Two surveys on robots and war

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

The first survey is mine, and to those who filled out my short — less than 60s — survey on robots in a COIN/SASO environment, thank you. This survey is intentionally brief and focused on a few points. It is not meant to be comprehensive, which have noted. The survey is still open, so please take it if you haven’t already. The results will be compiled this weekend for a presentation next week. I will post the results here in the next 10 days.

The second survey is what happens when you have a sponsor. Money makes for a bigger survey with more depth. As part of a research project under a grant from the Army Research Office, Dr. Ronald Arkin of the Georgia Tech Mobile Robot lab is conducted a comprehensive (15-25 minutes) survey on the Use of Robots Capable of Lethal Force in Warfare. Take his survey and pass along the survey link to others to help fill out his demographics. I’m very interested to see what he comes up with.

Mash-Up for Friday, August 10, 2007

~ Matt Armstrong

I’m short on time for the blog so I am just going to dump a bunch of recommended reads here. I am at a conference next week, so posting next week is likely to be very light.

From the Pew Research Center: Internet News Audience Highly Critical of News Organizations

The American public continues to fault news organizations for a number of perceived failures, with solid majorities criticizing them for political bias, inaccuracy and failing to acknowledge mistakes. But some of the harshest indictments of the press now come from the growing segment that relies on the internet as its main source for national and international news.

The internet news audience – roughly a quarter of all Americans – tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance. As many as 38% of those who rely mostly on the internet for news say they have an unfavorable opinion of cable news networks such as CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, compared with 25% of the public overall, and just 17% of television news viewers.

DARPA sees the future, and it’s not the world where we can rest on our technological asses. We must take into account a smart and adaptive enemy. The wizz-bang devices don’t play and weren’t designed for the information game. This informational asymmetry reduces the fungibility of our kinetic assets:

There’s a tendency to view Islamists as backwards barbarians, Winter said.  This image is “misleading and very dangerous.”  The terrorist enemy is more likely to be a “engineer in a lab” than an “evildoer in a cave.”

Growth in commercial computing power has “eroded” America’s Cold War “technical edge,” Winter said.  The same – or even better – gear gets out to kids worldwide, before soldiers ever see it.  “The playing field has thus been leveled.”  Just look at how Iraqi insurgents have been able to the Internet to recruit, train, and spread propaganda. And check out the network-like “command and control” structures that these guys are using, compared to our old military hierarchies. 

On PRTs, Richard Fernandez of The Belmont Club, adds some important points on PRTs not raised in my post, namely State’s out of touch regs and a mil-based Civil Response Corps already in operation (h/t SWJ Blog):

I was just on the blogger round table with Philip Reeker, US Embassy Baghdad, on the subject of PRTs. And it was clear that they were trying to building things from the bottom up in a society where the tradition of local government (as opposed to tribal government) was nonexistent. But it was also clear that the assets necessary to accomplish this are pretty thin. They’re still building the doctrine. And there’s no enabling bureaucratic structure. One of the things, for example, that Ambassador Crocker had to do was waive the State Department security regs to get people out. To provide any security at all, the PRTs either have to be embedded or escorted, except in places like Kurdistan where they can mostly operate unescorted.

Interestingly, the PRTs found the military’s reserve system very useful because it provided a pool of specialists for which State had no analogue. There was some reference to the need for the equivalent of a Goldwater-Nichols for the civilian arms of government to provide an institutional cure. But that’s still prospective. The sense you got was that State is trying to field people and is succeeding somewhat, but that many hurdles remain.

To summarize, from what I understand there’s a clear recognition now — and there may have been a former reluctance — to create the capacity to conduct political work at the grassroots. But there remain questions about whether a) it is still possible, given the time elapsed; b) US Government agencies can [mobilize] effectively to accomplish this task.

My own sense, without any pejorative reflection on State, is that they are struggling to match the political work with the security gains. And this is due, I think, almost wholly to the circumstance that we are now asking diplomats to do something they never in their wildest dreams thought they would be doing. As Mr. Reeker ran down the list of this or that person voluntarily leaving a post in such and such European capital for duty in some provincial Iraqi dustbowl you got the sense that the State guys were individually making one heck of an effort but that the institutional capacity still isn’t there.

