I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Max Boot yesterday. He talked with us about his book about guerrilla warfare, which is now out in paperback.
I find military history instructive on many fronts, but of course it is always highly instructive about software and software business.
The most basic point of the book is that, throughout history, the vast majority of warfare is what we now call "guerrilla" or "unconventional" warfare. "Conventional" warfare only arose about 5,000 years ago with the early city-states, and their ability to have hierarchies, funds, command-and-control, etc.
The Roman Empire was a massively successful conductor of conventional war. When faced with rebellions or guerrillas, they rolled in with their centurions and laid waste to their enemies, including but not limited to crucifying (literally) their leaders. Ultimately, however, they lost to a combination of internal dissolution and the attack of guerilla armies, the most notable of which was the Huns under Attila. Here he is invading Italy.
Guerrilla forces are typically (though not always) smaller than conventional ones. They are harder to find. They tend to show up when and where least expected, can then cause terrible damage -- and then disappear.
Mr. Boot made the point that the biggest change in Guerrilla warfare has been the rise of media and the importance of public opinion. He claims the first major Guerrilla war that illustrated this shift was the American Revolution, which fought as much in the media for public opinion as on the ground against the Red Coats. He gave as example of this Thomas Paine's Common Sense at the beginning of the effort.
I had always understood that the war ended at the battle of Yorktown with the defeat of Cornwallis:
Well, I was wrong. There were huge efforts to influence public opinion on American independence, not only in America, but also in Great Britain and France. Lord North wanted to send boatloads of fresh Red Coats over to suppress the rebellion, but his Tory government lost the vote to the Whigs, who demanded that America be let go, as summarized in this contemporary piece of media:
At the end of his excellent talk, which no doubt reflected an excellent book, he was asked questions about cyberwarfare. There Mr. Boot reflects a standard view which I find to be incorrect. Just as government power is required to protect the people against invading powers, including Guerillas (given proper counter-insurgency measures), he feels similar protective measures will do the trick with cyberwarfare. He regrets that the Snowden case has made people less willing to accept well-intentioned government intrusion into computer-land in order to protect against things like cyberwarfare threats.
As I've made clear in prior posts, computers have changed the landscape. They're a new kind of thing, just like media is, and one that changes the equations. The Snowden case illustrates this.
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