tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42452794428803380572024-03-13T13:21:59.714-07:00Materials for Two Theories: TIMN and STA:CHow and why four cardinal forms of organization — tribes, institutions, markets, networks (TIMN) — explain social evolution. How and why space-time-action cognitions (STA:C) explain people's mindsets.David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.comBlogger237125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-6481971692739370072023-02-20T08:41:00.003-08:002023-02-20T08:52:04.284-08:00Chapter 2. Backstory: From Cyberocracy To Networks To TIMN<span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[In my original outline for <i>How and Why
Societies Evolve, Some Better than Others</i>, this preliminary draft chapter
was going to lay out the basics of TIMN.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But as I was writing an introductory paragraph, it got longer and
longer, and morphed into this new backstory chapter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope it helps orient readers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have updated the outline at the end of
Chapter 1, originally posted here on February<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>8, 2023.]</span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Initially, I had no thought of writing about
social evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My interest in the
topic arose from a progression of happenstances that generated its own flow over
the course of ten years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have not reminisced
about this before — I usually leap directly into laying TIMN out. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But on this occasion I mean to recount this
backstory, for it had unconventional effects on how I came to approach social
evolution, for the better. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I had turned
to focus directly on social evolution from the start, I would never have unearthed
TIMN.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Cyberocracy Is Coming</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">A few years after starting to work at RAND in
1972 as a specialist on U.S.-Latin American security relations, I happened to
read Alvin Toffler’s <i>Future Shock</i> (1970) at a friend’s urging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This book, not to mention other matters — I
received my first office computer in the late 1970s, began hearing in the
hallways about the ARPANET (forerunner of the Internet), and kept coming across
inspiring new speculations about the future, notably William Gibson’s science-fiction
novel <i>Neuromancer</i> (1984) — pulled me into sensing that a world-changing
information technology revolution would soon take hold.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Thus, literally staring at my office wall in
1978 (1979?) and wondering what I really wanted to be doing, I decided to start
taking steps to move beyond Latin American matters and re- focus on worldwide
political implications of the dawning information revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In particular, I decided to focus on
prospects for <i>cyberocracy</i>, the term I coined at the time for speculating
about likely political effects and implications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It then took me ten years of off-and-on
efforts to re-educate myself and make the transition, but I finally produced
results: an informal paper about “Cyberocracy, Cyberspace, and Cyberology:
Political Effects of the Information Revolution” (1991), plus an iteration for
journal publication, “Cyberocracy Is Coming” (1992). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">My work in this phase was entirely future-oriented;
I still did not sense that I might end up analyzing past, present, and future aspects
of social evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, the word
“evolution” appears only once in my first paper thirty years ago:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“What new ‘ism’ or ‘ocracy’ may arise?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The purpose or this paper is to suggest that <i>cyberocracy</i>
is coming. This term, from the roots ‘cyber-‘ and ‘-ocracy,’ signifies rule by
way of information. As it develops, information and its control will become a
dominant source of power as a natural next step in man's political evolution.
In the past, under aristocracy, the high-born ruled; under theocracy, the high
priests ruled. In modern times, democracy and bureaucracy have enabled new
kinds of people to participate. In turn, cyberocracy, by arising from the
current revolution in information and communications technologies, may slowly
but radically affect who rules, how, and why.” (Ronfeldt, 1991, p. 2) </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">However, this work did lead me to conclude that
the information revolution would increasingly favor and strengthen the rise of new
network forms of organization:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“It may turn out that knowledge is to the study
of information what wealth has been to the study of economics, and power to the
study of politics. (It also may turn out that networks are to the study of
information what markets have been to the study of economics, and institutions
to the study of politics.)”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Ronfeldt, 1991,
p. 4)</span></p><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“<i>Global Interconnection: Networks Versus
Nations</i>. We are moving out of an era of global interdependence and into an
era of global interconnection. The attention-getting trend today is the rise of
global markets (e.g., for goods, ideas). Yet the spread of transnational and
global networks (not only communications, but also social and organizational
networks) among corporations, governments, advocacy groups and other
nongovernment organizations, international and multilateral agencies,
transnational elites, and so on, may have equally profound effects on the
nature of the new order.</span></p><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“As these organizational networks build, cutting
across public and private sectors and national borders and interests,
influential new sub- and supranational actors may increasingly compete for
influence with national actors. As political and economic interests grow in
protecting and expanding networks, the networks themselves may increasingly
take precedence over nation-states as the driving factor in domestic and
foreign affairs. The government that gains the lead in building and shaping
these organizational networks should gain enormous comparative advantage to
influence the direction the world goes in economically, politically, and
socially.” (Ronfeldt, 1991, pp. 77-78)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">More to the point, I added to the 1992 iteration
a new section — <i>From Hierarchies to Networks</i> — to insist that “The
information revolution appears to be making ‘networks’ relatively more
important, and interesting, than ‘hierarchies’ as a form of organization” (Ronfeldt,
1992, p. 274).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This proposition became
central to my work on most all matters from then on.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Networks To Rule The Future </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Given the significance I saw for information-age
networks, I then wondered whether to start educating myself about (a) how to
analyze social and organizational networks in technical detail, or (b) what
other forms of organization besides networks were analytically significant and
why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew I could not do both (too
much reading, since these were new fields for me). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also figured it was a choice that could
affect my interests and abilities for years to come. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I chose the latter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">So, while I was still not intent on learning
about social evolution <i>per se</i>, I headed into reading about the major
forms of organization that people used, and how they compared to each
other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was easy to identify the iconic
two forms — hierarchies and markets — for sociologists and economists had
written about them for decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
contrast, few scholars studied networks prior to 1990. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there were inspiring exceptions, notably
about social movements becoming “segmented, polycentric, ideologically
integrated networks” (Gerlach and Hine, 1970). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And by 1991, after getting ahold of “Neither
Market Nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization” (Powell, 1990), I had
enough materials to feel confident that hierarchies, markets, and networks were
the cardinal forms of organization that all societies depended on (see
Ronfeldt, 1993, 1996, for details and citations.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">For comparative reasons, I then wondered about
hierarchies and markets the way I had about networks:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If networks were the form of the future,
enabled by a radical new information revolution, what about hierarchies and
markets?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly, hierarchies, in the
form of states, armies, and other large institutions, took hold centuries
before markets gained sway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, I
learned, the rise of hierarchical institutions depended on the development of
writing and printing technologies; whereas the rise of markets depended on
telegraphy, telephony, and other electrical technologies in the 19<sup>th</sup>
century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In sum, the rise of each older form
— first hierarchies, then markets — had required the rise of a new and different
information-technology revolution, in one case for writing and printing, in the
next for electrical communication and storage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That fit just fine with my argument that networks would be next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had found a progression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Next, <i>IMN</i> Evolves Into <i>TIMN</i> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">With that observation, I realized I had scoped
out not only a future-oriented framework for comparative organizational analysis,
but potentially even a framework about long-range social evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would have at its core the phased
emergence and maturation of three forms of organization: first hierarchies,
then markets, and now networks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For arguable
reasons, I decided to use “institutions” (meaning hierarchical institutions) in
place of “hierarchies” in my formulation — hence the acronym <i>IMN</i> for
I/institutions + M/markets + N/networks to denote my first effort to lay out a
framework about social organization and evolution (Ronfeldt, 1993).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Yet, after further mulling as well as
road-testing a couple talks about IMN in 1992, this formulation felt
incomplete. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Social organization and
evolution did not start with states; surely there is a fundamental form of
organization that preceded states and other hierarchical institutions. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">So, I undertook another round of readings — mostly
classic anthropology texts about early forms of social organization, long
before states arose. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These impressive writings
illuminated the centrality of kinship forms of organization — families, bands, clans,
tribes, etc. — and their normally acephalous, segmentary, egalitarian nature (for
details, see Ronfeldt, 2007).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover,
I learned that an economist had proposed adding “clans” to the categorizations
used by economists (Ouchi, 1980)— further confirmation I was stepping in
sensible directions. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which was still
further confirmed as I finally began reading about theories of social evolution
(notably, Sanderson, 1990, 1995, 1999, 2001).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">While I came across several naming options I
settled on regarding this early form as the tribal form, added T/<i>tribes</i>
to the framework, and renamed it <i>TIMN</i> (Ronfeldt, 1996). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally I felt certain that I was in the
presence of a potentially full-fledged forward-looking framework about social organization
and evolution across the ages, with implications for the future. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Along the way, it immediately proved useful,
first for forecasting new modes of conflict we named <i>cyberwar</i> and <i>netwar</i>
(Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1993, 1996), and later for heralding new modes of
cooperation among activist NGOs (non-governmental organizations) associated
with civil society (Ronfeldt, 2005).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Coda: A Fortunate And Promising Find</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">And that’s how and why I ended up with TIMN — obliquely
and circuitously. If, back in the late, I had been drawn to focus on social
evolution rather than the information revolution, and if I had then pursued the
topic directly, concentrate on learning about existing theories of social
evolution from the start, I would surely never have sensed the rising
importance of network forms of organization in the 1980s, much less come up
with TIMN in the 1990s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">To my knowledge, no other scholarly approach to
social evolution, then or since, has emphasized the rise of network forms of
organization, nor held that quadriform societies may someday supersede today’s
triform societies. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other frameworks do
identify major stages of evolution that overlap with TIMN; but none do so in
terms of a progression of forms of organization that emerge, interact, and
combine to define those stages (phases).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Moreover, while other frameworks observe that social evolution may
exhibit historical cycles, spirals, or waves of one kind or another, only TIMN
has served to identify recurrent system dynamics that attend the rise of every new
form of organization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, TIMN
has implications for policy and strategy that other frameworks lack, as I
discuss later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These unique aspects make
TIMN worth pursuing, do they not?.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">All the while, I have never regarded TIMN as a
framework that I am trying to build.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Instead, it has always felt like an ancient archeological artifact that
I inadvertently stumbled across and am still trying to unearth, open up, and
see inside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>O Fortuna</i>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Yet I am also finding it no slam-dunk to tell
other theorists and strategists about TIMN, especially if they are already
committed to established streams of analysis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But then again, I have repeatedly flagged and faltered in trying to
write it up in full.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe I can do
better this time.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">CHAPTER BIBLIOGRAPHY</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt,
"Cyberwar is Coming!" <i>Comparative Strategy</i>, Vol. 12, No. 2,
Summer 1993, pp. 141-165.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Online at: <br />
https://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP223.html</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt, <i>The
Advent Of Netwar,</i> Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, MR-789-OSD, 1996.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Online at: <br />
https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR789.html</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Gerlach, Luther P., and Virginia Hine, <i>People,
Power, Change: Movements of Social Transformation</i>, New York: The
Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1970. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Gibson, William, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Neuromancer</i>, New York: Ace Books, 1984.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Ouchi, William G., “Markets, Bureaucracies, and
Clans,” <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, Vol. 25, No. 1, March 1980,
pp. 129–141.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Ronfeldt, David, <i>Cyberocracy, Cyberspace, and
Cyberology: Political Effects of the Information Revolution</i>. Santa Monica,
Calif.: RAND, P-7745, 1991.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Online at : <br />
at https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7745.html.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Ronfeldt, David, “Cyberocracy Is Coming,” <i>The
Information Society</i>, vol. 8, no. 4, 1992, pp. 243–296. Online at: <br />
http://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP222/. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Ronfeldt, David, “Institutions, Markets, and
Networks: A Framework about the Evolution of Societies,” (Draft Report), Santa
Monica, Calif.: RAND, DRU-550-FF, 1993. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Available at: <br />
https://www.rand.org/pubs/drafts/DRU590.html</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Ronfeldt, David, <i>Tribes, Institutions,
Markets, Networks: A Framework About Societal Evolution</i>. Santa Monica,
Calif.: RAND, P-7607, 1996.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Online at: <br />
http://www.rand.org/publications/P/P7967. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Ronfeldt, David, “A Long Look Ahead: NGOs,
Networks, and Future Social Evolution,” in Robert Olson and David Rejeski,
eds., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Environmentalism and the
Technologies of Tomorrow</i>, Washington, D.C.: Russell Sage, 2005, Ch. 9, pp.
89–98.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Online at: <br />
http://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP1169/index.html.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Ronfeldt, David, <i>IN SEARCH OF HOW SOCIETIES
WORK: Tribes — The First and Forever Form,</i> Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND,
WR-433-RPC, 2007.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Online at: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR433.html<b> </b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Powell, Walter W., “Neither Market Nor
Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization,” in Barry M. Staw and L. L. Cummings,
eds., <i>Research in Organizational Behavior: An Annual Series of Analytical
Essays and Critical Reviews</i>, Vol. 12, 1990, pp. 295–336. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Sanderson, Stephen K., <i>Social Evolutionism: A
Critical History</i>, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1990. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Sanderson, Stephen K., <i>Social
Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development, </i>Cambridge,
Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1995. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Sanderson, Stephen K., <i>Social
Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development</i>, expanded ed.,
New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Sanderson, Stephen K., <i>The Evolution of Human
Sociality: A Darwinian Conflict Perspective</i>, New York: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 2001. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Toffler, Alvin, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Future Shock</i>, Random House Inc., New York, 1970.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-5713210052517791232023-02-08T08:25:00.002-08:002023-02-08T08:55:37.753-08:00Re-Post of "Points To Ponder As We Move Ahead With TIMN — #1"<span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#12 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Originally posted at Substack on September 27,
2022, at: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/points-to-ponder-as-we-move-ahead</span></p>
<p class="Body"><b>- - - - - - - </b></p>
<p class="Body">Now that I have posted a draft of Chapter One, and since I’m
likely to be as slow to draft the next chapters, I am adding this side-discussion
(probably a series of side-discussions) about additional points that may figure
in later chapters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They seem worthy of
broaching right now in order to provide perspective on where I am headed, and
how I would advise readers to approach TIMN:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></p>
<p class="Body">•<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have never regarded
TIMN as something I am trying to create or construct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, it feels like an archeological
artifact that I stumbled upon and am still trying to unearth, open up, and see
inside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">Moreover, TIMN is not about extending the ideas of any particular
philosopher or theorist. It has plenty of room for all sorts of influences, all
mixed together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I have mentioned in
earlier write-ups, TIMN appears to have Darwinian, Hegelian, Marxian, and
Parsonian aspects, but others could be noted as well, including from modern
complexity, chaos, and collapse theories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>TIMN even seems concordant with ages-old Buddhist principles about
seeking harmony and balance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not
because I meant for TIMN to reflect such influences (I am not an expert on any
of them) — they have simply become evident, the more I unearth TIMN.</p>
<p class="Body">This multiplicity of reflections seems a strength of TIMN,
connecting it to a variety of philosophical and theoretical strands, as I hope
to elaborate in a later chapter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For now,
however, I would note a curiosity: the seeming disinterest of Darwinian social
theorists whenever I have attempted to call TIMN to their attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve only had brief interactions with a few
over the years, so I am not certain that my perception is correct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">My own view is that TIMN is thoroughly Darwinian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It could easily be written up in terms of the
key principles of Darwinian evolution: variation, adaptation, selection, and
replication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, someday, I shall have
to try anew to find out why Darwinian social theorists seem to find TIMN
uninteresting, even objectionable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps it is because I have not fielded it in Darwinian terms?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or because TIMN focuses on “forms” whereas
today’s Darwinians focus more on “levels” of social evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or because I am not using a standard
data-based scientific method?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or because
I regard TIMN as predictive, primed to forecast the emergence of a new realm,
whereas Darwinians seem averse to prediction?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Or, as noted, perhaps my perception is wrong?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It could be instructive to find out someday. </p>
<p class="Body">•<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Try not to get hung up
on the terms I use to name each form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
you prefer <i>kinships</i> (or <i>segmentary lineages</i>) over <i>tribes</i>,
or <i>hierarchies</i> over <i>institutions</i>, that is okay with me (and it
has happened).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What matters is that each
form’s defining structures and dynamics remain the same (or much the same), whatever
synonym or cognate term is preferred.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bear
in mind too that my use of the <i>institutions</i> here refers to hierarchical
institutions like states, militaries, and corporations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It does not refer to a common academic usage
whereby any long-established custom or other pattern of behavior, like marriage
or slavery, is viewed as institutionalized, and thus an institution.</p>
<p class="Body">I have yet to see a better term than <i>markets</i>, though <i>exchanges</i>
comes close.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, I would object to
substituting <i>capitalism</i> for <i>markets</i>, for they are not the
same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The +M in TIMN is about model market
systems that are ideally open, free, and fair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Capitalism can work that way, but that is often not its nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For its actors often try to fashion quite the
opposite — dynamics that are not open, free, or fair — perhaps through biased infusions
of the tribal form (e.g., cronyism) or the institutional form (e.g., legalized
monopoly), thereby exploiting old T-type and I-type forces in order to avoid, displace,
and deform +M’s nature, creating a rigged and possibly malignant hybrid, the
case with what is being called “late capitalism.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, I now think a case can be made
that American-style late capitalism is a principal cause of the enormous
systemic problem we know as homelessness — whereas it would make no sense to
claim that the market form <i>per se</i> causes homelessness. </p>
<p class="Body">As for the term <i>networks</i>, when I unearthed TIMN in the
early 1990s, references to network forms of organization were fairly rare, appearing
mostly in the small emerging fields of social network analysis and economic
transaction analysis. But by now, decades later, <i>networks</i> has
become a hugely expansive concept, driven by the rise of network science, complexity
theory, and social network analysis as new fields of academic and scientific
endeavor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their proponents tend to view all
forms of organization as networks, meaning that all of TIMN’s four forms — tribes,
hierarchical institutions, markets, and networks — are just varieties of
networks. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Compared to my original
intent, that is too expansive and generic a view of networks — it is tantamount
to conceptual imperialism.</p>
<p class="Body">My original intent was to name a fourth form of organization that
is distinct from the other three. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My sense,
as I shall explain in later chapters, is that TIMN implies the emergence of a
distinct kind of network form and the consolidation of a realm of actors and
activities around it — a network-based design that allows egalitarian equitable
organization (and administration) across a large set of actors, activities, and
issues. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">Once this becomes clearer, months (years?) from now, I may morph
TIMN into TIME, by replacing +N (for networks) with +E (for “equinets”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To specify a form that may define a new realm
and its sector, “equinets” seems a more apt, more distinctive term than plain
“networks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We shall see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If so, the TIMN framework will then become
the TIME framework.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I have lots of matters
to clarify before that may be a sensible step.</p>
<p class="Body">•<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would advise readers
to avoid wondering where quadriformism may fit on today’s political and
ideological spectrums — whether it bends Left or Right, or whether it is a
progressive, liberal, or conservative concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For the most part, today’s grand isms — progressivism, liberalism,
conservatism — are ideologies tied to the nature of the triform system; they
are designed for taking positions about what to do with that system’s
structures and processes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that will
change if/as quadriform ideas emerge and take hold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">For now, I sometimes try to fashion myself as a nascent
quadriformist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I have no idea
whether I am a left- or right-leaning or a purely centrist quadriformist, or
whether today’s kinds of Left and Right will make sense in the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am sure, however, that neither capitalism
nor socialism — key isms for over a hundred years now — will endure in the ways
we see them today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will explain in
future chapter posts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">Meanwhile, I hope you too will entertain becoming a
quadriformist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, if quadriformism
seems appealing to you, then I would advise you to be wary about trendy new
ideas for transformative societal reforms, be they from the Right, Left, or
Center, that ultimately retain the triformist design — the case, for example,
with many current proposals for reforming capitalism, including by creating “a fourth
sector of the economy” (and only the economy).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They may be good ideas, worth pursuing for a while, but the ones I have
come across are not as radical and transformative as may be presumed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will be writing more on this later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body" style="border: medium none; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">• The worlds
of statecraft and grand strategy are currently focused on the vast struggle
taking shape nowadays between autocracy and democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>TIMN offers a perspective that could help
improve U.S. strategy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body" style="border: medium none; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">Proponents of
U.S. policies and programs to export liberal democracy have generally focused
on developing the political structures and processes that liberal democracy
requires abroad: pro-democracy leaders, political parties, free and fair
elections, independent legislatures, diverse information media, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Policies and programs for doing so usually
notice the importance of cultural and economic conditions as well, but these
tend to be background rather than up-front concerns. </p>
<p class="Body" style="border: medium none; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">TIMN
instructs stepping back to see the roles that each TIMN form has played in the
rise and functioning of liberal democracy. To put it bluntly, what made liberal
democracy thinkable and doable several centuries ago was the rise of the +M
market form, for it embodies the ideals of free and fair competition and open
information flows that political democracy requires.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Liberal democracy is the result, then, of the
+M form feeding back into and reshaping the +I form in environments where
strong T-type forces (e.g., dynasties, aristocracies, cronies) can be
contained.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border: medium none; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">From a TIMN
viewpoint, then, today’s great ideological cleavage between autocracy and
democracy is the surface manifestation of a deeper evolutionary cleavage
between those societies that can adopt and adapt to the +M form in positive
ways, and those that have not and still cannot do so properly (like Russia,
Cuba, Venezuela).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today’s debates are
usually conducted as though there is a choice between autocracy or democracy;
yet the deeper choice, the real challenge, is whether and how to adopt and
adapt to the market form in all its aspects, which are about much more than
just economics and economic freedom.</p>
<p class="Body">This goes for America<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>too:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>TIMN seems to imply (pending
further analysis) that if an economic market system is distorted and decays, then
political democracy will become distorted and decay too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If that hypothesis is sound, then it can be
said that the right-wing anti-democratic movements besieging U.S. politics
nowadays are mirroring the downsides of “late capitalism” — they are negative
externalities of each other (though positive for right-wing ideologues).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which may mean America will not be able to
rectify what is going wrong in our political market system if we cannot also
repair and rectify what should be going right in our economic market
system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aargh. </p>
<p class="Body">That’s all for now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More
next time</p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-32201102286776489212023-02-08T08:20:00.003-08:002023-02-08T08:58:10.455-08:00Re-Post of TIMN Draft "Chapter 1. Anticipating The Emergence Of Quadriform Societies"<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#11 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Originally posted at Substack on September 27,
2022, at: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/how-and-why-societies-evolve-some <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">- - - - - - - <br /></span></p>
<p align="center" class="Body" style="text-align: center;"><b>HOW AND WHY SOCIETIES
EVOLVE, SOME BETTER THAN OTHERS</b></p>
<p align="center" class="Body" style="text-align: center;"><b>[Prospective Manuscript
Title]</b></p>
<p class="Body"><b> </b></p><p class="Body"><b>Chapter 1. Anticipating The Emergence Of Quadriform Societies</b> </p><p class="Body"> </p><p class="Body">Our society, like most societies, has three major realms: civil
society, government, and the economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>How and why we came to have a society that has those three realms is a
long story; but have them we do — nearly everybody says so; and nearly
everybody takes them for granted, as a design we have always had, and seemingly
always will have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">But here is the bottom line up front:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the decades ahead — and it will take
decades — America’s future depends on achieving a major evolutionary transition
from its current <i>triform</i> design — meaning it has those three major
realms (civil society + government + market economy) — to a next-generation <i>quadriform</i>
design with four major realms (civil society + government + market economy + a-new-realm-yet-to-unfold).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">Why does a fourth realm seem likely to emerge?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, what actors and activities seem likely
to comprise it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While neither question
has a certain answer at this point, the why question has a clearer answer than
the what.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">The why is because of the emergence of new network forms of
organization, enabled by history’s latest (digital) information and
communications technology revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Across
the ages, each time a major new form of organization has come to the fore, along
with a new information and communications technology revolution, the result has
been the definition of a new realm of activity and governance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I shall explain later, there have been
three such history-bending transformations in the past; we are now in the early
phases of a fourth.</p>
<p class="Body">Looking ahead, the what question comes down to figuring out what mounting
challenges a growing society faces that have finally outgrown the capabilities
of its existing forms of organization, and thus require new forms of
organization for those challenges to be effectively addressed and resolved. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Best I can tell, based on a logic I shall
unfold in subsequent chapters, the actors and activities that are most muddled
and can benefit the most from the emergence of a new network-based realm are in
the fields of health, education, welfare, and the environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These may appear to be markedly different
fields; but they are quite interrelated — improvements in one field usually
benefit the others too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
interrelates them thematically is that they are all about <i>care</i>: not
power, not profit, but care — ranging from people care to planet care,
preferably for the common good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">For decades they have been treated as separate policy problems,
with some pieces in the public sector, others in the private sector, while
other aspects are tossed back to burden families and communities in the
civil-society sector.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet health,
education, welfare, and environmental matters have become so crucial and complex,
so interconnected and interactive with each other, that it is advisable to view
them as a combined set and let them move, and be moved, into their own realm
and sector: a care-centric net-work-based “commons sector,” separate from but
also linked to our customary civil-society, public, and private sectors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">If/when this occurs, America will have accomplished a transition to
a quadriform system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>America will emerge
stronger and better-structured as a complex society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will be newly able to get more things done,
more simply and effectively, easing and improving people’s lives better than
ever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will be better designed to
resolve crucial policy problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will
cease to face the systemic deadlock and decay it currently faces. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will become re-energized as a society and
civilization.</p>
<p class="Body">If America cannot make this structural transition, its current
two-centuries-old triform design may still be adjustable enough to muddle along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But America’s current system is close to (perhaps
already over) the limits of what a triform design can accomplish well,
politically, economically, socially, and otherwise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Barring a transition, America is likely to become
evermore indecisive, ineffective, and grid-locked, so riven by political tribalism
and policy confusion, that it may collapse rather than keep muddling along.</p>
<p class="Body">T<span lang="IT" style="mso-ansi-language: IT;">riform</span>? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Q<span lang="IT" style="mso-ansi-language: IT;">uadriform</span>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fourth sector?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those terms may seem odd, even jarring at
first sight. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But bear with me — for what
they mean is simple enough, and only a few paragraphs away. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are concepts that work to chart the past,
present, and future of our society’s evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></p>
<p class="Body"><b>Across The Centuries: From Monoform To Biform To Triform
Societies</b></p>
<p class="Body">The reason people assemble into societies is to enable them to
live better by living together. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is why,
ages ago, people first clustered together in familial clans and communal <span lang="PT" style="mso-ansi-language: PT;">tribes</span><span lang="PT"> </span>centered
around kinship ties, structures, codes, and customs — making <i>tribes</i> the
first major form of social organization and evolution. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, centuries later, people began to benefit
from and accommodate to the formation of states, armies, and other hierarchical
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">institutions</span> — making <i>institutions</i>
the second major form of organization, which enabled large undertakings that
required central command and control, undertakings that tribes alone could not
accomplish well, such as constructing irrigation systems and organizing territorial
defense forces. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next, still more
centuries later, people transformed their societies again, this time to make
room for the growth of markets based on free fair exchanges of goods and
services — making <i>markets</i> the third major form of organization and
evolution, which enabled businesses to grow and commerce to flourish, alongside
but relatively free of preexisting tribal and statist constraints. </p>
<p class="Body">Not everybody benefitted along the way. But overall, this
evolutionary progression — from tribe-centric, to state-centric, to
market-centric systems — has enabled most societies to perform better, so that
people lived better. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus societies grew
in complexity and capability across the ages as people learned to add and combine
the tribal, institutional, and market forms of organization. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">In doing so, societies gradually advanced in complexity from
monoform (tribes-only), to biform (tribes + institutions), to triform designs
(tribes + institutions + markets). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Along
the way, the tribal form morphed into becoming the core of what we now call civil
society, the institutional form into today’s modern administrative state, and
the market form into today’s capitalist economy — making civil society,
government, and the market economy into the three grand realms of all modern
societies.</p>
<p class="Body">The best result has been the United States of America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For over two centuries, it has been the
paragon of a triform society — the epitome of a liberal democracy aglow with an
energetic civil society, a strong and trusted system of government, and a
thriving market economy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, after
the fall of the Soviet Union (a dictatorial biform system that deliberately excluded
the market form), the success of our own and other triform democratic societies
inspired an optimistic belief in the <span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" face=""Arial Unicode MS",sans-serif" lang="AR-SA" style="mso-ansi-language: AR-SA; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>“</span>end of history” idea, whereby </p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" face=""Arial Unicode MS",sans-serif" lang="AR-SA" style="mso-ansi-language: AR-SA; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>“</span>What we may witnessing is not just the end of the Cold
War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of
history as such: that is, the end point of mankind<span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" face=""Arial Unicode MS",sans-serif" lang="AR-SA" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span>s ideological evolution and the universalization of
Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government” (Fukuyama,
1989, 1992).</p>
<p class="Body">However, matters have not evolved that way; and they remain
unlikely to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fight for Ukraine
has revitalized Fukuyama’s and others’ hopes to revitalize the “end of history”
model.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even so, it is essentially a
trifom model, fielded not only at the moment of its greatest power and success
in the late 20th Century, but also, unknowingly, on the eve of its evolutionary
finitude.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Belief in this supposedly
final model has thus limited people<span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" face=""Arial Unicode MS",sans-serif" lang="AR-SA" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span>s
thinking about how societies could and should be structured in the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For this model does not recognize the
emergence of a fourth grand form of organization and evolution: information-age
<i>networks</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">Most nations are still trying to get the triform model right — this
is not easy to do, and the world would be a far better place if they did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But other nations, America in particular, are
so advanced that, even as our leaders endeavor to fix what has gone wrong in
each existing triform realm, they would be well advised to at least begin thinking
and planning for transformation to a quadriform model.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doing so is not on any leader’s agenda today,
but it will eventually become imperative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></p>
<p class="Body">The rise of the fourth form — the digital-age network form of
organization and evolution — will lead to a renewal of history, not its end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, history has restarted each time a next-new
form has emerged to take hold in the past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It will do so again.</p>
<p class="Body"><b>Emergence Of The Network Form<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of Organization And Evolution</b></p>
<p class="Body">Distributed decentralized multi-node network forms of
organization have existed for ages; in modern eras, some business enterprises
as well as activist civil-society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) were early adopters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But networks were not deemed a distinct form of organization worthy of specialized
academic analysis and theorizing until the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the
spread of fax machines and then other new digital devices, services, and
systems, especially the internet, made network designs far more feasible and attractive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">Today, networks of all kinds attract constant massive attention;
they have spread everywhere, affecting everything in all realms and sectors of
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People are turning to networks
wherever they can, sometimes as though networks may prove the cure-alls that
earlier people used to think hierarchies or markets would be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first it was thought that CSOs and NGOs
would benefit more than other actors, but this is not what has happened so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, dark actors from uncivil society
