Hacking Structure, Culture and Ethics

Just some thoughts I had on how strategy could be used to counter hacking. These are from an edited form of a comment I made in Oliver Stone’s post on Medium https://medium.com/@TheOliverStone/the-russians-are-coming-eef3697e548b#.mde6jb8q0. I just stuck them up here so I could think about them some more.

“A hack should be considered getting inside a society’s structure, culture and ethics and letting that society see betrayal and trust where in truth there is none. There is no strategy in a hack other than that which is structural. A hack operates on the basis of observation and I would say that transparency is the key in defending and undoing a hack.”

“But transparency has to be accomplished strategically. As I said, hacking is not strategic, so those on the defence needs to act in a strategic manner. They need to release transparency through trusted sources only and, as betrayal and trust is targeted in a hack, this is not easy to accomplish, and needs much thinking in the process.”

Trump drops Twitter bomb on Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet

“Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!” Trump tweeted Thursday.

There is no comparable F-18 Super Hornet to price-out. The F-35 has shown an ability to shoot down non-planer aircraft (non-airplane aircraft), which, I think, makes it a generation or two ahead of the F-18 Super Hornet. The F-35 is built to be a 5th generation fighter and the F-18 was built to be a 3rd generation fighter.

What gives the F-35 its designation as a 5th generation fighter (if developed–a big if), the F-35 doesn’t rely on a plane of air to maneuver on.

The F-35 maneuvers in  directions other than parallel to the plane it is on and without having to change the direction of that plane in flight. Most other aircraft and all airplanes are dependent on one plane of air and maneuvers by bending that plane.

In other words, the F-35’s maneuvering is not dependent on a linear plane. The F-35 flight can be considered, in that context, to be nonlinear. It is a 5th generation fighter jet. If Trump’s administration is figuring to prepare to fight a tactical (1st generation) nuclear war as stated, then probably the F-18 Super Hornet is the machine to go for. If his administration is planning to participate in the 4th generation war we have, then they should really think about getting serious about developing the F-35.

Part of this ability of nonlinear flight of the F-35 is in its structural design. The F-35 has an interior center of mass that gives it symmetry similar to that of a flying saucer. Coupled with an engine that is virtually able to move in all directions enables the aircraft and all targeting systems to revolve around the center of mass. In that sense, the F-35 should be able to target an aircraft behind, or any other direction, as easily as it is able to locked on and destroy the aircraft in front. This seems to me, if developed, to be some kind of an advantage and what, at least in part, gives the F-35 its status as a 5th generation fighter.

The other ability of the 5th generation F-35 fighter (and there may be more) that makes it a non-nonlinear fighter depends on it hooking into the virtual world of the world wide web and connecting that world to its real world in realtime, in all directions, in all environments, and all at once.

And while the F-35 has not proven itself in simulated dog fights with fighters of lesser generation, other fighters, as far as I know, haven’t proven themselves able to fight a battle waged in 5th generation  war. I think the F-35 has, at least in a small way. It was used to successfully shoot down missiles in flight.

That is the war the F-35 is created for and the war we are fighting right now today. So to me it comes down to being able to fight the war we have, or fighting the war the Trump administration apparently wants.

President-elect Donald Trump elevated his criticism of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter today, saying he’s asked Boeing to explore pricing for an alternative to the costly fighter jet.

Now “alternative” is another narrative. In warfare or in the context of a political solution, i.e. one State/ Two State solution?

 

Source: Trump drops Twitter bomb on Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet – POLITICO

Mike Pence Says His Role Model Vice President is Dick Cheney

Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence discusses his VP role model and his debate prep on “This Week.”

Let’s stop pretending what he ( Pence) is talking about. Cheney was the “grownup” in the relationship and Bush was the “spoiled kid”.

We can see from where Mike Pence is coming from. He will have to run the country and become the commander-in-chief, because, like Bush, Trump isn’t up to it. He is not completely ignorant, but stupid.

Bush, in a stupor, had to have his Chief of Staff run the war in Iraq, because he, Bush, thought it was about another Crusades.

