Skilluminati Research

Posted Jul 07, 2007

Methodology

Strategic communication requires a sophisticated method that maps perceptions and influence networks, identifies policy priorities, formulates objectives, focuses on ?doable tasks," develops themes and messages, employs relevant channels, leverages new strategic and tactical dynamics, and monitors success. This approach will build on indepth knowledge of other cultures and factors that motivate human behavior. It will adapt techniques of skillful political campaigning, even as it avoids slogans, quick fixes, and mind sets of winners and losers. It will search out credible messengers and create message authority. It will seek to persuade within news cycles, weeks, and months.

Outsourcing PSYOPS

Finding new ways to harness strategic communication to the flexibility and creative imagination of the private sector will be central to successful strategic communication in the 21st century. The commercial sector has a dominant competitive edge in multi-media production, opinion and media surveys, information technologies, program evaluation, and measuring the influence of communications. Academic and research communities offer vast untapped resources for education, training, area and language expertise, planning and consultative services.

Someone in the Pentagon Knows NLP

Frames simplify and help to communicate complex events. But like the Cold War frame, the terrorism frame marginalizes other significant issues and problems: failing states, non-proliferation, HIV/AIDS pandemic, economic globalization, transnational threats other than terrorism, and global warming. Often the terrorism frame directs attention to tactics not strategy. The focus is more on capturing and killing terrorists than attitudinal, political, and economic forces that are the underlying source of threats and opportunities in national security.

Information Age Dynamics

We must also take the measure of new dynamics emerging from the information age. The speed with which information becomes available to the global audience, the convergence of means by which we can capture many different kinds of information (visual, audio, print, etc) in a single digital format, and the ability to get that information to a global audience all suggest some of the advantages and limitations of this information age. Often the first information to reach an audience (a global audience that is really a galaxy of niche audiences) frames how an event is perceived and discussed ? and thus can shape its ultimate impact as well. Always reacting to information is tantamount to losing.

For example, NATO strategists were stunned to discover that Slobodan Milosevic's most effective weapon in the air campaign against him was not, say, an air defense network, but rather the global television network. Digital convergence is only beginning to be understood by decision makers. The significance of a common news language of bit and byte simply cannot be overstated. A truly global network is reshaping politics, diplomacy, warfare ? all social interaction.

Just one example: the ability of a blogger in a conflict zone to capture a digital image of an atrocity, upload it, paste it on a webpage, and have it available to millions in minutes is a startling development.

Download the Defense Science Board report on Strategic Communication

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Posted Jul 07, 2007

In 1917, Theodore Reuss showed up at a commune in Switzerland with a most interesting document: it was the manifesto which would soon establish the Ordo Templi Orientis, or the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, or as it's known to young occultists, conspiracy theorists and weirdos of all persusasions, the OTO. The statement itself was a barn-burner:

"Let it be known", began this manifesto, "that there exists, unknown to the great crowd, a very ancient Order of sages, whose object is the amelioration and spiritual evolution of mankind by means of conquering error and aiding men and women in their efforts of attaining the power of recognizing the truth. This Order has existed already in the most remote times and it has manifested its activity secretly and openly in the world under different names and in various forms: it has caused social and political revolutions and proved to be the rock of salvation in times of danger and misfortune. It has always upheld the banner of freedom against tyranny in whatever shape this appeared, whether as clerical or political or social despotism or oppression of any kind.

To this "secret order" every wise and spiritually enlightened person belongs by right of his or her nature: because they all, even if they are personally unknown to each other, are one in their purpose and object and they all work under the guidance of the one light of truth. Into this Sacred Society no one can be admitted by another unless he has the power to enter it himself by virtue of his own interior Illumination neither can anyone after he has once entered be expelled unless he should expel himself by becoming unfaithful to his principles and forget again the truths which he has learned by his own experience.

All this is known to every enlightened person.

But it is known only to few that there exists also an external, visible organization of such men and women, who having themselves found the path to real self-knowledge, and who having travelled the burning sands, are willing to give to others, desirous of entering that path, the benefit of their experience, and to act as spiritual guides to those who are willing to be guided.

