Deep Thought 42: Life, the Universe and Everything

Last year around this time, I wrote about how computers are getting smarter and how that would lead to enormous prosperity, but it would also reduce the need for people.  If computers can drive and perform a huge number of tasks usually done by people,what would be left for people to do?  Compared to scrabbling around for bare necessities – which was the lot of nearly all of mankind for most of human history – this doesn’t seem like a problem.  But without a purpose, people would lead idle lives.  I envisioned a dystopia much like a huge welfare colony, where everyone has just enough to getby but no one has much to do so they pursue hobbies like hooliganism.  (Alternately, we’d all become professional hobbyists, working at what we loved.)

I expect the conclusion is somewhere in the middle, life will on the whole get more comfortable.  Perhaps something will be lost as life becomes softer and smoother.  Too quote Woody Allen, “The heart wants what the heart wants.”  The stakes may become lower, but people will still be caught in difficult, painful situations and have to muddle through.  Passions will trump reason at awkward times and tussle, as they have since humanity arose.

The scale of changes being made in the human condition is awesome and unparalleled in our history.  Something huge is afoot.

A few years ago (while going through some pretty serious personal stuff – a subject for another time), I read Martin Amis’ NightTrain.  I like British novelists, with their crisp use of the language and social backdrop that is intelligible – but just alien enough to give me pause.  Night Train turned out to be a police procedural set in the United States – not what I wanted.  But it grabbed me.  Jennifer Rockwell, a beautiful and brilliant young astronomer had committed suicide.  Her police brass father could not accept this and had one of his best detectives look into it.  She interviewed the dead woman’s boss, a world renown astronomer who describing their work trying understand the scale and nature of the universe admitted:

The truth is, Detective, the truth is that human beings are not sufficiently evolved to understand the place they’re living in. We’re all retards.  Einstein’s a retard.  I’m a retard.  We live on a planet of retards.

Amis' book was written in 1998.  In the relatively modest span of time since then, we have seen astounding leaps in computational capabilities – capabilities that are only increasing.  Predictions are that relatively soon all the computational power in the world will match that of a single human brain, but it is not so far in the future after this that computing power will exceed the computing power of all the human brains in existence.

I don’t want to argue that we are close to all the answers.  But we are building powerful tools to ask and at least attempt to answer these questions.  But will we understand the answers?  What will be our place in this vast computing architecture?

Amis' astronomer says:

And do you know what a black hole is Detective? Yeah, I think we all have some idea.  Jennifer asked me: Why was it Hawking who cracked black holes?  I mean, in the Sixties everybody was going at black holes hammer and tongs.  But it was Stephen who have us some answers.  She said” Why him?  And I gave the physicist’s answer: Because he’s the smartest guy around.  But Jennifer wanted me to consider an explanation that was more-romantic. She said: Hawking understood black holes because he could stare at them.  Black holes mean oblivion. Mean death. And Hawking has been staring at death all his adult life.  Hawking could see.

Aristotle’s treatise On the Soul is often referred to by its Latin title, De Anima, meaning that which animates.  If we are building some sort of massive hive mind that can contemplate to the edges of the universe, we are what moves it.  The same wonder and awe that led us to build Stonehenge and the Pyramids, has led us to this as well.  If we are building this massive hive mind, we may not understand it (does a cell in our body understand the enormous, marvelous thing of which it is part?)  But we will remain essential, we are what sets it into motion – we will be the soul.

Iran: Smeagol or Sauron

A few months ago The Washington Post ran an article about Iran's efforts to recruit Latin Americans. The article focused on a young Mexican who met Iran's ambassador at a reception and after limited interactions found himself a guest of the Iranian government.  He didn't care that much for it, got out and made his way home where he said Iranians at the Embassy were continuing to tail him.

The obvious interpretation here is that Iran is rather aggressively attempting to recruit Latin Americans. There have been many reports regarding Iran's efforts to obtain influence in that part of the world and there is a definite concern that Iran and its terrorist allies would like to launch terror attacks against the U.S. via Mexico.  Hezbollah, working hand in glove with its Iranian sponsors, launched terrible attacks in Argentina in the early 1990s.  More recently Iranians attempts to attack the Saudi Ambassador in Washington working with Mexican drug cartels.  (However, the contact with the cartel turned out to be a DEA informant.)

