Tom on KnoxNews today

Pre-emptive regime change: China's turn

North Korea's Kim Jong Il rattled his nuclear saber one time too many with his recent underground testing of a crude device. Now he's really got a superpower mad, one that can seriously do something about it.

No, I'm not talking about the United States. America's continuing military tie-down in Iraq rules out any substantial military action on our part. Given our performance post-Saddam, this news is clearly welcomed in both Pyongyang and Seoul, with the latter being scared witless at the prospect of paying any post-Kim reconstruction bill. [read more]

Comment upgrade: Acemoglu's new book

Got the following comment from TheJew in the Can the Army escape the fate over their overweight Hummers? thread:

I'd really like to hear what [Tom] thinks about Daron Acemoglu's new book Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy available here. A positive review which contains a summary was posted by Brad Delong a couple days ago.

And if the reader will indulge my self linking, I have written something about it as well.

Not only is self-linking of pertinent content welcome, but Tom posted an answer:

Acemoglu's book strikes me as reasonable. Some countries are able to open up domestically (democracy) before externally (globalization). I think islands pull this off better, and remote colonies with big inlands to integrate (Canada, US, Australia, NZ, and India).

Most countries, though, will open up externally first (China model) and stay authoritarian until the dynamics he cites work their way through the system.

Tom on kottke

When I saw Jason Kottke was blogging Pop!Tech, I wondered if he would mention Tom again. It first heard of Tom two years ago when Kottke posted about him at Pop!Tech the last time. Here's Kottke's take this time:

The upshot of Thomas Barnett's entertaining and provacative talk (or one of the the upshots, anyway): China is the new world power and needs a sidekick to help globalize the world. And like when the US was the rising power in the world and took the outgoing power, England, along for the ride so that, as Barnett put it, "England could fight above its weight", China could take the outgoing power (the US) along for the globalization ride. The US would provide the military force to strike initial blows and the Chinese would provide peacekeeping; Barnett argued that both capabilities are essential in a post-Cold War world.

Lunch with Brian Eno, BTW...

Was way cool.

On the way to the restaurant, I get to meet Kevin Kelly too, whose book "New Rules for the New Economy" was a top-tenner for me in the 1990s, so that was very nice. He and Eno were both very complimentary about my (and slidebuilder Bradd Hayes') use of PPT, commenting that the blend of sound and motion and content and delivery and humor was really unique (Eno especially liked the humor), so that was like my ego stroke for all of 2006 (and if you that's cool, wait and see the one Steve DeAngelis gets in about 20 days). Now to discuss PPT with late-in-life convert David Byrne...

Actually, Brian and I discussed the Everly Brothers, Johnny Cash, Little Richard, the Beatles, Roxy Music (whom he produced), David Bowie (ditto), the Heads (also), U2 (also also), Franz Ferdinand, Artic Monkeys, and the Tom Tom Club (natch).

Of course, Brian could say things like "one time Paul (Simon) told me ..." whereas I had no specific gems like that, but we also talked the Middle East, the Long War, al Qaeda and U.S. Military change, so I got to drop some very cool lines too.

All in all, a very pleasant and charming guy. Very unaffected or vain. I could have spent the whole day conversing. He was my Pop!Tech dream date. His toss-off storied were like golden nuggets, given my fascination with the Heads (my big band from my college years).

So, when I said goodbye and jumped in the waiting hybrid Lexus for the drive to Portland (a Pop!Tech perq), I did something I have never done--not even with Jerry Kramer--I asked him to autograph my badge, claiming it was for my wife.

But really, I will frame it for myself.

And yes, I will tease my little brother over it someday.

Ted, my brother, had his famous confab with Laurie Anderson at a Madison radio station in the 1980s, which beat my physically bumping into Joe Strummer in a Chicago bar just before The Clash's "Combat Rock" show a few years earlier. and that one really hurt, because, truth be told, Anderson is a seminal influence on my stage style.

But lunch with Eno, I believe, finally vaunts me back into the lead.

In car to airport, I did 20 mins on a radio show out of Pittsburgh and a quick interview with a Harper's journalist working a story on climate change.

Then I got to Portland and began the long horrible odyssey that is my trip home.

