My blogging has suffered due to a lot of recent travelling around the world to install Vordel's products and provide training, in the US and Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. But, given all the flying I've been doing, the apparent threats against air travel aren't too far from my mind. Here are a couple of interesting blog snippits from two (very different) blogs that are both worth following:
Fred Destin (a European VC) writes:
I was reminded of a recent analysis by a senior security figure in the UK (Chris Parry), who said open networks and air travel were our biggest security risks as terrorists become connected and globe-trotting individuals (Bruce Sterling article in Wired - August 2006). Guess what, a terrorist cell and a startup (take OpenBC for example) probably operate in much the same way...
http://www.freddestin.com/blog/2006/08/us_carriers_fac.html
Nick Currie (AKA Momus, the Scottish avant-guard musician) writes about the "new jet set":
You cannot be in favour of globalization and against the most cosmopolitan people on the planet; the urban poor. They're the new jet set -- even when they're blowing jets up.
http://imomus.livejournal.com/217216.html
"Open networks and air travel" have indeed become security risks, and, ironically enough, they themselves contribute to the security risk by enabling the very people who threaten them.
As in Fred's post, the comparison is often made between a terrorist cell and a startup company. I've spoken to product groups in other companies who talk of their "jihad" to develop a new product. But, I think the comparison depends on which terrorist group you're talking about. Ireland's own IRA organized itself into discrete groups, including an "Engineering" group (mostly composed of farmers) which researched, tested, and made bombs, and Active Service Units (ASUs) which carried out operations. Care was taken so that the ASU members operated on a need-to-know basis and therefore couldn't implicate other ASU members who may even live on the same street. Engineering department members did not carry out operations, so that they could continue to live normal lives and not have their homes or business places searched. The seperation of engineering from feet-on-the-street operations is similar to how high-tech startups are supposed to work [I say "supposed", because in startups you often end up having to send out engineers to do pre-sales and installations, thus blurring the line between engineering and "active service"]. With the IRA, you could also point to a financial department and even press liaison (issuing press releases signed by P O'Neill). Thus, the IRA was more "army-like" than Al Qaeda [I suppose the word "Army" in their name is the clue].
With Al Qaeda and it's copycat groupings, this Engineering/ASU split doesn't seem to exist so closely. Possibly it did exist when Al Qaeda had an actual base in Afghanistan (of course, its name means "The Base") and could run engineering there. Maybe north-western Pakistan is now that base. But, it seems to be up to individual Al Qaeda (or copycat) cells to research attack methods, create their weaponry, and then carry out the attacks. No split between Engineering and Active Service Units, unlike the IRA. This week I saw a UK-based CNN analyst say that, in the eyes of the UK police, this makes Al Qaeda more agile and dangerous than the IRA ever was, since they can change their targets quickly. I wonder if this is true. The fact that Al Qaeda's specifically wants civilian deaths is certainly different from the IRA. But their "everybody is doing everything" model would not scale well for a startup, and is more likely to result in a shambes than in a success [which may be why Al Qaeda seems to manage so few successful attacks, with so many "shoe bomber" type fiascos]. If a startup acts this way, with the same individuals doing research, development, and implementation, the problem is sustainability and scalability.
I wonder then are Al Qaeda cells like a Web 2.0 startup. These tend to be Internet-driven, consist of either just one person or a small group, operate on a "everyone does everything" basis, frequently fail, and have questions about scalability attached to them. As with Al Qaeda cells, only one startup in a hundred needs to be successful in order for the movement as a whole to have a global impact (e.g. the Digg headline on the cover of BusinessWeek magazine gives the impression that all of Web 2.0 is awash with success). A more traditional startup, with the hot-shot engineers in a back-room cranking our code and the hot-shot salesperson on the road signing up early-adopters, would be more like the IRA, with its Engineering/ASU dichotomy.
4:18:34 PM 
|
|
