Xark!

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Our expanded selves & The Construct

I’m not a particularly active dreamer, so when I get strong messages in my sleep I tend to pay attention. On Saturday morning I woke up with an odd idea in my head, which made me take notice. On Sunday I woke up with more of it in place, as if my dreaming self had been installing the idea in segments.

It’s a Singularity idea, although I don’t think it’s necessarily just a post-Singularity idea. And here’s the way I think I’m supposed to introduce it:

We understand cyberspace to be the virtual space between all the nodes on all our computer networks. And I’ve defined my concept of Spookworld as being everything that exists between the nodes of organized deception.

This new concept is called The Construct, defined as everything that exists between nodes of intent. And since I’m really introducing two ideas here (The Construct and “nodes of intent”), I’d better start by explaining the foundational idea: scaling humanity to the Law of Accelerating Returns.

Lunch hour report: Hersh on Iran NIE

(Editor's note) Say what you want about reporter Sy Hersh, but remember this: History gets the last word. His coverage of the Bush Administration's wars just keeps on getting confirmed -- months, even years later, yes, but that's the way things go in the world.

So what does Hersh have to say about the NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities? Here's a transcript of what he had to say to Wolf Blitzer on CNN last night (-dc)...

Reading William Gibson: Media

"In the early 1920s," Bigend said, "there were still some people in this country who hadn't yet heard recorded music. Not many, but a few. That's less than a hundred years ago. Your career as a 'recording artist'" -- making the quotes with his hands -- "took place toward the end of a technological window that lasted less than a hundred years, a window during which consumers of recorded music lacked the means of producing that which they consumed. They could buy recordings, but they couldn't reproduce them. The Curfew came in as that monopoly on the means of production was starting to erode. Prior to that monopoly, musicians were paid for performing, published and sold sheet music, or had patrons. The pop star, as we knew her" -- and here he bowed slightly, in her direction -- "was actually an artifact of preubiquitous media."

"Of--?"

"Of a state in which 'mass' media existed, if you will, within the world."

"As opposed to?"

"Comprising it."

-- Hollis Henry, lead singer of the long-defunct indie-rock band The Curfew,  gets a lesson in the New World Order from for-profit spookworld entrepreneur Hubertus Bigend in Chapter 20 of William Gibson's new novel, Spook Country.

Reading William Gibson: Terrorism

"A nation," he heard himself say, "consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation." He opened his eyes and confirmed Brown there, his partially disassembled pistol in his hand. The cleaning, lubrication, and examination of the gun's inner workings was ritual, conducted every few nights, though as far as Milgrim knew, Brown hadn't fired the gun since they'd been together.

"What did you say?"

"Are you really so scared of terrorists that you'll dismantle the structures that made America what it is?" Milgrim heard himself ask this with a sense of deep wonder. He was saying these things without consciously having thought them, or at least not in such succinct terms, and they seemed inarguable.

"The fuck --"

"If you are, you let the terrorist win. Because that is exactly, specificially, his goal, his only goal: to frighten you into surrendering the rule of law. That's why they call him 'terrorist.' He uses terrifying threats to induce you to degrade your own society."

Brown opened his mouth. Closed it.

"It's based on the same glitch in human psychology that allows people to believe they can win the lottery. Statistically, almost nobody ever wins the lottery. Statistically, terrorist attacks almost never happen."

There was a look on Brown's face that Milgrim hadn't seen there before. Now Brown tossed a fresh bubble-pack down on the bedspread.

"Good night," Milgrim heard himself say, still insulated by the silver membrane.

Brown turned, walking silently back into his own room in his stocking feet, the partial pistol in his hand.

Milgrim raised his right arm toward the ceiling, straight up, index finger extended and thumb cocked. He brought the thumb down, firing an imaginary shot, then lowered his arm, having no idea at all what to make of whatever it was that had just happened.

-- Drug addict and hostage Milgrim lectures his captor during a rare moment of semi-lucidity in Chapter 29 of author William Gibson's latest novel, Spook Country.

Hersh: J'accuse

Have you heard about Seymour Hersh's interview with Major General Antonio Taguba yet? I heard about it today... but not from reading a newspaper.