Abu Muqawama gave this timely link on Jeep’s and Humvee’s that included this important realization:

Yet the Humvee’s biggest drawback may actually be the false sense of security it imparts. American troops, many military theorists now argue, are too removed in their vehicles, fighting for Iraqi hearts and minds with a drive-through mentality. The open-air jeep meant that soldiers could, and had to, interact with the people of occupied nations; the closed, air-conditioned Humvee has only isolated American forces from Iraqis. This is even more of a problem with the MRAP, which offers only small, armored windows to peek out of. Though the tactics of the current surge seek to get troops out of their vehicles more often, many politicians involved in the debate over Humvees assume—perhaps erroneously—that more armor means more safety and success.

Over one thousand contractors have now died in Iraq, but, no surprise, we don’t know the true number. David Ivanovich writes in the Houston Chronicle:

And as of June 30, 1,001 civilian contractors working for U.S. firms had died there since the war’s start more than four years ago, including 231 in the first six months of 2007, according to Labor Department statistics the Chronicle received Tuesday.

How many of those killed were Americans is unclear, since the Labor Department records do not provide the nationalities of the casualties.

Lastly, and for something completely different, cycling’s sponsors have finally had enough of being associated with doping. The latest news on this front is Team Discovery, formerly USPS, will end their sponsorship in February and director Johan Bruyneel will retire. While they team was in negotiations to replace the main sponsor, they decided to cut negotiations because “the situation in the sport is so bad that nobody wants to be involved with us.”

Hizballah lays cable to own local comm network

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

 From the Counterterrorism Blog:

[Lebanese] Defense, Interior, Telecommunications and Justice ministries would launch an “immediate” investigation into the creation of new telephone cables by Hizbullah.

The source, the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star, writes this is not an isolated closed loop network:

“We have discovered by accident that a new telephone network is being created along that of the state in Zawtar Sharqieh,” [Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh] told Voice of Lebanon radio.

“Technical reports also showed that cables have reached Yohmor and other Tyre regions,” he added.

Hamadeh also said there was information that similar works were being conducted in Beirut and Dahiyeh.

The government describes this as violating state sovereignty. I am not familiar with the telecommunications market of Lebanon, but if it weren’t a group seeking the overthrow of the government, would the ministries be this upset if it were a normal privatization of infrastructure? Would they simply be upset at not issuing (or denying) permits and collecting associated fees (or bribes, again I don’t know the intricacies of the Lebanese telecom market)?  In the American media system it’s like Google buying dark fiber, if Google was seeking to destabilize the government (see previous post on Google’s foreign policy). But Google isn’t outright trying to destabilize the US government.

One can already argue the Beirut government ceded some sovereignty to the private sector, in this case Hizballah, when they were slow to respond to the destruction of the recent war. Funny thing about governing people, but given the choice, they will choose and many are choosing Hizballah, which has been providing other infrastructure and social services in the absence of the government.

You have to ask yourself, what can be done to dissuade, or make unprofitable (in other than economic terms), Hizballah’s venture to own media distribution? The government must become a better provider across the board.

Read: Attacking the al-Qaeda Narrative

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Read Jim Guirard’s post Attacking the al Qaeda “Narrative” and “semantic infiltration” at the Small Wars Journal blog.

In his June 2007 State Department E-Journal article, New Paradigms For 21st Century Conflicts, Dr. Dave Kilcullen of General David Petraeus’ senior staff in Baghdad called for, among other things, a “New Lexicon” for better defining and more effectively defeating enemies which subscribe to the faith-based mantra of “Death to America, the Great Satan”.

In other public statements and in several Small Wars Journal postings, Kilcullen entered very slowly, very prudently into the virtually verboten realm of attacking al Qaeda-style Terrorism in Islamic religious context, rather than in Western secular terms only — referring to the AQ terrorists as “munafiquun” (hypocrites to authentic, Qur’anic Islam) and pointing out that “they call themselves mujahideen” but are doing barbaric things which are anything but holy.

To which this word warrior says: Spot on! Two small steps for a good man, two giant steps for truth-in-language and truth-in-Islam in the War on al Qaeda-style Terrorism — a.k.a., Irhabi Murderdom and the AQ Apostasy, as this essay recommends as its most appropriate new names.