(terrorists, criminals, etc.) have benefitted as much as civil-society’s
bright-side actors from turning to information-age networks designs</p>
<p class="Body">Yet, the rise of the network form — along with its particular enabling
technologies, organizational dynamics, and philosophical implications, distinct
from those of the earlier three forms — is still in early disruptive phases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It remains unclear exactly what kinds of actors
and activities — and what kinds of systemic functions — the network form may be
best suited to enabling and energizing in the decades ahead. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">For the time being, the rise of the information-age network form helps
account for the vast loosening and questioning, both functional and
dysfunctional, that has beset all three realms of our aging triform system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, none of these realms and their
sectors are functioning properly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Civil
society’s variously-named sector(s), the government’s public sector, and the
economy’s private sector all appear to be in distress, overburdened, and out of
whack, thus functioning poorly, even coming apart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some problems — too many to list in this
first chapter, but voiced everyday by people everywhere — are internal to each
sector.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Others pertain to how the three sectors
interconnect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some problems are now so
chronic and complicated that multiple observers, from Left to Right, claim our
society is failing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">Amid all the explanations and solutions being proposed, what is
yet to be noticed fully is that many of today’s chronic systemic problems are
largely the result of: </p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">(1) the success of the triform model at
generating so much progress across the last two centuries, for prolonged progress
always creates new problems that test and eventually confound a system’s
capacity for further growth; </p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">(2) the advent of a next-new form of
organization and evolution — this time, the network form — atop a new
information and communications technology revolution that offers new ways to
grow.</p>
<p class="Body">In short. the rise of this network form is shaking up the entire triform
design, even as the form’s ultimate implications remain unclear, even
unseen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, that is what the rise of
a major new form of organization always does to societies: it stirs them to
pull, apart even as it offers new ways to re-assemble — and the pulling-apart
precedes and prompts the re-assembling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">Unfortunately, America<span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" face=""Arial Unicode MS",sans-serif" lang="AR-SA" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span>s
current political, economic, and social leaders are still thinking and planning
in triform ways, as evidenced by their continual proposals for public-private
partnerships to resolve this or that issue, sometimes with nods to
strengthening the roles of civil-society actors as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, these leaders cannot do otherwise, for
the triformist design is all they have known — they are unable to think and act
otherwise. </p>
<p class="Body">Meanwhile — a long meanwhile by now — America looks increasingly off-balance
and out-of-balance, in trouble across all realms and sectors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Broken individuals, broken families, broken
communities, and broken mores afflict civil society, far and wide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All areas and levels of government seem
increasingly broken as well, with more and more people losing faith in its leaders,
offices, and operations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oligopolistic corporations,
rigged markets, and predatory “late capitalism” keep distorting what is
supposed to be a free and fair market economy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s just to mention a handful of pan-systemic
ailments and dysfunctions, without noting myriad others and the worsening synergies
among them. </p>
<p class="Body">Many Americans are living adequately enough (myself included); so
all is not doom and gloom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in light
of the above:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No wonder America seems to
be losing ground as an ideal power and exemplary model.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No wonder so many Americans are angry and alienated,
reverting to the earliest form of social organization and evolution: the tribal
form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No wonder malignant tribalism is
spreading across the political spectrum, led on by exploitive domestic as well
as outside actors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No wonder cruelty and
inequity are on the rise.</p>
<p class="Body">All sorts of cogent conscientious analyses have appeared about these
matters, and myriad more are on the way — too many to comment on here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I would hark on one crucial observation:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of them, even the most transformational
analyses, presume that our society has three major realms, and that this will
remain the case well into the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
triform model is taken for granted; and networks are treated as a modifying
form, not a major next-new form that may bring an end to the triform design.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I have come across one exception, to be
discussed in a future chapter.)</p>
<p class="Body"><b>Onward Toward Quadriform Societies (Based on TIMN)</b></p>
<p class="Body">Thus we find ourselves caught in an evolutionary quandary,
peering Janus-like in two directions, facing two grand choices that we seem
barely aware of:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 1in; mso-list: l4 level1 lfo12; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>One is to persist with the triform system we
know — the legacy of the past, the presumptive given — and keep trying to reform
and adjust it. </p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 1in; mso-list: l4 level1 lfo12; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>The other, once it is glimpsed, is to head deliberately
toward a quadriform re-shaping — the promise of the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">It is an unsettling choice, bound to bring difficulties and
uncertainties no matter which choice is made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the first option will ultimately prove futile; only the second can
prove fertile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">I shall argue for pursuing the quadriformist option.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I shall rely on what I call the TIMN
framework to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Actually, I have used
it throughout this chapter; I just have not said so until now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All mentions of tribes, institutions,
markets, and networks as cardinal forms of organization are based on TIMN, an
acronym comprised of the first letters of those four forms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ideas about an evolutionary progression
from monoform to biform to triform and potentially to quadriform societies are
also drawn from TIMN.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will lay all
this out in coming chapters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">TIMN has plenty to offer regarding how to assess and address the problems
our triform system currently faces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, even
if you do not accept that a quadriform system is a possibility that would work
better in the future, you may still learn something new from TIMN about how to
improve our current system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, my primary
objective is to call for moving toward a quadriform transformation. </p>
<p class="Body">This will be accomplished in the chapters ahead by conveying what
appear to be three unique implications of TIMN: </p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">• The first is that social evolution
revolves around not only a core set of four organizational forms but also a set
of system dynamics (rules, principles) that come into play every time a
next-new form arises and matures — to wit, whenever there is a major
evolutionary transition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Identifying these
recurrent dynamics, which can be done by examining the transitions from
monoform to biform to triform societies, can enable us to prefigure what to
expect from a prospective transition from a triform to a quadriform society.</p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">• The second unique implication is that the
emergence of the network form will lead to the emergence of a new networks-based
realm, with its own sector(s).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will
serve to encompass and resolve complex problems that our aging public and
private sectors are no longer suited to addressing, and that cannot, and should
not, be left alone to burden families and activists in civil-society.</p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">• The third implication, in keeping with
the first two, is that this next-new sector will be as distinct from the prior
three sectors as they are from each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The others are defined not only by distinct forms of organization but
also by their different purposes, functions, values, and motivations, as well
as by their different approaches to property and finance, and of course by the
different kinds of actors and activities with which we associate them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to TIMN, the fourth realm and its
sector will be likewise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">Exactly what actors and activities may comprise the next-new
realm?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How might we know apart from
sheer speculation?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I indicated above,
and for reasons I shall expand in future chapters, TIMN implies that the fourth
sector, like the prior three, will emerge and take shape around a core challenge,
or set of challenges, that the prior sectors are no longer suited to addressing
and resolving, yet that must be addressed and resolved if a society as a whole
is to keep progressing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Best I can
deduce — if you have a better idea, please advance it — the challenges that most
fit this criterion are health, education, welfare, and the environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">Curiously, these matters, viewed as a set, involve a common
cross-cutting theme; and that theme is <i>care</i>, broadly defined — <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;">individual and collective care; people
care, life care, indeed the care of body, mind, and soul; political, social,
cultural, and environmental care, indeed planetary care. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The overarching goal is to assure that people
can do their best for themselves, for their families and communities, and for
the common good of society. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body">For decades these care-centric matters were manageable enough to
fit, and be force-fitted, into various public, private, and public-private programs,
sometimes with civil-society actors playing roles too. By now, however, these
problems have all become so enormous, complicated, unsettled, and unsettling,
that they beg for new approaches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a
set, they have outgrown the triform framework in ways our leaders do not see
yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">For America to remain on the cutting edge of human progress and
social evolution, our leaders better start seeing this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From a TIMN standpoint, what seems most
advisable is that this fourth sector be a “commons sector,” with health,
education, welfare, and environmental matters migrated out of the existing
three sectors and into this next-new one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>More on that as we go along.</p>
<p class="Body"><b>The Chapters Ahead</b></p>
<p class="Body">That is the argument I shall unfold in a series of chapters to be
posted here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tentative title is <i>How
and Why Societies Evolve, Some Better than Others</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The chapter order I currently have in mind is
as follows:</p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo11; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Anticipating The Emergence Of Quadriform
Societies [this chapter]</p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo11; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Backstory: From Cyberocracy To Networks To <i>TIMN</i></p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo11; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Overview Of Social Evolution: Past, Present, And
Future</p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo11; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="border: medium none; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="border: medium none;">Organizational </span></span><span style="border: medium none; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="border: medium none;">F</span></span><span style="border: medium none; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="border: medium none;">orms </span></span><span style="border: medium none; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="border: medium none;">C</span></span><span style="border: medium none; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="border: medium none;">ompared: TIMN vs. </span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">O</span><span style="border: medium none; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="border: medium none;">ther </span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Frameworks</span></p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo11; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Explaining
Social Evolution: TIMN’s Recurrent System Dynamics</span></p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo11; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Forecasting The Fourth Realm: Toward A Care-Centric
Commons Sector</p>
<p class="Body" style="margin-left: 0.75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo11; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>America Transformed: Implications For Theory, Policy,
And Strategy</p>
<p class="Body">Decades may pass before anyone can know for sure whether what I
am about to lay out amounts to scientific analysis or science fiction — a
protopian guide to the future, or a misconceived conjecture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All I know for certain is that it is my
driven duty to try to lay it out, and that I am at least ten years behind in
doing so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">Surely the triform design is not the best design that
evolutionary progress can offer humanity — its final stage, the end of
history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That seems way too limiting,
even dystopian, lacking in promise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Quadriform systems are unlikely to become utopias, but they could bring
basic massive improvements to people’s lives for generations to come.</p>
<p class="Body">- - - - - - - </p>
<p class="Body">[P.S.:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have a pretty good
start lying around, beginning with my 1996 RAND paper on the basics of TIMN, and
a 2007 follow-up paper on tribes as the first and forever form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are reading a first draft of Ch. 1 right now.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ingredients for Chs. 3-6 already exist
in blog posts I’ve written since 2008, but they all need revising and updating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ch. 5 on system dynamics will benefit from
the fact that my 1996 paper contains a section that identifies some dynamics, and
later blog posts reported on others I have uncovered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Problem is, there are still other dynamics I
have found in recent years, but at this point I do not know where I wrote them
down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of Ch. 6 exists in blog posts
I drafted a couple years ago, but never completed for posting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="Body">As for Ch. 7 on TIMN’s implications for theory, policy, and
strategy, many points already exist in prior blog posts; it should not be too
difficult to pull them together in a concluding chapter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I also have new deductions to add,
notably that TIMN seems “biased” in favor of recognizing the limitations as
well as strengths of each form, developing their bright sides while
constraining their dark sides, keeping the forms in some kind of balance so
that no single form dominates the others, and opposing absolutisms and
extremisms of all kinds since they are bound to create imbalances, distortions,
and rigidities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My long-range aim is to
identify ways to foster the transition to a quadriform system, but my
near-range hope is more practical: to identify principles embedded in TIMN for getting
the triform model right too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More on
this later.</p>
<p class="Body">I am likely to be repetitive, long-winded, halting, and tentative
along the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But hopefully that can all
be corrected later, amounting to the least of my problems in trying to lay out
TIMN and its implications.]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
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{margin-bottom:0in;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-43699612182899679842023-02-08T07:52:00.001-08:002023-02-08T07:52:30.594-08:00Russian Request to Translate “The Prospects for Cyberocracy (Revisited)”<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#10 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In June 2022, a Russian scholar associated with
the Russian State University of Justice sent me a surprise request to translate,
and then circulate, an old paper on my concept of cyberocracy: i.e., David Ronfeldt
and Danielle Varda, “The Prospects for Cyberocracy (Revisited),” December 1,
2008, available at: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>https://ssrn.com/abstract=1325809 </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Abstract: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The
deepening of the information age will alter the nature of the state so
thoroughly that something new emerges: cyberocracy. While it is too early to
say precisely what a cyberocracy will look like, the outcomes will include new
kinds of democratic, totalitarian, and hybrid governments, along with new kinds
of state-society relations. Thus, optimism about the information revolution
should be tempered by an anticipation of its potential dark side. This paper
reiterates the view of the cyberocracy concept as first stated in 1992, and
then offers a postscript for 2008. It speculates that information-age societies
will develop new sensory apparatuses, a network-based social sector, new modes
of networked governance, and ultimately the cybercratic nexus-state as a
successor to the nation-state. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Accordingly to the request to translate into
Russian, </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Previously, the analysis of
your articles was replicated in Russian scientific publications, but these were
only free interpretations of the main ideas, and I found a lack of
understanding of the foundations and essence of your thoughts among
Russian-speaking authors.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Our research group is
engaged in the study of modern forms of government, and I think this
publication might became popular among scientists and can lead to a broad
scientific study of cyberocracy in our political and legal science.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">This was all fine with me, especially since his
translation and circulation were to be a non-commercial endeavor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After some delays in ascertaining whether and
how to grant permission, I finally just granted it personally, without signing
any document.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I emailed a long
comment in October, in order to offer some additional thoughts:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yes, I wish sometimes that I could write an updated paper. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I do not see that I will ever be able to
do so, given other priorities I have (and limitations). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, I may try to write a blog post
eventually about the continuing prospects for cyberocracy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If so, I would surely include something about China’s
social-credit and other monitoring and surveillance systems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I may also want to include something about
the concept of “noocracy.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I learned
about it only a few years ago when researching to write about the emergence of
the noosphere and noopolitics. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which is
when I also learned that the noocracy concept is fairly well-known among
Russian theorists and analysts, perhaps especially those influenced by
Vernadsky’s writings since the 1920s.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A concern I have is that many developments that may be related to
cyberocracy are mainly about political and economic control, as in writings
about the “surveillance state” and “surveillance capitalism” and
“hyper-surveilled office.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I have
deduced from my efforts to write about long-range social evolution that a
system’s (society’s) capacity for “decontrol” (or de-control) is also crucial,
within limits. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One example from ages ago
being where ancient tribal, clan, and other kinship forces had to let go of
(separate from) the construction <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of
states and other institutions, so that these more modern forms of organization
became free enough to professionalize. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
later example being about states having to let go of market actors and
activities so that a market system can emerge and mature properly, separate
from old tribal and statist controls. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
a balanced degree, of course. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am not
sure how cyberocracy and control impulses may affect each other, but it seems
an important topic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A related concern I have is, What happens to civilization if
cyberocracy takes hold? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If cyberocracy
develops mainly as a system of control, it will offer rulers new ways not just
to control but even to stifle civilizational impulses. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was in high-school and college decades
ago, we took courses in Western Civilization, and those courses were only about
the great figures of high civilization, mostly in fields of the arts and
culture. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since then, and really only in
the latest two decades, I have realized that great civilizations are (and
should be) great at all levels, from “high” to “low” and with all sorts of
mixings across all levels and domains: painting, sculpture, music, dance,
cinema, theater, fashion, food, etc. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which
helps explain why I watch lots of TV and streaming series about “street food”: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like street food, bt more than that, I have
come to regard the presence of thriving innovative street food (e.g., tacos,
noodles) as a sign of a country’s capacity to contribute to civilization, and
as a sign of the capacities for diversity and decontrol that I have come to
believe are long-term necessities</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anyway, these are just some preliminary thoughts about which I
sometimes wonder if/when I try to think about the future prospects for
cyberocracy. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">We were both pleased we were able to accomplish
these email exchanges while the Russo-Ukraine war was going on.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-83967422487758199352023-02-08T07:49:00.000-08:002023-02-08T07:49:07.526-08:00Article in The Atlantic Revisits Our Cyberwar and Netwar Writings<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#9 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Also in February (February 2022 was full of
surprises), <i>The Atlantic</i> magazine announced that “The Threat of Cyberwar Has
Finally Arrived” with an article by Ian Bogost, “‘Netwar’ Could Be Even Worse
Than Cyberwar: A risk first described almost 30 years ago is now mature,” <i>The
Atlantic</i>, Feb 26, 2022, online at: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/02/russia-ukraine-conflict-cyberwar/622931/</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Here’s a longish excerpt:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“Cyberwar sounds bad—and it
is. Broadly, it names the global threat of combat mixed with computer stuff.
But further explanations of its risks tend to devolve into disconcerting
shopping lists of vulnerabilities: our power grids, water-treatment plants,
communications networks, and banks, any of which could be subject to shadowy,
invisible incursions from half a world away. This murky and expansive threat
can even be expanded further, until it’s covering everything, including
espionage, disinformation, and attacks on computer infrastructure. Cyberwar is
coming! If you’re going to worry about it—and you should probably worry about
it—then what, exactly, should you be worried about?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“In all other matters, <i>cyber</i>-anything
has long since fallen out of use; it’s now a shibboleth for those who have
failed to stay abreast of online culture. (Remember how it sounded when Donald
Trump went off about “the cyber” on TV?) Back in 1993, when the word cyberwar,
as it’s used today, was coined, the prefix had more currency. That year, the
Rand Corporation published a pamphlet called <i>Cyberwar Is Coming!</i>, by the
international-politics analysts John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt. Their premise
was simple: The information revolution would alter the nature of armed
conflict, and new language would be needed to describe it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“To clarify the future
risks, they laid out two scenarios, each of which would get its own moniker:
There was cyberwar, and also <i>netwar</i>. The latter—with its dated reference
to the “net”—feels even more anachronistic than “the cyber,” but the idea is
surprisingly contemporary. For Arquilla and Ronfeldt, netwar is a social and
commercial phenomenon. It involves conflicts waged via networked modes of
communication, and is closest to what people call “disinformation” today. When
one group attempts to disrupt the knowledge another group has about its own
members and social context, by means of messages transmitted via networked
communication technologies, that’s netwar.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“At the time, Arquilla and
Ronfeldt imagined netwar mostly as a state-based activity, and one that could
unfold over any communications network. (It did not have to involve the internet.)
The United States engaged in netwar with Cuba, for example, via Radio
Televisión Marti, a Miami-based broadcaster funded by the U.S. federal
government to transmit in Spanish to Cuba. State-run newspapers could also
prosecute a netwar, along with surveillance systems that intercept or prohibit
certain telephonic or electronic messages.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“But Rand also imagined
another kind of netwar, one fought between “rival non-state actors, with
governments maneuvering on the sidelines to prevent collateral damage to
national interests and perhaps to support one side or another.” Arquilla and
Ronfeldt called this type of netwar “the most speculative,” but it’s one we can
see quite clearly now.…”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Since that is our three-decades-old paper he is writing
about, I was delighted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, as I remarked
on my Facebook page at the time (and meant to reiterate here), the author apparently
misunderstood or erred on a few points:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">A delight to see our old
work on cyberwar and netwar featured in a new article in The Atlantic magazine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But while the author (previously unknown to
me) gets some things right, he also gets some points not quite right, two in
particular:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">— I never “imagined netwar
mostly as a state-based activity.” Cyberwar yes, but not netwar. In fact, since
we originally treated cyberwar as a primarily a military concept, I suggested
we needed a separate term/concept that would be mainly about social conflict.
Indeed, our study on the Zapatista movement as a case of social netwar was
mostly about the activities of social activist NGOs operating as networks.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">— Netwar is not mainly
about disinformation. The article over-conflates at one point. Netwar is mainly
about using organizational networks of all kinds, but mainly social, to fight
against adversaries, be they organized into networks or hierarchies. Yes,
social-netwar actors function best if they are using advanced information and
communications technologies that are likewise networked. But these netwar
actors also need narrative strategies that fit well with network designs, for
social netwar tends in the end to be about whose story wins, not whose ammo
wins. If the netwar-waging networks are quite loose, then its varied actors may
need to see that their varied stories are harmonized, perhaps into a networked
meta-narrative.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In any case, I’m delighted
to see our old work re-circulated. Also, see my first comment below about
current examples.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">My follow-on comment still holds true (but could
sure use editing): </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">… many right-wing activists here in the U.S. are
currently waging social netwars of various, as in the truck convoys. Some
left-wing activists too, but seemingly less so in my view. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I’d also note that, over time, I’ve learned that Russian
strategists have blamed the demise of the Soviet Union and weakening of Russia
not primarily on the West’s military power but on the netwar-like social
movements expressed through Solidarity, the Arab Spring, and the Color
Revolutions. The counter-strategy they have evolved, termed “gibridnaya voina,”
is typical translated as “hybrid war” but its non-military aspects would better
be translated as “social netwar” in my view.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-24100185229743603682023-02-08T06:36:00.000-08:002023-02-08T06:36:04.665-08:00Invitation to Re-Post Old Paper on Two Faces of Fidel: Captain Ahab and Don Quixote (1990)<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#8 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In February 2022, former RAND colleague John
Warren, who directed RAND’s office of public relations years ago, contacted me
out of the blue from his current position at The George Washington University
(GWU), and informed me that he was building a new website about Don Quixote: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://gwpress.manifoldapp.org/projects/don-quixote
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">He asked to add a paper I wrote long ago that
compared Cuba’s Fidel Castro with Miguel de Cervantes’<i> Don Quixote</i> and
Herman Melville’s <i>Moby Dick</i>: i.e., <i>Draft Chapters on Two Faces of
Fidel: Don Quixote and Captain Ahab</i>, RAND Corporation, P-7641, 1990, available
at:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7641.html</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I wrote it as an aside to other work I was doing
on Fidel Castro’s mindset.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had learned
about the mythological Greek concepts of hubris and nemesis, whereby humans
afflicted with hubris (the vainglorious pretention to be god-like) were struck
down by Nemesis (the goddess of divine vengeance).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My sense was that dictators like Castro embodied
both dynamics: they have hubris, yet deign to play Nemesis against someone else
they accuse of hubris — i.e., they have a “hubris-nemesis complex.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This paper provided a comparative way to
discuss the dynamic, for Captain Ahab embodies the hubris-nemesis complex more
than any other literary archetype, whereas Don Quixote appealingly does not.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Unfortunately, Warren needed a computer file
with “live” footnotes and endnotes, but the only file available was in a
30-years-old bygone format.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His recourse
was to find a student who would take on the job of redoing the file.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">What has happened since then, I don’t know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any event, I am delighted this paper may
yet have a second home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The final paragraphs of the Foreword I wrote — “Hoping
The Don Quixotes Of The World Prevail Over The Captain Ahabs” (April 28, 2022) —
fits with my blog’s purposes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I
excerpt it below: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“Meanwhile, in real life
these days, there appear to be as many if not more Captain Ahabs roiling our
society than Don Quixotes, largely because the current era seems exceedingly
vulnerable to the forces of hubris and nemesis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Donald Trump is a striking example of a leader ruled by a hubris-nemesis
complex; he may want his fans to think he is Quixote-like, but his real nature
is deeply Ahabic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elon Musk may not have
a full-blown hubris-nemesis complex, but he too appears to be a slick blend of
quixotic and ahabic tendencies, often oscillating between the two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The January 6, 2021, insurrection at the
Capitol in Washington provided a spectacular display of Quixote- and Ahab-like
characters, including in the ways many insurrectionists dressed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile, Fox News Primetime’s hosts
(currently, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham) often seem to
cast their amped-up orations in quixotic and ahabic tones; indeed, news pundits
on the Right generally seem to do so more than do pundits on the Left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pro-MAGA, pro-conspiracy movement known
as QAnon provides yet another example of quixotic and ahabic forces gone wild
in our country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“America has become so
malignantly tribalized around political, cultural, and other issues that the
fissures in our society serve as inviting openings for the rise of newly
aspirant Don Quixotes and Captain Ahabs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When I wrote about them in past decades, I was mostly concerned about
exemplars I spotted abroad (e.g., Hitler, Mussolini, Castro, Qaddafi,
Ahmenijad, Chavez). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today I see reasons
to be more concerned about quixotic and ahabic forces swelling and mingling
inside our own country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“I continue to hope that
the Don Quixotes of the world will prevail over the Captain Ahabs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet I’m no longer so certain that they can
and will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>America may be the nation
where this matters the most.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But right
now there’s the war in Ukraine, where Russia’s Vladimir Putin exhibits
something of a monstrous hubris-nemesis complex, while Ukraine’s Volodymyr
Zelensky fights back impressively and pragmatically, all the while displaying a
Quixote-like spirit infused with a sense of Nemesis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This war, whoever wins, may have profound
effects on the balance of Quixotic and Ahabic forces around the world — which
may matter more than we presently know.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-28879069941049325732023-02-07T09:48:00.003-08:002023-02-07T09:48:57.950-08:00New Substack Blog: Onward with TIMN … maybe STAC, NOO, and CYBOC too<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#7 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">During early 2022, determined to return to
blogging about TIMN and other matters, but displeased about aspects of my
long-standing Google blog and its interface (where we are right now), I looked for
alternatives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Substack came to the fore
(good design, etc.).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">So, in February I registered a blog presently (and accurately, but admittedly awkwardly) named “Onward With TIMN … STAC, NOO, and CYBOC too” at: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">On Feb 24, to fill out the About This Blog
section, I laid out four ideas that I want to continue blogging and plugging:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The oldest idea is about
social cognition: the simple idea that people’s cardinal cognitions from
infancy onward are their social space, time, and action (agency) cognitions,
and that the three function as an interdependent interactive set: a
space-time-action triplex. [acronym: STAC] …</span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The second idea is about
how the digital information revolution may reshape societies and their
political systems: the idea that “cyberocracy” is coming. [acronym: CYBOC] …</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The third idea is about
social evolution: the idea (observation) that four forms of social organization
— tribes, institutions, markets, and networks (TIMN) — largely explain how
societies have developed and progressed over the ages. …</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The fourth idea springs
from the emergence of the long-predicted “noösphere” (globe-circling “realm of
the mind”): the idea that, as a planetary noösphere spreads and takes form atop
our planet’s geosphere and biosphere, statecraft and grand strategy will be
affected so extensively that geopolitics, a primarily hard-power concept, will
increasingly be paralleled and eventually surpassed by noöpolitics, a primarily
soft-power concept. [acronym: NOO] … </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/onward-with-timnmaybe-stac-noo-and</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The full text is re-posted below.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It applies to this blog’s purposes as
well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Months later (September 27), I added two posts
about a prospective manuscript on HOW AND WHY SOCIETIES EVOLVE, SOME BETTER
THAN OTHERS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One post is titled “Chapter
1. Anticipating The Emergence Of Quadriform Societies.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second is “Points To Ponder As We Move
Ahead With TIMN—#1.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will re-post them
later in this backlog-catchup series. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">All my Substack posts are freely accessible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It remains to be seen whether I can fulfill
my objectives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">- - - - - - - </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">About This Blog</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Ever assume you have a good idea, but you take
so long to focus on working it out and writing it up that you eventually doubt
you will ever be able to finish?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet
you still feel driven to lay out as much as you can, and hope it’s enough that
someday maybe others can run further with it?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I still have three such ideas in tow, and in
some ways a fourth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remain years
behind on fully elaborating them and their implications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet I want to keep trying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And evidently this is the place where I will
do so next, but with an emphasis on just one of the three.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">•<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
oldest idea is about social cognition: the simple idea that people’s cardinal
cognitions from infancy onward are their social space, time, and action
(agency) cognitions, and that the three function as an interdependent
interactive set: a space-time-action triplex.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This idea (observation) struck me during a stressed-out nap in graduate
school in the late 1960s, a sudden sharp epiphany I’ll relate some other time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may not seem like much of an idea, but no
one has pursued it yet. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Briefly, by <i>space </i>I refer to how people
see their identity positioned in relation to others, and how they perceive
other subjects and objects — near and far, strong and weak, etc. — as being
spatially structured, arrayed, and linked (or not).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By <i>time</i>, I refer to how people
perceive, prioritize, and interrelate their sense of the past, present, and
future, and what content they give to the past, present, and future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By <i>action</i>, I mean a sense of agency,
of efficacy — whether and how people think they can or cannot act to affect
matters around them. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Back then, these three cognitions (perceptions,
orientations) were mostly studied singly and separately in specialized writings
by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, cultural
historians, and philosophers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At best,
one or another of these specialists might write about two of the cognitions
together, usually space and time, but never all three.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, according to observations I have yet to
fully write up, the three should be treated as a set.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For there is no way to write about one
without bringing the other two into the picture, one way or another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there is also no way for one to change
without having an effect on the other two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I remain amazed (and fortunate?) that no one else has noticed and
advanced this observation in the decades since it occurred to me. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Why keep proposing this idea about people’s
space-time-action cognitions (STAC)?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because the better we understand how the three cognitions function as an
integrated interactive set, the better we can understand why people think and
act as they do, how cultures and civilizations evolve and settle around
particular ideas (e.g., order, freedom, progress, the American Dream), and what
makes one historical era different from another, particularly as advances in
information and communications technologies alter people’s space-time-action
perceptions about the world around them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Also, I want to persist because the few specialists to whom I have tried
circulating the idea have shown no interest in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I have a bunch of old blog posts and one long
draft paper (2018, at SSRN.com) about STAC, but there is much still to be said
and done — for example, to identify the spatial, temporal, and agentic
orientations of mindsets that become<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>susceptible for recruitment to terrorism and other extreme <i>isms</i>,
at home and abroad; to analyze the mindsets of leaders who develop a
“hubris-nemesis complex” (e.g., currently, Trump, maybe Putin); and more
grandly, to see whether it may be helpful to view strategy as the art of
positioning for spatial, temporal, and agentic advantages (whereas it is
ordinarily defined as the art of relating ends, ways, and means).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">•<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
second idea is about how the digital information revolution may reshape
societies and their political systems: the idea that “cyberocracy” is
coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I coined the word for the first
paper I wrote (in 1991/1992) on the topic as I moved out of working on
U.S.-Latin American security affairs, into this new field whose proponents were
starting to put “cyber-“ (from Greek <i>kyber</i>, meaning information) in
front of one word after another, most notably by coining “cyberspace.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">While I always kept this idea in mind, I did not
get back to revisiting and updating the original paper until 2008 (it’s on
SSRN.com, with Daniel Varda as co-author).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Since then, except for a few blog posts, I’ve neglected advancing
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d even forgotten about it until
I’d nearly completed this write-up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then, while rummaging in old files, looking for something else, I came
upon a few pages I wrote in 1990, not long after the Tiananmen Square protests
were quashed, mentioning how the information revolution may affect China.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly, </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“The events in China
confirm that exposure to the information revolution is politically risky for a
totalitarian regime. But they also show that such a regime can learn to exploit
the new technology. There is no assurance it will favor glasnost and democracy
in the long run. …</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“Cyberocracy, far from
favoring democracy or totalitarianism, will lead to advanced, more divergent
forms of both. Divergence, not convergence, is the historical rule. In
countries like the United States, we may yet see how fruitful democracy can be.
