Center for a New American Security:

The Center for a New American Security was honored to host the launch event for CNAS Senior Fellow and counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen on his new book The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, a book that takes an infinitely complicated situation like global terrorism and localized guerrilla warfare within the larger framework of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and makes them both understandable and interesting. The discussion and subsequent reception was Wednesday, April 1, 2009, from 6:00pm to 9:00pm, in the Willard's Crystal Room.

From one week before the CNAS talk, here's Kilcullen:

We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state. The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today.

From that long-ago era we may one day know as B.S. (Before Surge):

After 9/11, when a lot of people were saying, ‘The problem is Islam,’ I was thinking, It’s something deeper than that. It's about human social networks and the way that they operate.

From the book jacket:

Kilcullen sees today's conflicts as a complex pairing of contrasting trends: local social networks and worldwide movements; traditional and postmodern culture; local insurgencies seeking autonomy and a broader pan-Islamic campaign. He warns that America's actions in the war on terrorism have tended to conflate these trends, blurring the distinction between local and global struggles and thus enormously complicating our challenges.

A Discussion with David Kilcullen on His New Book, "The Accidental Guerrilla"

A compendium of things you may or may not have seen before.

The Onion:

Area Man Acts Like He's Been Interested In Afghanistan All Along

Michael Lewis:

Until very recently, one of the most striking things about our economy was how common it was for young people to make a lot of money quickly. For nearly 20 years, except for a year or two in the early 90's, a college student has been able to gaze out of his dorm-room window and see a well-traveled path to millions. His ability to imagine himself getting very rich very quickly was an ingredient in the modern money culture.

That's what 27-year-olds did, strike it rich.

This youthward shift in moneymaking has had all sorts of strange social effects.

It would hardly be surprising if the pursuit of passion led ambitious young people to rethink the whole idea of success.

C.S. Lewis:

... It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them free because you don't matter, that is much worse.

Troy McClure:

Troy: Come on Jimmy, let's take a peek at the killing floor.

Jimmy: Ohhh!

Troy: Don't let the name throw you Jimmy. It's not really a floor, it's more of a steel grating that allows material to sluice through so it can be collected and exported.

...

Troy: Don't kid yourself Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about! [Image of a cow quietly chewing cud.]

Jimmy: Wow, Mr. McClure. I was a grade A moron to ever question eating meat.

Troy: [Laughs.] Yes you were Jimmy, yes you were.

Mmm, tripe:

Only the Polytron reduces an entire mouse to a soup-like homogenate in 30 seconds.

Truth:

Lisa: "Thank you. I know this giant check is very important to everyone here, but ... what's even more important is the truth."
Skinner: "No, no it isn't. Don't listen to her. She's out of her mind!"

Dress for success:

Jenny on the job: wears styles designed for victory.

David Barrett:

A European Union directive will require all internet service providers to retain information on email traffic, visits to web sites and telephone calls made over the internet, for 12 months.

Police and the security services will be able to access the information to combat crime and terrorism.

Hundreds of public bodies and quangos, including local councils, will also be able to access the data to investigate flytipping and other less serious crimes.

The taxpayer will reimburse internet service providers and telecoms companies for the costs associated with storing the billions of individual records.

Noam Cohen's friend:

Privacy is serious. It is serious the moment the data gets collected, not the moment it is released.

New Scientist:

The US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect "hostile thoughts" in people walking through border posts, airports and public places ...

Internet records to be stored for a year

An assortment of aggrieved AT&T subscribers:

"I couldn't use my home phone, I couldn't use my cell phone, I couldn't use my computer. I was miserable."

"I worry about people that don't have a car," Lijon said.

"We literally feel like were on an island right now," Nguyen said. "It's bringing us back to the Stone Age."

From the archive:

To be sure, time marches on.

Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.

Zak Ryman:

I think a lot of people don't have time to Twitter.

It just takes too long to compose a message with 140 characters, and then you start getting bombarded by a few tweets and it's like, hundreds of characters that you have to read.

Samantha Power:

There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.

Neal Stephenson:

Hey, wait a minute, the hacker tourist says to himself, I thought AT&T was the enemy.

Sabotage attacks knock out phone service

Elizabeth Wurtzel:

Whatever lessons the powers that be might learn from this adjustment -- that salary structure should change, or that the billable hour is an anachronism -- it seems no one has stated the obvious: The whole system is warped.

All those lost nights of sleep are now lost 401(k)s. So what was the point? Corporate lawyers could have been sunning in St. Bart's and ended up with the exact same result, plus a tan.

Bob Skrivanek:

"You have this expectation that when you get out of law school, things will be better. Sometimes it's not true."

ABA Journal:

Of the 2,377 respondents who answered all or part of the survey, 84.2 percent indicated they would be willing to earn less money in exchange for lower billable-hour requirements.

