
The Digital Maginot Line (2018) - mikro2nd
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the-digital-maginot-line/
======
KaiserPro
> Like the original Maginot Line, this approach is about as effective a
> defense as a minor speed bump.

No

The Maginot Line forced the german army to go through the ardennes. It bunched
up all their forces into a tiny crossing surrounded by valleys rivers and
other such obstacle.

Two french spotter planes saw this and reported back. The report was regarded
as spurious.

Had the report been acted on, the invasion of france probably would have
failed.

France and britian had by far the best kit and numbers. However the french
were in disarray politically, and the british weren't really integrating
properly.

So the real reason barrier was the lack of joined up political thinking.

~~~
cally
I wonder what would have happened if the allies had screwed Belgium over and
not advanced to protect it.

As well as the crazy political situation in France, their army was also far
too top heavy and old, and relied on ww1 era comms. I saw the average age of
the high command was something like 30 years older in France than Germany.

Maybe you could say the top heaviness was due to French politics, and that the
the old generals did not invest in new comms, but I think that is a stretch.

But, yes, I agree with you. The maginot line did exactly what it was supposed
to do

------
pjc50
Ah yes, this is Venkatesh Rao's site, who is some kind of "futurist".

It's the wrong metaphor. The Maginot line was supposedly impenetrable for
keeping clearly labelled troops on the other side. The modern situation is
something much more porous, much more like Cold War (counter)intelligence. Or
this discussion of "interpretative superiority":
[http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2018/02/18/why-corbyn-is-
th...](http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2018/02/18/why-corbyn-is-the-only-
effective-remainer/) (although I disagree with the conclusion). A system that
can detect ideological incursions, vector an intercept response, and shoot
down memes that get over the line. Analogy between forum moderation and those
Phalanx CIWS systems for shooting down missiles.

The West doesn't _have_ a central ideological defence system though, or at
least not since the Cold War. Instead it's more like an immune system.
Individual agents wander around the body politic attacking ideas they find
unfamiliar. Responses to ideological challenge happen _not_ through central
coordination but by the actions of individual and factions.

The effectiveness of this system has become an autoimmune disease that can be
exploited by pathogenic actors. The US police are a good example of this:
their ideological defence is so strong it can cover even crimes committed in
broad daylight on video.

~~~
082349872349872
Pathogenic actors don't even wander around. See the description of how the
Committee on Public Information prepared a hitherto-isolationist US public to
enter WWI. (I think in one of Bernays' books, or maybe the Creel report?)

They used knowledge of the social graph to proceed clique by clique,
triangulating such that their point of view appeared to come from multiple
independent outside sources. In 1917.

~~~
pjc50
The daily mail published the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinoviev_letter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinoviev_letter)
in 1924 and tried to do the same thing just very recently in alleging that
Corbyn was a Czech spy. Different century, same tactics.

(see my comment below about "identity" being irrelevant to bad actors)

~~~
082349872349872
or, one century prior and more subtly,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Dispatch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Dispatch)

as to identity:
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm)
notes

"First point to note is the character of the source. There are several choices
on this: the true source (who really got it out?) and the ostensible source
(whose name is signed to it?); also, the first-use source (who used it the
first time?) and the second-use source (who claims merely to be using it as a
quotation?). Take the statement: "Harry said to me, he said, 'I never told
anybody that Al's wife was a retired strip-teaser.' Mind you, I don't pretend
to believe Harry, but that's what he said, all right." What are the possible
true sources for the statement of fact or libel concerning Al's unnamed wife?
What are the alternatives on ostensible sources? First use? Second use? The
common sense needed to analyze this statement is of the same order as the
process involved in analyzing the statement: "Reliable sources in Paris state
that the visit of the American labor delegation has produced sensational
repercussions in Moscow, and that Moscow, upon the basis of the American
attitude, is determined to press for unification of the entire German labor
movement.""

and more directly to your point (that overt identities may not even matter), I
would say Zweig's Schachnovelle is an extended meditation on parties who
continue politics by openly unlawful yet unopposed force.