My guess is that Pence will continue the war against Islam, while ignoring Nixon’s connection to Globalization, while Trump moves America towards authoritarianism. #fail

Source: Mike Pence Says His Role Model Vice President is Dick Cheney

The F-35 Stealth Fighter May Never Be Ready for Combat

Last month the Air Force declared its variant “ready for combat,” and most press reports lauded this as a signal that the program had turned a corner. But a memo issued from the Pentagon’s top testing official, based largely upon the Air Force’s own test data, showed that the declaration was wildly premature.

It might be that the Air Force is fighting a different war than the one the Pentagon is fighting. So the rules of Orientation are different in each battlespace. A fighter jet like the one the Pentagon wants most likely positions and postures itself differently than the one the Air Force wants

I mean the F 35 has shown the ability to shoot down rockets. It is basically what makes it a 5th Generation fighter. This ability comes from the fact that the F 35 is similar to a flying saucer (except when the Pentagon attaches ordinates outside the mass of its symmetrical planes) and the Air Force has a plan to use them as such. How you fight rockets with an Airplane, you can’t, as I am sure the Pentagon knows well. How you fight rockets with an F 35 is anyone’s guess.

Of course to use them properly they must position them as close to the target (the target the F 35 wants to hit) as possible. Incoming rockets move at something like 22,000 mph, so the F 35 would need some time to do some real maneuvering to swat them out of the sky before they reach the target.

Just guessing. I could be wrong.

Source: The F-35 Stealth Fighter May Never Be Ready for Combat

Thomas P.M. Barnett – Blog – What Does Russia/Putin Seek?

In my old vernacular, the “Gap-shrinking” continues, it is just more obviously and geographically divvied up, with Asian great powers (China, India, Japan) nonetheless forced into some competitive thrusts into the Center (particularly Africa) for reasons both immediate (resource access) and long term (tomorrow’s biggest cheap-labor – and consumer – pool).

I think the idea of  “Gap-shrinking” has long been proven dead. The mechanism of a “Gap” only works if the structure is the same for each position on either side of the gap, and, in most cases, it never is.

Ok, the structure of the UK, Japan, Saudi Arabia, US and many other nations in Europe, MENA,  South America, with a strong sense of a center of gravity are nearly the same. Other nations who rely more on a center of mass, such as Russia, Turkey, Iran and others, the structure of their networks are quite different. For these two different network structures, when crossing the “gap” the key doesn’t fit the lock.

So what does Putin seek? He seeks to take advantage of any position in his favor between the two networks, i.e. the distributive network of the East and the decentralized network of the west.

If he doesn’t (take advantage), the center of mass in Russia will change, and, most likely than not, Putin will be crushed in the process.

Mother Russia is hard on fathers as well as daughters.

Source: Thomas P.M. Barnett – Blog – What Does Russia/Putin Seek?

Britons want to know what possessed officials targeting apostrophes

But, he added, correct use of the apostrophe isn’t simply nitpicking; the tiny punctuation mark can make an outsized difference, as in this sentence: “If you’re late for dinner, you can eat your son’s.”

“If you don’t put the apostrophe in ‘son’s,’ it’s cannibalism, isn’t it?” said Noon, the father of two English teachers. “It’s only when English is clear and precise that you can get the message across properly.”

Yes, what did possessed them, the Apostles?  but then is it also not Paul’s or the King’s, unless it says so?

The British are so polite, it doesn’t even sound like war.

Of course I guess they don’t have Fox News then either, to stand up for God and King. If no one tells you it’s war, is it war?

I wonder if this Pope is going to weigh-in on the issue? The last Pope was more interested in what was considered mundane issues in the Church. If I understand it correctly, the new Pope is a little more Conservative.

via Britons want to know what possessed officials targeting apostrophes – latimes.com.

Stealth Jets Return To The Air Following Engine Snafu

“What is different is that this airplane has accelerational characteristics with a combat load that no other airplane has, because we carry a combat load internally,” Lockheed exec Tom Burbage told aviation reporter Dave Majumdar last year.

OK enough! They are building an aircraft that has the characteristics,  if not the look, of a flying saucer. It’s all in the z-axis baby!

OK!! There I’ve said it. Now can’t we, or at least shouldn’t, we just stop talking about all of this. 🙂

via Stealth Jets Return To The Air Following Engine Snafu — For Now | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Unimaginable Statements and Signs of Surrender

Brett Friedman said it best. “Can you imagine a USMC 4-Star ever saying “we’ll be unprepared’? Never”

Oh how we long for the days of the NeoCons, when what our generals said didn’t matter.