But even these two measured Kilcullen attacks on the terrorists’ religious legitimacy were in conflict with the State Department’s basic rule in such matters. As stated on page 25 of the US National Strategy For Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication, the official advisory is, in part, as follows: Use caution when dealing with faith issues. Government officials should be extremely cautious and, if possible, avoid using religious language, because it can mean different things and can be easily misunderstood…

…[Lieutenant General Jim Mattis, Commanding General of US Marines Forces Central Command and I Marine Expeditionary Force charged ] in a recent North County Times interview, the al Qaeda narrative in this respect is nothing but tyranny in false religious garb. Although he does not list the specific Islamic terms which constitute that pseudo-religious scam, the most likely ingredients of this patently false but highly seductive, self-sanctifying narrative would be bin Ladenism’s six-word mantra of so-called

(1) Jihad (holy war) by supposed
(2) mujahideen (holy warriors) and UBL-anointed
(3) shuhada (martyrs) destined for a promised 72-virgins
(4) Jennah (Paradise) as reward for killing us alleged
(5) kuffr (infidels) and, in time, the alleged
(6) Shaitan al-Kabir (the Great Satan, America), as well

Notice, please, that the widespread parroting of this AQ-supportive narrative is much akin to the “useful idiocy” of those in the Cold War who parroted (and who demonized those few who would not join them in parroting) the Soviets’ and Fascist Fidel Castro’s deceitful narrative of so-called

(1) Wars of National Liberation by alleged
(2) Progressive Movements and supposed
(3) Patriotic Fronts on their way to heaven-on-earth
(4) People’s Democracy as a reward for killing all of us
(5) Fascists and for defeating the evils of
(6) American Imperialism

You can beat a dead horse only so many times, so briefly… note where the argument for a “new lexicon” is published. In a State Department e-journal, that’s great. Note who wrote it. Someone from the defense community (Kilcullen was working with State before he was poached, but he is mil, period… and Mattis is mil). Note how his seemingly fundamental argument of not adopting the enemy’s vocabulary and grammar is in violation of State’s, and Karen Hughes’ (surprise), policy. Do you hear about such awareness coming from the civilian sector, say State or even our Chief Information Officer Karen Hughes?

Read Jim’s post, I’m working on something else and the horse is dead already.

“No one is actually at war except the Armed Forces, their US civilian contractors, and the CIA”

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

General Barry R. McCaffrey’s testimony before the the House Armed Services Committee is an excellent summary of the problems were facing today and the real hit America’s national security is taking. It speaks for itself and it should be read.

From a summary he released as his testimony is not yet available from the Committee (h/t Kat):

…the purpose of my testimony is not to talk about the ongoing tactical operations in CENTCOM — but instead the disastrous state of America’s ground combat forces. Congress has been missing-in-action during the past several years while undebated and misguided strategies were implemented by former Secretary Rumsfeld and his team of arrogant and inexperienced civilian associates in the Pentagon. The JCS failed to protect the Armed Forces from bad judgment and illegal orders. They have gotten us in a terrible strategic position of vulnerability. The Army is starting to crack under the strain of lack of resources, lack of political support and leadership from both the Administration and this Congress, and isolation from the American people who have now walked away from the war.

No one is actually at war except the Armed Forces, their US civilian contractors, and the CIA. There is only rhetoric and posturing from the rest of our government and the national legislature. Where is the shared sacrifice of 300 million Americans in the wealthiest nation in history? Where is the tax supplement to pay for a $12 billion a month war? Where are the political leaders calling publicly for America’s parents and teachers to send their sons and daughters to fight “the long war on terror?” Where is the political energy to increase the size of our Marine Corps and US Army? Where is the willingness of Congress to implement a modern “lend-lease program” to give our Afghan and Iraqi allies the tools of war they need to protect their own people? Where is the mobilization of America’s massive industrial capacity to fix the disastrous state of our ground combat military equipment?

Recent and related post (among many on MountainRunner): If the surge is working, why are we still losing?

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Monday Mash-Up August 6, 2007

~ Matt Armstrong

From 1987 until 2002, the State Department published an annual report titled, Political Violence Against Americans, formerly Significant Incidents of Political Violence Against Americans. It was a report mandated by Congress and

produced by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s Office of Intelligence and Threat Analysis (DS/DSS/ITA) to provide readers with a comprehensive picture of the broad spectrum of political violence that American citizens and interests have encountered abroad on an annual basis. 

I’m still waiting for somebody to link social obesity with Sageman’s socialization schema. Phil Carter, with highlighting and a special image by Noah Shachtman, did see a link to national security.