But the situation in China—not to mention other countries—indicates that we
also have yet to see how thorough totalitarian control can be.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“The Cold War may be over.
Democratic liberalism may be carrying the day-most notably in Eastern Europe.
But totalitarianism is far from finished.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Reading that 30 years-old assessment, which then
figured in my papers about cyberocracy (1991, 2009), reminds me to keep this
idea in tow too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It needs further work
and attention, including in the context of the next idea.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">•<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
third idea is about social evolution: the idea (observation) that four forms of
social organization — tribes, institutions, markets, and networks (TIMN) —
largely explain how societies have developed and progressed over the ages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly, these four forms have existed
incipiently since the ancient origins of society, but they have emerged and
matured at different rates, partly because each requires a new
information-technology revolution to fulfill its potential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tribes arose first, institutions next, then
markets, and now information-age networks are emerging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Societies have thus progressed over the past
ten thousand years or so according to their abilities to add and combine
these forms, their bright and their dark sides, thereby evolving from monoform
(T-centered), to biform (T+I), to triform (T+I+M), and next (potentially)
to quadriform (T+I+M+N) types of societies.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The TIMN framework came to mind gradually in the
early-to-mid 1990s, when I first figured that the digital information
revolution would favor network forms of organization, then wondered what other
forms of organization mattered and why, and settled on these four forms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I then spotted that their histories seemed to
spell an evolutionary progression, hence framework — leading to my original
paper about TIMN in 1996, a monograph about T/tribes as the first and forever
form in 2007, and a long series of blog posts after I retired from RAND in
2008. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I have never regarded TIMN as something I am
inventing or constructing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, it
feels like an archeological artifact that I stumbled upon and am still trying
to unearth, open up, and see inside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
I proceed, what seems most interesting is not only the progression of forms in
various guises and combinations, but also the recurrence of a set of system
dynamics (which I’m still trying to fully identify) during each transition in
the progression from monoform to quadriform societies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, each time a new form arises and
takes hold, a society becomes not only more complex but also more simplified
for addressing problems that the old form(s) were finally failing at.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Why keep at TIMN?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because TIMN’s potential is good, possibly
very good, for evaluating not only the past and present but also the likely
future evolution of advanced societies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of note, TIMN implies that people will revert to the tribal form if they
lose faith and trust in the later institutional and market forms — precisely
what has been occurring in American society over the past twenty years, as more
people turn to malignant forms of political tribalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking ahead, TIMN implies that the rise of
the network form will, in time, lead to the emergence of a fourth sector,
probably a commons sector, that will be distinct from yet interdependent with
our existing three major sectors: civil society (as the modern expression of
the T form), the government’s public sector (from +I), and our market economy’s
private sector (from +M).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">What this fourth sector (from +N) may look like
remains a matter of speculation, but TIMN offers a vision different from any
others being offered (as I’ll describe in a future post).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If so, America will emerge stronger and
better-structured as a quadriform society, innovatively getting more things
done more simply and effectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
not, America’s current (and two-centuries old) triform design will probably
collapse, or at least become evermore stuck and unworkable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">My TIMN efforts have been haphazard and in
disarray for several years now, though I have made episodic progress with posts
at my old “Materials for Two Theories” blog (also on my Facebook page).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My goal here is to revise, update, and
publish (republish) a handful of the most basic posts in a chapter-like order
that would make sense if I were drafting a short forward-looking book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m also certain to post a variety of asides
along the way, for example by commenting on how other analysts have viewed and
used TIMN.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">•<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
fourth idea springs from the emergence of the long-predicted “noösphere”
(globe-circling “realm of the mind”): the idea that, as a planetary noösphere
spreads and takes form atop our planet’s geosphere and biosphere, statecraft
and grand strategy will be affected so extensively that geopolitics, a
primarily hard-power concept, will increasingly be paralleled and eventually
surpassed by noöpolitics, a primarily soft-power concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ideational territory will then matter as much
as physical territory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Narrative
strategy will grow in significance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Conflicts will be increasingly about whose story wins, not simply whose
weaponry wins. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Former co-author John Arquilla and I have
written about this idea four times since 1999, always framing it as a contrast
between realpolitik and “noopolitik” (a term we coined from the Greek word <i>noos</i>
meaning “mind”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, since a year
or so ago, lamenting that our realpolitik-vs.-noopolitik framing was still not
gaining traction among U.S. strategists, I began to figure that noöpolitics
(with or without the umlaut) may to be a more viable concept than noopolitik,
and that a geopolitics-vs.-noöpolitics framing may make better sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I’m adding it (acronym: NOO) to my writing
efforts, alongside our earlier stream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Why is this idea significant?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the rise of noopolitics is well
underway, propelled by the world-wide spread of digital information
technologies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And much of it is underway
to America’s disadvantage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While U.S.
strategists have lately tended to neglect or misconceive the ideological and
other ideational dimensions of conflict, Russian and Chinese strategists have
moved adroitly to design new concepts and techniques for waging political,
psychological, cultural, and other modes of cognitive warfare — in Russia’s
case, through its efforts at reflexive control, hybrid warfare, and “noomakhia”
(“wars of ideas”);<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in China’s case,
through its efforts at “discourse power,” “cognitive domain operations,” and
“Wolf Warrior” diplomacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, the
culture wars lately tearing Americans apart domestically are highly
noöpolitical in nature, as their various tribalized actors fight to control the
parts of the emerging noösphere that matter to them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Yet NOO isn’t just about conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s also about discerning new visions and
narratives for constructing a more harmonious peaceful world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the noösphere and its dynamics become more
evident, national-security and foreign-policy strategists better learn to think
and act noöpolitically as well as geopolitically.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Overall, I hope to keep elaborating all four of
these ideas, pushing their potentials as frameworks that have sensible
forward-looking implications for theory and practice, for policy and
strategy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, while drafting this
post, then pondering the heaviness of this four-fold challenge, I could see
that I better focus primarily on just one of the three, lest I get boggled by
the burden (again).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I will emphasize TIMN.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over time, it has felt the most pressing and
potentially the most significant of the four.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Moreover, good start already exists that has attracted interest and
encouragement among some among readers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Besides, I can still post episodically about STAC, NOO, and CYBOC;
indeed, all these ideas overlap and interconnect in various ways.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Why here on Substack?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not entirely sure, but it certainly
provides a cleaner, more writerly-looking screen than other options.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have long had a blog where I endeavored for
years to do much of the above; but then I joined Facebook and began neglecting
the blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By now it feels so
out-of-the-way and cluttered, that a fresh start elsewhere seems
advisable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So here I am, and here we
go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Even though I post this explanatory marker with
a feeling of anticipation, it may be a while before I am able to post in
earnest, and even then probably not very often.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hey, I’m getting old and slow, often feeling not only like one or more
of Snow White’s seven dwarfs (Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and
Dopey), but also more and more like two she never mentions: Creaky and
Cranky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Anyway, those are my hopes for being here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you subscribe (it’s free, should remain
so), that will provide me with some encouragement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Besides, I welcome your interest and possible
advice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Onward.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/onward-with-timnmaybe-stac-noo-and]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-37571593420458751162023-02-06T08:07:00.002-08:002023-02-06T08:07:52.607-08:00Review of Chinese Strategist Wang Huning’s Book "America Against America" (1991)<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#6 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">At the end of every year a private alumni group
I’m in calls on its members to contribute brief reviews of books and other
media that they would recommend to other members.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All are variously interested in national
security, information technology, complexity theory, network science, cognitive
science, social evolution, future planning scenarios, and the like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">While drafting the paper about U.S.-China
relations (see prior post), I learned about the impressive Chinese theorist and
strategist, Wang Huning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I
contributed the following book review for the group:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">“Wondering
where China and America are headed? To find out, Wang Huning traveled around
the United States as a young professor decades ago, and wrote his findings in <i>America
Against America</i> (Shanghai Arts, 1991).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Though long out of print, a translation can still be downloaded here* or
here°. It is worth consulting because today Wang is Xi Jinping’s most
formidable political theorist and advisor. A key theme is that American
society, while offering much to admire, is so fraught with individualism, so
lacking in spiritual community and cultural security — its youth too ignorant
of traditional Western values, too prone to nihilism — that American democracy
risks decaying into a war with itself (hence the title). Given its excessive
individualism, Chinese collectivism will surely prove the superior way to go.
Reading America’s major conservative thinkers back then — notably Alan Bloom
and Charles Moynihan — heavily influenced Wang’s views about America. Today
they seem prophetic. And they persist in shaping China’s strategy toward the
United States — perhaps for years to come, if Xi extends his stay in power,
with Wang alongside as ideological leader of the ‘New Authoritarians.’”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">*https://dokumen.pub/america-against-america.html</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">°https://download2170.mediafire.com/tnkp6al5nfrg/cnnb5nzyo5xj1sx/America+Against+America+-+Wang+Huning.pdf</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">That
Wang Huning is worth keeping an eye on was confirmed last week on January 26,
2023, when a news article reported that Xi Jinping has named Wang to take
charge of Taiwan policy and strategy matters:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/Analysis-Xi-puts-top-brain-in-charge-of-Taiwan-unification-strategy<span class="MsoHyperlink"></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></span></span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-59084742275830866132023-02-05T08:32:00.000-08:002023-02-05T08:32:02.194-08:00Paper on "Has China 'Hacked' The Foundational Framework For U.S.-China Policy Dialogue?"<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#5 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In August 2021, while trading emails about a
range of TIMN-related matters with friends Dick O’Neill and Shiquin “Eddie”
Choo, I learned from a news<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>article about
an unusually sharp exchange of words between U.S and Chinese diplomats at a
public meeting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The exchange reflected a
topic we sometimes discuss: the cooperation-competition-conflict spectrum,
known as the 3Cs spectrum (sometimes as the 4Cs spectrum, if confrontation is
inserted before conflict).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">From what I read, I gathered that Chinese
strategists had “hacked” the ways Americans have long used the 3Cs/4Cs spectrum
for public dialogue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence my reply: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“When I’ve seen that
spectrum before, I’ve normally thought it’s about identifying where actors are
located along that spectrum, and then trying to move them more toward the
cooperative end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m now thinking that’s
very Western of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not to mention
saying we Americans are trying to both cooperate and compete while avoiding
conflict, which may be Western of me as well.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“China’s strategists seem
to be doing something different with/to that spectrum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They seem to be looking at it and defying
being placed at any one location, or being moved along it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They want to be everywhere at once along it,
maybe seemingly at one location one day, an entirely different position another
day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they are using narratives that
go with one position on it to support their narrative position(s) elsewhere
along it, and/or to subvert Western narratives about one position or another
along it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“… the Chinese have hacked
the 3C/4C spectrum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have hacked the
narratives all along it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And their discourse
about it extend from their ideas about ‘discourse power’ and ‘cognitive domain
operations.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Theirs is a noöpolitical as
much as a geopolitical strategy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
they’ve got us confounded, riskily if not dangerously so.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">So I made an impulsive decision to write about
U.S.-China relations from a noöpolitical perspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After plunging into voluminous reading about
a topic I knew little about (U.S.-China relations), and with Eddie as co-author
and Dick as mentor, I/we did come up with a draft paper for circulation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I posted it on the Social Science Research
Network site (SSRN.com) in October 2021, as follows:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Title:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Has China "Hacked" The
Foundational Framework For U.S.-China Policy Dialogue?</i> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Abstract:
</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">U.S. foreign-policy
and national-security actors have long relied on a particular framework — known
as the cooperation-competition-conflict (3Cs) framework — for diplomatic
dialogue. It recognizes that countries may be cooperating in one area,
competing in another, and on the verge of conflict in yet another. Thus it is a
fairly complex as well as realistic framework for viewing relations with other
countries, sorting policy priorities, and organizing working groups to address
specific issues — be that other country an ally, rival, adversary, or something
in between. However, China’s strategists seem to have “hacked” it this year —
they have aggressively penetrated, deconstructed, disrupted, and redirected its
narrative elements and tactical implications. And China has done so not only
because it is an aspiring power seeking to push the United States back, but
also because Chinese strategists have apparently discerned, better than have
their U.S. counterparts, that grand strategy and global positioning
increasingly depend on information-age noöpolitics (“whose story wins”) as well
as hard-power geopolitics. Implications for U.S. diplomacy and strategy
include: (1) Be sure to broaden the framework’s spectrum to at least 4Cs. (2)
Construct a policy stance that emphasizes the framework’s allowances for
multiplexity — instead of identifying with a limited area, such as cooperation
or competition, identify with the entire span and its multiplex dynamics. (3)
Wake up to the emergence of the long-predicted noösphere (planetary realm of
the mind) and noöpolitics. (4) Build global networks, and fight back with
global networks, for noöpolitical as well as geopolitical purposes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Keywords:
</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">China, diplomacy,
statecraft, geopolitics, narrative strategy, noosphere, noöpolitics,
multiplexity</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Suggested
Citation:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Ronfeldt,
David and Choo, Eddie, Has China "Hacked" The Foundational Framework
For U.S.-China Policy Dialogue? (October 26, 2021). Available at SSRN: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">https://ssrn.com/abstract=3929474
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3929474
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I cannot report that the paper did
well; it just sits there, posted but unpublished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some reviewers considered it too
jargony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most unexpected criticism
came from experts on narrative strategy who did not cotton to the “hacking”
concept as part of narrative analysis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
couple of China specialists had positive appraisals, but most did not reply to
requests for comments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the time, I meant to post the paper
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Better late than never, I
suppose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Working on it certainly
expanded my knowledge about China and U.S-China relations, as well as about
multiplexity and other concepts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This may
yet prove useful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile, I have
since come across other writings, plus a TV series, that use “hacking” the way I
did, both as a descriptive and analytical concept.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">-------</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Just to add a little more substance to
this post, here is what the closing sub-section and coda state about a favorite
theme, networks and noöpolitics: </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">EXCERPT</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">• <i>Build global networks, and fight
back with global networks</i>: As observed decades ago, “it takes networks to
fight networks,” and “whoever masters the network form first and best will gain
major advantages” (Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 1996, pp. 81-82). China and the
United States, not to mention other state and non-state actors, are heading
deeper into an unsettling era of intense challenges and likely rivalries in
this regard. Accordingly, and to our delight as analysts who want to see
network perspectives reinforced, one senior expert foresees </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“...a task that will
require the United States to embed its China strategy in a robust network of
relationships and institutions — not only within Asia but across the world, and
not only with other states but with the full range of actors shaping global
political, social and economic change in the world. ... The combined weight of
US allies and partners, and the American capacity for connectivity in a
networked world, can shape China’s choices across all domains — but only if
Washington deepens each of these relationships and works to tie them together.”
(Campbell. 2020). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Most analyses focus on the
geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geostrategic aspects of this network-building
rivalry. On China’s side, these include its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the
Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank, New Development Bank, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, etc.;
and on the U.S. side, its efforts to promote the Quad (Quadrilateral Security
Dialogue), AUKUS, the G7 Build Back Better World initiative, proposals for
pro-democracy alliances, etc. These efforts are indeed significant, and most
surfaced during the U.S.- China diplomatic discussions discussed above. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But there is another aspect that has
not surfaced clearly: rivalry to build regional and global networks for noo</span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">̈</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">political and noo</span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">̈</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">strategic purposes. Under their own
concepts about “discourse power” and the “cognitive domain,” China’s
forward-looking theorists and strategists seem set on this — their “United
Front” strategy being an example — more than U.S. strategists have recognized. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Network-construction and -connectivity
races are likely to grow across three levels of the emerging noo</span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">̈</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">sphere: the hard technological level,
e.g., via underseas-cable and 5G-telecom projects; the social organizational
level, e.g., through efforts to construct state-to-state and state-NGO
alliances and partnerships around key issues; and the ideational cognitive
level, through the design and deployment of strategic narratives across all sorts
of media, including by way of building new media networks around the world. For
example, in a way involving all three levels, China has worked relentlessly
with fellow authoritarian countries in the Like Minded-Group of Developing
Countries to block numerous civil-society NGOs — mostly the ones interested in
human-rights or other sensitive issues, like Tibet, Taiwan, or the Uyghurs —
from gaining consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council’s
Committee on Non-governmental Organizations (Inboden, 2021). </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">CODA </span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Today, it is not clear whether China or
the United States is better suited to addressing these twin challenges —
noöpolitics and networks — but China seems further along in understanding and
preparing for both. Meeting them may ultimately depend on each power’s ability
to out-compete by out-cooperating, not simply bilaterally but mainly by forming
noo</span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">̈</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">political
(and geopolitical) alliances, partnerships, and other networked relations
around the world. Values and interests all across the 3Cs/4Cs spectrum will be
at stake. While our explanation here is brief, we sense that noo</span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">̈</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">political and network- building
strategies will figure increasingly in U.S.-China relations for years to come,
affecting matters all across the 4Cs/5Cs spectrum. Strategists today speak of
the geopolitical power balance; someday they will heed the noo</span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">̈</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">political power balance as well. As
this occurs, world-building will supersede nation-building as the key concern..
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">[source: </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">https://ssrn.com/abstract=3929474] </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-15087603429710270592023-02-04T08:22:00.002-08:002023-02-04T08:22:48.725-08:00“Geopolitics, Noopolitics, and the Fight for Ukraine” (April 27, 2022) <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#4 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In May 2021, following circulation of our <i>Whose
Story Wins: Rise of the Noosphere, Noopolitik, and Information-Age Statecraft</i>
(RAND, 2020), John Arquilla and I were invited to join a new project on
“Science of the Noosphere,” sponsored by the Kacyra Family Foundation (KFF).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The project is led by sociologist David Sloan
Wilson, with videographer Alan Honick assisting and aiming to produce a
streaming documentary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other
participants include cutting-edge theorists about collective intelligence,
global consciousness, complexity theory, network science, AI and other advanced
technologies, biological and social evolution, global commons, and
storytelling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A goal is to find ways to
foster a more cooperative, peaceful, and adaptable global society. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">It’s an impressive project, the first of its
kind regarding the noosphere, well worth attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The various interviews and transcripts from it
are online here:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://humanenergy.io/projects/science-of-the-noosphere/</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I learned about several useful publications I
had not seen before, notably various articles by David Sloan Wilson, Dennis
Snower, and Boris Shoshitaishvili.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
also learned more about concepts and theories that I was already somewhat familiar
with, notably Wilson’s and others’ writings about “major evolutionary
transitions” and “multilevel selection theory” (MLS).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both concepts are in line with the TIMN
framework, though MLS could benefit from creation of a parallel “multiform
adaptation theory” à la TIMN.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I had hoped our inclusion in the project would develop
into a sustainable opportunity to contribute to and learn from it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is entirely geared to video interviews,
which I cannot do anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps
because of that, not to mention other matters, I found my involvement
increasingly disconnected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nonetheless, John’s
video interview with Wilson in June 2021 successfully conveyed aspects of our writings,
as posted here:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://humanenergy.io/john-arquilla/</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">My eventual contribution was a written commentary on “Geopolitics,
Noopolitics, and the Fight for Ukraine” (April 27, 2022).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During 2021, and especially after Russia’s
war on Ukraine conflict erupted in 2022, my sense grew that <i>noöpolitics</i>
may be a better concept than <i>noopolitik</i> for analyzing and approaching
some situations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I drafted a
write-up that was eventually added to the project’s website as a separate
download. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can be read online at the
end of John’s video interview, or downloaded separately here: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://humanenergy.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Ronfeldt-Addendum.pdf</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">It makes and then expands on the following
points:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“… recent events — particularly
the conflict in Ukraine — are bearing out our analysis and forecast: (1) that
the long-predicted <i>noosphere </i>is indeed emerging atop the continued
spread of advanced information and communications networks around the world,
and (2) that as the noosphere grows, information-age <i>noopolitik </i>will
begin to rival traditional realpolitik as an approach to strategy and statecraft.