All of this is true. But...

Recently I've had a penchant for looking at things and turning them upside down and seeing how things look.

The young man at the center of the story approached the Iran's Ambassador at a public forum.  The Ambassador continued the contact, followed-up and pressed the young man to participate in a program that took him to Iran.  The Ambassador was personally recruiting people to train in Iran.  Now on the one hand it could be interpreted that this shows how Iran's Foreign Ministry is one with the IRGC and MOIS.  Maybe.

Another way to see it is that the Embassy in Mexico was ordered to recruit X people.  The recruitment didn't go so well, so the Ambassador personally had to get involved.  Does Iran's Ambassador to Mexico have so little to do that he can spend his time recruiting possible agents from universities?  I believe in most countries that job goes to a 2nd or 3rd Secretary at the Embassy.

In most of the world, the US Embassy or Consulate could - relatively easily - spark a riot just by floating rumors that additional visas to work in the U.S. were available.  Iran has to send its Ambassador out, personally, to try to get people to come to Iran.

None of this is to say that there aren't some extremely bad people in the Iranian leadership or that this somehow ameliorates Iran's bad behavior on the world stage.  If I've written on this once, I've written on it a hundred times.  But this story reveals some profound weaknesses and power imbalances between the U.S. and Iran.

Too often we see our enemies as Sauron, with vast legions an all seeing Eye, and clear intention to dominate the world.  But maybe Iran is Smeagol, a weak and tormented.  This doesn't mean that they aren't dangerous (Smeagol was dangerous and devious), but they were not all-powerful.

Negotiating with Smeagol
Since I'm writing about Iran and an interim deal was just signed, I should give my thoughts on this, incorporating my Smeagol/Sauron metaphor.

In a nutshell, when faced with war one must really, really try for peace.  There are several reasons for this, not the least of which are that you might actually get peace.

If Iran, as I say, is more like weak conflicted Smeagol negotiations have a chance for success.  I am not qualified to get into all of the technical details, but it appears that there are constituencies that would very much like better relations with the West.  To bring along enough other players in the Iranian system, they need to show that Iranian concessions will be reciprocated by Western concessions.  This will be a long drawn-out process.  The end result will not be ideal or pretty.  Ultimately we'll have to recognize a loathesome regime that will remain a challenge to other US interests in the region.  But, if this prevents an Iranian nuke and does not result in war, that is an acceptable outcome.  We can manage an unpleasant Iran in a difficult region - a nuclear armed Iran is many orders of magnitude more problematic (as though Smeagol got the ring.)

Won't Iran cheat and just keep going on the nukes anyway?
Maybe, but we are far more likely to catch them cheating with tons of IAEA inspectors on the ground.

And that brings up the second point, what if Iran is Sauron, inexorably seeking nukes and building its power until it can challenge Israel and the United States and boot them out of the Middle East?

Then we especially need to try to make a deal.  Not because it will work, but because if Iran is Sauron, there WILL BE WAR.  If we are going to war with Iran (hot - bombing/cold - renewed sanctions) we will need to show the world, the American people, and the Iranian people that we really, really tried to avoid the war.

Sanctions can be hard to maintain and require international support.  Many of the participants get tired and frustrated enforcing them.  If we do not make a serious good faith effort to come to an agreement and show an eventual end path to the sanctions the regime will eventually fall apart.  If, even more seriously, we need to engage in military action against Iran we will need to tell the international community that this was not a war we wanted.  War with Iran will not be pretty - it is not a matter of a few quick bomb strikes.  There will be an endless bombing campaign, revenge attacks on Americans around the world, and probably proxy fights throughout the Middle East.  Americans have gotten a good look at how war in the Middle East tends to go.  They will not rush into it again, they will need to be persuaded that their government did not seek this conflict.

This is a bit of an inversion of the Latin admonition, si vis pacem, para bellum.  But if war is neccessary (and it very well may be), we must show that we tried for peace.  And maybe, just maybe, we will get lucky and we will get peace.

