Pipelines, Thin Veneers, & “Half Well” Survival by Mark Hatmaker

 

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.]