Heads up to Mass. readers: I will be speaking at the Kennedy School at Harvard on the morning of 9 Nov. Not sure how open it is, but it will be a big show (2 hours). Got talked into it by the military fellows class, but it's getting bigger by the day as the buzz builds, or so Jenn Posda has been told. Now students and faculty want a breakfast and lunch too.

I'm looking forward to that plenty. Save one career-advice stint I did in the late 90s, I haven't really ever spoken at Harvard since I left (although the Harvard mil fellows did come to Newport to hear me there, I believe, more than once). So this will be a nice stroke to finally make this happen.

Now if Wisconsin would ever invite me...

Crazy money v. Kim

Financial connectivity is what tames China as a threat and moves it toward alliance

Two stories in today's NYT (rescued from airport garbage) present a couple of bookends to the many chapters of change that is China today.

In the first, "China May Press North Koreans" (Joseph Kahn, p. 1), we hear that Chinese banks are pre-emptively cutting back on handling any DPRK business, fearing it will expose them to asset freezes by the U.S. I'm just old enough to find that notion astonishing. Now it's "paper tiger" America who threatens China's paper money, and now it's China's $1T in USD reserves that serves as a more effective Damocles sword over our nation than Beijing nukes ever did.

Meanwhile, the second story blares, "Hong Kong Is No. 1 in 2006 Offerings" (Keith Bradsher, p. C1): "More money will be raised by companies selling shares to the public than on the biggest exchanges in New York and London." The big Industrial and Commerce Bank of China offering coming up very soon will be the largest in world history. That one deal will push HK to the top spot this year, an accolade that's unlikely to last, even as it speaks volumes about the future.

So there's all that money, and then there's Kim.

Care to bet who's going to win out on that choice?

Can the Army escape the fate over their overweight Hummers?

Interesting perspective from recent boots-on-the-ground soldier.

In Iraq the high tech light weight cross country Hummer has been turned into a road bound over weight tanket. When I was in Iraq it always seemed strange that our Hummers featured about half an inch of armor plate supported by an almost flimsy light weight aluminum frame. We were issued new M1114s and it was interesting how the weight of the armor caused the vehicle to noticeably settle in the year we had them.

In that year I witnessed the Military Transition Team (MiTT) that I was assigned to also settle on its frame. The leadership had the expectations of the "Leviathan Force" and did not grasp that they were the vanguard of the "System Administrator" force. They sought the big battle, the decisive engagement, the sound of screaming jets and overwhelming firepower on a battlefield ruled more by smiles, gestures, words and deeds. They taught the art of writing Operations Orders while skipping how to track operations on a map or even how to track what they had. They sought an enemy defined in black and white in a place with more shades than a paint store. The result was a great gap between expectations and results that lead in many quarters to "Sour Grapes." No screaming horde pouring through the Fulda Gap, but instead an enemy made up of handfuls of individuals armed with cell phones and IEDs. An enemy who's world turned not on great concepts and international politics but petty designs and private causes.

Ironically this MiTT was made up of the very people that the "System Administrator" force concept prescribes: professional people drawn from civilian business, engineering and IT. There was however no leap of intuition into the new role. Instead people fell back on what they had been trained to do, they remained blind to what they had not been trained on and tried vainly to superimpose their expectations over reality. The consequence was, for some, bitterness and for those who went beyond what they new and grew in the new roles some exultation. But even for the exultant there was the nagging thought that their untutored adaptations were not what could have been achieved with better preparation. Someone has to be first but the result was that both the success and the failure could not be fully appreciated by many of the participants.

What was needed was better vetting. The Army is often vetted more against

free thinking and experimentation than for it. In this the Army leadership has been accused of becoming addicted to employing the more flexible teams provided by other services. The Navy, for example, has provided small teams that; because they are employed far from their training base, have proven to be highly adaptive and aggressive as they move into the uncharted waters of prosecuting an asymmetrical counter-insurgency on land. Unfortunately, however the re-alignment of the Army at the end of the Cold War has left the Army Reserve with few soldiers qualified in Combat Arms. Those units with Combat Arms soldiers are subject to having their ranks full of Field Grade Combat Arms Officers who left active duty as junior officers. These officers therefore have experience in combat units during peace time as "Obligated Volunteer" junior officers without the benefit of the grooming being applied to their "Regular Army" counterparts. Such officers tend to be conservative or, worse, seeking that master stroke to prove that the chain of assignments that led them away from active command of a combat unit were wrong. Having neither great experience nor the benefit of being entirely inexperienced, they are consequently trapped by what little they know. And a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