Droning About Drones: What Else is in the Toolkit

Drones are back in the news, as Pakistan’s Prime Minister tours Washington and protests U.S. drone strikes in his country. These protests are a bit pro forma, as it is pretty clear that the U.S. is carrying out these strikes with cooperation from Pakistan.  Sharif is caught between U.S. security priorities and his own population’s preferences. He silently cooperates and publicly complains. Angela Merkel of Germany is basically finding herself in the same spot with NSA wiretapping. But without Snowden, the wiretapping may have continued below the radar, drone strikes are much harder to hide.

This raises a perennial hobbyhorse of mine, that U.S. counter-terror policy is becoming toodependent on drones. Not that I’m opposed to drones, they are obviously an invaluable tool, but right now it appears to be the only thing in our toolkit and, as they say, when you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

Right now, the U.S. seems free to hammer away, but if there is one lesson in life, everything has a cost or, as a better writer than me once wrote:

for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap

Former SecDefRobert Gates was also warning about drone warfare, observing that:

Remarkable advances in precision munitions, sensors, information and satellite technology and more can make us overly enamored with the ability of technology to transform the traditional laws and limits of war…. In reality, war is inevitably tragic, inefficient and uncertain.

Let’s talk about Pakistan, another obsession of mine. The people of Pakistan assume that their government is corrupt and manipulated by foreigners to grind the Pakistani people into poverty. While this is not the case, one can certainly understand how Pakistanis might come to believe this – particularly with drones operating from and within their territory.

There are good reasons for the U.S. to be using drones against the Pakistani terrorists, but drone activity is simultaneously undermining the Pakistani government. Long-term, fostering a stable not too awful Pakistani government ought to be a U.S. priority - because the whole country is just a few steps from being a giant basket-case, which brings much bigger problems than terrorism.

Alternatives

I recently saw Jacob Shapiro discuss his new book TheTerrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Operations. I was familiar with his work and had cited it in my own work on Lashkar-e-Taiba (which found that traditional counter-terror strategies had limited efficacy). In a nutshell, Shapiro states that terrorist groups – because they have to operate covertly – face a lot of organizational challenges to maintaining command and control. For an organization to carry out complex operations requires a lot of organization which forces the leadership to effectively exercise control through paperwork. But these mechanisms of control are a treasure trove for intelligence agencies. Further, the great fear of terrorist leaderships is losing control over their units. Al-Qaeda documents have endless disputes about money – operatives spending too much and leaders not providing enough – as well as tactics.

Sowing dissension within a group might be a useful alternative to simply killing group members. Spreading stories about corruption and other forms of impropriety could do more to reduce operational efficiency. It wouldn’t necessarily be easy.  But leaking information about a group, or spoofing their internal electronic communications should be well within the capabilities of Western intelligence agencies.  And it is probably a lot cheaper than drones.

The essence of terrorism (from a national security decision-making standpoint) is how it gets inside the decision-making cycles and makes the political leadership seem flat-footed, inept and prone to over-reaction. This approach is an opportunity to turn the tables and get inside the terrorists’ decision-making and organization and twist them up.

Caveat

This strategy – to a limited extent has been used againstFARC in Colombia and others.  But it may not be appropriate in the Pakistani hinterland. Literacy is low, and running a public diplomacy campaign would be by word or mouth, which requires extensive on the ground knowledge. But that doesn’t make it impossible and it is at least worth trying.

Drones are a great tool, but let’s use some other ones as well.

Navy Yard vs. Westgate: A Silver Lining for the US

Despite the title, this is not a cheerful post.  The incidents at the Navy Yard in Washington DC and at Westgate Mall in Nairobi are tragedies.  But comparing the highlights a modest silver lining for American counter-terror efforts.

First, about the Navy Yard the obvious tragic aspects must be reiterated:

1. A dozen people, pointlessly, lost their lives
2. A mentally ill person easily acquired a firearm
3. A mentally ill person did not receive the help they needed (despite actively seeking it)

It would be easy to also rail against a failed clearance process that allowed Aaron Alexis access to a secure facility (the same process that brought us Edward Snowden) but I'm not sure that is fair.  We now have about five million cleared individuals, even a process that was 99.99% effective would fail 500 failures.  The question on that front is not how these people got through, but rather why there haven't been a great deal more such failures.

