[Air-l] networks

[Mark Andrejevic]

Steve's point is well taken: with respect to content, networking 
certainly should make information easier to get at, if it's in 
computers, at any rate (if it's in the heads of people willing to die 
for the cause, that may be a different matter). 

Maybe the metaphor holds up better if viewed from the perspective of 
command and control infrastructure. I don't want to overly belabor the 
original (admittedly flawed) observation, but just to observe briefly 
that perhaps the comparison hinges, to put it crudely, on what we mean 
by "taking down" a node. The original ARPANET, at least according to my 
rudimentary understanding, was designed not so much with content 
protection in mind (how secrets might be kept -- a function, for which, 
as Steve suggests, it may not be particularly well suited), as with the 
goal of maintaining a viable communication infrastructure -- one that 
would withstand targeted missile attacks (the Cold War paradigm) 
without losing data or the capacity to relay crucial transmissions (and 
thus allowing command/control structures to remain functional). Taking 
down a node, in this sense, meant quite literally destroying it (not 
getting the information from it/learning what it was storing). 

By the same token, US policy is not directed toward "taking out" bin 
Laden in terms of getting at the stored information he has (the 
"content" of the node), but rather at physically destroying him as a 
crucial command control link. The policy assumption I attempted to 
highlight is not based on the notion that the US might gain useful 
information by finding out what bin Laden knows (an assumption which, 
were it possible to get such information, seems reasonable enough), but 
that eliminating him physically will help destroy the command/control 
structure of his network. Considered from this perspective, I thought 
that the model of a distributed network might help convey why this 
particular form of "taking down" a node (blowing it up) as a means of 
disrupting crucial operations seemed flawed. 

The question of how redundant the information is and whether it can be 
"got at" easier in a distributed model is certainly complicated by the 
fact that we're not talking about servers but humans. But the evidence 
certainly seems to back up Steve's suggestion that relatively 
independent nodes provide a more relevant model than distributed 
networking per se when it comes to the distribution of information in 
terrorist networks.  

I certainly agree that this argument may well function purely at a 
metaphorical level, but wonder if it might not be a useful metaphor for 
thinking about the assumption that taking out bin Laden (getting his 
"head on a platter" as Dick Cheney so Biblicly put it) would disrupt 
the terrorist organizations with which he has been linked.

Mark

>At the risk of taking this somewhat off-topic, I'd wonder whether 
>operating in this fashion would, in fact, make an organization more 
>vulnerable to discovery. The notion of distribution via 
>Internetworking, to my knowledge, involves concepts like 
>store-and-forward, copies of information shared at all nodes, etc. 
>One of the problems with "early" (in quotes because it wasn't that 
>long ago) forms of Internet legislation in the U.S. was that it 
>wasn't clear whether all of the nodes through which a pornographic 
>image, for example, were equally liable under the law, because all of 
>them would, by virtue of having a copy of the image, be "responsible" 
>for its distribution. Would it be desirable for a group seeking 
>secrecy to operate in such a fashion? It seems to me to run counter 
>to the level of secrecy one would want, and that it would be better 
>to have nodes that were actually independent of one another, or at 
>least not very well informed of the others, so that if one _is_ taken 
>down the others to which it might in some way be connected are not so 
>easily discovered. Perhaps the notion of "network" as it's being 
>applied here isn't quite the same as we've understood it in terms of 
>the Net, or I'm misunderstanding its use in one or both of these 
>contexts, or it's being used metaphorically?
>
>As to organizations like the ones housed in the WTC, Christian makes 
>an interesting comment. I suspect most of the ones that were using 
>computer databases had multiple backups, some of which were well 
>beyond the WTC, possibly even in other countries. Why not similarly 
>distribute personnel?
>
>And if I may be allowed a bit of tongue-in-cheek, perhaps "distance 
>learning" could in this way come to mean sending faculty to teach 
>from Hawaii while their students remain in Chicago.
>
>Sj
>
>>This is right on. I would also suggest that this attack will probably
>>accelerate calls for organizations to become distributed networks with
>>regard to personnel as well with regard to computers--who wants to come 
in
>>to a central office location when such are a more attractive target. 
These
>>accelarated calls should also accelerate technology to make such 
personnel
>>distribution possible--video-conferencing technology and the like.
>>--Christian Nelson
>>
>>"Prof. Andrejevic" wrote:
>>
>>>  Has anyone else on this list been struck by the parallel between the
>>>  current portrait of de-centralized terrorist networks emerging in the
>>>  media coverage and the organizational logic of distributed computer
>>>  networks? Certainly both forms of networking emerged with a similar
>>>  goal in mind: a resiliance to the forms of centralized large-scale
>>>  attacks characteristic of warfare in the first half of the 20th
>>>  century. Redundancy and de-centralization are defensive structures
>>>  whose effectiveness is demonstrated by the fact (reported yesterday, I
>>>  think) that despite the destruction of something like 10 percent of
>>>  Manhattan's office space, suprisingly little data was lost. In the 
face
>>>  of this kind of distributed networking, the type of military response
>>>  envisioned by Bush/Cheney et alia seems disturbingly out of joint. 
Just
>>>  as we wouldn't imagine that we could take down a network by hitting a
>>>  node, so too does the goal of "taking out" Osama bin Laden seem more
>>>  symbolic than effective (to the effect that it works to proliferate
>>>  cells of resistance, it might even be read as counter-productive). I'm
>>>  wondering if there's some way to use the commonly accepted discourse 
on
>>>  computer networking to shed some light on the current debate over the
>>>  appropriate U.S. response to the recent acts of terrorism.
>>>
>>>  _______________________________________________
>>>  Air-l mailing list
>>>  Air-l at aoir.org
>>>  http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
>>
>>--
>>NetscapeCommunicator4.73Win3220000502
>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Air-l mailing list
>>Air-l at aoir.org
>>http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Air-l mailing list
>Air-l at aoir.org
>http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l