The purpose of the canary isn't to die — the purpose of the canary is to be observed to be dead.

So a SecretWarrior in a mine would try to stop the miners from seeing that the canary had died.

How much damage could ruthless saboteurs do if they focused their attack on hiding the canaries death? Assuming that a dangerous situation would arise naturally, but without a notictably dead canary the miners would not have warning… probably a lot.

Coast to Coast AM used to carry /every/ suspicious death and near-death of biological and genetic researchers. It was spooky, but without knowing how many biological and genetic researches would find themselves in dangerous situations just randomly, it was impossible to know whether or not there was anything to it.

A sufficiently skeptical society is easier for a SecretWarrior to fight in, because it will not “leap to conclusions.”

I think there are more useful ways to view the causes of the Civil War than slavery. The initial causes of the war were

1. The 1860 bumber cotton harvest
2. The rise of a President who wanted to export Northern anti-slavery rulesets to the South

The Civil War was a very bloddy attempt to attack the South at her strongpoint — love of wealth.

A wiser strategy would have been to subvert the South by using that strong point. A noticably above-market-rate eminent domaining of all slaves, combined with existing anti-slave-import laws, would have ended slavery immediately, while buying off the North's opposition.

A lot of our discussions are defensive in that we are trying to conceive of 5G attacks on the US. But I think that the US is better able to absorb 5G attacks than any other society (but not completely immune). We have lots of small factions trying to gain political influence, why would a 5G cell be anything but another faction? factions come and go. Political, religious, artistic, philosophic, economic ideologies come and go. Some have influence and some don't, but none of them have destroyed our country.
The US has a lot of experience dealing with natural disasters. Every year we have hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, forest fires, blizzards, mudslides, floods, droughts, and more. We spent decades preparing to survive a nuclear war that might completely devastate our country. We are not a bunch of naive doofuses. We are a resilient and resourceful people. We are a self-organizing, entreprenuerial people.

I think we give too much credit to those who seek to bring us down. We have 300 million people among whom a vast amount of knowledge and skill are distributed. We do not need orders issued from centralized “leaders” to survive in a chaotic and unpredictable world.

I have my doubts about the claim that each succeeding generation can defeat the previous generations' armies. That may be true with 1st, 2nd and 3rd generations, but 4th generation stategies emerge when a combatant realizes that it CAN'T beat a 3rd generation army. So 4G is about bypassing that army and collapsing support for the war from within. It is a defeat but not a defeat on the battlefield. The only way this can be successful is if a society is susceptible to that kind of strategy. Not all of them are. A society might be susceptible to this strategy if it had lost confidence in itself or if a significant faction was constantly propagating the idea that that society could not possibly succeed, how it was to blame for whatever was happening, that it was doomed to failure, that its every action only made things worse, that its leaders were all liars who were engaged in some kind of conspiracy, etc. This could be the perfect avenue for the 5G warrior to “manipulat[e] the wielders of conventional power.” Thus creating the conditions for the 4G warriors to be successful. But if citizens did not fall for that then the society would not be undermined by the 4th and 5th generation efforts and a 3rd generation military could be successful.

What makes 5GW “warfare” and not simply “politics”?

But I think we ought to take a closer look at the distinction between a closed government and an open government. I think the openness you require would open the government activity to criticism, a criticism that might come from the sub- and counter-cultural elements. (Witness the general unwillingness of the GWB base to criticize GWB, and the secrecy of the GWB administration. The GWB admin. doesn't want to open itself to close scrutiny and criticism which a complete openness would invite.)

In general, I brainstormed with an eye on future defenses which would require a *revolutionary* change in the system we now have — especially since 5GW would itself be revolutionary and would require a revolutionary defense. To suggest from another angle: the system of “majority rule” as now practiced concentrates the power into hands which need not listen to any minority in decisions requiring *immediate* action, and this is likely to be utilized by a 5GW attacker.

I should have made more of the Auden quote from my blog entry. We could isolate several key issues now splitting America in two, any one of which or any group of which could ultimately lead to a civil war. (I think some are already attempting civil war — but not the pre-5GW type of civil war!)

A thought-provoking reply.

Just as our enemies focus on economy of force — how to subvert or subdue us with only the forces they can muster — we must eye economies of force while designing ways to protect our nation.

In particular,

(a) a response should be automatic, or as Jeremiah (http://organicwarfare.blogspot.com/) might say, immuno-defensive
(b) the response should be easy to implement, as the greater the change required, the harder it will be to build, and the less likely it will be built at all

In other words, we need an easy way to mutate an enemy from SecretWar to something the system can process. So we need to shift our enemy from SecretWarriors or even SecretPoliticians to just plain politics.

This is how OpenGovernment relates to “canaries in the mine.” The more open government is, the more likely that any “conspiracies” or even semi-private associates will become “just politics.” While “subcultural or counter-cultural elements” like Alex Jones are unlikely to gain political influence, marginal figures like the people who influence political primaries will. To give two examples from the 2004 Democrat Primary, showing how both SecretPolitics and SecretWar can be deformed into “just plain politics”

1. There was an effort by college Republicans to subvert the Democrat Party by supporting Howard Dean in Iowa John Kerry's people found out about it, and Kerry publicly complained. While Kerry was mocked for being “paranoid,” it did get the idea into the logosphere (http://zenpundit.blogspot.com/2005/07/googles-5g-vision-to-reshape.html), and transform the SecretPolitics that supported Howard Dean into “just plain politics.”