In that spirit, of asking why not, I want to look at the question of why Westgate Mall style terror attacks have not happened in the United States.  The lion's share of mass shootings appear to have been conducted by people who were mentally ill.  This emphasizes that, at least on one level, such attacks are extremely easy to carry out in the United States.  More than a few terrorist experts have noted this vulnerability.  So why have terrorists not done this, is it simply that the US has been lucky?

This is an important question to ask because, as the eminent Daveed Gartenstein-Ross observed:

it is well worth considering how we might respond were a shopping mall attacked in this manner. Would we create checkpoints at mall entrances to prevent people from entering with weapons? Would we increase the presence of security forces, perhaps providing them with instructions about how to identify possible perpetrators of an attack? Or would we encourage citizens to come to the mall armed, so that they could defend themselves in case terrorists strike? Perhaps we would decide that defensive measures were not worth the cost—especially since our ability to break up plots before they become operational remains strong—and find that a successful mall attack every 12 years or so is an acceptable cost for maintaining our current levels of convenience.

Often we seem blindsided by terrorist events. After failing to anticipate a particular attack, we struggle to respond, and our response might not address the underlying risk or may even be counterproductive. Considering possibilities is not the same as paranoia or fear, and the implications of a mall attack in the West are worth thinking through before it happens.

Since the costs of securing potential targets is extraordinarily high (a wealthy, open society of 300 million offers a plethora of soft targets) we need to press our analysis farther into the operation.  After the Mumbai attacks I observed:

To carry out a similar attack in the U.S. would require either training the attackers here, or inserting them from elsewhere. Both are possible, but neither is easy. 

In Kashmir there is a network of training camps, a pre-set structure. Here, a group of radicals would have to self-train. Possible: of course, but not easy. Without a formal structure, could a dozen Americans (many with jobs and families) put themselves through this rigorous program and stick to it over months - without anyone noticing? 

In fact there have been several self-starting cells, and they seem to get rounded up fairly early.
The other option is to smuggle the operatives in. But this is also difficult. While America’s borders and coastlines are poorly protected (and penetrated by smugglers almost constantly) this doesn’t mean that terrorists will necessarily have an easy time of it. Sailing direct from Karachi to a U.S. coast in a vessel small enough not to be noticed would be an impressive act of seamanship. More likely the terrorists would move more closely to the United States (for example to Latin America) and then infiltrate. But would they have the local contacts to acquire guns and transport without being noticed?

Most Latin American intelligence agencies are extremely concerned about being the base for an attack on the United States and would be on the lookout for such an infiltration. And the more operatives that are involved in the attack, the greater likelihood one will be detected.

An important addition to this point is on the importance of training - not only because of its tactical relevance - but because without extensive indoctrination, sane people are not inclined to take the lives of others.  Without placing a person in this environment for a lengthy period of time they will not commit to being a terrorist.  The places to get this kind of indoctrination are far away, increasing the chances that individuals who have had this kind of training will be detected before the enter the United States.

The US, unlike Kenya or India, is a long way from its enemies. This has been a blessing.  But we would be foolish to take it for granted.  The 9/11 Commission wrote an in-depth monograph on travel intelligence because of its importance for terror operations.  These capabilities need to continue to adapt, to continue to avoid a mass terror in the United States we need to make our own luck.

9/11 is not a day for wonkery

Your TerrorWonk has been moribund lately. I'm not bereft of ideas or things to say, but rather of time to say them. If you follow me on Twitter you'll see I'm pretty busy.

But I'm the TerrorWonk, if I can't say something on 9/11 maybe I'm in the wrong business.

Wonkery is about analysis and the go-to tool in our time is cost-benefit analysis (CBA - which if done right is also CYA.)  Is this thing we are going to do or have done a good idea - is it working, do we like what we are getting out of it?  It isn't always just about numbers.  Moral considerations are also costs, heavy reliance on drones may have a non-tangible cost to America's reputation. Disguising special forces as a NGO workers for a rescue operation may have a cost in endangering the NGO workers in the future.

