Global Guerillas is John Robb's blog, expounding the theory that the asymmetrical warfare practised in Iraq and elsewhere is organised along the same lines as open source software.  Intertwined technological and political innovation is a house theme at SSR, so let's pause and contemplate this for a moment, or at least string together jargon in an appealing but fragmentary way.

This post from September breaks down the parallels between the insurgents and the humble developers of the GCC compiler.  John has also graphed the insurgent attacks; they follow roughly the same long tail distribution as book sales on Amazon.com.  He treats recent Al-Qaeda franchise terror attacks using the same framework.

This kind of sucks for advocates of open source software - we were only just getting over being called communists.

Of course open source insurgency sucks even more for the unfortunate people being killed and maimed by their local warfare entrepeneur.  

Open source and long tail approaches are both made possible by a dramatic deflation in the price of information and shipping, in real terms, over the last 150 years.  Anyone who's read the Art of War will recall how obsessed Sun Tzu was with knowing the movements and motivations of the enemy, so it should be no surprise to find parallels.

Parliamentary democracy as such doesn't deal with this problem.  The genius of constitutional democracy is in its slowness and deliberation, inclusiveness and due process tempering the dangerous weight of collective decisions.  These insurgents - and the smart policing mobs being grown to combat them - are by contrast highly flexible and autonomous groupings within the state.  The instinctive response of rich world governments to these recent terrorist acts has been to try to lock down and track its citizenry further.  This effectively raises the cost of information, shipping and the actions of everyday life for everyone, while giving everyday citizens less power to stop the attacks.

((Those Iraqi insurgents who are part of the Al-Qaeda franchise, rather than more conventional civil warriors, are in the bizarre position of insurging in order to establish a "caliphate" - far removed from the political autonomy they now possess.  Please, hand me my straightjacket - I can't be trusted!))

The networked terrorist is a new, cheap and successful piece of military tech.  Historically, responses to new military tech with old - especially when the new tech is cheap - fail.  Democracies instead need smart policing mobs able to inform and if needed act to protect their own communities from threat.

((More analysis and the original heads up for Global Guerillas is at the addictive uber-development blog Worldchanging)).

Dave Foley, of the stylish architectural practice Holland and Foley , comments at Worldchanging :

[...] There's one thing that's hard to do with efficiency and renewable energy: project military power.

He's wrong: efficiency and renewable energy would make America's fun new imperialism more sustainable.

Militaries depend on supply lines and logistical trains, and far from being an exception the modern American military has quite a high tail:teeth ratio, around 10:1 as I recall.  A lot of this is just moving oil around.  You'd keep the rocket fuel for the big bangs, but the less dramatic parts of the military have efficiency gains galore.  

If, for instance, plug-in hybrid electric humvees, recharged from in the field solar panels, were available, it would extend supply lines, reduce needed support personell, and make the military power who controlled them even more potent.   Indeed Wired has reported on this in the past , and a tank is just a chunky car with a big gun.  The long Pacific supply lines of the USN would also see pretty useful benefits from efficiency or distributed generation - imagine if the airstrip on an aircraft carrier could also be a solar array.  And I haven't even started talking about my Mongol hordes riding super-efficient solar-charged light-aircraft scenario yet.

Armed force isn't going away in a hurry, but if they could kill/liberate people without bringing Sydney Harbour into Pitt Street, I'd appreciate it.

A key theme in environmentalism is industrial and agricultural self-reliance, interpreted as a strong ethical relationship between yourself and the energy and materials you consume and produce.  This expresses itself in a heavy focus on localism, village trading and life, to the point of personally producing and maintaining a sizable chunk of one's clothes, tools, and growing a large chunk of your own food.  This exists even in the bright green consensus reality of technoprogressive environmentalists; Vinay Gupta of Worldchanging wrote recently of being Unplugged, and previously of a Global Sustainable Peasantry.

I imagine Mencius asking: How do you have an Unplugged neurosurgeon?

Mencius was one of the great early Confucian philosophers. Amongst other things he is credited with an early argument for the division of labour.

4. Mencius said,'I suppose that Hsü Hsing sows grain and eats the produce. Is it not so?' 'It is so,' was the answer. 'I suppose also he weaves cloth, and wears his own manufacture. Is it not so?' 'No. Hsü wears clothes of haircloth.' 'Does he wear a cap?' 'He wears a cap.' 'What kind of cap?' 'A plain cap.' 'Is it woven by himself?' 'No. He gets it in exchange for grain.' 'Why does Hsü not weave it himself?' 'That would injure his husbandry.' 'Does Hsü cook his food in boilers and earthenware pans, and does he plough with an iron share?' 'Yes.' 'Does he make those articles himself?' 'No. He gets them in exchange for grain.'

5. Mencius then said, 'The getting those various articles in exchange for grain, is not oppressive to the potter and the founder, and the potter and the founder in their turn, in exchanging their various articles for grain, are not oppressive to the husbandman. How should such a thing be supposed? And moreover, why does not Hsü act the potter and founder, supplying himself with the articles which he uses solely from his own establishment? Why does he go confusedly dealing and exchanging with the handicraftsmen? Why does he not spare himself so much trouble?' Ch'an Hsiang replied, 'The business of the handicraftsman can by no means be carried on along with the business of husbandry.'

 -- Mencius, Book III, Part 1, Chapter 4

The division of labour - specialization - is not an artifact of modern industry, it's an attribute of the world itself. Natural selection works by progressive specialization. Sure, specialization has risks that have to be managed, as it can make you vulnerable to context shocks - the decline of ecosystems or industries.  ((People are great generalists, and great at learning skills quickly when required - for a good description of it, via its suppression by institutional schooling, see education anarchist John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education.))  Jobs for life may have been replaced, but they've been replaced not by jack-of-all-trade jobs but by a series of specialisations, each adapted to the circumstances of the moment.

Why would the division of labour not apply to a modern green peasantry, technological or no?  The only answer I can seem to find from advocates is an aesthetic or moral one: it's a more fulfilling way to live, and you shouldn't take more than you put in.  But the peon aesthetic doesn't much appeal to me, and people are no more virtuous now than the 3rd century BC.