"There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff (the explicit images) was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this."

That's the two-star general who was tasked with investigating the program of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib, the same man who was forced into retirement this year. Hersh hit the talking-head circuit last night to promote it. On what planet is this not front-page news? Everywhere?

"This Pres?"

More.

Iraq: Victory for nobody?

As much as I'd like to read Stratfor's 2007 Annual Forecast, I just can't come up with the $399 to buy a copy right now. However, I thought some of you might be interested in the company's sales pitch summary of some of its key preditions:

• Russia and China will rank at least as high in importance as the U.S. conflicts in the Muslim world.
• The United States and Iran are blocking each other's ambitions in Iraq. This will open new possibilities for political arrangements. The war in Iraq will not end in victory for anyone. That will become the basis of all negotiations.
• The United States is the world's leading power. When it moves toward political paralysis, others grow bolder. Aggressiveness will continue from Venezuela to Asia. But the most important moves will come from Russia and China.

Sometimes the best plan isn't a plan

The big story this news cycle is the White House's rejection of the Democrats' "plan" for a phased withdrawal from Iraq. To be clear, this is not really a plan, but the gist of comments from the Sunday morning news shows.

But even that may be too much of a plan for where we stand today.

Say, anybody out there have a plan for solving our Iraq problem? Anybody think that if we just do X, everything will simply fall into order and we'll march out to smiles and waves from our new Iraqi allies?

I don't have a plan and I don't believe in any magic X. My advice to Democrats is simple: Don't trust any simple solutions. This is why it never bothered me that Democrats didn't offer any detailed plans for fixing Iraq in either 2004 or 2006: Solving complex international problems by centralized political planning is seldom a good idea.

Original White House intentions aside, it is safe to say that we are in the mess we face today because America's political leadership didn't listen to the voices of wise counsel within its professional ranks. Jay Garner was replaced by the disastrous Paul Bremer. Dissent among senior officers was squelched to such an extent that otherwise loyal generals found themselves in revolt against the stubbornly wrongheaded edicts of Donald Rumsfeld. Democratic critiques from Capitol Hill were not heard at all.

Solving Iraq will take more than grand political plans and arbitrary deadlines. The best thing the Democrats can do right now is to make sure that the White House opens its ears to the voices it has long ignored. Bring in the mavericks and heretics from Spookworld, the State Department, the armed forces and both parties. Empower the smart people who have been ignored for the past four years. Try diplomacy and reach out to other nations as well. Remember that we have an executive branch for a reason.

A general direction change is fine, but I hope the Democratic plan for Iraq goes something like this: Rescue America's smart professionals from the political wilderness to which they have been consigned, and use what clout you have to make sure they get a chance to help us steer our way out of this tricky passage.

Sad day

I've read the defenses, some of them from people I consider well-intentioned, but I cannot escape the overwhelming sense that yesterday was a sad, sad day for the United States. I suspect history's verdict for this short-sighted failure will be harsh on both the Administration and Congress, but far worse, I expect that American soldiers will suffer horribly for this act of retroactive political ass-covering.

...the bill immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year. It gives the president a dominant but not exclusive role in setting the rules for future interrogations of terrorism suspects.

Written largely, but not completely, on the administration's terms, with passages that give executive branch officials discretion to set details or divert from its protections, the bill is meant to provide what Bush said yesterday are "the tools" needed to handle terrorism suspects U.S. officials hope to capture.

And yes, I understand that the terrorists who oppose us are often sadistic, remorseless butchers. But the fact that our enemies commit far more heinous acts doesn't mitigate the fact that the Congress of The United States of American just authorized state use of more "humane" forms of torture.

If the cost of security is that we must become more like our enemies, then I guess I don't care that much about safety.  Honor is priceless, and these actions have sullied it. If you feel differently, that's your right, but I doubt that you'll be proud of that position five years from now. So I guess we'll just wait and see.

But today? Shame on us.

Richard Armitage and Plamegate

The recent revelation that Spookworld power broker Richard Armitage was the person who first told columnist Robert Novak about Valerie Plame's CIA identity is worthy of review. This is one of those moments when the Right is making a legitimate criticism of media: That once the original Novak source turned out to be someone other than Karl Rove, left-wing pundits and mainstream news desks responded with a collective yawn.