I've done these analyses on 9/11s past. But not today.

As a nation we've done some smart things and some stupid things since 9/11.  But ON 9/11 nearly three thousand people died for no good reason.  Their deaths were due to eschatological fantasies of a band of fanatics.  We saw some stunning examples of heroism that day twelve years ago and in that our souls can find some comfort.

The Eye of Sauron now turns to Chechnya, er Syria, I mean Egypt, oh wait Syria again...

As I first conceptualized this post I could hear Ian McKellan sonorously intoning these words.  I really enjoyed the geopolitical lessons of LOTR (if only Denethor had systematically maintained Gondor’s strategic alliances he would have been better able to deter Mordor I whispered to my wife as we watched the movie – she told me to shut up.)

I’d been thinking about the Eye of Sauron as a metaphor for how top-level decision-making works (kind of an obsession of mine!) for some time when Slate ran an article comparing Sauron’s Eye to the surveillancestate.  It’s a good article, but does not quite capture the essence of the Eye (although it does a good job comparing Mordor to a police state – another book that does that is Watership Down).  Sauron’s Eye can only look upon a place at a time, whereas the NSA can effectively read pretty much everything all the time.  However, the ability of policy-makers to act on this information is limited by what they choose to focus on – that’s the essence of the Eye.

When Sauron looks upon something, he (it?) can unleash huge armies, death from the skies, and his creepy voice that can tempt the weak and twist the strong.  Not unlike the US which can bomb anywhere in the world at will, deploy soldiers and Special Forces, and finally just send compelling messages.  (Most people tend to find a direct contact from the President pretty compelling.)  This is not to say the US is Mordor (I believe we are on the whole a force for the good but one can certainly see an alternate perspective.)

LOTR ends with the good guys (Men of the West!) launching a huge attack on Mordor, not because they can win but because it will distract Sauron while the Hobbits schlep the ring to Mt. Doom to destroy it.  (Sorry if I gave anything away – it’s still a good read or view.)  The plan works, because Sauron’s armies are drawn away to counter the attacking army while the Eye itself has to focus on the battle.

I’ve been thinking about this since April when, after the Boston bombing, suddenly everyone was interested in Chechnya again.  But, Chechnya is a complicated far-away place with a surplus of clan warfare and crime, which has also been brutalized by the Russians.  How much effort does the President want to expend on this kind of thing?  What’s more, anything the US would want to do in Chechnya would involve Russia.  So first the President has to engage Russia (and probably give them stuff) to get better access to Chechnya and then the pot of gold is getting sucked into the perennial Hatfields & McCoys of the Caucuses.  If we had dozens of attackers coming to the US from Chechnya killing hundreds a year maybe we’d have to do exactly that.  But we don’t.  I’m sure on an administrative level the appropriate national security agencies put additional modest resources on the Chechnya beat, but that’s about it especially since Syria flared up.

Syria is a real war and getting involved in a way that would clearly tilt that scales would be a massive commitment.  In the debate about going into Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell reportedly warned, “This is going to suck the oxygen out of everything else we are trying to do.”

One thing the Iraq war did do was devour the time and energy of the decision-makers.  I heard that at the height of the violence there was a Deputies Committee meeting everyday about Iraq.  That is an enormous amount of work.  The Deputies are the number 2s (busy people!) at the key departments (State, Defense, Justice National Security Council and usually several others.)  They try to resolve issues and if they can’t tee them up for the Principals – the big bosses.  The Deputies Committee really is the working group for the government.  So if they were spending all of their time on Iraq it meant other stuff isn’t getting to the Deputies – let alone to the President.

We just learned that military options in Syria would cost at least a billion dollars a month.  If there were a clear benefit to the expenditure it would be a bargain.  But we aren't sure where a war in Syria would lead.  But it would become the dominant item on the President's desk for the foreseeable future at the expense of innumerable other priorities.

