcass of a continent-spanning “society” and never look back. As long as insurrectionists remain popular and willing to continue the fight until the last breath(as the Seminoles did) they’re guaranteed a chunk of territory.

The Grim Future of Urban Warfare

There are reasons that coming wars will be more, not less, deadly. As weapons systems become increasingly accurate through satellite positioning, surgical strikes on military targets will seem more viable. But the blood-soaked history of “smart bombs” show that they have only been as smart as the intelligence used to deploy them. In 1991, laser-guided missiles entered the Al-Amiriyya bomb shelter in Iraq through a ventilation shaft, killing more than 400 civilians. In 2008, an air raid obliterated a bridal party at Haska Meyna. Such “aberrations” likely will increase in frequency.

Despite all those innovations, the block-by-block, building-by-building, room-by-room fighting seen from Stalingrad to Aleppo will continue at great cost. Soldiers avoid conventional routes, preferring “mouse-holing” by blowing holes through the walls. For invading forces, the fear of infiltration and assault from below, from the city’s bowels, is ever-present. Jewish resistance fighters surviving beneath the Warsaw ghetto noticed that the German soldiers above suffered from “sewer paranoia,” fearing they could be attacked from any location. In Vietnam, the American soldiers referred to the Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi with the nightmarish term “Black Echo.” But invaders in the future would be armed with more than flamethrowers, harnessing sonar and special 3-D-mapping drones that could venture down where soldiers feared to tread.

Electric Grid ‘Prime Target’, ‘Profound Threat,’ says DHS

“The power grid is a prime target for attack by nation states, and it is not fair for ratepayers to bear the full burden for this national security function,” said the report, which looked at the potential of a “catastrophic” half-year blackout that could impact 75 million.

The attack could also come with no notice and last half a year. “Long-duration, lasting several weeks to months (at least 2 months, but more likely 6 months or more) due to physical destruction to equipment, such as transformers or transmission lines; or the severity of the event resulting in limited work force to repair damage, or inability to create or transport replacement parts,” said the report.

Pentagon Preparing for Mass Civil Breakdown

Among the projects awarded for the period 2014-2017 is a Cornell University-led study managed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research which aims to develop an empirical model “of the dynamics of social movement mobilisation and contagions.” The project will determine “the critical mass (tipping point)” of social contagions by studying their “digital traces” in the cases of “the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey.”

Twitter posts and conversations will be examined “to identify individuals mobilised in a social contagion and when they become mobilised.”

Another project awarded this year to the University of Washington “seeks to uncover the conditions under which political movements aimed at large-scale political and economic change originate,” along with their “characteristics and consequences.” The project, managed by the US Army Research Office, focuses on “large-scale movements involving more than 1,000 participants in enduring activity,” and will cover 58 countries in total.