------
082349872349872
(a) I have former-Yugoslav colleagues who believe that "Information Wars" were
already at work last century.

(b) in Maginot's defence, junior french planners may well have imagined a
Blitzkrieg, and rightfully discarded it, assuming the germans wouldn't have an
energy source. A coal-based army doesn't move quickly.

The french were to learn that a synfuel-based[1] army _can_ blitz. The
germans, on the other hand, _had_ to blitz: after failing[2] to reach Grozny
and Baku to replenish energy stocks they were put on the defensive.

Crude Rules Everything Around Me

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergius_process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergius_process)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad#Prelude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad#Prelude)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motherland_Calls#/media/Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motherland_Calls#/media/File:Volgograd_and_the_Motherland_statue.JPG)

[https://books.google.ch/books?id=6_h3DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA85&lpg=PA...](https://books.google.ch/books?id=6_h3DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=hitler+maikop+grozny+liquidieren&source=bl&ots=4_Zyj-
jHAQ&sig=ACfU3U0Erz0VOEaHfxX5UAYA1Ue5qVWE5g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjvi_Ke7ZfqAhURQhUIHUfDBasQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=hitler%20maikop%20grozny%20liquidieren&f=false)

~~~
pjc50
You've reminded me to add _The Prize_ (Yergin) to lockdown reading. And that I
miss theoildrum blog.

(I would also appreciate an ideological history of the Yugoslav war, how
neighbors were persuaded to murder one another so readily and what should be
learned from it..)

~~~
mesofile
You might, as I do, prefer written sources, but I must recommend watching
(even just the first part of) this BBC documentary.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDADy9b2IBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDADy9b2IBM)

~~~
082349872349872
especially 8:00-9:20 and 12:00-13:15

also 31:40 "All the changes we made to the structure of Serbia were
implemented using perfectly legal means. We followed the proper procedure."

(Milošević's projection game appears to have been strong. Everything was
everyone else's fault.)

This _was_ a BBC production, so we expect to see the NATO side, but given that
Milošević's lawyer had a fool for a client, I am not feeling poorly at being
inclined to their editorial.

------
bambax
> _Ardennes, it turned out, was not impenetrable. Moving through the forest
> would perhaps have been a futile effort for an army using the attrition
> warfare strategies prevalent in World War I, but it was vulnerable to new
> modes of warfare. As the French focused on building the Maginot Line, the
> Germans developed exactly such a new model of warfare — Blitzkrieg —and sent
> a million men and 1500 tanks through Ardennes (while deploying a small force
> to the Maginot Line as a decoy)._

While not outright false, this isn't exactly true. Ardennes' forest was in
fact near impenetrable, but the Germans took the road. It would have been more
than feasible to stop them while on that road, but before a decision could be
made as to attack them there, they were through and it was too late.

The _débâcle_ had many causes but the major one was a failure of thinking. In
1938 an important French general, Louis Chauvineau, wrote a book called "Is an
invasion still possible?" in which he, of course, answered by the negative.
The book enjoyed a modicum of success and had a reprint in... 1940: it was
still in bookshops in France when Hitler was parading in front of the Eiffel
tower.

Beware of experts.

------
lebuffon
After reading this it occurs to me that a key aspect of the real world that is
missing in the digital variant is identity. When people believe they cannot be
seen they are prone to doing things that they might not otherwise do. If one
needed a licence to drive on the information highway where digital-traffic
violations had fines and/or jail terms, things might be different.

Sounds un-workable? Perhaps. But there was time when anyone could drive an
animal powered vehicle with no certification. Once transportation technology
became too powerful regulation had to follow to prevent chaos. How different
is the current situation? Why does the local radio station, with 5 KW
transmitter, need a FEDERAL license but Facebook and Twitter do not? Political
leaders in the early 20th century seemed to understand the power of electronic
media and did not shirk their responsibility to manage the society they found
themselves in.

I am of the opinion that the current flock of political leaders, many of whom
were born before the micro-computer existed are incapable of drafting the
appropriate balanced language for this century. It will therefore fall on
those born in the digital era to figure it out but the speed of digital change
means we are already late and damage will be done before solutions exist.