The "Green Berets" were supposed to be the "System Administrators" of asymmetrical warfare, but unfortunately more than a Special Forces Tab is required. There has to be the expectation and the belief in the concept. There has to be the desire to learn, the ability and the willingness to network. There are no laurels from peacetime employment or past experiences on foreign terrain that could surpass current situational awareness, adaptability and networking skills. The over reliance on past experience is contrary current situational awareness. A soldier on the battlefield is required to know what is happening rather than what should be happening and to be a networked member of a group living in the present rather than an individual living alone in his personal past.

Like our Hummers, something specialized for one thing can be re-engineered to be specialized for something else. The results, however, while functional, will be expensive and probably less than satisfactory.

When I left Iraq, our Hummers were sagging like the old warhorses they had become. Transformed from high tech light weight cross country vehicles into road-bound, overweight tankets they were continuing their transition to the scrap yard, a transformation whose pace and ultimate design is preordained by their construction: heavy armor bolted to a light aluminum frame.

AFRICOM and China

ARTICLE: China to Strengthen Its Ties With Africa, By SHAI OSTER, Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2006

Great little piece by Shai Oster on China's rising profile in Africa, right down to Beijing promising plenty of Chinese SysAdmin troops.

If we get our act together there, maybe AFRICOM becomes seriously worth setting up.

Thanks to Barry Eisler for sending this in.

Feels good all around

Somebody's sick, so I get to go 30 vice 20.

Juan Enriquez is first up.

Yes Men are now in another spot.

The SysAdmin is already there

ARTICLE: Chechnya Finds First Foreign Investor: China, By Maria Levitov, The Moscow Times, Issue 3523. Page 1.October 20, 2006

Again, who can we find to go into tough Gap situations? Who will be your vigorous SysAdmin personnel?

They are already there, my friends.

Thanks to Jarrod Myrick for sending this in

SpaceAdmin

ARTICLE: Gore Condemns Bush Space Policy

I'm basically in agreement with this criticism of Bush's new space policy, in that it's far too militarizing. This will come off like us trying to control the Internet in this day and age. In sum, this comes off like Leviathan claiming a first-entrant rule of supremacy when we need to be thinking about a SysAdmin approach that binds us with fellow Core powers.

As the morning drags on ...

My lunch time is rapidly disappearing. Last performer on now, and I've got to be in a car NLT 1:30, so I'm cutting all this way too close (which is my norm).

Point being: glad I chatted up Eno when I could in case this doesn't happen because we both get caught up in something/one else and/or time gets totally crunched.

The price of always wanting to get home ASAP, but one worth paying. Tomorrow is panda school with Vonne Mei, maybe golf, and then a Ron White concert that night.

Then off to China!

After two weeks straight at home, the buzz is back. Not a better buzz, cause I prefer home to the road, but a different one all right.

Just after the talk at Pop!Tech

DATELINE: Sitting in the theater listening to a lady talk about planets and moons in our solar system

Talk felt pretty good.

First, I was blown away by Juan Enriquez. Really cool slides. Really cool delivery. Sort of Kelsey Grammar as this very cool academic. I'm thinking he's Brazilian, based on his comments, and I was really intrigued by what he noted about Brazil (only country in history to have more "stars"/states added since its birth--other than America).

Coolest chart showed how the number of stars in U.S. flag has grown very steadily across our history and this factoid: no U.S. president (serving or former) has ever died who hasn't seen the number of stars in the U.S. flag increase from the number it was when he was born. That truth will not be broken until a president born after 1959 (Hawaii) serves and then passes away. My guess? It'll never happen.

Overall, a stunning, mind-opening piece. His "Untied States of America" is the book I and all of us should read. As he told me after the talk, that's the one that most captures his presentation today.

I had 32 slides teed up when they told me prior I had 20 minutes (20 "white" or substantive slides and 12 "black" or transition slides).

That was a super-packed slide that I knew I'd never get done in 20, but here is what I remember from last time: the other two speakers went way over 20, I did not, and I regretted. There's no money in this gig, just exposure (amazingly, I have made a number of cool biz contacts), so I figured that--this time--I'd just do what I want.

So when Andrew Zolli said we'd now get 30, I added back in the 5 white slides I was really regretting not having in the piece.