The open-source revolution is a concept that predates the OTO, of course. The actual claims of Theodore Reuss are almost beside the point, because the concept is so effectively infectious. Here at Skilluminati Research, we find a number of words to be utterly useless -- "God," for instance, or "coincidence" -- and we have long since discarded "terrorism," a wet blanket of a term, for "Open Source Warfare" or OSW. Occult OSW was also advocated in the memorable Appendix Yod of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, known as "Operation Mindfuck":

To this day, neither Ho Chih Zen himself nor any other Discordian apostle knows for sure who is or is not involved in any phase of Operation Mindfuck or what activities they are or are not engaged in as part of that project. Thus, the outsider is immediately trapped in a double-bind: the only safe assumption is that anything a Discordian does is somehow related to OM, but, since this leads directly to paranoia, this is not a "safe" assumption after all, and the "risky" hypothesis that whatever the Discordians are doing is harmless may be "safer" in the long run, perhaps. Every aspect of OM follows, or accentuates, this double-bind.

This may or may not be the source of the Scottish saying, "never give a sword to a man who can't dance."

BRAINSTURBATOR DOT COM

Filed in: 5GW Project 2008

Posted Jul 07, 2007

The attack conducted by units of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on the city of Nablus in April 2002 was described by its commander, Brigadier-General Aviv Kokhavi, as 'inverse geometry', which he explained as "the reorganization of the urban syntax by means of a series of micro-tactical actions."

During the battle soldiers moved within the city across hundreds of metres of "overground tunnels" carved out through a dense and contiguous urban structure. Although several thousand soldiers and Palestinian guerrillas were manoeuvring simultaneously in the city, they were so "saturated" into the urban fabric that very few would have been visible from the air. Furthermore, they used none of the city's streets, roads, alleys or courtyards, or any of the external doors, internal stairwells and windows, but moved horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of movement, described by the military as "infestation", seeks to redefine inside as outside, and domestic interiors as thoroughfares. The IDF's strategy of "walking through walls" involves a conception of the city as not just the site but also the very medium of warfare -- a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever contingent and in flux.

Contemporary military theorists are now busy re-conceptualizing the urban domain. At stake are the underlying concepts, assumptions and principles that determine military strategies and tactics. The vast intellectual field that geographer Stephen Graham has called an international "shadow world" of military urban research institutes and training centres that have been established to rethink military operations in cities could be understood as somewhat similar to the international matrix of elite architectural academies. However, according to urban theorist Simon Marvin, the military-architectural "shadow world" is currently generating more intense and well-funded urban research programmes than all these university programmes put together, and is certainly aware of the avant-garde urban research conducted in architectural institutions, especially as regards Third World and African cities. There is a considerable overlap among the theoretical texts considered essential by military academies and architectural schools. Indeed, the reading lists of contemporary military institutions include works from around 1968 (with a special emphasis on the writings of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Guy Debord), as well as more contemporary writings on urbanism, psychology, cybernetics, post-colonial and post-Structuralist theory. If, as some writers claim, the space for criticality has withered away in late 20th-century capitalist culture, it seems now to have found a place to flourish in the military.

full article: The Art of War

EDITORIAL: Like we keep on saying at Skilluminati Research, the next generation of warfare is utterly open-source and decentralized. There is no shortage of "revolutionaries" out there, but if you actually want to make a difference -- pay attention.

Filed in: Social Control

Posted Jul 07, 2007

When George Dyson took a tour of Google's headquarters, he wrote an article for Edge that had a line which raised a few eyebrows:

The mood was playful, yet there was a palpable reverence in the air. "We are not scanning all those books to be read by people," explained one of my hosts after my talk. "We are scanning them to be read by an AI."

A lot of tech news sources jumped on this story, but when pressed for comment, Google executives didn't really address the question:

"Every engineer is able to take 20 percent of their time to work on non-core projects. Google News came out of that. We want to hire the best people and for them to work on the projects that they need to but we also want them to innovate. Most teams contain from three to five engineers. At our company if you have 20 people working on something then the project is not working," said Levick.

Google has given some insights into its AI work in the past. Speaking in 2003, Google Senior Research Scientist Mehran Sahami explained that Google News was using AI techniques to handle information.

"AI applications are using the infrastructure to get people useful information in interesting ways," said Sahami, according to reports. "There is no human intervention. Google News is an example of where AI is making a huge difference. It's used several million times a day," he added.

Sahami also reportedly hinted at AI-based research in progress at Google that has yet to be deployed, such as voice-driven search and query results clustering to help users navigate. "We want to combine information retrieval, large systems, and AI to work together towards the next generation of search engines," he said.

