Cyber warfare has always been a staple of sci-fi fiction, but generally between nation states. I can't help but wonder if the reality is that this 'warfare' won't be so much between nation states, but between governments and the public and we're witnessing the start of this with a secretive and paranoid government(s) on one side and a distrusting and increasingly activist 'public' on the other. Corporations are stuck in the middle looking at their bottom line, but pressured from both sides.
I read an interesting editorial a few months back -- can't remember where -- that basically made the counter-intuitive point that we are not headed towards totalitarianism. Far from it. We are headed towards mob rule.
The writer used the various strikes and protests in Europe as an example. His point was that as the nation-states became less relevant, people would begin to more closely associate in virtual groups than geographic ones.
I _also_ read the recent leaks about China, which leads me to believe that the Chinese think they can keep a lid on the internet.
This could be the beginning of a long, drawn-out period of chaos and overreaction by all sides. Sure would suck to have to choose between that and totalitarianism (even if, in the end, totalitarianism wouldn't work) Perhaps this is some author's overactive imagination though. I sure hope so.
Public demonstrations in Europe these days are generally well-behaved. Probably the main motivation for taking to the streets is to ensure that the government at least acknowledges an issue rather than simply ignoring as was case in the past.
The anarchist groups active today are a little less troubling than groups like the Red Army Faction, Red Brigades and the Irish Republican Army that were a feature of the 1970's and 1980's.
The real danger of mob rule might come from unscrupulous politicians making capital from social tensions. The recent series of expulsions of Romany from France and Italy were certainly a very troubling reminder of Europe's recent history.
And I do not doubt that if some European politician got it in to their heads to try something really stupid that such 'reminder' demonstrations would turn violent pretty quickly.
In France it wasn't 5 years ago that 100's of cars were burned every night and in the Netherlands squatters do battle with the riot police with some regularity.
I think that the events in France don't belong to this list. France is dealing with a lot of youth criminality from ghettoized communities. The burning of cars was not backed up with any political claims. It only reflects how authorities are losing control over certain neighborhoods.
The burning of cars was - as far as I understand it - a direct consequence of multiple decades of festering trouble that was not adequately recognized or responded to by politicians. The shortest complete description of the background on this was something like 'these youths are protesting not against any specific policy but against being born in to a situation that they find it almost impossible to escape from in the country that they are nominally a citizen of'.
If you can do better than that be my guest, but I definitely see them as motivated by politics, even if not directly attacking a specific policy or having a concrete goal. It's more an act of frustration with life set off by the friction between police and these youths, specifically one incidence was the spark that set off the powder.
Ah yes, but I think all other dictators be it China, Singapore, Iran or North Korea have learned from the Romanian/Yougoslavian/East German, etc. experience.
A successful mob revolution requires a huge mob that can spill over government opposition. Such a huge mob can be prevented in 2 main ways - $ and Fear:
1. The Chinese and Singaporean approach: The fascist state with a booming economy. Fear of punishment and desire to make money keeps the mob small.
2. The North Korean approach: Have such a huge military that the rest of the country can not overrun it ever. The downside is no state can support that kind of military and you get starvation.
Iran etc. are a mix of 1 & 2 with less prosperity then Singapore but more sate violence and spying then China.
I have absolutely no faith that a violent revolution can happen anywhere in today's Europe. We're too old and too rich.
I live in Romania, and although I was only 8 years old in '89, I remember pretty vividly what happened.
Such a huge mob can be prevented in 2 main ways - $ and Fear
Fear, Doubt and Censorship is what defined the Stalinist regime before Dec '89 in Romania.
The North Korean approach: Have such a huge military that
the rest of the country can not overrun it ever.
The military is formed out of ordinary people that can switch sides at any time. Also wars are won in the hearts first: you can make the military switch sides if you give the impression that this isn't a war they can win.
In Romania I still think it was a coup d'état, as the army switched sides quite early; but the mob was there, it was furious ... and it emerged out of nowhere. And it was interesting because romanians really aren't violent people.
Governments should learn to not piss off citizens: people can take a lot of pain before acting, but there's always a tipping point and from there onward it turns into a civil war between millions of people and a couple of thousand with guns (but that's a short-lived tactical advantage).
Not that I disagree with your point, but 1989, while only 20 years ago was a different era. Especially regarding Romania or anywhere east of Berlin. It's closer to 1979 than it was to 1991 in a lot of regards.
I'd argue that on the surface everything seems different but that underneath that surface more of it remains than you might think.
I've lived 'east' of Berlin for a while and still spend quite a bit of time there and in Romania and this particular sentiment strikes me every time I'm there. In the big cities the differences are large but outside not nearly as much if at all. Poverty is still quite present and the fat cats have found ways of getting fatter.
At least it's gotten easier for people to get around, provided they have the means of doing so.
>we are not headed towards totalitarianism. Far from it. We are headed towards mob rule.
In Plato's Republic, he set up a cyclical theory of the progression from one form of government to the next. From aristocracy to timocracy to oligarchy to democracy to tyranny and back again to aristocracy.
The transition between democracy and tyranny was ochlocracy, a.k.a. mob rule, out of which emerges a demagogue.
> Corporations are stuck in the middle looking at their bottom line, but pressured from both sides.
Maybe some of them fall into this category, but many of the others are the ones pulling most of the strings.
They are responsible for millions of dollars in campaign contributions, whereby they essentially buy seats in the House and Senate and dictate much of the legislation. They influence voters through mass advertising and propaganda, they influence the representatives through lobbyists and the threat of withdrawing their financial support.