To see the validity of the complaint, imagine if the source had turned out to be Rove. The response would have been a full-court press, with endless blather on the left of the blogosphere and the cable news bookers in a frenzy. You don't have to be a wingnut to imagine that scenario and be correct.

Then on Friday the (purportedly liberal) editoral board of The Washington Post threw Joe Wilson under the bus, blaming Plame's husband for the whole stink. Conservatives were pleased.

But before anyone concludes that this ends the Plamegate story, repudiates Joe Wilson, exposes "media bias," or exonerates Rove, Scooter Libby and the Bush White House, a pause is in order. Because -- surprise! -- it's not that simple.

This is why I've tended to treat l'affair Plame gingerly. A game-changing political scandal is notable for its easy-to-grasp characters, motivations and smoking-gun evidence, but Plamegate has always been a story in search of a master narrative.

STRAFOR on al Qaeda

An interesting update from the analysts at STRAFOR on the record pace of al Qaeda video releases in 2006 (excerpts are cut-and-pasted from a longer piece... you can sign up to recieve these reports here):

These volumes likely stem at least in part from changes in the way al Qaeda chooses to broadcast its statements to the world. Whereas it once took the considerable risks of smuggling tapes to commercial broadcasters such as Al Jazeera, it now is uploading its own statements directly to the Web. These methods give the organization greater control over when -- and how much of -- its statements reach the public...

Tellingly, it is not only the quantity of messages being produced by as-Sahab that is rising, but the quality as well. As-Sahab is using professional-grade gear and studio-quality lighting for its productions. Even in-the-field footage captured in places like Afghanistan and Egypt displays a professional level of post-production editing, crisp graphics and, quite often, added subtitles in a second language. As any comparison to popular clips at sites like YouTube or MySpace will show, as-Sahab videos are not being produced by an amateur at home using a personal computer and a cheap camcorder...

Both the numbers and the quality of the recordings being issued by al Qaeda's apex leadership this year can be read as an indication of a growing comfort level. The atmosphere is very different now than, for example, in 2002, when the organization's sanctuary in Afghanistan had been newly disrupted and key figures were scattered, seeking new places of safety. At this point, al Qaeda's leaders appear to feel safe and believe that issuing greater volumes of recordings will not compromise their hiding places...

The quality of the video messages speaks to something else as well. When posted to the Internet, the files are very large -- so clearly, whoever is doing so has a high-speed Internet connection. The general principle is that the longer an upload takes, the greater the exposure of, and risk to, the person doing the uploading. Also, because these files often are encoded in a number of formats, with varying file sizes and quality, as-Sahab technicians clearly are uploading numerous files with each video release. The risks incurred increase every time they do so...

The obvious conclusion is that al Qaeda not only has high-speed Internet connections, but competent, clandestine IT support as well...

In the months following our attack on Afghanistan, al Qaeda appeared to be surviving by reverting to stone-age solutions like hand-delivered communications and inhospitable hideouts. They weren't defeated, but their operational abilities were severely degraded.

Al Qaeda's re-emergence as a user of 21st century technology suggests two things: They're feeling more confident, and they're playing on high-tech turf where we have certain advantages.

Is this good news, or bad? Who knows? But STRATFOR's analysis suggests the situation has changed in some fundamental ways.

"The future will find you out"

Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing), on May 12, quoting novelist William Gibson (Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition) from his May 11th appearance on Christopher Lydon's Open Source Radio (topic: NSA datamining of phone records):

I can't explain it to you, but it has a powerful deja vu. When I got up this morning and read the USA Today headline, I thought the future had been a little more evenly distributed. Now we've all got some...

The interesting thing about meta-projects in the sense in which I used them [in the NYT editorial] is that I don't think species know what they're about. I don't think humanity knows why we do any of this stuff. A couple hundred years down the road, when people look back at what the NSA has done, the significance of it won't be about terrorism or Iraq or the Bush administration or the American Constitution, it will be about how we're driven by emerging technologies and how we struggle to keep up with them...