Perhaps Friedman should ask the General what we will be prepared for, because the General has obviously given that some great thought. That is what generals do; they think.

But more than just thinking, a general adds strategy to the thinking process and his/her strategy has two ends to think about and prepare for: the beginning of the end (which the General says we are not prepared) and the end of the end, which I am betting he is prepared for.

So either seek the advice of the general that tells you that “we’ll be unprepared”, or become a Republican 🙂

But on the other hand, if we somehow bite-the-bullet and Decide to Act according to how we are Oriented (we are a consumer economy) and pay for the debt that we have accrued in the world, perhaps we should take advantage of the environment that we have positioned ourselves in, and opt out.

We have positioned ourselves as a nation of great command, but little control. This is what the General is trying to tell you.

We are unable to fight a war against  a nation that is in control of what we want (cool electronic gadgets and games), while at the same time maintaining the demand for those products.

So we are unprepared for war.

At the same time, the advantage we have in the world is our ability  to move our culture in new directions, think  what Jazz, Blues, Rock and Roll, Rap, ect. has to offer.

This ability to create fast transits (OODA) is pissing many people off, and what the General is also  telling you is: we can’t afford to pay for this war against the generation of diversity while at the same time fighting a war against the generation of conformity.

This ability, to generate diversity in our cultures, upsets many people of many orientations.

The greatest Orientation that has been upset has been among our own culture–the Conservatives.

The Conservatives want to enforce conformity, to our past, because it is that Orientation that has been the most successful, in the past.

Unfortunately, the past is no more. We are a nation of command and what control the suppliers of our resources had over us is gone, in a mushroom cloud.

This ability of our culture to diversify does not set well for the party of our culture that demands control, i.e., Conservatives.

The Conservatives want to enforce the conformity of our past on the culture of those generations that are living in the future. These generations are called Liberals.

Liberals want to generate diversity that increase demands, unlike the culture of the Conservatives who want to decrease diversity, to conform to demand.

The problem being: the potential for both diversity and conformity is equal, and so the two structures, the left and Right are at war.

To generate diversity while at the same time enforce conformity will take some kind of strategy over the process, but I believe these two worlds can live together, it is doable.

It’s a game, and you all are invited.

via Information Dissemination: Unimaginable Statements and Signs of Surrender.

Soft Power, A Strategic Theory Perspective

If we label the ideal commercial person as a “business manager” and the ideal military person as a “soldier”, we would label the ideal soft power institution employee as a “hippie” without the negative stereotypical characteristics.

Right on!

But more importantly, I think he brings up the point that, in today’s world, both hard power and soft power are basically the same culturally, with the structure being the difference between soft and hard power.

Hard power is structure more like a 2×4, while soft power is more like a feather pillow. Most countries would rather get hit with a pillow than a 2×4, but no mater how you look at it, you’re still getting hit.

Seyditz89 says we need to change the culture of soft power, and I would not argue against this. I especially like the part where seyditz89 turns it over to the hippies.

However, power is power and when you start messing with it between countries there is a price to be paid, and the outcome of both forms of power just depends on who has the most energy to pay with.

So perhaps we should develop a different form of power.

Network wise, soft power runs in phases much like 3-phase power running an industrial motor.

The flow of currant that runs the motor not only alternates in direction but is carried on different degrees in waves at the changing of direction.

These “waves” of soft power come into the target country in the form of resources, with the hope of changing the way the motor moves.

Culturally wise, the more powerful country doesn’t want the motor to stop turning inside the less powerful country, it just doesn’t want to give it any more power, and it wants the less powerful country to act more like the more powerful country.

Changing how another nation of power acts is a big problem, especially when the more powerful nation has less energy. That is basically where the U.S.A. is at. The U.S.A. is a nation of little energy, but is able to, because of its culture, express that energy very quickly.

So the third form of power, which I shall call here and now hippie power, would run parallel to the nation less powerful and only connect perpendicular to the less powerful nation, much like our connection with Yemen today.

I am not sure this less love and more sex approach would be hippie approved,  but yeah, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

1 out of 3 is probably better than what our soft power is doing today.

H/T Zenpundit

via MilPub: Soft Power, A Strategic Theory Perspective.