“Timendi causa est nescire” : ignorance is the cause of fear — Seneca. Found in the signature line of a public affairs officer.

Seth Weinberger wants to make politics personal.

On robots, Noah counts down the 50 best movie robots.

Jason Sigger again wrote about general military readiness, adaptability, and capability. This is one of my “favorite” topics I’ve let slide in the last few months, so I’m glad Jason is staying up on it. Manpower and equipment problems lingering below the surface may force certain decisions if not addressed ASAP.

In the same vein, Amy R. Gershkoff, writing in the Washington Post, writes about saving soldiers’ jobs:

For tens of thousands of members of the National Guard and reserves who are called up to serve in Iraq, returning home safely may be the beginning — not the end — of their worst nightmare. Reservists lucky enough to make it home often find their civilian jobs gone and face unsympathetic employers and a government that has restricted access to civilian job-loss reports rather than prosecuting offending employers.

The Army is finally getting that we’re in an information war and it’s rewriting a core operations manual to address the “important business of influencing and informing populations — both our own and in the area in which we operate.” I’m sure this rewrite will have a greater impact than the book chapter I just wrote arguing the same at the national level.

It’s a good thing because al-Qaeda’s information capabilities having gotten slicker. From Noah (again):

We all know Al-Qaeda’s propaganda videos are getting slicker and slicker.  Here’s the newest evidence: a computer-animated recreation of a March 2006 suicide attack that killed U.S. diplomat David Foy in Karachi, Pakistan.  Okay, no one is going to confuse the clip with Finding Nemo or some other digitally-generated Pixar classic.  But it does show just how sophisticated the terror group’s production techniques are becoming.

Blogger’s Roundtables and PRTs in Iraq

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Unfortunately I missed the Blogger Roundtable on PRTs in Iraq with Philip Reeker, counselor for Public Affairs at the Department of State out of the US Embassy, Baghdad. On the call were Andrew Lubin of On Point, Grim of Blackfive, Dave Dilegge of Small Wars Journal / Small Wars Council (go to SWJ’s post for a good summary of questions as well as background resources), Austin Bay, Richard Fernandez of The Belmont Club, David Axe of Aviation Week, Charlie Quidnunc of Whizbang, and Jason Sigger of Armchair Generalist. But not me, the wife’s conference call at the same time and my son waking up messed up my schedule. However, I do have the transcript of this valuable and allegedly secret-handshake-required conference call.

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Targeting Public Opinion is nothing new

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

Targeting the morale of the civilian population is not new and certainly not something absent from 20th Century warfare as many would have you believe. What is new, is the rise of the non-state actors, but attacking the will to fit. The United States hired privateers to attack the will of the British to support the war against us in the 19th Century at the dawn of the nation-state. While the nation-state brought with it problems of governance because the governing lost at least some autonomy over the governed (in the worst cases they had to at least work harder to oppress their people than before). Long before the nation-state, consider Vlad the Impaler’s PSYOP to dissuade trespassing.

In the 20th Century when supposedly warfare was only industrial and between states to the exclusion of the people, German bombing in World War I caused such panic in London that one observer, Giulio Douhet, the influential Italian air warfare theorist, developed a thesis that can best be described as terrorism from the air for maximum psychological affect on the enemy:

At this point I want to stress one aspect of the problem – namely, that the effect of such aerial offensives upon morale may well have more influence upon the conduct of the war than their material effects. For example, take the center of a large city and imagine what would happen among the civilian population during a single attack by a single bombing unit [dropping 20 tons of high-explosive, incendiary and gas bombs.]… First would come explosions, then fires, then deadly gases…By the following day the life of the city would be suspended…

What could happen to a single city in a single day could also happen to ten, twenty, fifty cities. And, since news travels fast, even without telegraph, telephone, or radio, what, I ask you, would be the effect upon civilians of other cities, not yet stricken but equally subject to bombing attacks? What civil or military authority could keep order, public services functioning, and production going under such a threat?…

A complete breakdown of the social structure cannot but take place in a country subjected to this kind of merciless pounding from the air. The time would soon come when, to put an end to the horror and suffering, the people themselves, driven by the instinct of self-preservation, would rise up and demand an end to the war…

In 1939, E. H. Carr also noted the rising “power over opinion” as contemporary war nullified “the distinction between combatant and civilian; and the morale of the civilian population became for the first time a military objective.”