2. More extremely, Howard Dean mentioned an “interesting theory” that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance but purposefully did nothing. Howard Dean's parrotting of Alex Jones did little for his credibility, but it showed that even life-and-death SecretWar can be transformed into “just plain politics.”

So the proverbial canaries aren't the most marginal birds who die easily — the “canaries” are birds more like us, but just a tad weaker — just a bit more sensitive to lack of oxygen. There will be false positives, but not so many that they are useless.

In other words, exactly like real canaries.

The reference to the Bush Administration is valuable. As charges of “neocons and theocons” (http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2005/06/09/the_neocon_theocon_axis_winning_and_losing.html) show, the Bush Administration has partially adopted SecretPolitics. This is because the system makes SecretPolitics profitable. Frighteningly, the same “features” that lay the ground work for small numbers of SecretPoliticians are “vulnerabilities” to small armies of SecretWarriros.

A “winner take all” system makes America very vulternable to SecretWar. Fortunately, it would not be too hard to substantially lessen our vulnerability. America's Constitution is federal, recognizing the wide powers of the several States. The more states-rights a nation has, the less harm that any one enemy can do. Likewise, the less attractive a massive SecretWar would be, as not so much power gained from a victory.

A return to greater states rights would limit the number of national divisive issues. Giving the several States the right to spend highway and medicare funds as they see fit, returning to the several States the right to legislate on abortion as they see fit, and (in a non-Federal but still devolutionary course) super-empowering individuals by giving them greater control over “their” Social Security “investment,” would all structurally lesson the risks of SecretWar and SecretPolitics.

I think that a return to greater States rights and a limiting of Federal powers is a step in the right direction — but we have seen how easily such a configuration can lead to civil war! Maybe “easily” isn't the right word. I'm contemplating a blog post on the idea even as I type this…

Because more free societies tend to be more open societies, 5GW (SecretWar) and 5GW-style Politics (SecretPoltics) are more effective in unfree societies than free societies. Power is more concentrated, there are less avenues for revealing deception, etc.

(The differenece between SecretWar and SecretPoliticss is the same as the difference between in any type of war and any type of politics — in war you kill people. This implies that there is not a clean war/politics, or SecretWar/SecretPolitics, divide. A group could be largely political but selectively kill enemies. Likewise, a group could be largely violent but occasionally use the political process.)

A SecretPolitics or SecretWar againt Moscow to restore democracy could be modeled on Deng's takeover of China and the recent “Revolutions-in-a-Box” (Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, etc). (These weren't true secret wars, because Mao and Putin finally recognized their enemies. But both were too late. Mao was unable to act harshly against Deng because Deng already had powerful internal ideological allies who Mao could not safetly identify and remove. Putin's foes already had powerful external allies that protected them before they began their campaign by taking Belgrade.)

Anyway, a semi-Secret approach to winning Russia:

1. Appear invisible to the regime. Either be a trusted but weak helper, or a radical but harmless agitator. Either because of “loyalty” or “weakness,” never be thought about by the Enemy.
2. Begin establishing friendly contacts with regime members. It helps if these aren't overtly political even to the contacts themselves You are merely trying to find sympathetic people who can listen. Even if your Enemy knows about you through this, the SecretCampaign can continue. The Enemy may see this as further proof of your weakness — you are being sucked into the informal patronage network that prevents true resistance. But the Enemy is thinking at least a generation behidn.
3. Begin establishing friendly contacts with foreigners. This is very dangerous. Foreigners are naturally distrusted, particularly when the foreigners most able to help (Soros, bin Laden, etc) are the most universally distrusted.
4. Be patient. Development of the Secret force is “in house,” and can take a decade. Keeping up momentum while remaining silent is very hard. Further, a regime may have an immune system that unthinkingly tries to provoke Secret foes into revealing themselves. DO NOT FALL FOR TRAPS. DO NOT MEANINGFULLY JOIN IN ANY “CAMPAIGN” TO CHANGE OR REFORM TEH REGIME.
5. Embrace your weakness. Realize your only weapon is the Enemy's strength. In Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, for example, the government stupidly held elections while loudly praising free elections. Your Secret organization will have ties to critics of the regime during the crisis (an election, whatever). Maintain these ties, but do not expose yourself.
6. The Enemy will win the crisis. This is natural. Your goal is to win the post-crisis. Cause a “stroke” by paralyzing your Enemy with your Secret network. In the anti-Moscow coups, this was caused by anti-government demonstrations COMBINED WITH moral support by sympathizers in the regime unmasking themselves. In Kiev, Victor Yushenko was often flanked by former KGB agents, who isolated the government and encouraged the demonstrators by showing than “even KGB agients” had turned against the government. THE STROKE MUST BE SEVERE. The Enemy has more staying powr — you have little “stand-off” power. Use the stroke to physically endanger the enemy (in all anti-Moscow coups, the local Enemy was in danger of physical harm from the mob — the coagulated blood. In Georgia, the mob physically carried off the Enemy from the Parliament).
7. Post-post crisis, rapidly restore order by connecting local and foreign friends. When the “international community” is behidn a government of local sympathetic elites supported by a street mob, the Enemy will fold in on himself. This happened in Ukraine, with former regime elements assassinating each other to prevent them from turning. When this happens, even the Enemy becomes a SecretAlly!

Of course, much more 5GW-style pro-democracy efforts are imaginably… but that is a post for another time…

What do you think it would look like?

Interesting criticism that “each succeeding generation can defeat the previous generations' armies.” I'll need to sleep on it.

Excellent comment! Thank you!