More from Dyson's article:

For 30 years I have been wondering, what indication of its existence might we expect from a true AI? Certainly not any explicit revelation, which might spark a movement to pull the plug. Anomalous accumulation or creation of wealth might be a sign, or an unquenchable thirst for raw information, storage space, and processing cycles, or a concerted attempt to secure an uninterrupted, autonomous power supply. But the real sign, I suspect, would be a circle of cheerful, contented, intellectually and physically well-nourished people surrounding the AI. There wouldn't be any need for True Believers, or the downloading of human brains or anything sinister like that: just a gradual, gentle, pervasive and mutually beneficial contact between us and a growing something else. This remains a non-testable hypothesis, for now. The best description comes from science fiction writer Simon Ings:

"When our machines overtook us, too complex and efficient for us to control, they did it so fast and so smoothly and so usefully, only a fool or a prophet would have dared complain."
If anyone has further information:

UPDATE: further info from a news source I will never credit, cuz fuck 'em:

Responding to a direct question from Tom Standage, technology editor of The Economist, Google's Levick did not outright deny that Google was developing AI technology. Instead he postulated that the Google employee's comments were probably referring to the idea of "intelligent networks" of information rather than artificial intelligence.

However Levick did admit that Google's founders believe that current search technology is still in its infancy and the future would look very different. "Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] would say that search is nothing like it could be right now," he said.

When questioned on whether a renaissance of the general paranoia about omnipotent and malign computers was underway now, Levick admitted that such concerns were more abundant, but insisted that Google's core philosophy of "Don't be evil" guides all its actions.

Filed in: Future Tech

Posted Jul 07, 2007

Any effective attack means the attacker must flow a burst of concentrated energy along a line directed at you. If the attack is a punch to the belly, the attacker's energy, embodied in his fist, moves along a line from his body to your belly. If it hits, you can be badly hurt. So you follow the first basic principle: you get off the line--you move or turn so that the energy of that punch does not connect with you.

The second principle is to blend or harmonize with the attack. You practice Ai. . . . To truly harmonize with the attack, you would not only get off the line, you also would not slow the punch down or oppose it in any way. In fact, you might put your hand on the punching arm and add energy to it in the direction it was already going. You have harmonized and blended with the energy of the attack. By projecting your energy in the same direction the attacker projects his, you see, as it were, your attacker's point of view. . . .

The third basic principle after you have gotten off the line and harmonized with your attacker's energy is to lead energy further than it originally intended to go, thus taking control of it. Then you can throw or otherwise control your attacker. The attacker thus provides most of the energy for handling his attack.

If you were a practitioner of Aikido, how would you react to a personal attack in this imperfect world? In an idealized scheme, we can distinguish three levels of self-defense.

At the highest level of Aikido skill, you would have developed a great sensitivity to subtle cues from others. Among other things, Aikido is a kind of mindfulness meditation (Buddhist vipassana) in action. Thus you would probably sense that the other person was getting upset and might get physically aggressive, so you would leave before the potential attacker's feelings reached an overt level! Not being there when someone gets angry is a marvelously effective kind of self-defense, and you certainly don't need to get angry or aggressive yourself in practicing this approach.

If you were not skilled enough to sense the imminance of the attack before your attacker felt angry, you would still be skilled enough to know how to stay centered and peaceful under the developing tension that precedes an attack. Remaining calm, present, and centered is an excellent form of self-defense. Note the importance of being present as well as calm and centered. You may be calm because you are so lost in your own fantasy world that you don't know what is happening around you, but that is quite different from being calm and present.

As I have discussed elsewhere . . ., there is a great deal of fear of psychic abilities in many people, sometimes conscious, often unconscious. One way this fear can manifest without the person having to realize he is afraid, is through hostility toward psychic and spiritual subjects. Since I frequently lecture on these topics, I sometimes become the target of this kind of anger.

I certainly don't like to be attacked for any reason, even if it's only verbal. I can become afraid, angry, self-righteous, and lose contact with reality as I get absorbed in this pattern. It's not only unpleasant, there is a further frustration: my goal was to communicate useful knowledge. I might seem to "win" an argument, but if I'm angry and self-righteous, I probably have not communicated effectively to my audience, and certainly not to my "opponent".

Before I had studied Aikido, my reaction to an attack in a lecture question was to counterattack. I would expose logical flaws in my attacker's thinking, and/or show he was ignorant of the facts, and/or shower him with high-status scientific facts to demonstrate to him the error of his ways. I would usually "win" the argument, for I was an expert in the subject matter compared to almost all questioners, and a skilled debater. This also made me popular with most of the audience, who were typically "believers" in psychic and spiritual matters, for I had won a victory over the kind of person who attacked them, too. I fought force with greater force.

In retrospect, I doubt that I actually communicated much of anything useful to my "opponent."

Filed in: Emergent Order