As it was, Juan hit his 30-minute mark perfectly, which made my transgression more forgivable (save to potential questioners). I started in and when I looked up, I was at 15 minutes on the countdown and still working the DOEE slides. So you may have noticed I picked up the pace quite a bit then, getting through the Middle East stuff as the clock wound down to zero. That's when I asked Zolli onstage if I could go over, he said yes, and thus I got through the rest in probably about 40 minutes total (but I could be wrong--maybe 45).

On the questions, I was amazed: 1) not to see infamous Arthur on his mark and 2) he didn't ask a question!

I thought the questions went fine. I really did have to go to the head pretty badly at that point.

The fun part of the day (so far and counting): I see Brian Eno from the speakers' perch just before the session starts, so I jump down off the stage, run to the back of the theater and intro myself to him, getting a handshake.

After the session, he's in the green room, so I chat him up. We start with "Remain in Light": I ask if the entropy thing (the songs get slower from the beginning of side A through the end of side B) was purposeful or not. He says he wasn't aware of that perception (which shows he doesn't read the critics--fine by me), but says the real goal he had in producing the album was to group the optimistic stuff up front and the pessimistic stuff in the back. He said that type of grouping and shaping really doesn't happen much anymore on albums, because CDs have no A-v.-B break-up and don't impose the same discipline of size constraints. I countered that I felt the same things were happening with blogs v. books leading to blogs.

Then we traded bits on how producing an album is like editing a book, so I described Mark Warren's "Eno" to my "David Byrne" in my books.

Eno worked on "More Songs About Food and Buildings" (1978) and "Fear of Music" (79, I think). I told him that the first Heads album struck me like the early Beatles compilation albums, and that "More Songs" was sort of their "Revolver"--i.e., coherent. He liked that comparison.

I asked him about the rumors that his time with the Heads became increasingly contentious as far as everyone else was concerned and he said yes, there was this growing sense among the other three that he was sort of stealing Byrne from the rest of the group. I said he was sort of the Heads' Yoko Ono, and he laughed at that one, saying Eno and Ono were awfully close, BTW!

But we agreed that the Heads never could have evolved into "Speaking in Tongues" (their "Sgt. Pepper") if Eno hadn't been there on albums 2-4 ("Tongues" was 5th), and that is was a rare and cool thing for a 4-person group to evolve into the 8-person, multicultural band the Heads ended up being.

Then the next session began and Eno excused himself. I asked if he wanted to do lunch, he said yes, and then I exchanged my lunch coupon for the same restaurant (Zoot's) where Eno's eating.

Then I called Jen and had her move my radio appearance on this Pittsburgh student station to after 1pm, so I could have lunch with Brian Eno!

If my little brother Ted knew this, he would be aflame with envy!

Second impressions at Pop!Tech

(after discovering there is Wi-Fi at my B&B)

A bit pissed that the PT bookstore has only PNM in paperback and no BFA. My bio mentions the second book, so why not have it there since I'm basically back here on the strength of the second book?

That was balanced by checking out the select bibliography of Alex Steffen's World Changing book, which lists BFA (first time I've ever seen that).

Remember two years ago when the famously crabby guy named Arthur who ALWAYS sits in the second row on the right looking down from the stage asked me a snarky question and we had a bit of back and forth?

Well, one of the attendees (who saw me at TED a year-plus back and verifies my Charles "Roger Rabbit" Fleischer story--"You're the best stand-up I've ever seen!") corrals me for dinner with a bunch of other attendees and sits me down next to... the famous Arthur, who apparently remembered me, because everytime somebody asked me a question, he tried to steer the conversation to something else. After a while, he just got up and left (although he did come back to pay his share of the bill, which made me respect him). I'm betting money the first question today comes from him, and it'll be a variant of "Doesn't Iraq prove the whole 'white man's burden' thing is a complete disaster? I mean, who are you going to convince to do all this nation-building in the Gap?

My answer will be--as always--go with those who are motivated. That ain't Europe. It ain't Japan. In the end, it may not even be America. So if it ain't the West, we need a new definition of the core.

And that New Core will shrink the Gap, whatever it takes. Why? They want a better life, and like American settlers heading out across the Plains and over the Rockies in the second half of the 19th century, they're willing to do just about anything to make that better life happen. That's why the Chinese are all over the Gap, just like freed Negro slaves were all over the American West, constituting, for example, the vast majority of the cowboys (a poorly understood fact, just like most people today not knowing about the Chinese being everywhere).

