RED ALERT

I was going through my GMail "cyberwar alerts" this morning when I encountered this link. Perhaps it belongs in the "horror file"? I'll excerpt it below and provide the link.

The blogger sites a Rand Corp. study from 2005 outlining "worst case scenario's" with a global cyber-environmental movement designed to cripple America's---and the West's industrial capacity. The blogger, an environmentalist, has most/all pertinent links.

Take a look...

Perhaps most striking is that their near-worst case scenario called a “transnational web,” sounded like the global justice movements best case scenario.

They write:”In this hypothetical future, the period from 2020 to 2025 witnesses a dramatic growth in the threat to the United States presented by radical transnational “peace and social justice” groups. Using the goal of creating a just “global civil society” as their rallying cry, large militant transnational actors appear, promoting radical agendas for the environment, nuclear disarmament, and Third World land reform.”

They paint a fictitious 2025 scenario of what the Transnational Web could look like in action. In their fictitious scenario they describe a climate network with groups in 80 countries; “World Environmental League (WEL), is spearheading a crusade to compel the UN General Assembly to approve a radical treaty for fossil fuel emissions reduction that would cripple many American and Western manufacturing industries.”
WEL engages in violent actions against the US and corporations and requires a military response.

It’s interesting that they understand the power of decentralized leaderless network organizing more than many social movement folks, who continue to organize in weaker top down organizations, nonprofits, parties and unions.

In the study they recommend a military “Netwar Army” response. Like the RAND book Networks and Netwars, they actually lay the ground work for a military response to international grassroots networks organizing for positive social change and challenging the power of governments and corporations, whether or not nonviolent and un-armed.

Essentially they view grassroots democratic networks and activism as a threat requiring a military response to maintain the deeply anti-democratic power of nation states and corporations.

Welcome to the future.

Here's the link:

http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/06/12/rand-not-ran-study-of-future-environmental-networks/