Or, to use somewhat different phrasing, strategy and statecraft will
increasingly revolve around information-age <i>noopolitics</i>, even as classic
geopolitics continues to mater. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“Confirming this view, the
Russo-Ukraine conflict has become the world’s first major conflict where
noopolitical forces and calculations appear to be mattering as much as geopolitical
ones. The war is revolving around a cluster of ideational, ideological,
cultural, religious, spiritual, identity, morale, and narrative — in sum,
noöpolitical — factors in unexpected ways, to intense degrees. In its
totality, the war is being waged as much over ideational terrain (the
noosphere) as on physical terrain.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In addition to adding the
geopolitics/noöpolitics frame, I stressed two other points we have not made
before:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is technological, to clarify
that “The noosphere’s soft-power potential depends on building a hard-power
foundation that circles the globe, thereby making the metaphorical pen ever
mightier than the sword.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second is
conceptual, to observe that “Just as geopolitics is a very broad concept — an
aggregator of all sorts of mostly material factors and forces that drive
territorial interests and actions — so is noopolitics a very broad concept … only
it will be able to stand on a par with geopolitics.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">What follows below is the full text, with thanks
to Arquilla for coming up with its title, and Honick for putting it online. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">- - - - - - - </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Geopolitics, Noopolitics,
and the Fight for Ukraine</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> (2022)</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Thanks for the opportunity to append a written
comment to the video.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since six months
have passed, I shall treat it as an epilogue or postscript to point out that
recent events — particularly the conflict in Ukraine — are bearing out our
analysis and forecast: (1) that the long-predicted <i>noosphere</i> is indeed
emerging atop the continued spread of advanced information and communications
networks around the world, and (2) that as the noosphere grows, information-age
<i>noopolitik</i> will begin to rival traditional realpolitik as an approach to
strategy and statecraft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, to use
somewhat different phrasing, strategy and statecraft will increasingly revolve
around information-age <i>noopolitics</i>, even as classic geopolitics
continues to matter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Confirming this view, the Russo-Ukraine conflict
has become the world’s first major conflict where noopolitical forces and
calculations appear to be mattering as much as geopolitical ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The war is revolving around a cluster of
ideational, ideological, cultural, religious, spiritual, identity, morale, and
narrative — in sum, noöpolitical — factors in unexpected ways, to intense
degrees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In its totality, the war is
being waged as much over ideational terrain (the noosphere) as on physical terrain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Great credit is owed to Volodymyr Zelensky and
the Ukrainian people for their innovative bottom-up efforts to rally, cohere,
and resist using noopolitical strategies and tactics, while fighting militarily
in new ways as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zelensky’s frequent
exhortations on CNN and other world-wide media platforms have been especially
effective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, top-down leaders in
Europe and America have rallied to support Ukraine for noopolitical as well as
geopolitical reasons — e.g., the defense of democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their combined efforts have both benefitted
from and further ballooned the growth of the noosphere around this
conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not being explicitly
noticed yet, but it is implicit in all their remarks about the significance of
shared values, narrative strategies, media structures, and alliance
capabilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Peace talks, if they
occur, will surely be about future noopolitical as well as geopolitical
stakes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Vladimir Putin and the Russian strategists who
have influenced his thinking over the years (notably, Alexander Dugin, Ivan
Ilyin, Patriarch Kirill, and Vladimir Surkov ) have erred in their assessments
of geopolitical and especially noöpolitical conditions in Ukraine (e.g.,
presuming that Ukrainians lacked a national identity, and that Russia’s
military would be welcomed).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Putin has
attempted a land grab that was also meant to be a mind grab.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he has grossly misjudged an array of
ideological, spiritual, religious, cultural, and other noopolitical conditions
in Ukraine and elsewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he has
done so to such an extent that If Russia can be repelled in this conflict,
Ukraine’s victory will have world-wide noopolitical as well as geopolitical
repercussions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Meanwhile, many expert analyses keep
viewing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this as a geopolitical war that
confirms realist tenets about strategy and the importance of hard power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While they are not wrong, excellent push-back
has occurred showing that realism misses a lot that is crucial for
understanding this conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, no
one has yet discussed the war as a noospheric and noopolitical phenomenon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps it’s time we and others do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Our past work has emphasized noopolitik as an
alternative and potential successor to realpolitik; and our stream of analysis
about realpolitik/noopolitik should be sustained.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, follow-on thinking,
particularly about this war, suggests that a geopolitics/noopolitics stream
should now be developed as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may
even work better for calling the attention of at least some national-security
theorists and strategists to the nascence of the noosphere and
noopolitik/noöpolitics — concepts and realities they have hesitated to grasp so
far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whichever concept — noopolitik, or
noopolitics — may gain better traction (in a Darwinian struggle within the
noosphere?), it will surely increase traction for the other concept as
well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Were both concepts to gain
traction, each would probably appeal most to different audiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any case, recognition would be enhanced
about the noosphere’s emergence and its implications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I am very pleased, as is John, that the Kacyra
Family Foundation’s project on the “Science of the Noosphere” is spreading
awareness of these matters, including by way of this and other interviews
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remain hopeful that U.S.
theorists, strategists, and policymakers will start to heed noosphere-related
concepts as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are wary that, in
some respects, such concepts are receiving greater attention in Russia and
China, as in Alexandr Dugin’s recent theorizing about “noomakhia” (wars of
minds) and China’s new ideas about “discourse power” and “cognitive war.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is surely time for us and others who favor
democratic ways of life to press ahead with determining the implications the
noosphere’s emergence may have for both war and peace in the decades ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s emergence promises new possibilities in
both directions; improving the prospects for peace to prevail will depend on
achieving a correct understanding of the noosphere, scientifically as well as
spiritually.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">If so, two clarifications about the noosphere
and noopolitics may be worth adding right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The war in Ukraine substantiates both of them, </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The first is about hard versus soft power:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As John and I have long pointed out,
geopolitics and realpolitik, mainstays of the realist school of international
relations, are primarily about “hard power,” whereas noopolitik and its broader
variant, noopolitics, are primarily about “soft power.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet it would be an error to view noopolitics
as simply new jargon for repackaging the concept of soft power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Just as geopolitical actors are often concerned
about making moves that have psychological and ideational (i.e., noopolitical)
effects — e.g., as in foreign port visits by a mighty U.S. aircraft carrier, or
a “shock and awe” bombing campaign — so does noopolitics require a hard
physical basis:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>vast technological installations,
systems, networks, and other physical infrastructures for information and
communications around the world — e.g., myriad undersea cables, land-based
towers, space satellites, server farms, plus vast arrays of surveillance and
monitoring systems, as well as what is usually mentioned, the Internet,
cellphones, computers, all sorts of media platforms, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Hardly any of this infrastructure existed when
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s prophetic best-selling books first circulated
about the noosphere concept in the 1950s-1960s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Today, decades later, this hard infrastructure is still in its infancy,
still blossoming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its continued
expansion will make it evermore difficult to be dismissive about the rise of
the noosphere and noöpolitics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Without what exists today, Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine would probably have been viewed as an isolated conflict in a far-away
place of limited geopolitical significance; and Zelensky and his fellow
Ukrainians would not have been able to develop an effective noopolitical
response.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their success so far should
not be viewed simply as a triumph of soft power over hard power. The
noosphere’s soft-power potential depends on building a hard-power foundation
that circles the globe, thereby making the metaphorical pen ever mightier than
the sword.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">My second point is about concept power:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as geopolitics is a very broad concept —
an aggregator of all sorts of mostly material factors and forces that drive
territorial interests and actions — so is noopolitics a very broad concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It encompasses not only cyberspace and the
infosphere, but also concepts about values, ideas, ideology, philosophy,
religion, culture, cognition, psychology, propaganda, public diplomacy,
identity politics, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of all these
concepts, noopolitics is the most encompassing; thus only it will be able to
stand on a par with geopolitics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">So long as national-security strategists and
analysts continue to use the narrower concepts and categories — such as,
ideology, culture, credibility, or identity — in their contrasts to
geopolitics, they risk being slow to see that these concepts and categories are
all overlapping, interwoven, and interactive facets of the noosphere and
noopolitics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They risk leaving the
strategic and analytical high ground to experts on geopolitics, at a moment
when we are entering an era when it will be advisable, even essential to think
in terms of noopolitics as being on a par with geopolitics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Decades ago strategists generally viewed the
Cold War as both a geopolitical and ideological struggle, with the former usually
taking precedence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today, however, the
Ukraine war involves so much more than ideology alone, it would be more
accurate to view it as both geopolitical and noopolitical in nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For in the broadest sense it is a battle for
control of the nascent noosphere, and not just in Ukraine.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">A final few words in closing:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To many conventional strategists’ eyes,
realpolitik seems far more pragmatic and hard-headed an approach than
noopolitik, which they may deem too idealistic, soft-headed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as the noosphere’s hard foundations grow,
noopolitik will become as pragmatic in the future as realpolitik has been in
the past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same goes for geopolitics
and noopolitics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both are all just
different ways of being pragmatic, attuned to the nature of their times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Ukraine war looks to become a pivot point
for realizing this.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-63158882929953879732023-02-03T11:27:00.000-08:002023-02-03T11:27:18.526-08:00Draft on “Terrorism Database Construction in Global Strategic Perspective” (July 2021)<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#3 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">This post logs the full draft (minus 26
footnotes) of the sub-section I offered to the project discussed in yesterday’s
post.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was not under contract and
received no remuneration, so the draft remains my property. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stripped the footnotes after having a series
of formatting and pasting issues for posting online.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the sources all appear in the
bibliography at the end.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">A few key points from my argument:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• “In a phrase that will
require explanation, terrorism used to be primarily a geopolitical problem for
policy and strategy; today it is becoming as much a ‘noöpolitical’ as a
geopolitical challenge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the strategic
environment evolves, so must terrorism research and database design.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• “Terrorism’s increasingly
noöpolitical phase may actually have commenced two decades ago — 9/11 was as
much a noöpolitical as a geopolitical attack on America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The January-6 insurrection this year was,
arguably, a primarily noöpolitical attack within America.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• “As this grand
evolutionary shift occurs — as conflicts become increasingly noöpolitical at
home and abroad — terrorism research and database design will be pressed to
adapt by placing more emphasis on ideational, cultural, cognitive, and
perceptual data.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">That still reads on track to me, confirmed by trends
at home and abroad over the past two years.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">- - - - - - - </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Terrorism Database Construction in Global
Strategic Perspective </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">(Draft, 07/21/2021)</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">As discussed in a linked publication, the RAND
terrorism database of the 1970s and 1980s was appropriate to the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now, a half-century later, the times are
very different — the world is different, terrorism is different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a phrase that will require explanation,
terrorism used to be primarily a geopolitical problem for policy and strategy;
today it is becoming as much a “noöpolitical” as a geopolitical challenge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the strategic environment evolves, so must
terrorism research and database design.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Terrorism’s Primarily Geopolitical Phase</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In the 1960s and 1970s, and well into the 1980s
and 1990s, terrorism was viewed in primarily geopolitical terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Policymakers saw terrorism, especially its
international varieties, as a new kind of geopolitical threat, one that could
damage and destabilize diplomatic, security, and other relations between
governments, potentially generating problems along the edges of the larger Cold
War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, analyses of terrorist groups
and their targets and tactics tended to be very country- and
region-specific.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In keeping with this
primarily geopolitical focus, policymakers and analysts mainly focused on the
hard-power capabilities and physical threats they may face from terrorists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Keeping terrorists from publishing a manifesto,
a list of demands, or an interview in the media of the times (print magazines,
newspapers, radio and television stations) — i.e., soft-power tactics — was of
far lesser concern than hard physical violence.<b></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">RAND’s terrorism research reflected these
geopolitical tendencies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The early
incident chronologies and case studies were structured in largely geographic
terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While international terrorism
amounted to a new mode of conflict, most of it remained country-specific, aimed
at specific regimes and leaders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having
RAND assist in identifying potential geopolitical effects and implications was
foremost in the minds of RAND’s key audience: U.S. policymakers and
strategists. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Nonetheless, in early anticipation of things to
come, RAND’s broader writings about terrorism back then were able to observe
that most international terrorism amounted to “theater” and that “what
terrorists want is not a lot of people dead, but a lot of people
watching.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, as RAND’s research
progressed, the team began delving more into terrorists’ psychological
motivations, as well as into the psychological effects of their actions on
government leaders and mass audiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Terrorist mindsets and media influences — terrorists’ propensities for
propaganda, deception, and psyops — began to emerge in the 1970s-1980s as new
concerns, notably in writings by Brian Jenkins, Konrad Kellen, and myself, and
later, by Bruce Hoffman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were
beginning to notice that, for some terrorists, occupying mental terrain was as
significant as seizing physical terrain.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Thus, even though RAND data collection and
analysis, not to mention policymakers’ concerns, remained geopolitically
oriented late into these decades, RAND’s team began to sense that terrorism and
its implications were evolving in directions that were more than simply
geopolitical in nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Terrorist groups
were becoming more networked in some regions — a geopolitical development — as
well as technologically more lethal (a hard-power development).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But terrorists were also learning to create
widespread soft-power as well as local hard-power effects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They endeavored more than ever to generate
ideological, religious, cultural, and other ideational and “identity” effects,
often by exploiting media attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Yet, in retrospect, U.S. policy as well as RAND
research on terrorism during its early decades, the 1970s-1980s, remained
mostly within a geopolitical frame.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Indeed, the evolution in terrorism we just noted — this reorientation to
create soft- as well as hard-power effects, to exert what today is termed
“sharp power,” and to impose ideational as well as physical effects — did not
start taking hold until the 1990s, near the end of this mainly geopolitical
phase, on the eve of what becomes a vast revolution in information, communications,
and social-media technologies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Its effects were especially potent on the
conflicts unfolding in the Middle East, where al Qaeda, IS, al Qaeda, and other
jihadist formations constantly maneuver online to attract recruit and stun
enemy audiences by means of graphic videos and other measures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Analysts everywhere struggled to make sense
of these new modes of cognitive warfare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In one example of this, RAND co-sponsored a conference in 2014 — <i>War
by What Means, According to Whose Rules? The Challenge for Democracies Facing
Asymmetric Conflicts</i> — where the concept of “imagefare” was raised by
Israeli communications specialist Moran Yarchi, as a contrast to warfare:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“Unlike the conflicts with
achievements determined in the battlespace in which the main tool for
overpowering is warfare, in conflicts with achievement determined in the
information space, the actors should first and foremost consider image concerns
and use imagefare: <i>Imagefare is the use, or misuse, of images as a guiding
principle or a substitute for traditional military means to achieve political
objectives. The actors involved in the conflict attempt to promote their
preferred messages through the media in an attempt to gain the public’s support
and, ultimately, achieve their political goals</i>.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">While this innovative term has not gained
traction, the underlying ideas and observations certainly speak to wondering
whether the geopolitical frame is as relevant as it used to be, and whether a
new framework is needed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sections
below offer a preliminary but grounded speculation about that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Terrorisms’ Emerging Noöpolitical Phase</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Geopolitics — geopolitical thinking,
geopolitical factors and forces — has long had a conceptual grip on how U.S.
policymakers and strategists see the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This concept, first coined in the early 1900s, dominated international
strategic thinking all across the 20<sup>th</sup> century, especially the
decades from World War I through the Cold War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Today, in these early decades of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, the
concept still runs strong; many national-security analysts still hold that
“Geopolitics matters, then, now, and always,” partly because “Hard power
underpins soft power, and enables it”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In hard-core national-security circles, those
maxims seem barely debatable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in
their purest, most exalted form, they are starting to hinder strategic
thinking, including about terrorism, largely because of how the digital
information revolution continues to transform the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once debates do arise about the limitations
of traditional geopolitical thinking for addressing today’s world, they are
bound to affect, perhaps reshape, future terrorism database requirements.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">During the 2000s, terrorisms’ evolution in the
directions we noted above accelerated abruptly following the 9/11 attacks, as
al Qaeda and IS arose, cyberspace and social media grew exponentially, and the
U.S. government mounted its “War on Terror” around the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jihadi and other terrorist strategists began
sensing, well before any nation’s anti- and counter-terrorism strategists
sensed the same, that terrorism is as much about whose story wins as whose
weapons win, and that success means targeting people’s mental as well as their
physical terrains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Al Qaeda and IS would
become masters, especially online, at causing the “fear and alarm” central to
most definitions of what terrorism is and does.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The challenges terrorists pose today are still
physical — they still conduct bombings, assassinations, armed assaults, etc.,
as lethal as ever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But today’s
challenges are also more cognitive than ever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>America’s adversaries everywhere — from nations to nonstate networks,
including terrorist organizations — are using dark new modes of political,
social, cultural, and psychological warfare against their opponents: wars of
ideas, battles of stories, weaponized narratives, memetic viruses, epistemic
attacks, etc., waged by way of information operations and narrative strategies,
often to drive people’s thinking into information silos and bubbles —
linguistic terms of art that mostly didn’t even exist during the foundational
years of terrorism research at RAND.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Despite the ideational nature of many conflicts,
most are still viewed as being primarily geopolitical in nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was the case during the Cold War, when
it was framed as both a geopolitical and an ideological struggle, with the
latter mattering mostly because of its potential geopolitical
consequences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lately, it has remained
the case with analyses about the Arab Spring, the rise of the Far Right in
Europe, Hindu-Muslim clashes in South Asia, protest movements in Hong Kong, and
secessionist movements around the world — with some being treated as terrorism
by local governments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, on closer
examination, none of these recent movements are primarily geopolitical in
nature; they are equally if not primarily ideational.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Since these new modes of conflict are being used
to confound people’s minds, subvert their institutions, fracture their
cultures, and polarize their societies, is it not time to see that geopolitics
alone may no longer be the best way to frame and explain them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Classifying them as ideational or cognitive or
soft-power in nature, is an easy way to go; such language is widely accepted
and is largely the practice today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However, realizing that it may be better to classify them under a new
category — as “noöpolitical” — can lead to a more accurate, encompassing grasp
of the strategic forces and dynamics at play as we move deeper into the digital
information age.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The words “noöpolitics” and “noöpolitical” stem
from long-ago observations that our planet is finally giving rise to a
long-predicted “noösphere” — a term derived from the Greek root “noös” meaning
“mind.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The term originated a hundred
years ago when three scientists — French theologian-paleontologist Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin, French mathematician Edouard Le Roy, and Russian
geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky — met in Paris in 1922, in order to discuss
Earth’s evolution as a planet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">For them and fellow scientists, it was already
accepted knowledge that our planet first evolved a globe-circling <i>geosphere</i>,
consisting of its geological mantle; and that next to evolve was a
globe-circling biological layer, or <i>biosphere</i>, consisting of all plant
and animal life, including humans — in other words, the terrains of
geopolitics. What Teilhard, Le Roy, and Vernadsky (still revered in Russia)
proposed was that a third layer would eventually grow atop the other two: the <i>noösphere</i>
— a globe-circling “realm of the mind,” a “thinking layer,” in later wording a
“web of living thought” and “common pool of thought” that will lead to an
“inter-thinking humanity.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These were
powerful innovative insights at the time; they remain so today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People today commonly talk about “cyberspace”
and, more broadly, the “infosphere” as information realms — yet the noösphere
encompasses both, and more.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The noösphere concept has yet to go mainstream
in common parlance, but select scientists and intellectuals have advanced it
for decades. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Immediately after World War
II, its proponents helped inspire the creation of the UN, UNESCO, and other
“noospheric institutions.”<sup><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span></sup><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The concept attracted wide (though fleeting)
public attention in Europe and America in the 1950s and 1960s, following the
posthumous publication of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s books: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Phenomenon of Man</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Future of Man</i>, which became
best-sellers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the 1990s, the concept
gained new legs, especially among <i>Wired</i> magazine fans, following the
emergence of cyberspace, which was said to be “hardwiring the noosphere.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today, the number and variety of online institutes
and other platforms in favor of the concept keeps expanding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It won’t be long before new initiatives
advocate far and wide for noticing the noösphere’s emergence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As words, noösphere and noöpolitics are not
“trending” yet, but they will before long.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">For the most part, proponents have wanted the
noösphere’s emergence to serve their interests in and hopes for global
peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, most proponents today
associate the noösphere’s emergence with improving the prospects for world
peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Nonetheless, the three original conceivers of
the noösphere predicted that its transitional phases could be turbulent and
that conflicts would arise to control it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Today, nearly a century later, this is already occurring in many areas —
on occasion explicitly, as when it is said that the “memetic tribes” fighting
America’s various domestic culture wars seem “locked in a Darwinian zero-sum
war for the narrative of the noosphere, the sphere of human thought.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile, usage of the term noöpolitics is
starting to spread in spots in Europe. and Russia as a contrast to geopolitics
and/or as a concept for critical thinking about information domination and
warfare in cyberspace </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Meanwhile in Russia and China</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The noösphere and noöpolitics, far from seeming
to be odd fringe concepts, are proving attractive to America’s adversaries,
notably Russia and China.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are
developing new concepts akin to noöpolitics, better and faster than are
American strategists, implicitly acknowledging that noöpolitics is on the rise
relative to geopolitics.<b></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">This trend began in the 1990s, when adversaries
and competitors of the West — from nation-state actors like Russia, China, and
Iran, to nonstate networks like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (IS), and Wikileaks
— quickly learned to develop and deploy dark modes of soft power, especially
online, against America and its fellow democracies. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Since then, Russian strategists have developed the
non-military, political-warfare concept they call “gibridnaya voyna” (usually
translated as “hybrid war,” but “social netwar” might be more accurate).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This concept arose from assessments that
Russia lost the Cold War not because of the West’s hard power, but because the
West used information-age soft-power measures — e.g., support for civil-society
movements like Solidarity in Poland — to collapse the Soviet Union, and then to
set Russia back through support for the Arab Spring and Color Revolutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Russia’s intent now is to turn this concept
around and use it against the United States, perhaps even inside our country.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">While “gibridnaya voyna” is not explicitly about
the noösphere or noöpolitics, other Russian concepts are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In particular, Alexander Dugin, Russia’s
famed expert on geopolitics and information warfare (he helped formulate <i>gibridnaya
voyna</i>) has focused since 2013 on articulating “Noomakhia” — his concept for
theorizing about “Wars of Minds” that he says characterize all civilizations,
defining their inherent natures and affecting how they rise and fall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far, Dugin’s unusual publications on noömakhia
seem quite historical, philosophical, and theoretical, often weirdly so — but
the concept could easily be given operational import if Russian strategists so
desired.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">It makes sense that Russian theorists and
strategists lead in formulating <i>noos</i>-related concepts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For they trace back to Vernadsky, co-founder
of the noösphere concept in 1922, who became evermore influential as a
scientist in Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may also be
worth noting that, for decades, Russians supported unusual international
conferences about the noösphere that attracted odd new-age and far-right
believers from the United States and elsewhere. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">While explicit references to <i>noos</i>-related
concepts are lacking in China, its strategists are currently intent on
developing the most noöpolitical concept to be found in adversarial circles:
“discourse power” — a combination of ideological, ideational, and psychological
measures for scripting what people think about China and its growing reach
around the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is manifested not
only in Beijing’s international narrative strategies, but also in its
aggressive efforts to expand media operations worldwide (particularly in
nations tied to its Belt and Road Initiative), and improve its social media
presence (and surveillance).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Spreading
propaganda and managing perceptions about controversial issues fall under this
concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More to the point, Chinese
military and special-operations thinkers are working hard to develop China’s
capabilities for “cognitive domain operations” for non-military as well as
military purposes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In sum, U.S. adversaries have already detected,
quite effectively, that noöpolitical factors and forces are gaining in significance,
alongside more traditional geopolitical ones; and that grand strategy is coming
to depend as much on noöpolitics as geopolitics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their conceptual arsenals appear to be more
developed and diverse than our own at this point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We do not know what effects this conceptual
turn may have on terrorism analyses (and databases) in Russia and China, not to
mention other state and nonstate adversaries, but the question may be worth
asking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Future Implications for Definitions and
Databases</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">As noted above, RAND’s early research on
terrorism arose in a primarily geopolitical environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today, a half-century later, and largely
because of the spread of digital information, communications, and media
technologies, the world has changed so much that it is time for
national-security policymakers, strategists, and analysts to begin putting
noöpolitics on a par with geopolitics, including for anticipating, deterring,
and responding to likely future bouts of terrorism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">At first, readers may have difficulty accepting
that “noöpolitics” is a valuable new concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If so, bear in mind two clarifications:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>First, it would be an error to view it as simply new jargon for repackaging
an old concept, “soft power.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Noöpolitics is indeed largely about “soft” forms of power, just as
geopolitics is mainly about “hard” forms of power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, just as geopolitical actors are often
concerned about making moves that have the right kinds of psychological and
ideational (i.e., noöpolitical) effects — e.g., as in foreign port visits by a
mighty U.S. aircraft carrier, or a “shock and awe” bombing campaign — so does
growth of the noösphere, thus noöpolitics, require a hard physical basis:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>vast technological installations, systems, networks,
and other infrastructures for information and communications around the world —
e.g., myriad undersea cables, land-based towers, space satellites, server
farms, plus vast arrays of surveillance and monitoring systems, as well as what
is usually mentioned, the Internet, cellphones, computers, all sorts of media
platforms, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hardly any of this
infrastructure existed when RAND terrorism research began in 1973; today, a
half-century later, it is still in its infancy, still blossoming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Continued expansion of this hard
infrastructure will make it increasingly difficult to be dismissive about the
rise of the noösphere and noöpolitics.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">apparatus</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Second, just as geopolitics is a very broad
concept — an aggregator of all sorts of factors and forces that drive
territorial interests and actions — so is noöpolitics a broad concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It encompasses not only cyberspace and the
infosphere, but also realms of values, ideas, ideology, philosophy, religion,
culture, cognition, psychology, propaganda, public diplomacy, identity
politics, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of all these concepts,
noöpolitics is the most encompassing; only it can stand on a par with
geopolitics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So long as
national-security research analysts continue to prefer narrow concepts and
categories as their foci, such as ideology, culture, credibility, or identity, they
risk being slow to see that these concepts and categories are all overlapping
interconnected facets of the noösphere and noöpolitics — which means they risk
leaving the strategic and analytical high ground to experts at geopolitics as
we enter eras when it will be advisable, even essential to think in terms of
noöpolitics as well as geopolitics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Terrorism’s increasingly noöpolitical phase may
actually have commenced two decades ago — 9/11 was as much a noöpolitical as a
geopolitical attack on America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The January-6
insurrection this year was, arguably, a primarily noöpolitical attack within
America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may not qualify as a
terrorist act, but besides involving violence that spread fear and alarm, it
was committed by people in a high state of deliberate inculcation with fear and
alarm.<b></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">If these speculations are correct about an
ongoing shift in the global (and domestic?) strategic environment, what new
light may this shed on terrorism? On how to look ahead?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On what kinds of acts may be more likely in
the future?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On what kinds of databases
may prove germane not only for analyzing events, but also for anticipating,
deterring, and otherwise responding to them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Here are some tentative preliminary speculations:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">•<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Analytical
debates about how to define terrorism in operational terms seem likely to go
through another challenging round, this time with a new emphasis on the meaning
of “fear and alarm” and on specifying measures for assessing it, this time at
societal as well as group and individual levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What may prompt this, as well as complicate
it, is knowing that American society at large appears to be more rife with fear
and alarm than ever before, mostly as a result of political polarization and
tribalization (i.e., malignant noöpolitics).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To make matter worse, there are now numerous politicians, preachers,
pundits, and partisans for whom manufacturing fear and alarm is a business
model.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">•<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Noöpolitical
approaches to conflict already have rising appeal among tribalized groups on
the far-left and, even more so, the far-right in Europe and the United
States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Members seem increasingly
animated by and susceptible to cognitive warfare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prospects of this resulting in violent
terrorist-type incidents within the United States seem likely to increase among
political, religious, and cultural factions and militias, especially where such
groups may be influenced by and networked with seemingly like-minded outside
groups.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While they generally use other
language, they are set on fighting for control of the noösphere (or their own mini-noosphere)
as they see it, be that to expand their own or defend it from expansion and
domination by somebody else’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Earlier
examples of this are anti-abortion and anti-Semitic terrorism.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">•<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Mindset
analysis seems likely to re-surface as a crucial concern for terrorism research
and database construction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As noted
earlier, “mindset” remains an imprecise concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most analyses rely on psychological and
ideological criteria for determining people’s mindsets and worldviews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, terrorism analysts may find that new
attention to cultural data would now be helpful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More systematic ways of assessing people’s
social cognitions (especially their space, time, and efficacy perceptions) may
be increasingly crucial for database construction and analysis. So may
narrative analysis, since so much depends on the creation and communication of
strategic narratives, and on the interactions among different narratives. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">•<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Just
as earlier terrorism aimed mostly at geopolitical kinds of targets, such as
government officials and buildings, so a more noöpolitically-oriented terrorism
may add new kinds of targets, ranging from nonstate actors to cultural
institutions to media infrastructures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While iconic forms of geopolitics pit arms against arms, noöpolitics
pits “weaponized narratives” against each other in battles over “whose story
wins” — the essence of noöpolitics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">•<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">State-sponsorship
of terrorism may occur more easily from afar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As the noösphere and its instruments grow, such sponsorship can become
less about shipping arms and other material goods to secret groups and
individuals, and more about exploiting online platforms (if not proxies,
plants, and patsies) for inducing reactive conditioning, deploying weaponized
narratives, and otherwise subverting from afar as well as within, perhaps so
slowly and nudgingly as to be nearly undetectable and unidentifiable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>State sponsors may act for noöpolitical as
much as geopolitical purposes, seeking cognitive more than geographic ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In light all this,
noöpolitical mapping may become more important to database designers and
displayers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Geopolitical strategists
love maps — nothing is more iconic than 19<sup>th</sup>-20<sup>th</sup> Century
pictures of them hovering over a map discussing its geography, built-up
structures, and the positioning of forces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mapping enables strategists and analysts to visualize a strategic
landscape, the better to grasp what they are up against and where their
advantages and opportunities may lie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Noöpolitically-oriented strategists and analysts will need maps too, but
of a very different sort — e.g., maps that display and track mental movements
and terrains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Preliminary attempts to do
so were made for the wars against Al Qaeda and IS, especially online.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it should be expected that far more
advanced and radically different kinds of maps may become possible in the
future. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">As this grand evolutionary shift occurs — as
conflicts become increasingly noöpolitical at home and abroad — terrorism
research and database design will be pressed to adapt by placing more emphasis on
ideational, cultural, cognitive, and perceptual data.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, public knowledge of this
could trigger, even amplify, the tribalizing narratives that already trouble
many Americans about being subjected to surveillance, monitoring, profiling, data
mining, and other measures that may be perceived as infringing on personal
freedom, privacy, identity, and individuality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As RAND analyst Konrad Kellen remarked about mindset analysis in 1982, “in
the end, the mindsets of the sympathizing audience and the government officials
who must respond to the terrorist threat may be equally significant for the
course and conduct of terrorism.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Thus, on the one hand, mindset and other
noöpolitically-oriented terrorism research and database construction may become
increasingly essential in order to safeguard domestic peace and assure national
wellbeing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But on the other hand, such
research could become far more controversial and questionable than terrorist
incident research ever was, especially if artificial-intelligence (AI) and
Big-Data processing become involved.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Extra care and skill may thus be indispensable
if/as analysts move deep into mindset-related research for domestic (or
international) security reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet it
can be done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, recent RAND work on
ancillary topics — notably, “truth decay,” “cognitive security,” and
“deradicalization” — provide positive innovative examples of how to approach
sensitive domestic matters in order to address the polarization and
tribalization besetting our society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In sum, the next phase of terrorism research
seems likely to develop in a noöpolitically charged environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The advantage will go to those analysts and
database builders who learn to think and work in noöpolitical rather than older
or narrower terms.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
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</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Nikonov, Sergey Borisovich, Anna Vitalievna
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
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https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA237-1.html</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Samson, Paul R., and David Pitt, eds., <i>The
Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change</i>, New
York: Routledge, 1999.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
https://epdf.pub/the-biosphere-and-noosphere-reader-global-environment-society-and-change.html</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Walker, Christopher, and Jessica Ludwig, “From
‘Soft Power’ to ‘Sharp Power’: Rising Authoritarian Influence in the Democratic
World,” in <i>Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence</i>, Washington,
D.C.: National Endowment for Democracy, International Forum for Democratic
Studies, December 2017. <br />
https://www.ned.org/sharp-power-rising-authoritarian-influence-forum-report/ </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Waltzman, Rand, <i>The Weaponization of
Information: The Need for Cognitive Security</i>, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND
Corporation, CT-473, 2017.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
https://www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CT473.html</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
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{margin-bottom:0in;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-21198824693515670812023-02-03T08:17:00.000-08:002023-02-03T08:17:35.119-08:00RAND Report on "The Origin and Evolution of the RAND Corporation's Terrorism Databases: Defining and Building a New Field of Knowledge" <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#2 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In April 2021, former RAND colleague Brian
Jenkins, who initiated and directed RAND research on international terrorism during
the 1970s-1980s, asked me to help write a history of RAND’s pioneering chronology
of international-terrorism incidents and related databases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had worked on those projects from 1972
until the mid 80s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I agreed, if we could add a future-oriented
section about how the emergence of the noosphere and noöpolitics may affect terrorism
in the years ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He agreed to
try.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus the final write-up we
submitted in September had such a section.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However, the powers-that-be wanted that closing section removed,
reportedly because it exceeded the project’s original historical intent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we removed it — to my lasting
disappointment.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">At least I made other contributions and got a
publication out of it:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brian Michael
Jenkins and David Ronfeldt, <i>The Origin and Evolution of the RAND
Corporation's Terrorism Databases: Defining and Building a New Field of
Knowledge,</i> RAND Corporation, PE-A1203-1, November 2021. Available at:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA1203-1.html</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The Abstract reads as follows:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“Two RAND Corporation
researchers at the forefront of collection and analysis of data on terrorism
recount the experiences, challenges, achievements, and lessons learned during
the past nearly 50 years. From the 1970s onward, RAND research on terrorism
evolved from its initial concern with terrorists' actions (i.e., incidents), to
the types of groups that committed those actions, to the attributes of people
who made up those groups, and finally to the nature of the mindsets that
motivated and characterized those terrorists. Each phase in that progression
required a different kind of database and a more sophisticated analytical
ability to use each database individually and to use them together (especially
as the databases became computerized). Each step also required a new look at
the definition of <i>terrorism</i>. After tracing this evolution, the authors
discuss challenges and criticisms that arose along the way. They conclude with
lessons learned, responses to criticisms, and thoughts about the future of this
area of research for database development.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Even so, this historical report has little
bearing on my blog’s purposes here, except as context for understanding my forward-looking
draft for the omitted section.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which I
will post tomorrow. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-40118633849199721142023-02-03T08:04:00.000-08:002023-02-03T08:04:35.284-08:00“Rethinking Strategy and Statecraft for the Information Age” Redux<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[#1 in a chronological series meant to update
this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">2020 had resulted in publication of our long
report <i>Whose Story Wins</i> (RAND, PE-A237-1, 2020) about the emergence of
the noosphere and noöpolitics, plus a short spin-off paper titled “Rethinking
Strategy and Statecraft for the Information Age: Rise of the Noosphere and
Noopolitik” (2020), which I posted here last year as a draft.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">During 2021 that spin-off paper led to three
opportune iterations, all with basically the same contents, but each slightly
revised and with a different sub-title:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">— First, as a prospective chapter for a book to
be published in South Africa about the implications of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution (4IR) for the future of higher education in Africa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I received an inquiry in mid-2020 about from
Willem Oliver, a scholar associated with the University of South Africa
(UNISA).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He initially wanted a chapter
about TIMN, but I offered an adaptation of the paper we already had available
about the noosphere and its implications for rethinking academic curricula and
coursework about grand strategy and statecraft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Arquilla and I are very pleased with the
outcome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We soon submitted a revised
draft, with a few additions about Africa, as “Rethinking Strategy And
Statecraft For The Information Age: Implications For Education.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the full book went through a couple
rounds of review and placement, it was published the following year as Chapter
6, “Rethinking Strategy and Statecraft for the Age of 4IR: Implications for
Higher Education,” in Erna Oliver, ed., <i>Global Initiatives and Higher Education
in the Fourth Industrial Revolution</i>, UJ Press, University of Johannesburg,
2022, pp. 131-151, available at: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://www.amazon.com/Global-Initiatives-Education-Industrial-Revolution/dp/1776405609</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">— Second, we provided “Rethinking Strategy and
Statecraft for the Information Age: Whose Narrative Wins,” for a book about
cognitive warfare that began full circulation in early 2021:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ajit Maan (ed.), <i>Dangerous Narratives:
Warfare, Strategy, Statecraft</i>, Narrative Strategies Ink, Washington, D.C.,
2020, Chapter 9, pp. 152-170, available at: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Narratives-Warfare-Strategy-Statecraft/dp/0578812819/</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">— Third, in August, after failing to place the
2020 original with a journal, and after making a few edits, including one I
regard as quite significant (see below), I posted the new iteration on the
Social Science Research Network (SSRN) site, as follows:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Title: </span></b><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Rethinking
Strategy and Statecraft for the Information Age: Rise of the Noosphere and
Noopolitik</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Abstract:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">
Updating ideas first proposed years ago, this paper urges that
national-security and foreign-policy strategists turn to a new concept for
adapting statecraft to the information age — noopolitik, which emphasizes
ideational “soft power” — as a successor to realpolitik, an aging concept that
has emphasized geopolitical “hard power.” Noopolitik derives from recognizing
that a new globe-circling phenomenon is emerging atop our planet’s
long-existing geosphere and biosphere: namely, the noosphere, as a “thinking
circuit” and “realm of the mind” enabled by the digital information revolution.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">As the noosphere grows, it
will profoundly affect statecraft — the conditions favoring traditional
realpolitik strategies will erode, and the prospects for noopolitik strategies
will grow. Strategic narratives will matter more than ever. The decisive factor
in today’s and tomorrow’s wars of ideas is thus bound to be “whose story wins”
— the essence of noopolitik.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Various state and non-state
actors have already taken the lead in deploying dark forms of noopolitik: e.g.,
political warfare, weaponized narratives, epistemic attacks — what China’s
leaders now call “discourse power.” This paper identifies better ways to fight
back and improve future prospects for the noosphere and noopolitik.