The "government" then becomes a battlefield between the ignorant, the manipulated, the enlightened, and the powerful manipulators sitting at the top.
many of the others are the ones pulling most of the strings
This seems to be a chicken-and-egg question to me. I'm not sure how you can determine whose strings are being pulled, and who are the pullers.
Is it really the corps that are coercing the politicians into misbehavior? Or is it the politicians that create an environment in which corporations can gain an advantage by doing so?
Who has more money and power in your opinion? The answer of course differs by country - it's one extreme in the US and another extreme in Russia or China.
Perhaps I don't understand the question, because I can't see that the answer is variable.
In all countries today, the power of the government, or an individual politician, exceeds that of a corporation. That's obviously true, or why else would the corporations be contributing to political election campaigns? Corporations are (despite popular complaints) at the mercy of their customers; look at the OP for an example of how corporations are held instantly responsible for any perceived action, contrasted to politicians who "launch an investigation" and then the problem is forgotten long before the next election, or who use demagoguery to convince voters that they are the lesser evil; if the opponent wins the country will fall apart.
Similarly, in all cases the government controls far more money than any corporation. What portion of the GDP does the government's budget make up? Compare that to the revenue of any corporation.
EDIT: OK, guys. I'll take a down-vote, but please give me the courtesy of an explanation as to why I'm wrong.
I can accept the vague assertion that "the government" is more powerful than a given corporation. However, the government does not ever (not even in the aftermath of 9-11) act as a single unit. Looked at in this way, it's easy to see that there are many corporations that are more powerful than individual politicians. Money and corporate connections are force multipliers with politics, and concerted corporate strategies can effect many changes that affect the public at large, as well as tax revenue deficiencies and other free-rider problems.
>In all countries today, the power of the government, or an individual politician, exceeds that of a corporation.
Nonsense and demonstrably false. If Al Gore had won his election that would have been the first time in 20 years that a candidate who didn't spend the most money won a presidential election. In Michigan the only Senator to vote against the Patriot act got ousted by a clueless hack who, once again, happened to spend a lot more money.
Spending more money doesn't always win, but it has enough effect that politicians live or die based on campaign contributions. Snap their fingers and wipe away a corporation? Yea right, so no other corp would ever give them money again?
I'm afraid you're living in a dream world. The US government is completely owned by big business. The only difference between republican and democrat is which companies they are owned by.
It's true that if the person who becomes president is always the one who spent the most money that the money might not have had any effect, but that's extraordinarily unlikely. It's hopefully not the only cause but it's virtually guaranteed that it's related and very likely that it's a major cause.
Yes, theoretically national power supersedes power of any single corporation in that country. That doesn't mean that corporations as a whole don't influence governments or vice versa. It all comes down to who needs whom the most.
US multinationals do depend on security provided by US Government, but they can exist without it too. The US Government on the other hand is absolutely and wholly dependent on large multinationals, at least in it's current form.
In China or Russia it's the other way around. Government does work with both domestic and multinational big co's, but shall the need arise they will be reduced to Nil in no time as has been demonstrated time and time again.
P.S. power of any individual politician exceeds that of largest corporations? Seriously?
US multinationals ... can exist without [the US government] too.
Yes, in the sense that they don't need to rely on the government. On the other hand, they are at the mercy of the government. One quick flourish of the pen, and a company can be destroyed. Obviously this is true at the startup scale, where a niche can simply be erased. But even at the larger scale, a national decision to back one approach can be devastating (as in FCC decisions). Or antitrust actions can decimate a company (ATT, IBM, narrowly avoided by Microsoft). The bottom line is that the government has the guns, literally.
The US Government on the other hand is absolutely and wholly dependent on large multinationals
I simply can't see how this is the case. Can you explain further? I mean, I don't see how the government needs Google or GM in any way.
power of any individual politician exceeds that of largest corporations?
I probably made that sound grander than I should have. In once sense, if every other politician is against you, then in general, winning one to your side won't help. However, in more realistic circumstances, winning a single person to your side (especially with America's committee system) can make all the difference. A single congressman influencing the language of a bill can mean hundreds of $millions in income, or the complete obsolescence of your business plan.
One quick flourish of the pen, and a company can be destroyed. Obviously this is true at the startup scale, where a niche can simply be erased. But even at the larger scale, a national decision to back one approach can be devastating (as in FCC decisions). Or antitrust actions can decimate a company (ATT, IBM, narrowly avoided by Microsoft).
This is just absolutely not true. When US president has the guts to suggest that company(ies) responsible for largest ecological disaster in US history should pay for it, it equalled to "shake-down" to people currently running US legislative branch, then what are we even arguing about? ATT, IBM and MSFT were decimated? Seriously? They were broken-up, as they were approaching monopoly (that's a good thing you know), but all three examples and their spin-offs are thriving since then.
One thing you got right though - start-up world is risky.
Your response seems to assume that if the government is "right" in its action (apparently as determined by your criteria alone), then the action of force somehow doesn't count. That is, because BP did evil, or because consumers might be protected, government action somehow doesn't count as force that asserts power of corporations.
Even if you're right, it's beside the point. My argument was that government holds ultimate power even against the biggest corporations.
It is true that they're not always able to wield their power, as in your BP example. That's a good thing, because it demonstrates that the government is at least constrained to operate predictable (i.e., the rule of law). If the government were able to spin anything as a righteous stand, and do whatever they thought they could get away with, then business (and indeed any freedom) would be stymied, because people could not be certain that they'd be able to go about their business -- the fear from uncertainty would inhibit all sorts of activities.
And the fact that ATT and IBM are doing well now really doesn't enter into it. The simple fact is that these were giant, powerful corporations. Yet the government still had the power to tear them apart. That simple fact demonstrates my argument; the "goodness" of the action is besides the point.