And even the realpolitik author decades later, Hans Morganthau, in his nine elements of national power, included two as unstable: national morale and the quality of diplomacy. Both were subject to domestic and foreign strategic influence campaigns.

Attempting to influence the psychology of populations comes in many forms. If the last resort of kings was war, the first resort was intelligence and linkages from cultural diplomacy. We have clearly forgotten how to participate in the struggle over minds and wills. We used to know. From radio broadcasts to inform and mobilize people over there to influencing the framing of US domestic news of events over there, we fully engaged the public, both ours and theirs.

George Kennan understood the importance of information, public opinion, and morale. As Nicholas Thomson wrote six days after I posted the ending of Kennan’s Long Telegram,

…in a letter to Lippmann that Kennan never mailed (most likely because his boss, Secretary of State George Marshall, had chastened him for causing a ruckus), Kennan explained that he didn’t mean containment with guns. He didn’t want American armed forces to intervene in countries where the Soviets were mucking around but hadn’t gained control, like Greece, Iran and Turkey.

The Soviets are making “first and foremost a political attack,” Kennan wrote. “Their spearheads are the local communists. And the counter-weapon that can beat them is the vigor and soundness of political life in the victim countries.”

Something to think about.

If the surge is working, why are we still losing?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 5 Comments

Question: if the surge is working, why are we still losing? That’s the oft asked question that starts from the wrong premise: that we’re losing. Seth at Security Dilemmas gets the point of the surge: 

The surge is intended not to pacify the country, but rather to provide sufficient security to create breathing room in which the government can pass needed laws and stabilize the political situation.

But while the surge may be working, the political process is not. All of the people cited above for their optimism on the military aspect of the surge also voiced their pessimism about the political side. Admiral Mullen stated that “there does not appear to be much political progress” in resolving the critical issues that might ease sectarian violence.

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UN Accountability, again

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Eugene Kontorovich at Opinio Juris wrote about The Good, the Bad and the UNgly of UN peacekeeping.

The blue helmets have in recent years been amply involved in corruption, sexual abuse and worse. The Post article describes some if it, but there is much more. Two years ago, a U.N. report found large-scale sexual abuse by peacekeepers around the world, including rape and child molestation, and of course, promised reform. In Congo, the abuse was particularly pervasive. One would think after the rape scandal there, someone would have kept a closer eye on the peacekeepers to make sure they didn’t add robbery to their list of offenses.

And then there are the French soldiers in the Ivory Coast who suffocated a man to death with a plastic bag, were congratulated by their officers, and covered-up for by some senior generals.

He accurately goes on about the perception of the force as being critical to their effectiveness.

Part of the accountability problem may have to do with the positive associations people often have between the U.N. and human rights. The UN represents the world, has the international Human Rights Commission — how bad can it be? People may be more hesitant to criticize the UN because they see it as performing other important functions. When the first pictures were released from Abu Ghraib, America and human rights abuse became synonymous. That creates incentives to change. But despite what to me seems like truly pervasive sexual abuse, far more than one would expect from a force of 83,000, the U.N. has not become synonymous with human rights abuse, at least not in the minds of those who matter.

This point was missed by some of the responders.

There are two important issues here. One is the perception issue Kontorovich hits on. The other is the nature of the peacekeeping force itself and the accountability. The truth is, UN Peacekeeping forces are outside of the law.

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Talking about talking in Iraq, Nineveh specifically

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

On the blogger roundtable last week, I’ll be brief and generally punt to Grim at Blackfive to talk about the Blogger Roundtable Call last Friday with Colonel Stephen (“ste-FAHN” to you and me) Twitty. COL Twitty is commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cav, stationed in Ninewah province, the largest in Iraq. The full transcript is here for your reading pleasure, but a searchable version is here (I’ve asked the PAO to make the bloggers archive version searchable as well).

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Agent-Based Modeling of Irregular Warfare (ABMIW)

~ Matt Armstrong

At Danger Room, Sharon Weinberger posted this morning about sims in predicting cause and effect, notably in insurgencies.