Policymakers and strategists should, among other initiatives, rethink existing
concepts of “soft power,” treat the “global commons” as a pivotal issue area
for both civilian and military strategy, and institute a requirement for regular,
systematic reviews of their nations’ “information posture.” Courses and
curricula for teaching grand strategy should be redesigned to focus better on
understanding social cognition and social evolution as well.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Keywords:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">
strategy, statecraft, realpolitik, noopolitik, noosphere</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Suggested Citation</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ronfeldt, David and Arquilla, John,
Rethinking Strategy and Statecraft for the Information Age: Rise of the
Noosphere and Noopolitik (January 30, 2021). Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3910628 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3910628 </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In the preceding months, after observing that
our realpolitik-vs.-noopolitik framing was still not gaining traction, I
figured that a geopolitics-vs.-noöpolitics framing might work better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most U.S. strategists were, by then, writing
far more in terms of geopolitics than realpolitik, and meanwhile the term <i>noöpolitics</i>
was starting to circulate in Europe (often as a translation of our noopolitik
term).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, when I posted the paper in
August, I added the following Author’s Note at the very end (p. 20):</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In the lead author’s view,
this version, last revised and updated as of January 30, 2021, should go
through another round of revision and updating before being re-submitted for
journal publication. In particular, the analysis would benefit from adding new
materials he has collected on Russian and Chinese concepts and strategies. The
analysis could further benefit from noting the possibility of adding a second
stream of thought. This paper, in keeping with our prior writings, focuses on
comparing realpolitik and noopolitik — our first stream of thought. It may make
good sense to at least mention the growing prospects for developing a companion
stream that would focus on geopolitics versus noo</span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">̈</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">politics — thereby urging
strategists to start thinking in terms of noo</span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">̈</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">politics as well as
geopolitics. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Oddly, my proposal to add that second
frame/stream of analysis became a matter of contention months later in 2022.</span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-70249115528635585242023-02-03T08:01:00.003-08:002023-02-08T08:59:18.075-08:00Blog Update: Materials I Had Meant to Post in 2021 and 2022<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I have been remiss in posting here for over two
years, including the entirety of 2021 and 2022.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Rather negligent and unproductive of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At least I did not come down with Covid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And I did get some writings done during those two years that were posted
or published elsewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, in roughly
chronological order, are write-ups from 2021-2022 that I meant to post here,
since they bear on the purposes of this blog:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• “Rethinking Strategy and Statecraft for the
Information Age,” Redux</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• Publication of <i>The Origin and Evolution of
the RAND Corporation's Terrorism Databases: Defining and Building a New Field
of Knowledge</i> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• Draft on “Terrorism Database Construction in
Global Strategic Perspective” (July 2021)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• “Geopolitics, Noopolitics, and the Fight for
Ukraine” (April 27, 2022)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• Paper on <i>Has China "Hacked" The
Foundational Framework For U.S.-China Policy Dialogue?</i> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• Book Review of Chinese Strategist Wang
Huning’s <i>America Against America</i> (1991)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• </span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">New <i>Substack</i> Blog: Onward with TIMN …
maybe STAC, NOO, and CYBOC too</span>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• Invitation to Re-Post Old Paper on <i>Two
Faces of Fidel: Captain Ahab and Don Quixote</i> (1990), Plus New Forward</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• Article in <i>The Atlantic</i> Revisits Our
Cyberwar and Netwar Writings</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• </span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Russian </span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Request to Translate “The Prospects for
Cyberocracy (Revisited)” <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• Re-Post of TIMN Draft Chapter 1. “Anticipating The Emergence Of Quadriform
Societies” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• Re-Post of “Points To Ponder As We Move Ahead
With TIMN—#1”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I will post each one next, separately and in
that order. [Edited, February 6]<br /></span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-24668306487537404432020-12-17T11:23:00.001-08:002020-12-17T11:23:49.198-08:00Toward a new sectorism — #5: Charting how to view a future “commons sector” <div><p></p><p>Maybe a couple of charts can help strengthen a speculation I keep trying to test out and explain better: </p><p>Health, education, welfare, and environmental matters have so many affinities and become so intertwined as major policy matters that it will make increasing sense for policymakers to view them as belonging together as a set, a bundle — indeed as bedrock components for an semi-independent new sector, a commons sector. </p><p>Since this has turned into another long-winded post, just skip to view the two charts — they depict the crux of my argument — if you’d rather not wend your way through my prose. The charts are what I’m testing out here. Do they work? </p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>INTRODUCTORY REMARKS (AGAIN) </b></p><p>As I’ve said before, our policymakers have has long treated health, education, welfare, and the environment as matters that fall to our public and private sectors, or that civil-society sectors should attend to. That has been the case for decades. Yet by now, as a result of growing size and complexity, none of these matters fits comfortably in either the public or private sector, and they are way too big and burdensome to leave up to civil-society. </p><p>Furthermore, health, education, welfare, and environmental matters are not primarily about maximizing power and/or profit, which is what the government’s public sector and the economy’s private sector are primarily about. Good health, education, welfare, and environmental conditions may be essential for furthering national power and economic productivity, but they are primarily about something else. And the more enormous and complex they become as policy problems, the more important it is to discern and heed that something else. </p><p>Here’s my speculative deduction: If we view health, education, welfare, and the environment together, as a set, we can see that they are mainly about maximizing care, broadly defined: people care, life care, planet care, in a sense the care of body, mind, and soul. Viewed as such — as an enormously complex interrelated set of matters that our existing sectors are no longer suited to handling — they look like the most potent candidates for a prospective “fourth sector” — probably a “commons sector” — for our society, as well as for other advanced societies on the verge of evolving from triform into quadriform systems. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>HOW HEALTHCARE POLICY MATTERS LOOK TODAY </b></p><p>A couple weeks ago, wondering about the above, I happened across a Wall Street Journal article by Bobby Jindal, plus an editorial and a bunch of follow-up letters, about how Republicans view healthcare policy — a tidy set of articles that highlight concerns found among Democrats as well. It occurred to me that these handy articles could serve as a foil for advancing my argument more quickly and easily than by going through the huge folders and hundreds of articles I’ve been saving for such a task. </p><p>These GOP-friendly articles raise a broad range of issues, more than I’m truly interested in right now: The lack of competition in our healthcare system. Its domination by a few large powerful companies. The limited choices and high costs facing consumers. The regulatory impediments to competition. The need for litigation and tax-code reforms. The power of unions intent on preserving employer plans. Et cetera. With much of all this framed in terms of individual vs. collective responsibility, and public- vs. private-sector roles. And with some ideas raised about expanding the roles of collectives, hybrid organizations, and network designs more generally. Plus laments that gridlock and stalemate now characterize our healthcare system. Not to mention more specialized points that arose in these write-ups. </p><p>Quite an array of concerns. Quite a muddle too. (And I left a lot out, too.) </p><p>What mainly catches my eye, however, is a set of policy principles that were raised, centered around the following: Whether healthcare should be recognized as a right. Whether to accept pre-existing conditions. Whether and how to support primary care, as well as offer preventive services and protect against severe risks that could become terribly costly. Whether and how to allow individuals to chose their plans and services, select tailored options, and at times make changes to them. How to keep all this affordable. Plus how to improve network designs across the system
The Republican voices represented by this small set of writings were generally in favor of these policy principles, to varying degrees. Assuming most Democrats and Independents may agree, here’s what these principles look like in a chart — see Figure 1 below: </p><p> </p><p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bbnwpx62-c0/X9utfcUHByI/AAAAAAAAAig/EJM7l8JVSMMhhb4jkqlUffGrFRKk0dtswCLcBGAsYHQ/s1348/Pro-commons%2Bchart%2B%25231.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="1348" height="316" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bbnwpx62-c0/X9utfcUHByI/AAAAAAAAAig/EJM7l8JVSMMhhb4jkqlUffGrFRKk0dtswCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h316/Pro-commons%2Bchart%2B%25231.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p> </p></div><p><span></span> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Now, take another look at that column of policy principles in Figure 1.
Doesn’t it also reflect principles we often see raised about education
policy? As well as about welfare policy? Plus, with language tweaks,
about policy principles for assuring the quality of the environment we
live in? <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>HOW HEALTHCARE AND RELATED POLICY MATTERS MAY LOOK TOMORROW </b></p><p>I’d say the principles in column one do apply not only to healthcare, but also to the policy analyses and dialogues occurring around education, welfare, and environmental matters. And I’m sure I can locate plenty of documents in my computer holdings to substantiate that. Indeed, comparable dialogues and narratives appear to exist in all four areas (health, etc.). Yet, so far, to my knowledge, no analyses exist that have looked across all four areas, assessing whether there are underlying similarities and interlinkages that could help guide policymaking. Isn’t it time to start doing so? </p><p>If so, then Figure 1 can be expanded to look like Figure 2 below. All the policy principles in the far left column reach across all four policy domains. Notice, however, that for this post I have presumptuously changed the title. Figure 1 is about a time, the past hundred years of so, today in particular, when policy dialogue is centered around public versus private options (or alternatives). Figure 2 jumps ahead to a future when “commons options” presumably take hold as well, especially for these four matters. </p><p> </p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f_T4UND-KDU/X9utuWEAhGI/AAAAAAAAAik/N_5fh5hWf1sxULo4a8jHgMWor0Tf58jBwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1520/Pro-commons%2BFig%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="580" data-original-width="1520" height="244" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f_T4UND-KDU/X9utuWEAhGI/AAAAAAAAAik/N_5fh5hWf1sxULo4a8jHgMWor0Tf58jBwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h244/Pro-commons%2BFig%2B2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p> <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>My questions for you as readers are mainly about the two charts: Do they help advance my argument? What else might/should be added to expand the rows, even the column headings? Have you come across depictions or proposals elsewhere that advise viewing, and treating, such matters conjointly? </p><p>So far, people have not cottoned to these ideas about putting health, education, welfare, and environmental matters in a distinct sector. Yet people have no problem nowadays thinking that agriculture and industry, not to mention agribusiness, belong together in the economy’s private sector — it’s standard, customary, to do so. Yet, I’d guess — and someday I should try to verify — that there was a time, centuries ago, when agriculture and industry were not viewed as belonging together in the same sector, say because of function, class, or other reasons. But cognitive frames about such matters can change immensely over time. </p><p>More to the point, it was only decades ago that health, education, and welfare were indeed bundled under a single U.S. government entity — first with the creation of the Federal Security Agency (FSA) in 1939 by President Roosevelt; then with the FSA’s successor, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), established in 1953 by President Eisenhower. Someday I hope to research the rationales for putting them together like that, since the underlying rationales (“service” being one of them) may apply to justifying the future creation of a new sector as argued here. </p><p>Today, partly because HEW became so enormous as a bureaucracy and budget item, a reorganization in 1979 under President Carter led to its components being distributed among new departments: the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), and the Department of Education ED). Then the Social Security Administration (SSA) was separated out as an independent agency in 1994 under President Clinton. </p><p>Today, no one says that health, education, and welfare, not to mention environmental matters, should be recombined under a single government department. That would make no sense. But if my analysis is correct, it will make increasing sense to see them all move into a next/new/fourth sector — hopefully, a pro-commons sector. Today’s MediCare might thus be superseded by, say, a “MediCommons”. Government and business (i.e., the public and private sectors, not to mention civil-society actors) would still have important roles to play; but they would no longer be in charge of overall sector governance after these matters are separated out. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>CODA </b><br /></p><p>Seen thusly, the emergence of a distinct new sector for health, education, welfare, and the environment would spell an advance in complexity — evolution from a triform to a quadriform society — that would simultaneously bring an improvement in systemic simplicity. Getting their will require combined efforts from myriad civil-society, state, and market actors, undoubtedly across many decades, perhaps driven along by the rise of pro-commons movements. The struggle to construct a quadriformist future has barely begun. </p><p>Meanwhile, what do you think of those two charts? Do they help? Enough to make them worth further development? </p><p> </p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-80213277721832234832020-10-20T08:53:00.006-07:002023-05-23T14:57:28.782-07:00Toward a new sectorism — #4: same old insufficient calls for a three-sector approach<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Back in April, when I meant to post this, I was
telling myself that I must get back to forecasting the rise of a fourth sector,
and explaining how and why it can improve America’s functioning and well-being.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">American, as a society and a system, has long
had three major sectors: civil society’s community- and home-based sector(s),
government’s public sector, and business’s private sector. Having these three
has enabled America to be successful for over two centuries, more so than other
three-sector societies, and far beyond what anyone could accomplish with
far-older one- and two-sector systems. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">But these three no longer suffice if we are to
continue advancing. We need a fourth (commons?) sector. We should start enabling
its emergence as the next step in long-term social evolution (à la TIMN). Doing
so will improve our society’s complexity as well as simplify its functioning —
a reorganization that will make everybody happier and healthier. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">As I was musing about this back then, along came
new papers by renowned theorists and activists reiterating the three-sector
framework and urging ways to make better use of it. Today six months later,
they are not so fresh, but they can still serve as foils for my continuing campaign.
So let’s take a look:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">•<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Samuel
Bowles and Wendy Carlin’s “The coming battle for the COVID-19 narrative,” in a
specialized journal (see URL below), dated April 10, 2020. The authors are
renowned complexity scientists affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute (SFI).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[https://voxeu.org/article/coming-battle-covid-19-narrative]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• Otto Scharmer’s “A New Superpower in the
Making: Awareness-Based Collective Action,” at a blog he heads, dated April 8,
2020. As a futurist based at MIT, Scharmer writes mostly about organizational
and economic trends and prospects.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[https://medium.com/presencing-institute-blog/a-new-superpower-in-the-making-awareness-based-collective-action-83861bcb9859]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">• Henry Mintzberg, Dror Etzioni, and Saku
Mantere’s “Worldly Strategy for the Global Climate,” <i>Stanford Social
Innovation Review</i>, Fall 2018, pp. 42-47. Mintzberg, a famed organization
theorist, is based along with his co-authors at McGill University in Canada. He
writes mainly about the roles of the “plural sector” — his term about what are
mostly community-based civil-society actors.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2246/bc715c531f724b404a4fcdd53f25504ee9b6.pdf]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 7.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">The first two articles are
motivated by institutional failures in responding to the Covid-19 health
crisis, the third by wide-spread failures to come up with a world-wide strategy
to deal with global climate change.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">All three make similar points: Modern societies
have civil-society (“people”), government (public), and market (private)
sectors — i.e., they have three-sector systems. Policymakers keep over-emphasizing
the public and private sectors as sources for policy options. But today’s
health, environmental, and other crises require including civil-society actors
as well. Better ways must be found to enable all three sectors to work
together, as complements rather than substitutes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">It's good to see the three-sector argument being
revived in these articles. But, from a TIMN perspective, it’s a very old
argument. It would help our society if policymaking conformed to it in the near
term, but it offers little new and effective for the long-term.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Bowles & Carlin’s three-sector framework:</span></b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">
Their article makes good sense regarding what framework to use for addressing
and resolving complex policy issues. Their paper illuminates that concern with
solid reasoning as well as two elegant charts (best I’ve seen lately) about how
government, market, and civil-society actors and their sectors may work
together. In their words:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“COVID-19, for better or
worse, brings into focus a third pole in the debate: call it community or civil
society. In the absence of this third pole, the conventional language of
economics and public policy misses the contribution of social norms and of
institutions that are neither governments nor markets — like families,
relationships within firms, and community organisations.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“No combination of
government fiat and market incentives, however cleverly designed, will produce
solutions to problems like the pandemic. What we call civil society (or the
community) provides essential elements of a strategy to kill COVID-19 without
killing the economy.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“These examples underline
an important truth about institutional and policy design: the poles of the
institution space — at least ideally — are complements not substitutes.
Well-designed government policies enhance the workings of markets and enhance
the salience of cooperative and other socially valuable preferences.
Well-designed markets both empower governments and make them more accountable
without crowding out ethical and other pro-social preferences.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JPuqm43em0w/X48FOk59DiI/AAAAAAAAAg8/4mcLuCOhiHswO1YwJ0OMwrw33lHRdyELwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1324/Bowles%2B%2526%2BCarlin%2Bfigure.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="818" data-original-width="1324" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JPuqm43em0w/X48FOk59DiI/AAAAAAAAAg8/4mcLuCOhiHswO1YwJ0OMwrw33lHRdyELwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Bowles%2B%2526%2BCarlin%2Bfigure.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">And their title is quite right: “a narrative
battle is coming” — indeed it is already going on. Who wins it will matter for
whether we end up with a two-, three-, or prospective four-sector framework.
But far more illumination is needed than they have provided so far. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><br />
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Scharmer’s more-or-less three-sector vision:</span></b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">
In observing how people — people, not government or business — are responding
to the pandemic, Scharmer is heartened to see “the further awakening of a
movement taking shape across the planet … the activation of a deep and widely
held longing for profound societal and civilizational renewal.” As a futurist, he
heralds the continued emergence of “the new superpower in the making — the rise
of a new pattern of collective action that operates from an awareness of the
whole: Awareness-Based Collective action (ABC)” on a planetary scale.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">After blaming Big Government, Big Business, and Big
Tech for a “massive institutional failure connected to these issues,” he asks: “Should
health and healthcare — or core parts of it — be organized by a different type
of enterprise, one that is driven by a social mission instead of profit?” In
reply, he calls for “rethinking the framework of public health in terms of the
planet: putting planetary health and well-being first in our framing of what a
good healthcare system is trying to do.” In his view, this means creating “new
types of societal innovation infrastructures” — new learning infrastructures,
democratic governance infrastructure, and economic infrastructures.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">His proposal is not clear about the details, and
it’s not explicitly a three-sector view. But it is in keeping with his
long-standing quest to transform capitalism and society — specifically, to
“upgrade our operating systems” by evolving toward “Capitalism 4.0” or
“Operating System 4.0.” For our society has become so complex “you cannot solve
‘4.0 challenges’ with response mechanisms that are rooted in operating systems
2.0 and 3.0.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4IWbG-xQVbo/X48FOjZYTnI/AAAAAAAAAhA/V_k56t4Vd0kQaj6HHikbqkS_Oc6tPbl0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1468/Scharmer%2Bfigure.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1026" data-original-width="1468" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4IWbG-xQVbo/X48FOjZYTnI/AAAAAAAAAhA/V_k56t4Vd0kQaj6HHikbqkS_Oc6tPbl0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Scharmer%2Bfigure.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Personally, I don’t cotton to his terms and
categories, but his framework is quite TIMN-ish in nature. As I wrote years ago
(2016), “his view maps imperfectly but surprisingly well onto TIMN —
particularly in his ideas about progressions, about sectors adding together,
about the old persisting with the new, and about heading toward a revival of
the commons.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[Source: http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2016/05/organizational-forms-compared-my.html]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Unfortunately, this recent article says nothing
about that last point, which might have made it into more of a four- than a
three-sector vision about the health crisis.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Mintzberg, Etzioni, and Mantere’s three-sector
framework:</span></b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> They summarize their triform argument very
concisely right up front: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“Progress in dealing with
the problem of climate change will require that the institutions of government,
business, and community work, not in isolation from each other, let alone at
cross purposes, but by reinforcing each other’s efforts through consolidation.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">They then categorize various climate-strategy
initiatives “by sector … because the public, plural, and private sectors seem
to favor different processes.” Of these processes, “orchestrated planning” is favored
in the public sector, “autonomous venturing” in the private sector, and
“grounded engagement” in the “plural sector.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In their definition, “The plural sector includes
those formal and informal associations that are neither publicly owned by
government nor privately owned by investors. Some are owned by members, such as
cooperatives, while others are owned by no one, such as the Sierra Club and the
Girl Scouts.” It’s a sector whose associations are often led by “social
entrepreneurs.” In other words, it is mostly a civil-society sector.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--LbBMn7Ks2U/X48FOnlbUaI/AAAAAAAAAhE/atOj-Tk6S4EEVyAdOlhFGxvHZu_T_pv_gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1696/Mintzberg%2Bet%2Bal%2Bfigure.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="824" data-original-width="1696" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--LbBMn7Ks2U/X48FOnlbUaI/AAAAAAAAAhE/atOj-Tk6S4EEVyAdOlhFGxvHZu_T_pv_gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Mintzberg%2Bet%2Bal%2Bfigure.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span><br /><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In addition to showing that different
climate-change initiatives may involve different sectors, and different
combinations of sectors, Mintzberg and his colleagues urge that these sectors
and their actors work together, not alone and especially not at cross<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>purposes. Indeed, what they urge is entirely in
accord with TIMN dynamics:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“By contrast, when the
three sectors work together, to constructively reinforce each other’s efforts,
they can together generate an ascending spiral of consolidation. …</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“Each activity can thus
spawn more activities in the other sectors as well as in its own, so that,
together, they can feed this ascending spiral of consolidation. Perhaps more
significantly, there can also be constructive networks of consolidation, as the
organizations of the three sectors interact with each other in many different
ways—alliances, partnerships, joint ventures, and so on. … <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">“In any event, addressing
the problem of climate change will likely require that each of the sectors
attends to what it does best, in conjunction with the other two. In general,
communities engage, governments legitimize, and businesses invest. We believe
that this is how healthy societies progress.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Preferring the term “worldly” to “global,” they note
that new narratives and mindsets are needed: “A worldly mindset can prepare
actors to appreciate their differences, and thereby work together towards
consolidated ascension, from group to globe.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 332.65pt;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 332.65pt;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">[The remainder of this
drafted-in-April post feels as though it may be mostly copy-pasted from earlier
posts. Oh well, the points still fit here. I’m too tired to be entirely new and
nonredundant right now.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 332.65pt;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Limits of the three-sector framework:</span></b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">
As these papers show, today’s policymakers, politicians, and media pundits, not
to mention social theorists, mostly behave as though our society, our system,
has only two sectors that matter: the public sector and the private sector. Our
leaders have long relied on a two-sector framework to propose fixes for
America’s mounting health, education, welfare, environmental, and other
domestic problems. Some proposals call for more government programs, others for
more privatization, a few for better public-private collaboration. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">By now, this two-sector framework is deeply entrenched
and tribalized. It is also just plain wrong-headed. It wasn’t true in the past.