I'm particularly enamored of the idea of a national security "bubble..." Technologies don't emerge unless there's someone who thinks he can make a bundle by helping them emerge...

I've been watching with keen interest since the first NSA scandal: I've noticed on the Internet that there aren't many people really shocked by this. Our popular culture, our dirt-ball street culture teaches us from childhood that the CIA is listening to *all* of our telephone calls and reading *all* of our email anyway.

I keep seeing that in the lower discourse of the Internet, people saying, "Oh, they're doing it anyway." In some way our culture believes that, and it's a real problem, because evidently they haven't been doing it anyway, and now that they've started, we really need to pay attention and muster some kind of viable political response.

It's very hard to get some people on-board because they think it's a fait accompli...

I think it's [the X-Files, Nixon wiretapping, science fiction]. I think it's predicated in our delirious sense of what's been happening to us as a species for the past 100 years. During the Cold War it was almost comforting to believe that the CIA was reading everything...

In the very long view, this will turn out to be about how we deal with the technological situation we find ourselves in now. We've gotten somewhere we've never been before. It's very interesting. In the short term, I've taken the position that it's very, very illegal and I hope something is done about it.

For the record, roughly 18 months ago I was touring a defense department engineering facility with its director, and I noticed diagram of a "social web" posted in a work area. The director offered me a layman's introduction to the work these government scientists were conducting, but because of my work I was already familar with the concepts. NORA (Non-Obvious Relationship Analysis). Total Information Awareness. Datamining. Discovery Informatics.

When I casually asked the director a couple of more pointed questions about the project, he politely steered me toward another part of the facility. But I have no doubt that this work is still being done.

It is becoming unprecedentedly difficult for anyone, anyone at all, to keep a secret.

In the age of the leak and the blog, of evidence extraction and link discovery, truths will either out or be outed, later if not sooner. This is something I would bring to the attention of every diplomat, politician and corporate leader: the future, eventually, will find you out. The future, wielding unimaginable tools of transparency, will have its way with you. In the end, you will be seen to have done that which you did.

William Gibson, The Road to Oceania, The New York Times, June 25, 2003

Coming Soon...

Uh, that would be an iceberg...

From the Xark Uh-Oh Department:

WASHINGTON: CIA Director Porter Goss resigned unexpectedly Friday, nudged from the helm of a spy agency still reeling from intelligence failures before America's worst terrorist attack and faulty information that formed the U.S. rationale for invading Iraq.

The decision was the latest in a series of moves by President Bush to shake up his team and reinvigorate his second term. A successor to Goss could come as early as Monday, a senior administration official said.

OK, stop.

Changing your CIA director isn't the same thing as changing your press spokesman. Particularly when the director is your own appointment, particularly when he's been on the job for less than two years, particularly when he's viewed as one of your loyalists.

And then, to put that in the context of what is quite obviously an ongoing, shadowy spookwar?

And then, to put THAT in the context of the rumblings that have been going on just outside of mainstream attention this week ... stories of corruption, Watergate prostitution rings, spies, blackmail, Abramoff... well, let's just say that this is one of those moments where you stop and say "ooooooh shiiiiiiiiit."

As Ed Rollins said: "This is big."

Pull. That. Thread.

UPDATES: Right now the Blogosphere is out front on this story. Here's a bit from blogger Former Spook:

...earlier this week, the CIA launched an investigation of the agency's #3 official--a Goss appointee--in connection with the bribery scandal that sent former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham to federal prison. Given the timing--and announcement--of the inquiry, there was some belief that the probe was something of a "counter-attack" by agency's anti-administration cabal.

Uh, would that be the Hookergate scandal, boys... and whaddaya know, there's Bill Kristol on FOX hinting that a big scandal is about to break... YATHINK?

From TPM via Eschaton:

Here at TPM HQ we were listening to the president's announcement. And the talking heads on CNN were speculating whether Goss's departure might be part of Josh Bolten's 'new blood' shake up in the Bush administration. I don't suppose it anything to do with the fact that Goss is neck deep in the Wilkes-Corruption-and-Hookers story that's been burbling in the background all week. We don't know definitely why Goss pulled the plug yet. But the CIA Director doesn't march over to the White House and resign, effective immediately, unless something very big is up.