Can modeling tools help predict (or forecast) the future? Well, that’s not quite what the Pentagon wants to do, but it’s similar. The goal of “Agent-Based Modeling of Irregular Warfare (ABMIW)” is to use computer models to forecast the consequences of specific actions on, for example, insurgency:

If you’re interested in previous versions of an “Artificial-Life Laboratory for Exploring Self-Organized Emergent Behavior in Land Combat” that doesn’t include sociological variables, you might enjoy EINSTein, the Enhanced ISAAC Neural Simulation Tooklit (ISAAC standing for “Irreducible Semi-Autonomous Adaptive Combat”), available here. (Note: this is a “very” old program.)  I’m sure some of you might enjoy playing with this software, if you haven’t already. It’s fascinating to watch the little guys swarm. 

Multiagent-Based Models (MBMs) incorporate complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory to simulate and understand. EINSTein looks at two living forces colliding, Blue v Red. Unlike EINSTein, newer versions of MBMs incorporating many sociological dimensions (tribe, sect, gang, etc) aren’t freely available for obvious reasons.

Useful for programming robots, no?

While talking about Public Diplomacy in Cyberspace… news on Second Life (updated)

~ Matt Armstrong

Following up on my previous post on electronic media is this article by Frank Rose, writing in Wired, How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life:

For months, Michael Donnelly had been hearing all about the fantastic opportunities in Second Life.

As worldwide head of interactive marketing at Coca-Cola, Donnelly was fascinated by its commercial potential, the way its users could wander through a computer-generated 3-D environment that mimics the mundane world of the flesh. So one day last fall, he downloaded the Second Life software, created an avatar, and set off in search of other brands like his own. American Apparel, Reebok, Scion — the big ones were easy to find, yet something felt wrong: “There was nobody else around.” He teleported over to the Aloft Hotel, a virtual prototype for a real-world chain being developed by the owners of the W. It was deserted, almost creepy. “I felt like I was in The Shining.”

…

Second Life partisans claim meteoric growth, with the number of “residents,” or avatars created, surpassing 7 million in June. There’s no question that more and more people are trying Second Life, but that figure turns out to be wildly misleading. For starters, many people make more than one avatar. According to Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, the number of avatars created by distinct individuals was closer to 4 million. Of those, only about 1 million had logged on in the previous 30 days (the standard measure of Internet traffic), and barely a third of that total had bothered to drop by in the previous week. Most of those who did were from Europe or Asia, leaving a little more than 100,000 Americans per week to be targeted by US marketers.

Then there’s the question of what people do when they get there. Once you put in several hours flailing around learning how to function in Second Life, there isn’t much to do. That may explain why more than 85 percent of the avatars created have been abandoned. Linden’s in-world traffic tally, which factors in both the number of visitors and time spent, shows that the big draws for those who do return are free money and kinky sex. On a random day in June, the most popular location was Money Island (where Linden dollars, the official currency, are given away gratis), with a score of 136,000. Sexy Beach, one of several regions that offer virtual sex shops, dancing, and no-strings hookups, came in at 133,000. The Sears store on IBM’s Innovation Island had a traffic score of 281; Coke’s Virtual Thirst pavilion, a mere 27. And even when corporate destinations actually draw people, the PR can be less than ideal. Last winter, CNET’s in-world correspondent was conducting a live interview with Anshe Chung, an avatar said to have earned more than $1 million on virtual real estate deals, when Chung was assaulted by flying penises in a griefer attack.

Hmmm…

Joseph Jaffe, the marketing consultant who advised Coke on its in-world presence, dismisses the notion that such efforts might not be worthwhile. “The learning is now,” Jaffe says. “You are a pioneer, and with that comes first-mover advantage” — that chestnut from the Web 1.0 boom. And the paltry numbers? “This is not about reach anymore. This is about connecting. It’s about establishing meaningful, impactful conversations. So when people ask, ‘Why Second Life?’ I ask ‘Why not?'”

Yes, why not? Are you going to see lots of people? No…

…the popular islands are never crowded, because each processor on Linden Lab’s servers can handle a maximum of only 70 avatars at a time; more than that and the service slows to a crawl, some avatars disappear, or the island simply vanishes. “It’s really the software’s fault,” says Andrew Meadows, Linden Lab’s senior developer. “Way back when, we used to say, ‘This is not going to scale.'”

Why go?

“Companies say, ‘It’s an experiment’ — but what are they learning?” Tobaccowala asks. “Basically, they’re learning how to create an avatar and walk around in Second Life.” Which is fine if that’s what you want to do. Just don’t expect to sell a lot of Coke.

