The recent pipeline shutdown and the many affected recalls
this passage on the thin veneer of civilization…
“The thought terrified him; the delicate
arrangements and systems that made life on the outside so easy; the massive
industries balanced on knife-edge adjustments; the handful of men who kept it
all running and the fewer who were able to improve it, add to it. Modern man
was a parasite living off the fat of the past, living on the dividends of a few
great brains. He did not gather his food or build his home or rear his
children; his hands and his brain were soft; he consumed and manipulated and
lived isolated and aloof from the natural world about him. It was comfortable,
it was good, it was civilization; but it could vanish overnight if the
mechanisms of it were destroyed.”—The Sands of the Kalahari, William
Mulvihill, 1960.
The “hacked” pipeline is just one of many rumblings
that security specialists have been warning about for some time.
Do you recall the massive SolarWinds hack and the dire
implications that were warned about recently or were you busy pro or con regarding
Dr. Suess?
Or how about the recent hack of a Florida water-treatment
plant that echoes a similar attack in Israel that could produce insidious long-term
effects on health?
The purposeful disinformation pile-on in both direction
regarding elections and vaccine info?
Such “soft” attacks are meant to undermine infrastructure,
foment confusion, sow distrust, and in terms of water purity and other like “soft”
attacks slowly physically weaken an already weak-ish populace.
[For more on this under-reported world of “soft” warfare
that the experts say should be the focus of our attention try any of the following
works as toe-ins to the subject.
·
This Is How They Tell Me the World
Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth
·
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social
Media by by P. W. Singer, Emerson T. Brooking
·
Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What
Everyone Needs to Know by by P.W. Singer, Allan Friedman
If one prefers a fully annotated and deeply sourced
easier access to the topic try any of the following works of fiction that
depict the same threat with real-world back-up.
·
Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next
World War by P. W. Singer, August Cole
·
Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic
Revolution by P. W. Singer, August Cole
·
2034: A Novel of the Next World War by
Elliot Ackerman, Admiral James Stavridis USN
I repeat, while fiction, the authors chose fiction as
a medium to warn a populace that doesn’t pay attention to something as unsexy as
pipeline shutdowns, ransomware attacks of hospitals, etc.
The experts assure us that SolarWind, ransomware, loss
of pipelines, grid disruptions, and thousands of other unseen but nefarious manipulations
are what the future holds.
The opening quote is also from a work of fiction. But
an informed source. Mr. Mulivihill was an acknowledged authority on Africa and
survival. His novel is full of instructive insights regarding man when what he
assumes he knows is no longer the norm.
Also from Mulvihill’s novel…
“Civilization is a membrane stretched over the dark
abyss of barbarism.”
That sentence is the crux of what current “soft”
attacks are about. Piercing that thin membrane of civilization and allowing disruption
and destruction to follow a self-fulfilling path.
Those in the know tell us that thousands of small disruptions
[pipeline, for example] and more than a few larger ones are likely coming down
the pike.
What we rely upon now, may not be, well,
reliable.
Before we continue, how many phone numbers do you know
by heart?
Can a manipulation of water-management software insure
flooding in the wake of above average rainfall?
Yep.
Such “soft” attacks have repercussions more than the
mere flooding event.
Hospitals unable to communicate and transfer health records
in a dire instant of need.
Tweaked water purity levels that over time…
I’m sure you can conjure you own series of questions?
Mulvihill offers a sight on solutions…
“Escape from the pit was survival and the secret of
survival was adaptation. It was as simple as that. You adapted to a situation
or a time or a place or you died. The survival of the fittest was the survival
of the most adaptable; that was why man had come the long way from forager to
master of all. The human body was a weak and pathetic thing. But it could
adapt; it could do nothing well but many things half well; it had the miracle
of change within it and through the great gulfs of time it did change and
adjust and survive while thousands of other forms vanished.”
Half-well skills, how many do you possess?
This moves beyond, “I always carry a fire-starter!”
Following the Nashville bombing a large swath of my
home state was rendered no-go for cell service and transactions using a card of
any sort.
It was rectified astonishingly soon, but…while it occurred
many minor meltdowns were observed.
“For modern man, survival meant mental change. The
stubborn died as martyrs; the fanatic and the philosopher perished in the face
of sudden change. To survive now one had to be pliable; one had to adjust to
new codes and ideals and morals. The mind had to change.”
For some, the outcome of such “soft” attacks can be frightening,
those are right to think such thoughts. Dialysis machine no longer working, “smart”
technologies of all sorts rendered dumb…
It does not help calm any that many “survival” types seem
to look forward to such times as an opportunity to “re-order” things a bit or
prove that wearing a camo hat in the middle of the city was a good idea all
along.
Skills, whole or half, are of utmost
value.
As is cooperation.
The species survives because the half-skilled bond
with other half-skilled ones and a synergy often occurs that is greater than the
sum of its parts.
This species is often more “alive” when it is pushed
towards that thin membrane that separates soft living from unfortunate circumstances.
“I can’t believe it,” Grace said. “It
seems as if I’ve been here half of my life.”
“You have,” O’Brien said. “From the
standpoint of your emotions and experiences.” He Spoke slowly and carefully and
the others looked up and nodded vaguely.
“We are more alive here,” O’Brien said.
“There are the basic elements around us. The sun, the air, the darkness of the
night and the heat shimmering over the rocks at noon. We live because we are so
close to death; we are all more real here than outside.”
This is just the sort of phenomenon reported in detail in Sebastian Junger’s tremendous
book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.
Being “more alive” more cooperative and more “in the
moment” may capture us at our collective best but choosing “dire” situations to
get there is the height of foolishness.
We are wiser to work on our own half-skilled inventory,
keep on eye on one another and perhaps assume that those in the know are right—the
point of most “soft” attacks is to make us distrustful of one another, to
divide us, to make us all downright ornery.
In other words, divide and conquer.
Half-skilled with no common tribe does not
survive. The strategy is unmistakable and brilliant, and from
what I can observe, seems to be mighty successful at the early stages of these “soft”
battles.
The Wise Warrior will examine the new battlefield that
is coming, realize that there is much of it out of his or her hands, I mean how
many of us know how to tinker with sewage treatment plant software?
We are wise to aim at developing half-skills and striving
hard to resist all information [disinformation] that ½ the population of your home
nation is somehow your enemy.
[For more such maunderings and nitty-gritty “get
your hands dirty” old school rough and tumble combat and indigenous peoples
“hacks” for half-skilling your life see this blog, The Black Box Project, and/or
here.]
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