Here's Think Progress, which appears to be the first to put together the background on the piece:

For more than a decade, Cunningham-linked defense contractor Brent Wilkes curried favor with lawmakers and CIA officials by hosting weekly parties at lavish hospitality suites at the Watergate and Westin hotels in Washington. Guests would gamble, socialize, and sometimes receive prostitutes; according to Harper’s magazine, the festivities “began early with poker games and degenerated” into what one source described “as a ‘frat party’ scene — real bacchanals.”

GOSS’ NO. 3 ADMITS ATTENDING PARTIES: The highest-ranking CIA official to admit he attended the poker parties thrown by Wilkes is Executive Director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, the agency’s third-ranking official. (Foggo even “occasionally hosted the poker parties at his house in northern Virginia,” though he denies ever seeing prostitutes at the gatherings.) Foggo’s connections to Wilkes and fellow contractor Mitchell Wade are now the focus of an investigation into CIA contracts by the agency’s inspector general, first made public in March. One of Wilkes’ companies, Archer Logistics, won a contract to provide supplies to CIA agents in Afghanistan and Iraq despite having “no previous experience with such work, having been founded a few months before the contract was granted.”

GOSS CONNECTED? Last week, Harper’s magazine reported that party-goers “under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence committees — including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.” CIA Director Porter Goss is perhaps the only individual who fits such a description. (Goss denied the accusations through a spokesperson.) But the alleged links between Goss, Foggo, and Wilkes led some to return to questions raised when Goss initially selected Foggo to be executive director in November 2004. At the time, the decision was viewed with skepticism since Foggo’s previous position was as a “midlevel procurement supervisor,” and because following his unexpected selection, “Porter Goss lieutenant Patrick Murray went to then-Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence Mary Margaret Graham and informed her that if anything leaked about other Goss appointments — in particular, Foggo’s — she would be held responsible.”

And so I started thinking? Who else was a hooker who had something to do with the current cabal? Which sent me looking for news on Jeff Gannon, and Oh By The Way, guess who just happened to resurface again TODAY?

Yep -- the Bulldog came out of the closet... And about those unexplained entries in White House visitor logs... ?

In a conversation with RAW STORY Thursday evening, Gannon spoke frankly about numerous questions this site has raised about his work. RAW STORY was the first to publish the Secret Service logs of his visits to the White House, revealing that Gannon checked in on numerous occasions but failed to check out.

"That's a problem with Secret Service record keeping," Gannon said when asked why Secret Service logs show fourteen days he failed to check out. He referenced an article from 2003 which revealed shoddy record-keeping by the presidential bodyguard.

"I think you're going to see that in this Abramoff thing that's coming out right now," he added. "You're probably not going to get a complete historical record."

Asked if he ever slept over at the White House, Gannon said, "Never. Absolutely never stayed overnight at the White House. Never ever."

"My personal life had nothing to do with how I got into the White House as a reporter," he added. "And my personal life had nothing to do with anyone in the White House or in the Bush Administration."

Thanks, Bulldog. And with a history like yours, I'm sure everyone will take you at your word... But speaking of Abramoff:

WASHINGTON - The White House said Tuesday the list that the Secret Service has been ordered to release concerning convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's contacts with the Bush administration will be incomplete.

But spokesman Scott McClellan declined to say what is wrong with the Secret Service list, why it is incomplete and whether it includes fewer meetings than took place.

Tom Mazur, a Secret Service spokesman, declined to comment on why the agency's records might be less than complete.

McClellan previously has said that Abramoff's only contacts with the administration were "a few staff-level meetings" and attendance at Hanukkah receptions in 2001 and 2002.

U.S. District Judge John Garrett Penn of Washington announced Monday that he has given the Secret Service until May 10 to give the list to Judicial Watch, a public interest group that went to court to get the records.

Judicial Watch believes the records "could show the frequency and length of Abramoff's White House visits, thereby shedding some light on the nature of the relationship between Jack Abramoff and Bush administration officials."

Abramoff is a complex figure. Watch this space...