It will be even less true in the future. For it neglects two other sectors that
belong in the framework: one very old, and still occasionally recognized, as
these papers set out; the other so new its prospective emergence is barely
discernible today. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Our society used to regularly recognize three
major sectors — besides the public and private sectors, Americans also
recognized that their society’s functioning depended on the vitality of civil
society’s home- and community-based sector(s) and their arrays of voluntary
groups, social clubs, charitable associations, and activist NGOs. When not
acting alone, they would often assist public- and private-sector actors with
all sorts of local issues. Indeed, this sector used to have a well-regarded, albeit
lesser place in policymaking circles. And for decades, lots of theorists and
activists have called for better recognition of civil society and its
sector(s), often by new names — e.g., “social sector” (Drucker), “third sector”
(e.g., Salamon; Rifkin), “people sector” (Mintzberg). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">But lately, especially nowadays, this sector’s
significance is acknowledged mostly as an afterthought. If its policymaking value
could be recognized anew in Washington — if a three-sector framework were truly
put back in play, as these papers urge — that would help. But this is no small
goal, given the power, profit, and privilege, as well as inertia and tribalism,
that are overwhelmingly concentrated in the dominant two-sector framework. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">It usually takes a crisis to illuminate civil-society’s
importance — the papers at hand are correct to emphasize this, and to call for
correctives that would revitalize the three-sector framework. But many other efforts
have urged likewise in the past, and so far not little if anything has changed.
The Covid-19 crisis has presented a new opportunity — but political trends and
rhetoric in Washington just continue to harden around the two-sector framework.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">It will take more than this singular health
crisis to prompt deep reform. Other motivating crises, including disruptive
climate change, will have to come to the fore as well, and all these crises
will have to be rethought, not in isolation but as interrelated and
interactive. By then, people may begin to see that what’s needed is not a
revitalized three-sector framework, but steps toward constructing a four-sector
framework.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Need for a four-sector framework:</span></b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">
Hence my key point: The three-sector framework these paper’s tout will inevitably
prove insufficient — it would be better to start moving toward a four-sector
(quadriform) design. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">For long-term evolutionary reasons (i.e., TIMN),
our society has grown so advanced, so complex, that adjusting the two-,
three-sector framework will not work well for resolving what have become our
most critical, crisis-riven social problems: health, education, welfare, the
environment, and related insurance matters. They are now too immense,
complicated, burdensome, and interrelated to fit any longer into a two- or
three-sector framework. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">For reasons I will keep explaining and exploring
in future posts, including with points I’ve held back, our society’s complexity
is moving into a phase where it will have to add a next / new / fourth sector
in order to progress further. Developing such a new sector is not an idle
add-on suggestion; it is a looming evolutionary imperative, drawn from the arcs
and archives of history (i.e., TIMN). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Best I can deduce, a particular set of matters —
namely, health, education, welfare, the environment, and related insurance
matters — form the bundle that will make sense to aggregate and migrate into a
new sector. None are being addressed well by either government or business
actors, and they are too big and complex now for civil-society actors to
handle. What may explain why they can, and should, be viewed as a bundle is
that they all concern collective and individual care, broadly defined to
include social, economic, cultural, and environmental care — people care, life
care. The cross-cutting purpose is to assure that people can do their best for
themselves, for their families, neighborhoods, and communities, and for the
common good of society. That’s a purpose that would suit a new “commons
sector.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Consolidation of such next/new/fourth sector may
take decades to unfold, and may seem too far-out for immediate tasking. But it
is not too early to begin considering its creation, identifying the advantages
it can bring, and figuring out how to move relevant actors and activities
(e.g., hospitals, schools) into it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">As has occurred with the long historical evolution
of the prior three sectors (including the particular forms of organization,
property, and information that each requires), this fourth sector will, in
time, become as distinct and independent as the civil-society, government (public),
and market (private) sectors are from each other. As noted above, my current sense
(though I keep looking for alternative prospects) is that it will be a
care-oriented “commons sector,” constructed around yet-to-be-identified
information-age network designs that enable massive sharing, consisting of
yet-to-be-identified organizational entities designed for collective
cooperation (not like independent corporations designed for stand-alone
competition), probably entirely non-profit, with properties commonly held in
enormous trusts. It will not exist entirely apart from civil society, but
rather in conjunction with that realm. It will not be part of the government or
market realms, though it will co-exist with them. It will mean that societies
have advanced from triform to quadriform systems.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I could go on (and will in future posts). But
hopefully this is enough for now to indicate that a more radical narrative is
needed than these three papers offer. They may appear to be saying something
new. But from a TIMN perspective, they aren’t; they’re just reiterating and
shuffling around old three-sector ideas. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">What’s increasingly needed are quadriform ideas
and arguments that can appeal to policymakers, so they at least start to wonder
about the growing necessity and potential benefits of moving toward a
four-sector framework.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif"> </span></p>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-74440873529995126662020-10-16T10:02:00.001-07:002020-10-16T10:02:10.808-07:00Fourth Reason to Wonder and Worry About Trump’s Psyche: Psychological “Projectioneering,” Weaponized<p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Early on, in January 2017, I posted three
reasons to wonder and worry about Trump’s psyche while he was in office as
President:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">1. It looks like he has a
“hubris-nemesis complex” — a rare mentality whereby a leader not only has
hubris (the pretension to be god-like) but also wants to play Nemesis (the
goddess of divine vengeance) against another actor who is accused of greater
hubris.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">2. He is very adept at
deploying “the scoundrel’s script” — a rhetorical strategy for first denying,
then diminishing, and if that doesn't work, ultimately displacing blame for
alleged misdeeds that have come to light. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">3. He is prone to behave
like a tribalist intent on tribalizing others — look at his rallies where he
rails like a tribal chieftain or warlord — in a time when America is already
turning evermore tribal to its detriment. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">(source:
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2017/01/three-reasons-to-wonder-and-worry-about.html)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">These may all be aspects of extreme narcissism. Indeed, every writing I’ve seen by clinical psychologists and
psychiatrists about Trump’s psyche emphasizes his extreme narcissism and its
malignancy. But I’m not trained in psychology or psychiatry, so I’d rather
stick with simply identifying specific patterns of behavior, like the three
above.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Now I see reason to add a fourth: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">4. He is a master at
“projectioneering” — the deliberately engineered use of psychological
projection as a tactic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">As analysts have pointed out, Trump often
engages in psychological projection. But in professional usage, “psychological
projection” is “a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself
against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by
denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others” (from
Wikipedia page). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Trump’s behavior goes far beyond that. In his
case, projection does not appear to be unconscious (not even subconscious); it
seems thoroughly conscious — quite deliberate, even plotted out in advance.
Moreover, it is not just a defense mechanism; sure, it serves to defend him,
but his usage seems entirely offensive (in more ways than one).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">He has weaponized psychological projection to
such an extent, and so skillfully, that the standard term/concept “projection” is
inadequate, too easily lost in the noise. Which is why I say he is engaging in
“projectioneering” — rather à la the concepts of “reverse engineering” and “reverse
psychology.” Trump looks like a deliberate, demonic, even diabolical
practitioner of reverse projectioneering, especially when he is working to
bully and cast blame on someone else, not only for alleged incompetence or
irresponsibility, but for virtually any dark motive or behavior that Trump
figures he himself might be accusable of and vulnerable to. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">In late-July friends-only Facebook post where I
first proposed “projectioneering” as a facet of Trump’s psyche, I noted several
dire scenarios where it might come into play (e.g., blaming urban violence on
Democrats, when he and cohorts fueled much of it). Today, since his bout with
Covid seems to have thrown him somewhat off track, those dire scenarios look
less likely. But the next few months, until at least February, still look quite
unstable and fraught. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Whatever happens, his skill at projectioneering
will play a role the entire way, as it has for the past five years, along with
the first three patterns noted above. His “base” of supporters seem to idolize
him all the more for his exuberant, vainglorious, demonic capacity to (1) radiate
his hubris-nemesis traits, (2) deploy the scoundrel’s script left and right, (3)
roar as a divisive tribalist skilled at tribalizing people, and (4) bully and
baffle opponents through his weaponized use of psychological projectioneering —
all the while making himself look virtuous, on the side of the angels, and
totally forgivable to his base and other supporters. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">A decade or so ago, as I recall, some
Evangelical conservatives voiced suspicions that Barack Obama might be the
“Antichrist” predicted by End-Times theology. Rubbish nonsense, I’d say —
but even though this narrative never gained traction, it did circulate for a
while. Today, I detect nary a concern among Evangelicals that Trump might be an
“agent of the Antichrist.” But for an exception or two in out of the way
places, such a narrative is evidently unthinkable in today’s conservative
Evangelical circles. Trump’s skill at offensive (and defensive) projectioneering
may help explain that, even more than may the other three patterns. What a terrible
spectacle it could be, however, were such a narrative battle to emerge at some point. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-62507445044571943372020-10-15T10:14:00.000-07:002020-10-15T10:14:15.825-07:00Housekeeping Update<p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Once again, I have neglected this blog while focusing
intently on reading and writing about the rise of noosphere, noopolitik, and
information-age statecraft since early 2018. Now that our full report has been
published — <i>Whose Story Wins</i> (RAND, 2020) — and a spin-off article is
out for review and possible placement (see prior two posts), I mean to go back,
with a sigh of relief, to focusing on TIMN theory (quadriformism) and prospects
for the emergence of a fourth (commons) sector to bring next-stage progress to our
society. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Taking a fresh look at this blog, I spot some
earlier drafts of our noopolitik study. So I am deleting them here (as well as at
SSRN.com and ResearchGate.com). If somehow you visit here looking for them, go
look at the final booklet and recent article version instead. They are much
better than the earlier drafts.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I also find some sketchy old drafts of posts I’d
meant to finish months ago: one about Trump’s psyche; another about recent
papers (Bowles & Carlin, 2020; Scharmer, 2020; Mintzberg et. al., 2018) that
call for three-sector approaches to resolving America’s problems; and another draft
or two about proposals for pursuing a four-sector approach along TIMN lines (Harold
Jarche, 2019; Tim Morgan, 2020). I truly welcome the interest and insight
coming from Jarche and Morgan, and recommend following their work.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">I am finding it difficult to shift from thinking
and writing so much about the noosphere and noopolitik, to getting back up to
speed at thinking and writing mostly about the TIMN framework and its
implications. But, the shift is underway. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">Somewhere along the way the STAC framework about
people’s space-time-agency cognitions begs for renewed attention too. Yet
it, as well as TIMN, did receive a bit in the writings about the noosphere and
noopolitik. See, everything I am trying to do is interrelated.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";"> </span></p>
<p><style>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-19447596954040974752020-10-01T16:25:00.013-07:002020-11-01T11:05:44.253-08:00RETHINKING STRATEGY AND STATECRAFT FOR THE INFORMATION AGE<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">[Short draft we have prepared for eventual publication as a book chapter and/or journal article. The first sections summarize key points from our recent report on <i>Whose Story Wins: Rise of the Noosphere, Noopolitik, and Information-Age Statecraft</i> (RAND, 2020). The final sections are new — they offer our follow-on ideas new courses and curricula for teaching grand strategy and statecraft in the future. Original publication date here on blog: October 1, 2020.]<br /> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>RETHINKING STRATEGY
AND STATECRAFT FOR THE INFORMATION AGE</b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> </p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>David Ronfeldt and
John Arquilla</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Around the world, national-security and foreign-policy
strategists are having difficulty adapting to the digital age. A rethinking is
needed. For decades, countless writings have pointed this out — ours among them
— and marginal improvements are being made. But it is time to urge a deeper
rethinking in light of new threats and other challenges to so many societies, institutions,
and cultures. The experts are not meeting these threats and challenges well
enough. Nor are strategists looking ahead the best ways possible.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It is not simply a technological matter — advanced
information, communications, and sensing technologies are increasingly
available. Instead, the challenge is mainly cognitive. Adversaries everywhere —
from nations to nonstate networks — are using dark new modes of political,
social, cultural, and psychological warfare against their opponents: wars of
ideas, battles of stories, weaponized narratives, memetic viruses, and
epistemic attacks. New kinds of cognitive warfare are being deliberately
designed to confound analytic and social strengths and exploit weaknesses in
individuals, institutions, and societies as a whole. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Strategists of all stripes — theorists and practitioners —
remain unsettled and often baffled about how best to analyze, organize, and act
amid this stormy flux. Trends and indications around the world suggest that
matters may grow worse before they become better — <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if</i> they do become better — in the coming years. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The most advisable way ahead for information-age strategists,
especially in the world’s capitals, is to reposition statecraft and grand
strategy by merging two streams of thought: the first involves the well-known
distinction between hard power and soft power; the second engages a lesser-known
distinction about the geosphere, biosphere, and noosphere (the last term means
“realm of the mind,” as we clarify below). At first glance, the two streams may
seem unrelated; but they are starting to come together in ways that should be
recognized — the sooner the better. Doing so reveals a new kind of
information-age statecraft we call “noopolitik” as a successor to traditional “realpolitik.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>HARD POWER VERSUS SOFT POWER</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Strategists have traditionally thought and planned primarily
in terms of tangible, material, “hard” forms of power — military forces,
economic capabilities, and natural resources. They refined “realpolitik” in the
19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> centuries to express their hard-power dispositions
as a mode of statecraft that emphasizes seeking relative advantages through
displays, threats, and uses of force. A realization that immaterial,
ideational, “soft” forms of power — ideas, values, norms, and battles for
hearts and minds — may matter as profoundly as “hard” forms of power started to
take hold in the early 1990s, when the end of the Cold War and the relatively peaceful
dissolution of the Soviet Union helped demonstrate the potential effectiveness of
ideational approaches to statecraft. Hard power played a central role in
deterrence and containment strategies from the 1940s to the 1980s; but it was the
West’s soft power (for example, the advocacy of democracy and free flows of
information) that brought the decades of high-stakes confrontations to a
successful, peaceful conclusion. Moreover, by then, the Internet and other
digital information technologies were on the rise, and strategists, most of all
in the United States, were beginning to view information itself as a new form
of power, one that favored the “soft side” of the spectrum. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">However, the American idea of soft power contained flaws.
The original definition tended to treat soft power as good and hard power as
bad, or at least as mean-spirited — i.e., soft power was said to be fundamentally
about persuasive attraction, hard power about coercion (Nye, 1990, 2004). But
in actuality, soft power is not just about beckoning in attractive, upbeat,
moralistic ways that make the United States and its allies, friends, and other
like-minded societies look good. It can also be wielded in tough, dark, heavy
ways too, as in psychological efforts to warn, embarrass, denounce, disinform,
deceive, shun, or repel a targeted actor. Moreover, soft power does not
inherently favor the good guys; malevolent leaders — say a Hitler, a Bin Laden,
or various of today’s authoritarians — often prove eager and adept at using
soft-power measures in their efforts to dominate at home and abroad. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thus, while strategists and other leaders in the more
democratic societies were misconceiving the concept of soft power, even inflating
it into “smart power” by combining hard and soft power (Nye 2009), they neglected
to come up with a doctrinal derivative that could rival hard power’s
realpolitik; indeed, many simply persisted with realpolitik, trying to modify
it to suit the information age. Spread over several decades, this conceptual
inertia, even complacency, has left the United States, and quite often its
allies and friends, at a strategic disadvantage. The American conceptual
arsenal, not to mention those of its allies, is still sorely lacking for
understanding about how to apply soft power. Strategists who believe primarily
in hard power have developed quite set of concepts around it, particularly over
the past two centuries—e.g., realism, geopolitics, balance of power, and
realpolitik itself. A comparable conceptual arsenal has yet to be developed
around soft power. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Meanwhile, various adversaries and competitors of the West
and other liberal societies — from nation-state actors in Russia, China, North
Korea and Iran, to nonstate networks like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (IS), and
Wikileaks —quickly learned to develop dark approaches to soft power, especially
online, in order to undermine American and other democracies and challenge
their positions in the world. Thus, Moscow fielded new narratives to extol
Eurasianism and deride democracy, while releasing a torrent of deception,
disinformation, reflexive conditioning and de-truthing operations. And Beijing
began concentrating on developing and deploying what it called “discourse
power” as its way of influencing how people think about China and its growing
reach around the world. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In short, democracy’s adversaries began deploying aggressive
soft-power strategies and tactics — lately called “sharp power” (Walker and
Ludwig, 2017a, 2017b) — far more adroitly than ever expected, catching
Washington and other liberal capitals quite unawares and unprepared during the
early years of the 21st century. Nonetheless, rather than rethink matters,
leaders in Washington and elsewhere have continued to neglect America’s soft-power
capabilities; instead, they have reverted to re-emphasizing hard power and
realpolitik (on this point, see Bacevich, 2010).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This state of affairs should be viewed with alarm — it
should prompt an awareness of the urgent need to rethink statecraft for the
information age. In our view, this means shifting away from realpolitik toward
noopolitik, a concept inspired by a second stream of thought. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>EMERGENCE OF THE NOOSPHERE</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Over the past hundred years, various scientists in Europe,
America, and Russia have worked on developing a stream of thinking about the
geosphere, biosphere, and noosphere. Whether appearing singly or jointly, these
three dimensions work as a set for understanding Earth’s eons of evolution as a
planet. Accordingly, first to evolve was a geosphere, consisting of the earth’s
geological mantle. Next, to evolve was a similarly widespread biological layer,
or biosphere, consisting of plant and animal life, eventually including people.
Third to grow and develop will be an all-encompassing realm of the mind, a
“thinking layer” termed the noosphere. These concepts were all in use by the
1920s, and continue to be today. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The last term emerged when French theologian-paleontologist
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, his friend French mathematician Edouard Le Roy, and
visiting Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky met in Paris in 1922 to
speculate about whether, because of humanity’s growth, our planet would ultimately
evolve a third layer: an all-enveloping noosphere, a term they coined from the
Greek word “noos” meaning “the mind.” Teilhard defined it as a “realm of the
mind,” a “thinking circuit” — in the later words of his colleague, Julian
Huxley, a “web of living thought” and “a common pool of thought” that would
lead to an “inter-thinking humanity.” For Teilhard, it was a spiritual as well
as scientific concept; for Vernadsky, it was strictly a scientific concept —
though both regarded it as having democratic political implications as well.
(Samson and Pitt, 1999)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At first, the concept of the noosphere spread slowly and
selectively among environmental scientists and social activists in the West.
Some early believers are credited with helping to inspire the creation of the
United Nations (UN), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), and other “noospheric institutions” after World War II. In
addition, the postwar period led to UN-backed covenants that reflected
noospheric hopes, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, both in 1948. Not
long after, the noosphere concept attracted wide attention in Europe and America
in the 1950s and 1960s following the posthumous publication of Teilhard’s books
on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Phenomenon of Man</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Future of Man</i>, as both became
bestsellers. Even so, the concept still spread mostly among a narrow range of
intellectuals — until the 1990s. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Since then, the rise of the Internet has excited a sense
among myriad theorists and prophets of the information age that cyberspace is
providing a technical foundation for the emergence of the noosphere. While the
concept has still not gone mainstream, it is proliferating far and wide, now at
the level of online platforms and not just individuals — <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wired</i> magazine, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Edge</i>
website, Evolution Institute, and various magazines and websites associated
with pro-commons social theory and social activism on the Left often feature
articles supporting the concept’s potential. Indeed, from a political
standpoint, people and platforms on the Left have shown the greatest interest
in the noosphere and its future prospects. Interest on the Right is relatively
rare. Theorists and activists on the Right are deeply interested in
information-related concepts, systems, technologies, and their effects; but
they prefer traditional constructs such as culture, ideology, and the media,
maybe even atmosphere or zeitgeist, over noosphere or other futuristic notions.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lately, various technologists and other scientists have
preferred concepts that are not focused exactly on the noosphere: e.g.,
collective consciousness, the global brain. But they all still descend partly
from the idea of the noosphere. Moreover, future successes with alternate
concepts are bound to help further the noosphere too. It is here to stay; it
will continue growing in significance and popular usage. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>ONWARD INTO THE FUTURE WITH NOOPOLITIK</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In sum, the noosphere concept provides logical grounding for
thinking broadly about policy and strategy in the information age. Furthermore,
our derivative concept — noopolitik — matches up with soft power, the way
realpolitik matches up with hard power. No alternative concept does this as
well — by comparison, cyberspace and the infosphere are smaller, more
technological domains. The noosphere is the best all-encompassing concept for
thinking about information-based realms and their dynamics. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We first proposed noopolitik as an alternative to realpolitik
back in 1999 (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1999; also see Ronfeldt and Arquilla, 2007,
2020). But little happened then to further its development. Ever since, other
strategists have proposed kindred concepts — notably, cyberpolitik, netpolitik,
infopolitik, information engagement, information statecraft, information
geopolitics — yet they too have failed to gain traction. Individually, these
kindred concepts vary somewhat definitionally; but what is more important is
that, collectively, they all represent innovative but so-far-unsuccessful
efforts to improve the conceptual arsenals of strategists for dealing with
information-age threats, challenges, and opportunities, in particular by urging
strategists to emphasize networks more than hierarchies and nonstate actors as
much as, sometimes more than state actors.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">All of which leads to two points. First, noopolitik remains
a suitable proposal for reorienting statecraft in the information age. Next,
even if this particular concept does not take hold, strategists had better come
up with something very similar, fast, before the world’s dark adversaries do
irreversible harm to the United States and other open societies by continuing
to apply their own vexing mutations of noopolitik. At stake is the essence of
effective strategy and statecraft in the information age: whose story wins.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Taken seriously, the noosphere concept has particular
implications for developing noopolitik as an approach to statecraft. The noosphere
began as a scientific and spiritual concept, but it has also acquired a
forward-looking political cast. Its expansion implies the ascendance of
ideational and other soft-power matters. It favors upholding ethical and
ecumenical values that seek harmony and goodwill, freedom and justice,
pluralism and democracy, and a collective spirit harmonized with individuality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and Desmond
Tutu have served as exemplars to the world of this kind of value-driven
statecraft. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Noopolitik is also an anti-war and pro-environment concept.
Strategically, it implies thinking and acting in global / planetary ways while
minding long-range ends, and the creation of new modes of agency to shape
matters at all levels. It implies humanity coming together through all sorts of
cognitive, cultural, and other close encounters. It is about the co-evolution
of the planet and humanity — thus it implies understanding the nature of social
and cultural evolution far better than theorists have so far. And it means
engaging nonstate as well as state actors in a quest to create a new
(post-Westphalian) model of world order less tethered to the nation-state as
the sole organizing principle and focus of loyalty. Furthermore, it favors the
widespread positioning of sensory technologies and the creation of sensory organizations
for planetary and humanitarian monitoring and response purposes. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yet, positive and peaceful as all this may seem, growth of
the noosphere also implies having to deal with persistent ideational clashes
and conflicts. Indeed, Teilhard, Le Roy, and Vernadsky said to expect ruthless
struggles, shocks and tremors, even an apocalypse, as different parts of the noosphere
begin to mingle and fuse around the world. These are not implications the
founders simply tacked on; rather, they stem from discerning principles and
dynamics that attended the prior development of the geosphere and biosphere as
global envelopes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Proponents and practitioners of noopolitik should heed these
distinctive implications, and not view noopolitik as a self-aggrandizing public
relations or propaganda game. When the switch to noopolitik deepens in the
decades ahead, strategists will gradually figure out how different it is from
realpolitik. For noopolitik requires a fresh way of looking at the world — a new
kind of mindset, situational awareness, knowledge base, and assessment
methodology, along with a generally more philosophical and theoretical outlook.
How to look at hard power, thus realpolitik, is quite standardized by now. But
how best to understand and use soft power is far from settled. Noopolitik
depends on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">knowing</i> — and finding new
ways of knowing — about ideational, cognitive, and cultural matters that have
not figured strongly in traditional statecraft. As the information age deepens
in the decades ahead, it will eventually be seen that noopolitik is not only an
information-age alternative to realpolitik, but also a prospective evolutionary
successor to it. (See Table 1, which compares aspects of realpolitik and
noopolitik.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>Table 1. Contrast
Between Realpolitik and Noöpolitik</b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b> </b></p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: medium none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-insideh: .5pt solid windowtext; mso-border-insidev: .5pt solid windowtext; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<thead>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 234.1pt;" valign="bottom" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Realpolitik</b></p>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Noöpolitik</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 234.1pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">States as key unit of analysis</p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-color: currentcolor windowtext windowtext currentcolor; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top: none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">States, nonstate actors, networks as key units </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 234.1pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Primacy of national self-interests, sovereignty</p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-color: currentcolor windowtext windowtext currentcolor; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top: none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Primacy of shared interests, mutuality</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 234.1pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Primacy of hard power</p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-color: currentcolor windowtext windowtext currentcolor; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top: none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Primacy of soft power</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 4;">
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<p class="MsoNormal">System as anarchic, conflictual</p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-color: currentcolor windowtext windowtext currentcolor; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top: none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Harmony of interests, cooperation</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 5;">
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<p class="MsoNormal">Power politics as zero-sum game</p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-color: currentcolor windowtext windowtext currentcolor; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top: none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Win-win as preferred game</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 6;">
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<p class="MsoNormal">Politics as unending quest for advantage</p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-color: currentcolor windowtext windowtext currentcolor; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top: none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Politics as pursuing a <i>telos</i> (end purpose)</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 7;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 234.1pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Alliances conditional (oriented to threat)</p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-color: currentcolor windowtext windowtext currentcolor; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top: none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Alliance networks vital to security</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 8;">
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<p class="MsoNormal">Ethos is amoral, if not immoral</p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-color: currentcolor windowtext windowtext currentcolor; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top: none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Ethics are crucially important</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 9;">
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<p class="MsoNormal">Behavior driven by interests, threats</p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-color: currentcolor windowtext windowtext currentcolor; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top: none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Behavior driven by common values, goals </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 10;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 234.1pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Balance of power as the “steady state”</p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-color: currentcolor windowtext windowtext currentcolor; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top: none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Balance of responsibilities</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 11;">
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<p class="MsoNormal">Power embedded in nation-states</p>
</td>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Power also embedded in “global fabric”</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 12; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 234.1pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Guarded, manipulative about information</p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-color: currentcolor windowtext windowtext currentcolor; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top: none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 233.9pt;" valign="top" width="312">
<p class="MsoNormal">Seeks information-sharing, inter-thinking</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In essence, noopolitik is ultimately about whose story wins — the power of narrative —
not whose military seems stronger. This means that the conduct of noopolitik
will depend on carefully crafting strategic narratives to suit varied contexts.