~~~
pjc50
Much of the most egregious ideological warfare is carried out in public in
newspaper columns under people's own names. And on the other side whole
categories of discussion can only exist while pseudonymous; see the other
thread on the front page about slatestarcodex.

If we're talking transparency, we should look at "think tanks" and their
funding.

Identity is not sufficient to deal with rule violations, either. We know who
killed Breonna Taylor, it's just a choice not to arrest them.

------
lowmemcpu
This article isn't worth the time. TL;DR: A lot of digital ink was spilt about
a digital Maginot line, but skimps out on spilling ink for the solution

> The solution to this problem requires collective responsibility among
> military, intelligence, law enforcement, researchers, educators, and
> platforms. Creating a new and functional defensive framework requires
> cooperation.

So the solution is that we must work together, starting with the military? Is
there something actionable here?

> It’s time to prioritize frameworks for multi-stakeholder threat information
> sharing and oversight. The government has the ability to create meaningful
> deterrence, to make it an unquestionably bad idea to interfere in American
> democracy and manipulate American citizens.

What deterrence are you proposing? The kinetic kind?

> It can revamp national defense doctrine to properly contextualize the threat
> of modern information operations, and create a whole-of-government approach
> that’s robust regardless of any new adversary, platform, or technology that
> emerges. And it can communicate threat intelligence to tech companies.

And that's it? Reading the content from think tanks at least put out something
more substantial.

~~~
naringas
there's no solution. this is an open problem

the first step, IMO, is stating it correctly i.e. we must state the problem
correctly so we may ask how it can be solved.

------
xtiansimon
The France's "Maginot Line" is used here as a metaphor to ground the author's
idea--increasing stories of security breaches and disruptive cyber-terrorist
acts are visible signs of the top-down dark state.

Ok. And on the other hand, technology is integrated into society.
Technologists (private actors, employees) will see opportunities and
vulnerabilities, and make black/white hat choices (like in finance?). And,
sprawling organizations with unaccountable funds and charismatic managers will
form groups (sounds like an interesting job and more fun than, you know, work)
and possibly do some unethical $#it and hide behind lawyers and money. //End
dialectical rant

Nicely written, though.

------
jaekash
> There is a war happening. We are immersed in an evolving, ongoing conflict:
> an Information World War in which state actors, terrorists, and ideological
> extremists leverage the social infrastructure underpinning everyday life to
> sow discord and erode shared reality.

Cite maybe? Like what is this even referring to? Some level of specificity
would be great.

~~~
rightbyte
It is all fear mongering. Any foreign state propaganda drowns in superior
domestic.

Disconnect the nuclear reactors from the internet allready and calm down
everyone. It is not like "russian hackers" is behind the riots in the US or
bad covid advice.

~~~
armagon
I'm amazed by the daft things people believe about Covid. The best thing a
foreign power could do to take out a nation would be to get them to fight
among themselves, and there is fighting all over the place, from memes to
counter memes, to riots in the streets.

I just can't tell if foreign agitators helped it along, or if it didn't need
any help.

------
rossdavidh
In the first couple paragraphs, he says that the Cold War involved
shadowboxing (it involved numerous medium sized wars, just not WW3) and that
the Maginot Line was ineffective (it was quite effective, that's why the
Germans went through the forest to get around it). I stopped reading.

------
Kinrany
(2018)

~~~
mikro2nd
Apologies for not tagging the title in the first place. Remiss of me, but no
intent to mislead. Perhaps a mod might fix the title?

