Building the network to match the network

Mark Kimmett, plans chief for the military, made this statement today.

“To defeat this enemy it is far more than simply the military,” said General Kimmett. “It will take a network -- interagency network, international network -- that brings together Department of the Treasury, brings together the State Department, brings together all the intelligence agencies, brings together all of our law enforcement agencies, so that we can develop a network, both here in America, and internationally, to fight this network and defeat this network.”

Find out why this makes me all warm and tingly after the jump.

For a long time, we've heard the benefits that Al Qaeda has maintained as a loose meta-group of coalitions which are themselves loose. They're incredibly fast, they have no rules, they can be anywhere at any time and can leap tall democracies in a single bound.

But as Michael Hirsh points out this week--until 9/11, Al-Qaeda was being torn apart by money woes, infighting and poor management. They were no paragon of complex network adaptability. More like an early dot com, they were over capitalized and under-performing.

Still, though, they are a network. More so now than ever--and that means that destroying them will take concentrated attacks on high traffic hubs through multiple loci. This is a soap box of mine that you'll hear more about, but the key point here is that the U.S. government works poorly as a network.

Notice that I didn't say, “The U.S. government is not a network.” I mean, duh. That's like saying Bobby Knight is not the Dalai Lama. The two things are so conceptually different you can't even align them enough to properly differentiate.

In those cases, however, when the U.S. government begins to work like a true network, bad things happen. People sidestep chain of command to call their friends at the White House. Graft occurs, and mixed media messages. Because informality is heavily mixed in with complex social network structures, networked government reverts back to a good ol' boys club. And not a good good old boys club like Alabama. More like Deliverance.

So, we should stop trying to turn government into a network. Rather, I think it's better to create formalized pockets of network within the hierarchy. That is, at some point the hierarchy stops, and a networked bubble occurs with certain rule-based areas of control and the ability to go as wild as they need to. Then, at a another point, the bubble close back into the hierarchy.

It's not as sexy as saying “Networked Government” maybe, but it allows accountability without bureaucracy and delineates a pure operating space for the network. More of this as my brain unmelts.

Comments

[Jacken Von Moncler]

let's join our hands together to stop this kind of wrong doings. It may risk lives in the future if we just let them continue.