The fact that narratives are crucial for maneuvering in today’s world is widely
accepted — as one expert has noted, “Kinetics may win battles; narratives win
wars” (Maan, 2018). But designing strategic narratives remains more an art than
a science, and there is still plenty of room for new ideas about how to build
expertise and wield influence. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For example, U.S. efforts to promote democracy abroad —
often through the use of force — have proceeded unsuccessfully, even
defectively, for many years. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, still a favorite
philosopher of many conservative (as well as some liberal) strategists,
cautioned back in the 1950s that “the greater danger [for U.S. strategy] is
that we will rely too much on military strength” (1958, p. 35) — a warning that
has come all too true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given the sorry
record of militarism, the matter of how best to promote democracy may well
become a key opportunity for noopolitik; and the answer(s) and strategies that
noopolitik may develop will likely prove quite different from what has been
assumed and pursued under past grand strategies. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here are some of the steps we have recommended to enable and
energize a shift to noopolitik:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">Rethink
“soft power,” especially its dark sides: We should not have to list this;
it should be cleared up by now — but it is not. </li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"> </p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">Create
international “special media forces” that could be dispatched into crisis
and conflict zones to help settle disputes through the discovery and swift
dissemination of accurate narratives, and for purposes of rumor control. </li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"> </p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">Uphold
“guarded openness” as a strategic principle: This means remaining open
(particularly among allies) in accordance with democratic values, while
also creating mechanisms for guardedness (e.g., mutual defense treaties,
robust cybersecurity norms, disease detection and control early warning
systems) to mitigate the risks inherent in being open. </li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"> </p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">Take
up the cause of protecting and managing the “global commons” — those air,
sea, land, space, and other parts of our planet that belong to no single
state or jurisdiction — as a pivotal issue area for the future of the
noopolitik. Though valued by many civilian activists and military
strategists, the global-commons concept has yet to gain public
recognition, and it is presently under challenge from arch-traditionalists
who prefer a return to nationalist/neo-mercantilist policies in the name
of state sovereignty. </li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"> </p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">Institute
a governmental requirement for periodic reviews of the nation’s
“information posture”: One’s information posture toward allies and
adversaries is now as crucial as one’s military posture. The latter
receives regular review; it is time to figure out how best to assess and
enhance the national information posture as well. (If a national
information posture assessment were conducted at this time by, for
example, the United States, it would surely clarify that Washington is in strategically
worse shape — on matters ranging from cybersecurity to America’s standing
in world opinion — than its regular military and economic posture assessments
seem to indicate.) </li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Such measures can open up transformational possibilities and
opportunities for shifting from realpolitik to noopolitik as the basis of a new
mode of statecraft attuned to the information age. They could help burnish the
image of the United States and its allies and friends in the world once again,
lessen the bitterness and violence of conflicts, revitalize diplomacy,
especially public diplomacy, and set the world on course toward sustainable
peace and prosperity. Whereas realpolitik treats international relations as
intractably conflictual, the starting point for noopolitik is faith in
upholding our common humanity, and a belief that, in statecraft, ideas can
matter more than armaments. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even now, many shifts, risks, and conflicts that are
commonly categorized as geopolitical in nature are, on closer examination,
primarily noopolitical. For example, during the past decade the Arab Spring — affecting
countries from the Maghreb to the Levant — the rise of the Far Right in Europe,
Hindi-Muslim clashes in South Asia, and protest movements in Venezuela, Sudan,
Lebanon, Hong Kong and Belarus all have geopolitical implications; but they may
be better understood as having an essentially noopolitical nature. Around the
world, many cognitive wars — ideological, political, religious, and cultural
wars — are underway, aimed at shaping people’s minds and asserting control over
this or that part of the emerging noosphere. At the same time, people are also
searching for new ways to get along together and cooperate in addressing such
global challenges as climate change and refugee settlement. Here, too, policies
and strategies guided by noopolitik rather than realpolitik will likely fare
better for the common good.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>NEW FRONTIERS FOR TEACHING STATECRAFT AND GRAND STRATEGY</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Colleges and
universities have long offered courses, programs, and degrees in international
relations and other topics that concern statecraft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, those that focus specifically on
grand strategy are quite recent. The first appeared only ten years ago, at Yale
University, with the creation of its Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy.
Today not only Yale but also Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), The Institute of World Politics (IWP), and a few other
schools offer their own courses, programs, and degrees on grand strategy and
statecraft.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For the most part, these courses revolve around classic
readings in strategic thought and practice, from ancient Greece through modern
times. They educate students about <span style="font-family: "TimesNewRomanPSMT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">political, military, economic, social,
and cultural forces that have affected international relations, often through
assigned readings in </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">military
and diplomatic history. The focus is mostly </span><span style="font-family: "TimesNewRomanPSMT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">on state-led
strategies and policies across the centuries; but modern nonstate, </span>citizen-activist,
social-change movements may receive bits of attention too, as may the ways such
movements benefit from the rise of new networked forms of organization enabled
by the digital information revolution. Accordingly, class syllabi may range
across writings by Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli, Carl von Clausewitz, H.J.
Mackinder, Hans Morgenthau, Henry Kissinger, et al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The list can be made very long when it
extends to including writings by the latest crop of theorists and
practitioners. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A very broad range of both hard- and soft-power factors may
thus be covered. But, for the most part, the hard-soft distinction is not a
major theme, except when including what is deemed the single essential reading
on this topic: Joseph Nye’s seminal book <i>Soft Power: The Means to Success in
World Politics</i> (2004). Even so, these courses on grand strategy and
statecraft generally cover the important roles that values, ideas, narratives,
communications, culture, and other “soft” ideational factors may play in
international relations, in peacetime as well as in war (see Kennedy, 1991).
But much greater attention is usually devoted to educating students about
strategic concepts that have grown around the “hard” material forms of power:
e.g., geopolitics, realpolitik, realism, the use of economic coercion and
military force, the balance of power, great-power competition, etc. Ever since
Nye fielded the concept of “soft power” in the late 1990s, strategists have
increasingly attended to the significance of soft-power factors, but not in systematic
ways — no particular set of strategic concepts has yet arisen around it. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Suppose our forecast is correct about the noosphere and
noopolitik. Then imagine how this may reshape curricula for graduate coursework
on grand strategy. Current-day curricula seem quite staid, looking far more to
the past than to what looms ahead. In recent decades, “realists” have run into theoretical
and practical challenges that their conventional approaches to strategy have
proved insufficient for characterizing or meeting, much less mastering. Classes
and readings for educating about noopolitik will have to be very different from
those used for realpolitik. Realpolitik requires knowing primarily about
tangible military, economic, technological, and other geopolitical forces, and
much less about intangible ideological, social, and cultural forces. In
contrast, noopolitik requires knowing primarily about ideational, cultural,
social, and other noopolitical forces — and finding new ways of knowing about
them. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the United States, strategic thinkers have long known,
and urged, that grand strategy should attend to socio-cultural as well as
political, military, technological, and other “hard” contextual factors. But,
in practice, strategists have repeatedly neglected analyzing operational
environments so comprehensively during the past few decades — they have
neglected cultural and cognitive conditions to strategy’s detriment, notably in
Iraq and Afghanistan (see Hoffman, 2020; Lynch, 2020). Calls are finally
emerging for rethinking grand strategy so that it attends equally, and
properly, to “the social dimension,” including its domestic import for grand
strategy (see Arquilla and Roberts, 2020). A future turn toward noopolitik will
require this. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A comprehensive guide for how to become a knowledgeable
practitioner of noopolitik is unavailable at this time — the concept remains
too new, the writings too few. Nonetheless, we can list some topics that will
surely require elevated if not entirely new kinds of attention as the noosphere
and noopolitik take hold. <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">We discuss
them briefly below, in order to suggest their prospective future importance for
teaching and learning in forward-looking courses and curricula about grand strategy.
However, we expect that the topics we list here will eventually require far
more pages of argument and elaboration before strategists steeped in traditional
approaches become convinced that such a reorientation is needed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">• <b>Recognizing the significance of social evolution for
grand strategy:</b> We have never seen a writing that explicitly pairs social
evolution and grand strategy for analysis. Yet, <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">grand strategies often rest on judgments about social evolution — who is
gaining strength, progressing the best, becoming a model for others to follow,
etc. Modern examples include containment theory in the 1950s, modernization
theory in the 1960s, and democratic enlargement in the 1990s. During the 2000s,
three ideas advanced during the previous decade that touched on social
evolution theory — the “end of history,” “the clash of civilizations,” and
“export of democracy” concepts — influenced strategists engaged in the “global
war on terrorism,” which became notable for its presumptuous naiveté about
imposing a democratic political evolution on tribalized, strife-torn societies
in Afghanistan and Iraq.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Attempts to
reroute the currents of history and culture in these sad lands have foundered,
at terrible human and material cost. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">What a grand
strategist thinks (or dismisses) about social evolution can make a decisive
difference. Indeed, a case can be made that grand strategy would benefit
immensely if it were grounded in better theory about social evolution. This may
seem a passing matter for realpolitik, but it may be a requisite concern for
noopolitik — better ideas about social evolution will be needed in the coming
age of the noosphere. Grand-strategic thinking that ignores social-evolutionary
dynamics will not be worth much for long (especially for such purposes as
fighting terrorism and promoting democracy). The fact that there is no
agreed-upon theory of social evolution does not obviate this concern. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Exactly what a
noopolitik-oriented curriculum should include is not clear today; but the aim
would be to educate students to think more deliberately about social evolution
and its implications for grand strategy, without opting necessarily for a
particular framework or theory. To this end, readings by Peter Turchin (e.g.,
2016) and David Sloan Wilson (e.g., 2018) may be advisable, along with selected
writings by David Ronfeldt (e.g., 1996, 2009). Readings on specific topics —
e.g., the evolution of government institutions, market systems, political
democracy, and civil-society networks — may also deserve inclusion. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">• <b>Realizing the significance of social cognition for
grand strategy:</b> According to realpolitik, strategy is the art of relating
ends, ways, and means — usually as defined in hard-power terms (see Marcella
and Fought, 2009). Strategy from a noopolitik perspective will be more about
identifying, assessing, and affecting peoples’ cognitions, a soft-power
concept. Assuming that peoples’ key cognitions are about space, time, and
agency, then strategy may then be seen as an art of positioning for spatial,
temporal, and agency-oriented advantages. For noopolitik, this may mean
thinking and acting in global/planetary ways (spatially), while minding
long-range future end-states (temporally), and creating new modes of action to
shape matters at all scales of deliberate (i.e., agency-driven) activity. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why focus on people’s space, time, and agency (or action, or
efficacy) cognitions? Because numerous psychological, sociological, anthropological,
and other studies have shown that people’s key cognitions are about space,
time, and action (or agency). These cardinal cognitions — space, time, action —
take form in people’s minds during childhood, and play key roles in shaping
their beliefs and behaviors from then on. They are essential building blocks
behind the development of consciousness and culture. No mind, culture, or
society can function without its particular set of space, time, and action
cognitions. Moreover, changes in people’s space-time-action cognitions — their
worldviews and mindsets — can lead to changes not only in an individual’s
beliefs and behaviors, but also in how a mass public thinks and acts
collectively throughout an entire culture and society. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thus, the better strategists can find ways to analyze
people’s space-time-action perceptions, the better they can ascertain why
people think and behave as they do, how societies and cultures evolve, and what
makes one historical era or phase different from another. Through such
learning, strategists will be better positioned to assess the effects that
different strategic options may have. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Today, it would not be easy to design courses and curricula
to educate students about the significance of multidimensional cognitive
analysis for grand strategy. Most experts have specialized in just one of the
three key cognitions, in isolation from the others (even though the others
always creep into their analyses). For the time being, courses and curricula
would have to rely mainly on single-focus studies — say, Philip Zimbardo’s
writings about time orientations (e.g., Zimbardo and Boyd, 2008), or Albert
Bandura’s about efficacy orientations (e.g., Bandura, 2006). But they should
still head steadfastly in the direction of multidimensional cognitive analysis
until new readings emerge (as argued and forecast in writings by David Ronfeldt
(e.g., 2018)). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">• <b>Finding ways to
assess and improve national information postures:</b> The United States has,
over the past 75 years, provided an illuminating example of the governmental
encounter with information strategy and policy, though it has yet to call for
regularly assessing its “information posture” the way it has its military
posture. Nevertheless, the American government does have a history of treating the
nation’s de facto information posture seriously — just not under that name. A
modern landmark arose in 1946 with George Kennan’s seminal “containment”
concept, which was meant to be applied more in the ideational than the military
realm. Later, in 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower created the </span>United States
Information Agency (USIA), and <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">always
included its director in cabinet-level meetings. As another landmark event, President
Ronald Reagan (“the Great Communicator”) called on his administration in March
1984, with his National Security Decision Directive 130, to develop a formal
information strategy and posture review process. He then used it to help guide
his summitry with Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and end the Cold War. Quite a set
of accomplishments!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">But after the Cold
War ended, President George H.W. Bush did not see fit to extend Reagan’s
initiative, preferring instead to proclaim an American-led “new world order”
based on preponderant military and economic strength. And in 1999 President
Bill Clinton dis-established the USIA as an independent entity (it was folded
into the State Department, where it remains today, much weakened). Thus, the
U.S. government began turning its back on developing a formal information
posture at the very time when the digital information revolution was getting
underway. “Information” was already being reconceptualized as a new form of
power, but mostly by state and nonstate competitors who were intensifying their
usage of new information operations against the United States, its allies and
friends — without American or other friendly policymakers and strategists
adequately realizing much of any of this.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Today, new voices
are calling on the U.S. government to revitalize the USIA and rekindle the
process that Reagan so wisely developed in 1984. These are good ideas. But far
more than a limited institutional renaissance in one country — the United States
is still too enamored of trying to impress other societies with its hard-power
capabilities — will be needed in order to assure that policymakers begin to
require national information-posture assessments as a regular matter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Posture assessments
are normally about a nation’s capabilities to apply all manner of power on
behalf of its national interests — the case with U.S. national military,
economic, and cybersecurity assessments. They are supposed to identify a
nation’s strengths and weaknesses, its priorities and possibilities, as well as
vulnerabilities and risks, the better to enable a nation’s leaders to craft
strategies for meeting the ideational, organizational, operational, and other
challenges that lie ahead.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">To our knowledge,
no one has ever tried to do a formal national information posture assessment.
It could prove daunting as well controversial to undertake. To begin,
“information power” and “information posture” (not to mention “information
space”) are far from settled concepts. But if they could be broadly defined,
spanning ideational as well as material aspects of “information” (as we think
they should be), then a posture assessment might be well advised to cover the
following: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">— key aspects of a nation’s image (the “face” it presents to the world,
its “brand identity”), in particular the national values, goals, character, and
the reputation it means to uphold and project, at home and abroad; </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">— the wealth (or lack) of information resources a nation has at its
disposal and is developing (or failing to retain and develop) in schools,
universities, research centers, libraries, and elsewhere in the “infosphere,”
including in the nation’s civil, public, and private sectors; </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">— the information policies and practices a nation favors, for example
“freedom of information” and “guarded openness” in the American case; </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">— the status of infrastructures pertaining to stocks and flows of
information, including the ways access is distributed or concentrated,
management is centralized or decentralized, ownership and intellectual property
are proprietary or shareable, and whether the designs are suited to meeting
national needs in case of emergency.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">— the information-monitoring and -sharing networks that exist for
coordination and cooperation across all levels of government, domestic and
foreign, as well as with IGOs and NGOs around the world on all manner of
issues, and with business and civil-society actors at home; </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">— the range of media that are used for information gathering and
broadcasting, as well as for uses that may range from message projection to
early warning. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Such an assessment
should identify strengths and weaknesses in a nation’s information posture, its
points of resilience and vulnerability in case of an attack or other disaster.
It should consider how well the posture serves to attract and work with friends
and allies, as well as to deter adversaries. It should set priorities and
specify options for future improvements. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Today, the idea of
formally assessing and improving a nation’s information posture is so new, and
so lacking in background materials, that it would be difficult to design
educational courses and curricula. Yet it is too significant a topic to set
aside. So, for now, it may be best to approach the topic via exploratory workshops,
rather than instructional classes. It may also be advisable for such workshops
to try to design ways for all governments to eventually produce
information-posture assessments, not just one’s own government (or other
entity). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">• <b>Additional
topics for education in noopolitik:</b> The preceding three topics are easy to
suggest, for they derive from our recent work. Yet they are just a beginning;
other topics could easily be added to this list. For instance, the significance
of strategic narratives — i</span>n light of the centrality of “whose story
wins” to noopolitik, future strategists should receive training in the
construction and application of forward-looking strategic narratives. Another
topic might be the growing significance of having (and building far more) <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">networks of sensory technologies and sensory
organizations around the world to monitor, share, and act on information about
global health, education, environmental, and other critical matters that cross
jurisdictional boundaries. At first, this may sound like a mostly technical
matter. But no, for this topic will prove to be mostly about designing and
building vast organizational networks that involve all sorts of state and
nonstate actors, large and small, near and far. Thus, as the noosphere and
noopolitik grow in tandem, organizational races to build networks may well
prove more important than the technological races to build ever newer products
and weapons, catalyzed by the digital information revolution.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">CODA<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">New courses and
curricula for such matters would make for a very different, far more
future-oriented approach to educating students about statecraft and grand
strategy attuned to the decades ahead. To our knowledge, such matters are not
being addressed much, neither singularly nor collectively, if at all, in
today’s institutions of higher learning. Moreover, the ideas and observations
we have offered here are preliminary — for example, further discussion should
surely lead to more refined ways to do a national information posture
assessment. Yet, if our forecasts about the rise of the noosphere and
noopolitik are correct, then it is already past time we all begin exploring and
adapting to these new frontiers.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">SELECT
BIBLIOGRAPHY</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Arquilla, John, and Nancy Roberts, “How the Coronavirus
Exposed the Flaws in America’s Security Strategy,” <i>The National Interest</i>,
August16, 2020. Available at:<br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-coronavirus-exposed-flaws-america%E2%80%99s-security-strategy-166830</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Arquilla, John, and
David Ronfeldt, <i>The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward An American Information
Strategy</i>, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, MR-1033-OSD, 1999. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Available at:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1033/index.html </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Bacevich, Andrew
J., <i>Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War</i>, New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 2010. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Bandura, Albert, </span>“Toward
a Psychology of Human Agency,” <i>Perspectives on Psychological Science</i>,
vol. 1, no. 2, 2006, pp. 164-180. Available at: <br />
https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Bandura/Bandura2006PPS.pdf</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Hoffman, Frank, “Distilling
The Essence Of Strategy,” <i>War on the Rocks</i>, blog, August 4, 2020.
Available at: <br />
https://warontherocks.com/2020/08/distilling-the-essence-of-strategy/</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Lynch, Thomas F.,
ed., <i>Strategic Assessment 2020: Into a New Era of Great Power Competition</i>,
Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 2020.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kennedy, Paul, ed., <i>Grand Strategies in War and Peace</i>,
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Maan, Ajit, “What
We Do,” <i>Narrative Strategies: Changing the Way Power Works</i>, website, 2017,
at: https://www.narrative-strategies.com/what-we-do</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Marcella, Gabriel,
and Stephen O. Fought, “Teaching Strategy in the 21st Century,” <i>Joint Forces
Quarterly</i>, issue 52, 1st quarter, 2009, pp. 56-60. Available at:<br />
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA515184.pdf</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Niebuhr, Reinhold, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The World Crisis and American Responsibility,
</i>New York: Association Press, 1958.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Nye, Joseph S., <i>Bound
to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power</i>, New York: Perseus Books,
Basic Books, 1990. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Nye, Joseph S., <i>Soft
Power: The Means to Success in World Politics</i>, Cambridge, Mass.:
PublicAffairs, 2004. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Nye, Joseph S.,
“Get Smart: Combining Hard and Soft Power,” <i>Foreign Affairs</i>, vol. 88,
no. 4, July/August 2009, pp. 160-163. Available at: <br />
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2009-07-01/get-smart </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Ronfeldt, David, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks: A
Framework About Societal Evolution</i>, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, P-7967,
1996. Available at:<br />
https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7967.html</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Ronfeldt, David, “Explaining
Social Evolution: Standard Cause-and-Effect vs. TIMN’s System Dynamics,” <i>Materials
for Two </i>Theories, blog, September 18, 2009. Available at:
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/09/explaining-social-evolution-standard.html
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Ronfeldt, David,
“People’s Space-Time-Action Orientations: How Minds Perceive, Cultures Work,
and Eras Differ,” draft, November 2018. Available at: <br />
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3283477</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Ronfeldt, David and
John Arquilla, “The Promise of Noöpolitik,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">First
Monday</i>, August 2007. Available at: <br />
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1971/1846</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Ronfeldt, David and
John Arquilla, <i>Whose Story Wins: Rise of the Noosphere, Noopolitik, and
Information-Age Statecraft</i>, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, PE-A237-1, 2020. Available
at: <br />
</span><span style="font-family: "ArialMT",serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA237-1.html</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Samson, Paul R.,
and David Pitt, eds., <i>The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global
Environment, Society and Change</i>, New York: Routledge, 1999. Available at: <br />
http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Samson,%20Pitt%20-%20The%20Biosphere%20and%20Noösphere%20Reader%20Global%20Environment%20Society%20and%20Change.pdf</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Turchin, Peter, <i>Ultrasociety:
How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth</i>,
Chaplin, Conn.: Beresta Press, 2016.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Walker, Christopher,
and Jessica Ludwig, “The Meaning of Sharp Power: How Authoritarian States
Project Influence,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Foreign Affairs</i>,
November 16, 2017a. Available at: <br />
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2017-11-16/meaning-sharp-power </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Walker, Christopher,
and Jessica Ludwig, “From ‘Soft Power’ to ‘Sharp Power’: Rising Authoritarian
Influence in the Democratic World,” in <i>Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian
Influence</i>, Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for Democracy,
International Forum for Democratic Studies, December 2017b. Available at:
https://www.ned.org/sharp-power-rising-authoritarian-influence-forum-report/ </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Wilson, David
Sloan, <i>This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution</i>, New York:
Pantheon Books, 2019.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Zimbardo, Philip,
and John Boyd, <i>The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change
Your </i>Life, New York: Free Press, 2008. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">ABOUT THE
AUTHORS</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">David Ronfeldt, now
retired, worked for more than 35 years at the RAND Corporation as a political
scientist. His work resulted in new ideas about information-age modes of
conflict (cyberwar, netwar, swarming), future security strategy (guarded
openness, noopolitik), and social theory (nascent frameworks for analyzing
social evolution and social cognition). He has a Ph.D. in political science.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">John Arquilla is
distinguished professor of defense analysis at the Naval Post-Graduate School.
Beyond his work with David Ronfeldt, his books include <i>The Reagan Imprint</i>
(2006), <i>Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits</i> (2011), and <i>Why the Axis
Lost</i> (2020). He has a Ph.D. in political science.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">While at RAND,
Ronfeldt and Arquilla coauthored many reports, including <i>In Athena’s Camp:
Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age</i> (1997), <i>The Zapatista
“Social Netwar” in Mexico</i> (1998), <i>The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward an
American Information Strategy</i> (1999), <i>Swarming and the Future of
Conflict</i> (2000), and <i>Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime,
and Militancy</i> (2001).</span></p><p> </p><p> </p><p><style>
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RETHINKING STRATEGY AND STATECRAFT FOR THE INFORMATION AGE by David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla is licensed under CC BY 4.0 CC iconby iconDavid Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-46830345791459547242020-07-28T10:15:00.001-07:002020-07-28T10:15:35.309-07:00New report on the noosphere, noopolitik, and information-age statecraft
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">Published
at last! What a relief. Plus, this final (fourth-draft) version is far better than the initial
(first-draft) version we prepared two years ago. The timing is also much better now.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">David
Ronfeldt and John Arquilla, <i>Whose Story Wins: Rise of the Noosphere,
Noopolitik, and Information-Age Statecraft</i> (RAND, PE-A237-1, July 2020)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">To
check it out online and download if interested, go here: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA237-1.html"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA237-1.html</span></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">According
to the online description: </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">“In
this Perspective, the authors urge strategists to consider a new concept for
adapting U.S. grand strategy to the information age—</span><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFontItalic;">noopolitik</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">,
which favors the use of "soft power"—as a successor to realpolitik,
with its emphasis on "hard power." The authors illuminate how U.S.
adversaries are already deploying dark forms of noopolitik—e.g., weaponized
narratives, strategic deception, epistemic attacks. The authors propose new
ways to fight back and discuss how the future of noopolitik might depend on
what happens to the </span><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFontItalic;">global commons</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">—i.e.,
the parts of the Earth and space that fall outside national jurisdictions and
to which all nations are supposed to have access.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">“The
authors expand on many of the ideas they first proposed in a 1999 RAND
Corporation report titled </span><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFontItalic;">The Emergence of Noopolitik:
Toward an American Information Strategy</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">, in which they
describe the emergence of a new globe-circling realm: the </span><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFontItalic;">noosphere</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">.
The authors explain that Earth first developed a </span><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFontItalic;">geosphere</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">,
a geological mantle, and then a </span><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFontItalic;">biosphere</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">,
consisting of plant and animal life. Third to develop will be the </span><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFontItalic;">noosphere</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;">,
a global "thinking circuit" and "realm of the mind"—a
collective form of intelligence enabled by the digital information revolution.