Seems like a good place to have a presence. In a cost-benefit analysis, seems like it isn’t the best investment for the money if you’re attempting to counter enemy propaganda through engaging foreign and domestic publics directly. But that’s just me…

Ok, Michael’s got some updates. First, was his post a couple of months ago about SL being a terrorist training tool. But all ICT(information and communication technologies) can be dual purpose, so I’m not concerned there. Better to use technology to empower the good than to fear its use by the bad. We may as well return to the communications systems of the Seventeenth Century to prevent the spread of ideology, food, etc. But here’s the good stuff MT shares: Virtual Terrorists, Hunted in reality, jihadists are turning to artificial online worlds such as Second Life to train and recruit members.

In SL people create their own characters, known as avatars, and live an alternative life, buying goods, real estate and living in a community of more than eight million people from across the world. They go about their lives, attending concerts and seminars, building businesses and socialising.

On the darker side, there are also weapons armouries in SL where people can get access to guns, including automatic weapons and AK47s. Searches of the SL website show there are three jihadi terrorists registered and two elite jihadist terrorist groups.

Once these groups take up residence in SL, it is easy to start spreading propaganda, recruiting and instructing like minds on how to start terrorist cells and carry out jihad.

One radical group, called Second Life Liberation Army, has been responsible for some computer-coded atomic bombings of virtual world stores in the past six months….

Earlier this year Britain’s Fraud Advisory Panel warned that SL players could launder money across national borders without restriction and with little risk of being detected. The FAP says criminal or terrorist gangs can also use the game to avoid surveillance while committing crimes including credit card fraud, identity theft, money laundering and tax evasion.

Perception management by the insurgency

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

This is a video of an EOD robot taking one for the team filmed and posted by an Iraqi Sunni insurgents & supporters. More interesting is the back and forth comments on YouTube about its place in the larger media campaign.

silence34342000 (video poster): can you imagine how many resistance videos are released daily each showing at least 4 marines dying(not considering flying rockets on american bases and operations which didnt get videod)? do you know how many Jihadi groups are in Iraq?
you dont know the size of resistance and its abilities.
plz ark get me one video showing the Mujahidin killing innocent ppl

arkgunslinger: Here’s a few
v=PpOHYdMQOkE “There has been a surge in sectarian violence in Iraq”
v=rdJTOIi0vaQ “Ever more Iraqi civilians murdered”
v=3hnkGxT3gAg “Chlorine truck bombs in Iraq”
v=MPAoQ8jQJPs “Many Killed in Iraq Car Bombing”
v=pFmdaWWKGMI “Typical Car bombing aftermath”

silence34342000: i watched them all and i have one comment
show me ONE Mujahid just one in any of these videos.
see Jihad videos theyre marked by a Jihadi group sign or accompained by comment of a Jihadi leader or Mujahidin themselves appearing in the video.
in the videos you brought it isnt clear who did those bombings and all of them just showing smoke and burnt things without a proof that this was done by Mujahidin

silence34342000: see how Jihad media is clear and simple it shows everything starting from planning an operation and ending with excuting it your media brings the burnt things and tells you the evil Mujahidin did it without any proof and without one Mujahid appearing in the video

The poster, an insurgent supporter at the very least, recognizes the need for IO and the value of a clear and simple media product. Taunting the (presumably) American to “Show me one mujahid…in any of these videos” killing innocent people, he shifts responsibility of demonstrating the contradiction of the insurgents message and tactics to the American.

By the way, what’s State doing to counter these messages? Under the “leadership” of Karen Hughes, State has “four of five” bloggers that search through cyberspace and attempt to correct information with official US position statements. Underwhelming to say the least.

Importance of images and perceptions

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

On framing US domestic images, Why the Military Hates the Left

On the importance of Iraqi domestic perceptions, see the second half of Sean Smith’s film at the Guardian.

Also, see Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack’s article in today’s New York Times.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.…

Another surprise was how well the coalition’s new Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working. Wherever we found a fully staffed team, we also found local Iraqi leaders and businessmen cooperating with it to revive the local economy and build new political structures. Although much more needs to be done to create jobs, a new emphasis on microloans and small-scale projects was having some success where the previous aid programs often built white elephants.

Good news and bad news in a single sentence: “Wherever we found a fully staffed team…”