Decius:

Life is too short to spend 2300 hours a year working on someone else's idea of what the right problems are.

Richard Hamming:

If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work.

Twelve Years Down the Drain

Johann Hari:

All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars.

"The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job."

The sheikh did not build this city. It was built by slaves. They are building it now.

I believe this is what you'd call an indictment.

Jeff Jarvis:

Dubai is either an act of fiction or of the future. I arrived thinking the former; I leave wondering whether it could be the latter.

From the archive, a selection:

Dubai threatens to become an instant ruin, an emblematic hybrid of the worst of both the West and the Middle-East and a dangerous totem for those who would mistakenly interpret this as the de-facto product of a secular driven culture.

... it's clear that the emirate will soon be overflowing with attractions ...

Dubai, with its Disneyesque Arab souks in which you can purchase Arab handicrafts or a Cinnabon ...

The company behind some of Dubai's best-known landmarks is considering a stock market listing to raise as much as $15bn to reinforce its finances.

Back to Johann Hari:

The most famous hotel in Dubai – the proud icon of the city – is the Burj al Arab hotel, sitting on the shore, shaped like a giant glass sailing boat.

The dark side of Dubai

Nicholas Eberstadt:

Russia's adult population--women as well as men--puts down the equivalent of a bottle of vodka per week.

In 2006--the most recent year for which we have such data--overall Russian life expectancy at birth was over three years lower than it had been in 1964.

Putin's Kremlin made a fateful bet that natural resources--oil, gas, and other extractive saleable commodities--would be the springboard for the restoration of Moscow's influence as a great power on the world stage. In this gamble, Russian authorities have mainly ignored the nation's human resource crisis. During the boom years--Russia's per capita income roughly doubled between 1998 and 2007--the country's death rate barely budged. Very much worse may lie ahead. How Russia's still-unfolding demographic disaster will affect the country's domestic political situation--and its international security posture--are questions that remain to be answered.

Neil Howe:

If you think that things couldn't get any worse, wait till the 2020s.

From the archive, a bit of Gladwell:

The relation between the number of people who aren't of working age and the number of people who are is captured in the dependency ratio.

Have you seen "4"?

Sometimes a severed pig's head is just a severed pig's head, after all, though sometimes a weeping crone yodeling mournfully about the Volga River is also a symbol of a grotesque and nostalgic nationalism.

Robert Levine:

The Great Depression brought the New Deal to the United States. It brought the rest of the world Nazism and universal war. This time, though, many nations have nuclear weapons.

"Maybe we could" is the limit of optimism in this paper. The world ahead looks difficult.

Mara Hvistendahl:

By the time these newborns reach puberty, war games may seem like a quaint relic.

Drunken Nation: Russia's Depopulation Bomb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small.
2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains.
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus.
4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks.
5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity.
6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning.
7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”.
8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains.
9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement.
10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs.

Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world

Globally we are tracking or doing even worse than the Great Depression, whether the metric is industrial production, exports or equity valuations. Focusing on the US causes one to minimize this alarming fact. The "Great Recession" label may turn out to be too optimistic. This is a Depression-sized event.

That said, we are only one year into the current crisis, whereas after 1929 the world economy continued to shrink for three successive years.

The world is currently undergoing an economic shock every bit as big as the Great Depression shock of 1929-30. Looking just at the US leads one to overlook how alarming the current situation is even in comparison with 1929-30.

Robert Levine:

The Great Depression brought the New Deal to the United States. It brought the rest of the world Nazism and universal war. This time, though, many nations have nuclear weapons.

"Maybe we could" is the limit of optimism in this paper. The world ahead looks difficult.

Simon Johnson:

The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump “cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.” This view is wrong.

What now?

After jokingly asking "Time to buy gold, huh?", there was a pregnant pause. Then came the response: "Buy ammunition".

World Economy Falling Faster Than in 1929-1930

In a shift, the Transportation Security Administration plans to replace the walk-through metal detectors at airport checkpoints with whole-body imaging machines — the kind that provide an image of the naked body.The plan now is that all passengers will “go through the whole-body imager instead of the walk-through metal detector,” he said.

In the airports where the whole-body imaging machines are being tested, less than 2 percent of passengers presented with the option of using them are choosing not to, Mr. Kane said.

Consider why:

Not too long ago possession of a cellphone, at least by people in certain socioeconomic classes, was likely to arouse suspicion.

Now it is becoming a social expectation that you carry a phone.

A middle class person without a phone would be viewed as garishly eccentric in a way that arouses suspicion.

Noam Cohen's friend:

Privacy is serious. It is serious the moment the data gets collected, not the moment it is released.

'Please Assume The Position'