As the noosphere expands, it will profoundly affect statecraft; the conditions
favoring traditional realpolitik strategies will erode, and the prospects for
noopolitik strategies will grow. Thus, the decisive factor in today's and tomorrow's
wars of ideas is bound to be "whose story wins"—the essence of
noopolitik. To improve prospects for the noosphere and noopolitik, U.S. policy
and strategy should, among other initiatives, treat the global commons as a
pivotal issue area, uphold "guarded openness" as a guiding principle,
and institute a requirement for periodic reviews of America's "information
posture."”</span></div>
</blockquote>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-45764962716069994682020-04-12T09:08:00.000-07:002020-04-12T09:08:01.819-07:00Stray thoughts about the aging mind — glitching, scripting, boxing (and Fox News):<br />
Friends of mine have raised concerns that a mutual friend is showing signs of cognitive deterioration — little lapses and glitches, plus unusual crankiness and dismissiveness. I’m not so sure; he still seems normal enough to me. <br />
<br />
But this has led me to wonder about what characterizes the aging mind. Which has further prompted me to wonder about Fox News and its primary audience, oldsters.<br />
<br />
Standard signs of an aging mind are mostly about mental glitching — e.g., forgetting this or that. They show up mostly in memory lapses, involving all three of the mind’s cardinal cognitions: perceptions about social space, time, and agency — as in not realizing who or what is where (spatially), when something happens (temporally), or how to get something done (agently). <br />
<br />
I see this glitching all around me now, including in myself, but not to serious degrees. Yet I’m also noticing two more signs of aging minds that, to my knowledge, do not figure in standard diagnoses: thought-scripting, and brain-boxing.<br />
<br />
As for thought-scripting, oldsters’ thoughts appear to congeal around increasingly set scripts that they run (and voice) over and over. Of course, everybody likes to tell the same story again and again, particularly when reminiscing about good old days. But, if my observations are correct, this goes beyond that. It’s more reactive and programmed, like pushing a button or pulling a lever and out pops a set script, positive or negative. And if it’s an arguable script, it’s unlikely to be changed through argument. As a friend once said, people don’t change as they get older; they just get more so. Perhaps, as people’s arteries harden, so do their scripts. I don’t mean this as necessarily a bad thing — some people run marvelous scripts — just that it may be another sign of the aging mind (including in myself?), a pattern that may become evermore set with advancing age.<br />
<br />
What I mean by brain-boxing (or thought-boxing, or mind-boxing) is that an oldster’s thinking about the world gets increasingly boxed within a frame. What they think, and how they think, about the world — their world — gets increasingly fixed, enclosed, boundaried. Their scripts run within that frame, those boundaries. The well-boxed brain rarely goes looking for new ideas and topics to think about; it prefers reassurance and reinforcement about what’s already in the box. It’s another way oldster's become set in their ways. The aging mind may not exhibit brain-washing, but brain-boxing is another story. <br />
<br />
In sum, mental glitching, thought scripting, and frame boxing are the three major ways that cognitive deterioration shows up in the aging mind. Of course, there are ways to limit, avoid, and counteract them. Glitching, if it’s serious enough, can be treated with medications and therapies. Scripting and boxing can be side-stepped by thoughtfully making sure to engage in diversified activities, not getting stuck in ruts. <br />
<br />
But there are also ways to worsen them. <br />
<br />
Which leads to an observation from now-and-then watching Fox News and its prime-time triad, currently Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity (not to mention particular Saturday and Sunday hosts). If you don’t care about letting your mind grow older, faster, then watch Fox News, and only Fox News, all the time. More than any other media source, it seems to work away at thought-scripting and brain-boxing. <br />
<br />
For decades I’ve heard conservatives say they are for individualism, whereas liberals and progressives are for collectivism. Yet, Fox News seems to work harder than any other news media at constructing collectivized thinking, indeed a rigid cult-like following. It’s one thing to feed your own political bias, but quite another to let your mind be ‘Pavolv-ed and Potemkin-ed’ into scripted, boxed enchantment (to make an oblique reference to those progenitors of Russian information operations — Ivan Pavlov for his psychological work on reflexive “Pavlovian conditioning,” Grigory Potemkin for his deception and disinformation operations that resulted in “Potemkin villages”). <br />
<br />
Of course, running reactive and proactive scripts, and trying to frame and box people’s thinking is occurring all around us in these tribalized times, on both the Left and Right. But I’m sure I’m far from alone in wondering about how Fox News in particular may take hold of aging minds.For example, here’s what another observer found and wrote: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Dozens who responded to my piece talked about the sad lonely twilight of their parents’ or grandparents’ lives, having been spurned by, or having disowned much of their families over political disagreements. Older people, recent studies have shown, are much more likely to share misleading information online, but the anecdotes I was hearing seemed to indicate this behavior wasn’t limited to the internet. Young parents wrote that they don’t want to bring their children to visit aging Fox-brainers. “The worst is when my children go to spend time with their grandparents and come home with Fox News talking points coming out of their mouths,” one told me. “I have to decontaminate them every time.”” (From https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2019/04/i-gathered-stories-of-people-transformed-by-fox-news.html)</blockquote>
<br />
[First posted on my FaceBook page, March 20, 2020]<br />
<br />David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-81820313799209609162020-03-15T12:02:00.001-07:002020-03-15T12:02:27.097-07:00Slouching toward cyberocracy — #2:<br />
The previous post was about surveillance capitalism, Shoshanna Zuboff’s concept. Today’s post concerns surveillance electioneering. Yet, here too, the emphasis on surveillance isn’t quite enough, for far more than surveillance is going on.<br />
<br />
In this <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/opinion/trump-digital-campaign-2020.html" target="_blank">article</a>, NYT columnist Thomas B. Edsall shows how “Trump’s Digital Advantage Is Freaking Out Democratic Strategists: Left and right agree on one point. The president’s re-election campaign is way ahead online.” <br />
<br />
The article is largely about “geofencing” — “a technology that creates a virtual geographic boundary, enabling software to trigger a response when a cellphone enters or leaves a particular area — a church, for example, or a stadium, a school or an entire town.” <br />
<br />
But geofencing is “just one of the new tools of digital campaigning, a largely unregulated field of political combat in which voters have little or no idea of how they are being manipulated, in which traditional disclosure requirements are inoperative and key actors are anonymous. It is a weapon of choice. Once an area is geofenced, commercial data companies can acquire the mobile phone ID numbers of those within the boundary.”<br />
<br />
Other new techniques in this field include “mass personalization, dark patterns, identity resolution technologies, dynamic prospecting, geotargeting strategies, location analytics, geo-behavioural segment, political data cloud, automatic content recognition, dynamic creative optimization” and micro-targeting.<br />
<br />
The 2020 Trump campaign remains multiples ahead of the Democrat’s in grasping and applying these new technologies and techniques. Indeed, “Trump rallies are providing a gold mine of data for the 2020 election” according to manager Brad Parscale.<br />
<br />
And the Trump campaign gains a further advantage from this asymmetry: “First, when Trump says something, Fox repeats it. When a Democrat says something, The New York Times and the rest of the MSM knock it down if it’s false or debatable.” Thus, “Trump benefits enormously because of the Right’s aligned network of media properties (i.e., Sinclair), Facebook properties, YouTube influencers and bots/sock puppets. This kind of amplification network barely exists for Democrats/progressives.”<br />
<br />
Part of what alarms me here is that the powers on the Right are moving forward in these techniques in order to move our society backwards. At this point, I’m quite sure that a 2020 vote for Trump will prove to be a vote for increased cruelty and inequity, mostly by people who would not countenance cruelty and inequity in their personal lives.<br />
<br />
SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/opinion/trump-digital-campaign-2020.html<br />
<br />
[Re-posted from my Facebook page posts a few weeks aago.]<br />
David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-55649771926062549982020-03-15T11:59:00.000-07:002020-03-15T11:59:29.722-07:00Cyberocracy is gaining ground, alarmingly: #1<br />
I mostly read about how the information age is affecting particular actors and activities. Here I read how the information age is reshaping everything for everybody, in faster, deeper, darker ways than I’ve fully grasped. Privacy in increasingly a goner, and mass manipulation and herding are becoming ever easier. Liberal democracy is being eroded so extensively that it is already giving way to the rise of illiberal cyberocracy (a concept I fielded in the early 1990s that may be worth revisiting).<br />
<br />
In this <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/sunday/surveillance-capitalism.html" target="_blank">article</a>, Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff warns that “You Are Now Remotely Controlled: Surveillance capitalists control the science and the scientists, the secrets and the truth.” Accordingly, “surveillance capitalism” is spreading so rapidly, and so uncontrollably, that while people initially celebrated free new digital services, “now we see that the surveillance capitalists behind those services regard us as the free commodity. We thought that we search Google, but now we understand that Google searches us. We assumed that we use social media to connect, but we learned that connection is how social media uses us. We barely questioned why our new TV or mattress had a privacy policy, but we’ve begun to understand that “privacy” policies are actually surveillance policies.” <br />
<br />
One result is a fraught new kind of inequality — “epistemic inequality” — that reflects people’s knowledge and power. People are being massively, unsuspectingly scanned, monitored, manipulated, and maneuvered to such an extent that leading firms, using their “computational factories,” are converting what we have long regarded as privacy into proprietary goods. <br />
<br />
A further result is “a new ‘instrumentarian’ power … to manipulate subliminal cues, psychologically target communications, impose default choice architectures, trigger social comparison dynamics and levy rewards and punishments — all of it aimed at remotely tuning, herding and modifying human behavior in the direction of profitable outcomes and always engineered to preserve users’ ignorance.” <br />
<br />
Yikes — this has advanced farther and faster than I’ve known, and her suggestions for constraining it do not give me much hope. For as she warns, “surveillance capitalism has turned epistemic inequality into a defining condition of our societies, normalizing information warfare as a chronic feature of our daily reality prosecuted by the very corporations upon which we depend for effective social participation.” <br />
<br />
SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/sunday/surveillance-capitalism.html<br />
<br />
[Re-posted from my Facebook page post a few weeks ago.]David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-63773732060602388022019-07-28T16:33:00.000-07:002019-07-28T16:33:12.766-07:00Toward a new sectorism — #3: an attractive but flawed “fourth sector” proposal?<br />
I’ve come across a proposal I should have found years ago: a forward-looking call for recognizing and developing a “fourth sector.” It’s from Heerad Sabeti and associates in the Aspen Institute’s and Kellogg Foundation’s Fourth Sector Network, created in 1998. This is the first I’ve heard of Sabeti, currently the head of the World Economic Forum’s Fourth Sector Development Initiative and CEO of The Fourth Sector Group (4SG).<br />
<br />
This is all news to me. Is anyone here familiar with Sabeti’s “fourth sector” proposal? Any comments about how it’s regarded? I’d like to know more before I continue.<br />
<br />
Here’s why it’s of interest: TIMN theory forecasts the rise of a fourth cardinal form of organization: the +N or info-age network form. TIMN further says a brand new sector of society will take shape around it. Remember, the rise and consolidation of the T/tribal form millennia ago led to what is now known as civil society, along with a confusing surfeit of names for its sector(s) — e.g., civil sector, nonprofit sector, voluntary sector, etc. Ages later, the rise of the +I hierarchical-institutional form resulted in governments and what we now call the public sector. Next, a few centuries ago, the rise of the +M market form led to what we now call the private sector. Today, we’re just a few decades into the rise of the +N network form, and it’s not yet clear what new sector will result from it — but there will be one.<br />
<br />
I’ve previously mentioned my own deductions from TIMN regarding this next/new/fourth sector. I’ve also kept my eyes open for other forecasts, and mentioned them before too. But what about Sabeti et al.’s proposal? How does it compare?<br />
<br />
<h3>
SABETI’S CONCEPT OF A FOURTH SECTOR </h3>
<br />
According to Sabeti (2018), “The emerging Fourth Sector is fundamentally comprised of organizations that <i>pursue social purposes</i> while <i>engaging in business activities</i>.” Thus, he/they view the Fourth Sector — a term they coined in 1998? — as “a new economic space at the intersection of the three traditional sectors (public, private and non-profit).” In their view, the “non-profit sector” is also the “social sector” (a term they borrow from Drucker’s usage a few years earlier?). Its key actors will be for-benefit organizations.<br />
<br />
What I discuss here is derived mostly from Sabeti’s paper “The Emerging Fourth Sector: Executive Summary” (2018 — see link at end).<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Stripped to its essentials, its thesis is as follows: a new class of organizations with the potential for generating immense economic, social, and environmental benefits is emerging — and this sector can be consciously developed and expanded through broad recognition and engagement.” </blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
ATTRACTIVE OVERLAPS BETWEEN THE FS AND TIMN FRAMEWORKS</h3>
<br />
His/their Fourth Sector (FS) framework overlaps well with the TIMN framework, in that both rest on the following observations:<br />
<br />
• Our society is in transition from a three-sector to a four-sector system. Whereas FS calls them the social, public, private, and fourth sectors, TIMN is headed toward calling them the home, public, private, and commons sectors.<br />
<br />
• Boundaries are blurring among the sectors, and new kinds of hybrid organizations and partnerships are forming, in ways that indicate a fourth sector is already taking shape. Today’s non-profit and for-benefit organizations, including collectives and cooperatives, seem best suited, in terms of ethos and structure, to enabling its emergence.<br />
<br />
• Eventually, entirely new organizational forms and models will have to be designed explicitly for the fourth sector. But whereas FS favors for-benefit designs. I’m not sure about TIMN yet. This is partly because, unlike Sabeti, I am sure the fourth sector won’t be a primarily economic and business-oriented sector — see below for clarification.<br />
<br />
• Information-age network structures are crucial for the development and performance of this new sector, not only for individual parts but also across the entire sector. Both FS and TIMN lead to requirements, in Sabeti’s words, for “new networking structures that enable collaboration and coordination” among individual actors, as well as “new models of networks … that enable large-scale, cross-sectoral, cross-disciplinary collaboration.” But TIMN implies extending this far more than FS does — see below for clarification.<br />
<br />
• To take hold and endure as a distinct separate sector, vast supportive infrastructures will have to be created: laws, regulations, services, associations, etc. FS is way ahead of TIMN in specifying this “ecosystem” — as Sabeti notes, “Social entrepreneurs, funders, non-profits, businesses, employees, members of the public, associations, policymakers, academics, lawyers, accountants, consultants, and others all have vital roles to play”. I’m aware of this, for comparable infrastructures help explain the cohesion and power of the earlier public and private sectors — I just haven’t written much up for TIMN yet.<br />
<br />
• Even though evolutionary dynamics will eventually induce the rise of a fourth sector, it is advisable to start making concerted efforts now to construct and define it. In Sabeti’s words, “The Fourth Sector is an idea whose time has come. … The counter-forces of inertia and sectoral constraints stand in the way, sharply reducing the odds that it will develop in an accelerated and coherent manner. The evolutionary process needs to be facilitated by the addition of a layer of conscious support — not to control or shape the process, but to enable those involved to develop a shared framework of effective design principles and supportive infrastructure.” That’s pretty much my view for TIMN as well.<br />
<br />
<h3>
SHORTCOMINGS IN THE FS FRAMEWORK — ADVANTAGES OF TIMN </h3>
<br />
So, there’s plenty of agreement between the two frameworks — somewhat better than TIMN has with other forecasts about a future sector. However, the FS framework does not track well with TIMN in other respects, largely because the two have different theoretical underpinnings. FS is based mostly on observations about current economic trends, whereas TIMN is based on observations about long-term social evolution.<br />
<br />
• Sabeti <i>et al</i>. view the fourth sector as a new economic sector, albeit one that operates for social-benefit rather than private-profit purposes. He, like most everyone I’ve found writing in this future-oriented area, foresees not only that it will be an economic sector, but also that a key purpose/effect will be to contain and reform capitalism, particularly its negative excesses and externalities.<br />
<br />
According to TIMN, it’s wrong to think that this next/new sector will be, in essence, an economic sector. Yes, the rise of this sector can be viewed from economic perspectives (as can all the other sectors). Yes, it’s emergence will have profound economic effects on all other sectors, and on society as a whole. Yes, it will alter the nature of capitalism. And yes, the fourth sector’s functioning will involve new kinds of business organizations. Yet, according to TIMN, this new sector will be as different from the older three sectors as they are from each other. It will be a distinct and separate sector. And it will function according to its own ethos and logic, as do the other sectors. The challenge, for TIMN at least, is to identify what may make this next/new sector that distinct and separate.<br />
<br />
• As Sabeti <i>et al</i>. see matters, the fourth sector consists businesses that serve social purposes. That sounds worthwhile, but it’s awfully vague. The FS framework is also vague and open-ended as to exactly what types of actors and activities will define the sector. Sabeti lists a hodge-podge of organizational types (non-profits, cooperatives, etc.) that are currently in business for social purposes; and he expects new types of for-benefit organizations to supersede them. But there is no specification of what, or even whether, particular problems or issues will/should be the sector’s principal focus and strength. Seemingly anyone who engages in business for social benefit belongs in the fourth sector — the more the better for the future of society, no matter the issues and problems at stake. (P2P theory is like this as well — seemingly any actors who subscribe to pro-commons beliefs belong in a future commons sector.)<br />
<br />
In contrast, TIMN implies an evolutionary logic for deducing/predicting the next sector’s nature. This future sector will arise and take hold according to the same logic that has characterized the rise of the three old sectors. In brief, (1) sectors take shape based on the TIMN form of organization that is finally coming into its own at the time — in our time, this means the +N/network form. This future sector will thus operate far more according to information-age network (+N) principles than according to the kinship (T), hierarchical institutional (+I), or market exchange (+M) principles that, in turn, drove the rise of the earlier three sectors — the civic/social, public, and private sectors. More to the point, (2) each sector in turn, as well as the organizational form behind its rise, emerges in ways that enable a society to address and resolve a crucial problem whose importance and difficulty has grown as that society has advanced, outgrowing what it could accomplish by using its existing sectors. Thus, the civic sector still serves, as it did ages ago when societies were basically tribes, to address problems related to community identity and belonging; the public sector, problems of large-scale administration and endeavor; and the private sector, problems of wide-ranging trade and commerce. So, the question looms, what about the next sector in this progression?<br />
<br />
• While the FS framework doesn’t (can’t?) specify exactly what actors and activities will define the new sector, it behooves a TIMN-ista to try to do so by using the evolutionary dynamics noted above. My own deduction is that this next sector will form around what have become the most critical complicated matters our society faces today — problems that have grown so serious it’s increasingly evident they cannot be resolved long-term by relying on the old public-private framework, nor even by adding the older civil sector back into it; problems also for which the network form seems more relevant than the civic-kinship (T), hierarchical-institutional (+I), or market-exchange (+M) forms.<br />
<br />
So, exactly what matters are these? Best I can tell, they’re education, health, welfare, the environment, and related insurance matters — matters that, in aggregate, concern collective and individual care, broadly defined to include social, economic, cultural, and environmental care; in short, people care, life care. Indeed, these matters bundle well together as an interrelated set when viewed from a societal care perspective, in contrast to how they are viewed and treated quite separately within today’s economistic public-private framework.<br />
<br />
For decades these matters were manageable enough to fit into our old public-private policy framework, and/or be left to individuals, families, communities, and related civil-society associations. This is no longer the case — these matters have grown too large, too complex, and too interconnected for standard solutions to work. America’s decades of progress have brought us to a turning-point for resolving care-centered matters. They have outgrown that two-sector framework in ways our politicians and policymakers don’t perceive yet.<br />
<br />
• The FS framework is correct to emphasize cooperative network principles and designs for the fourth sector’s growth and performance. However, TIMN implies going farther than FS in this direction. This new sector will be able to emerge and grow precisely because the information age has enabled massive network forms of organization to finally take hold as the latest of TIMN’s four cardinal forms to arise. The network form, not the other forms, is what will glue this sector together, undoubtedly in ways we’ve not detected yet.<br />
<br />
I have a few tentative speculations: Compared to the earlier sectors, this next/new sector will be structured very differently, woven together by means of collaborative network principles. Constituent entities will be non-profit and for-benefit, committed to the common good. Many may be organized as cooperatives, collectives, collaboratives, trusts, platforms, and other networked associations; none will be allowed on the stock market. They will be constructed as belonging to a mutually shared and boundaried commons — indeed, they’ll form a commons sector. As befits a commons, pooling of information and financing will occur across all sub-sectors and the entities that move (or are moved) into this fourth sector: health, education, welfare, environment, and related insurance (including social security). If some entities acquire excess earnings, these may be shared across all sub-sectors, as needed. Funds to pay for the sector may still have to come from the usual sources — government, business, philanthropy, membership — but, presumably, the sector itself will generate new savings and earnings, compared to the current mess. I’m unable to discern what new array of laws, rules, and regulations may be required to foster and protect such a new sector — not my bag — but they will surely have to be quite different from those pertaining to the other sectors. In any case, this new commons sector would be about the kinds of “assurances” — that’s right, assurances, not entitlements — that an advanced next-stage society can and should be able to warrant for the common wellbeing of its people.<br />
<br />
N.B.: These are speculative notions, so preliminary and tentative that I’m barely willing to field them here. Advice and comments invited. But if I’m making mistakes, I’m sure my overarching point will remain valid — this sector will be characterized by new and unusual organizational designs. I’ve read many times that better education is essential to improve people’s health, and that better health is essential to improve people’s education. But I read this only in specialized writings, not yet in strategic overviews about systematically bundling health, education, welfare, and the environment into its own sector — a commons sector governed by collaborative network principles. According to TIMN theory, as I understand it, it’s time we start thinking this through.<br />
<br />
• The FS framework depicts its fourth sector visually as a small circle sitting atop and growing at the intersection of the three major sectors (the social, public, and private sectors), which are depicted as large circles. Those three are shown as touching but not overlapping, whereas the FS sector sitting atop overlaps them all. This looks appealing and communicative to the eye — it surely helps convey the FS message — but it is inherently inaccurate. (See Venn-like FS diagram at https://www.fourthsector.org/)<br />
<br />
A TIMN visualization would/will be quite different: All circles depicting the four realms and their sectors would be sized equivalently and in the same plane (though the fourth would be smaller for now). Moreover, all circles would overlap somewhat to help depict that the sectors all interact, and that hybrids of two or more sectors may exist in those overlapping areas. This is easy to depict in a pretty Venn diagram if there are only two or three circles. But a Venn diagram of four or more circles is difficult (impossible?) and even ugly to draw, if it is to capture all possible intersections and interactions. What’s needed is a three-dimensional molecular visualization — unfortunately, I’ve not done that yet.<br />
<br />
<h3>
WRAP-UP COMMENT</h3>
<br />
• Many discussions, whether from the Left or the Right, discuss care-centered matters — health, education, welfare, the environment, etc. — as though they are about people’s rights and/or entitlements. FS does not delve into this. But TIMN dynamics indicate that responsibilities and assurances may be as important as rights and entitlements, though the former rarely figure as much in contemporary policy analyses and debates.<br />
<br />
According to TIMN, each sector’s rise across the ages has advanced the responsibilities and assurances that a society can and should provide its people in the long march toward an evermore civilized complexity. The next sector, presumably a care-centered commons sector, may well reflect that dynamic even more than the earlier sectors. As envisaged here, it would be bound to advance individual and collective responsibilities as well as provide assurances of greater wellbeing for society as a whole, and for individual people. Doing so may well be essential for civilizational progress.<br />
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A care-centered “assurance commons” could build in that direction better than would an economy-oriented “fourth sector.” From a TIMN perspective, then, the best that can be said about FS is that it aims to develop an array of socially-minded hybrid actors and activities which, if properly oriented, may help foster the transition to the full-fledged four-sector system implied by TIMN.<br />
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Here’s the principal statement about Sabeti et al.’s fourth-sector concept:<br />
<a href="https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/files/content/docs/pubs/4th%20sector%20paper%20-%20exec%20summary%20FINAL.pdf">https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/files/content/docs/pubs/4th%20sector%20paper%20-%20exec%20summary%20FINAL.pdf</a><br />
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Also see:<br />
https://www.fourthsector.org/<br />
https://www.ie.edu/cgc/research/the-fourth-sector/<br />
<br />David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-56805495365649673182019-07-13T10:20:00.003-07:002019-07-13T10:20:45.556-07:00Toward a New Sectorism — A Way to Rebalance Our System and Its Politics: #2Continuing where I left off in #1, in the hope I’m headed somewhere new and useful, and knowing I have sections to go yet:<br />
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<h3>
TIME TO RETHINK: RECOGNIZE FOUR SECTORS, NOT TWO</h3>
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So, how true is that two-sector public-private framework? It wasn’t true in the past. It’ll be even less true in the future. For it neglects that there are two other sectors — one very old, the other so new it’s barely recognizable so far. Not expanding the framework to include them will prove evermore pernicious for politics and policymaking. <br />
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The first sector to remember is embedded in civil society and is thus far older, more foundational, less formal, and harder to assign a name, partly because it represents more a cluster of sectors than a single sector: what is often termed the “civil sector” or “civil society sector” — our country’s original base sector of families, communities, and related associations; the sector that Alexis de Tocqueville lauded, without naming it, in Democracy in America (1835) as the source of America’s strength and uniqueness. Its actors and activities are defined primarily by kinship and similar associational dynamics, not market incentives. And its activist groups — e.g., nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), civil-society or community-service organizations (CSOs) — tend to be voluntary, non-profit, charitable, small, and service-oriented, by choice. Most strive to alleviate local health, education, welfare, and environmental problems, including via poverty- and disaster-relief. Thus, terms like “nonprofit sector,” “voluntary sector,” “independent sector,” “community sector,” and “social sector” are often applied. The term “third sector” was in vogue for a while as well.<br />
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By one name or another, this informal sector, or cluster of sectors, used to receive wide recognition and acclaim, notably for its actors’ abilities to supplement government and business initiatives at local levels. But not today. Now, whenever our political leaders can’t resolve an issue via the public and/or private sector, they may just toss it off to burden people in this community-oriented home-based sector, without acknowledging it as a crucial sector that deserves far better recognition, treatment, and involvement. <br />
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Myriad social philosophers, theorists, and other analysts have called for greater attention to family, community, and other civil-society matters, while also lamenting their neglect by government and business in recent decades. Currently prominent voices who lean Left include Gar Alperowitz, Amitai Etzioni, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Eric Liu, Roger Putnam, and Michael Sandel; and to the Right, Arthur Brooks, David Brooks, Rod Dreher, Yuval Levin, Charles Murray, and Roger Scruton. A recent entry is Raghuram Rajan’s new book The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind (2019) — a telling title indeed. <br />
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But their luminous efforts to revive viewing society as a threefold combination of civil society, government, and a market economy have had no noticeable effects on the two-sector policy framework. It remains entrenched, particularly in Washington political circles. One explanation may be that the above efforts have not been cast in terms of sectors per se. They’ve rarely called for viewing civil society as embodying a sector (or set of sectors), and none has yet explicitly called for making that sector — whatever term they use — as much a part of the policymaking framework as are the public and private sectors. Nor have they called for recognizing the emergence of a next/new /fourth sector. Those calls have come from elsewhere (see the next section).<br />
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Meanwhile, rarely noticed, a separate new sector is slowly emerging — initially termed a “social sector” (Peter Drucker, 1994), later a “fourth sector” (Heerad Sabeti, 1998?), and lately a “commons sector” (David Bollier, 2008). Views differ as to what its name should be, whether its time is truly at hand, how distinct and separate it will be from the other three sectors, what imperatives and impulses will define it, which actors and activities will move (and be moved) into it, how to formalize it in practice, and where its funding will come from. Forecasting the formation of this next sector is still so unusual that, so far, only a smattering of theorists on the Left have done so, mostly treating it as a new kind of economic sector (erroneously, in my view). No one on the Right has noticed or warmed to the possibility, except for Drucker decades ago (and he fit more in the Center than on the Right). All of which I shall detail in the next section.<br />
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To preview my own sense, derived from an ongoing study of social evolution, this next sector will form around what have become the most critical and complicated matters our society faces, problems that have grown so serious that they cannot be resolved long-term by relying on the old public-private framework, nor even by adding the older civil sector back into it. And what matters are these? Specifically, education, health, welfare, the environment, and related insurance matters — a set of matters that, in aggregate, concern collective and individual care, broadly defined to include social, economic, cultural, and environmental care; in short, people care, life care. <br />
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For decades these matters were manageable enough to fit into the established public-private framework, and/or be left to individuals, families, communities, and related civil-society associations. This is no longer the case — these matters have grown too large, too complex, and too interrelated for standard solutions to work. America’s decades of progress have brought us to a turning-point for resolving care-centered matters. They have outgrown that two-sector framework in ways our politicians and policymakers don’t perceive yet. <br />
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In short, there are four cardinal sectors, not simply two. Our politics would benefit if our politicians and policymakers would return to recognizing the sector(s) associated with civil society — i.e., reinstitute a three-sector framework. Even better will be when they start to recognize that a new/next/fourth sector is emerging — auguring a four-sector framework for the decades ahead. <br />
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But doing so won’t be easy. Our politicians and policymakers, not to mention others, are deeply invested in and committed to the two-sector framework, for that’s where most of the power, privilege, and money reside. Furthermore, difficulties naming and defining the other two sectors pose big conceptual and practical problems, a source of chronic confusion and hesitation. Ways must be found to maneuver through that.<br />
<br />David Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.com0