Now Egypt is in the headlines.  The ideal policy for Egypt is obvious – use financial aid and the need for international legitimacy to press the Egyptian junta to develop and follow-through on a Constitutional process while liberalizing the economy.  By the way, we sort of tried that already with the Gore-Mubarak Commission in the 1990s – check out my paper on a similar effort with Russia.  Both efforts had mixed results.  First, getting other countries to do what you want is really hard (that should be IR 101).  And to have a chance of getting other countries to do what you want the President needs to sit on them.  So my proposed Egypt policy would require the President to be desk officer for Egypt and Egypt just isn’t that important.

Why can’t the President set a policy and have Ambassadors and what have you carry it out?  Without clear and direct Presidential support, the country in question will ignore or slow-walk the President’s envoys.  Serious threats require follow-through to be credible and for that the President will have to put in real effort to make them happen – Ambassadors usually don’t have a sufficient arsenal.

Another way to view it is like parenthood (another hobby of mine.)  You want your kid to NOT do X and TO do Y.  The kid really doesn’t want to do Y and has a lot more energy to devote to the issue than you do.  You have a job, maybe other kids, a house to run etc.  Your kid has nothing to think about but this particular problem.  So the kid may not do X, but will successfully distract you enough to avoid doing Y.  If you are willing to focus your day on getting the kid to do Y – it can probably happen but then you won’t get to clean the kitchen, watch your shows, or play Sudoku on your phone.  You managed to get the kid to not do X, but do you really want to put in the enormous extra effort for Y to happen?

It would be kind of like that with Egypt.  They'd help on security in the Sinai but resist any serious economic liberalization or establishing a real Constitution.  We'd hold back aid, but then they'd warn that without aid the couldn't control the country - you can see how this goes.

That being said, sometimes the US has had successful foreign policies that have nudged along unstable states without completely overwhelming the President.  I often point to Plan Columbia as a case where the US spent some money and provided expertise and the situation in Columbia improved dramatically.  There have been others.  I am deeply curious about how to build the structure that will allow successful US policies without overwhelming the President.  It seems like a useful capability for the United States to develop.  Perhaps a topic for some enterprising PhD student...

Until the Eye of Sauron learns to delegate and establish some networked institutions among the orcs, it will be forced to flit from crisis to crisis.

Pursuit of Happiness

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these rights are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Jefferson was unquestionably a great politician.  He may not have been a political philosopher of the first order - in politics there is a vast gulf between practice and theory.  (Of course being a first-rate politician, natural scientist and writer, and a second-rate philosopher, architect, and inventor still puts one solidly in the poly-maths club.)

The basic ideas of the Declaration of Independence were cribbed from Locke, who wrote:

Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world  hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of the law in others...

A political philosopher must be precise and define terms carefully.  A politician has the freedom to paint with a broad-brush and inspire the polity.  Where Locke is precise, Jefferson is elegant.  But I am most struck by the shift from estate to happiness.  Perhaps is was merely an inspirational turn of phrase, but its impact is profound.

Jefferson himself was a man of property, but with little interest in it - except as a means to support his research and writing.  It makes me think of Aristotle who, in The Nicomachean Ethics an exploration of character, goodness, and happiness writes:

Every art and every investigation, and similarly every action and pursuit is considered to aim at some good....  If, then, our activities have some end which we want for its own sake, and for the sake of which we want all the other ends - if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for this will involve an infinite progression, so that our aim will be pointless and ineffectual) - it is clear that this must be the Good, that is the supreme good.

Aristotle dismisses money as this ultimate end:

As for the life of the business man, it does not give him much freedom of action.  Besides, wealth is obviously not the good that we are seeking, because it serves only as a means; i.e. for getting something else.

Jefferson evolves Locke's framework and inserts it into our political DNA.  We do not merely have a government to protect our property. Property, particularly Locke's "estate" is the necessary means.  But Jefferson wants to inspire us to seek our end, to pursue happiness.

There are no promises that we can be happy, but rather that this is the point of the whole exercise.  To quote another great American, Yaakov Smirnov, "What a country!"

It is fair to say that the United States - like every nation - is founded upon piles of bones.  We have a government that - at time - has systematically prevented individuals from the pursuit of happiness in a profound way.  But on July 4 we also recall the words of Lincoln - a match for Jefferson as a writer and politician - and his tremendous efforts to set right that great injustice.

But that will have to be a post for another time.  I have some happiness to pursue.