You can say, "But the Chinese do your Gap-shrinking very differently than we Americans do!"

And I'll say, "And what does that tell you?"

First impressions at Pop!Tech

DATELINE: Camden ME, 19 October 2006

Got here just in time to catch last session of day, watching Alex Steffen's very interesting presentation (key word: "dematerializing," which is very Trekky take on environmental conservation) and heard a bit of Bruce Sterling in Q&A (seems pretty pissed off as a rule, but maybe it was just the questions). Also had Brian Eno walk by and talk to people I was talking to (Pretty thrilling, actually, as in college I used to pen the following graffiti everywhere I could: "Eno is God is dead is Eno." Lame, yes, but I was 19). I don't intro myself in such situations, because I'm not a gusher externally, plus I just like to observe famous people without bugging them. I will confess: without his name tag I have no idea who he is.

I think I crossed paths with Tom Friedman, but I wasn't sure because the guy didn't have a badge and he seemed too tall for Friedman, whom everyone says is pretty short.

Is it me? Or were Kevin Kelly and Jared Diamond twins separated at birth? Former is here, but he probably already spoke and cut out. That's what I figured happened to Friedman, since I saw his badge at the counter of the check-in.

Really, it's weird to sorta maybe see famous people wandering Camden ME--like dogs walking on their hind legs, it just seems so incongruent.

My wife thought it was cool I saw Eno though. She knows him from my Heads obsession and that album I still regularly play ("My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" with David Byrne). I still think "Remain in Light" is the greatest album from my youth.

Taking it easy tonight. Got my brief ready. Want to get a good night's sleep. See you on the web tomorrow morning.

All Leviathan and no SysAdmin leaves George a dumb boy

ARTICLE: 'Dramatic change of direction' coming for Iraq, By Sharon Behn, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October 19, 2006

First option described as inevitable on many levels, as I continue to argue.

Second option seems premature, given bloodshed required. Still, one of my "headlines from the future" on Iraq had a Musharref-like strongman stepping dowwn (or something to that effect), so clearly I'm not too surprised by that temptation.

How to reconcile the two?

As I argued back in Mar 05 in Esquire (the second "Mr. President" piece), killing the Sunni dream of any unitary state is the same narrowing choice we forced on Milosevic's Serbia in that fake state Yugoslavia that was unable to survive beyond dictator Tito's grip (although his clever use of cross-domination among the republics' elites kept the peace a good decade beyond his death). Pushing/allowing semi-autonomy for the previously beat-upon Shiia and Kurds does that, but it doesn't tame the sectarian violence, nor does it end the Sunni-based insurgency. For that, a tough guy on top who's empowered on security, but less so on politics and economics, is likely key, because an ungovernable space in Sunni-land is probably too unacceptable to the region's dictators.

Neither path is particularly sunny, pointing out the profound cost we incur for both lacking the SysAdmin force and our horrible mismanagement of postwar Iraq.

All Leviathan and no SysAdmin leaves George a dumb boy.

Thanks to James Riley for sending this in.

Smarter or madder?

ARTICLE: The Thin Green Line: What the latest violence reveals about the failed U.S. strategy in Iraq, By Phillip Carter, Slate, Oct. 18, 2006

Yes, yes. The SysAdmin concept is sinking faster than the Titanic, according to John Robb.

Except everytime somebody who's thought it through lays out a vision for how we fix the mess we're in, they basically recite the concept--chapter and verse.

I've said for almost five years now: this isn't gonna happen because it's cool or elegant or visionary. It's gonna happen because without such capacity we're gonna keep f--king it up royally and getting people killed needlessly. It's gonna happen beecause we can either deal with these people over there or we can wait and deal with them over here. We can either get good at it, or we can keep doing what we're doing and hope to get a different outcome. We can either tackle these problems at their source, or firewall ourselves off against fantastic bogeymen who "rule our world."

We can either grow up and face the world and its challenges as they are, or we can retreat under cover of the Powell Doctrine and play spy-on-terrorist games, pretending that's the sum total of the challenge.

We can either get smarter or we can get madder.

Thanks to Jason Brantley for sending this in.

The kleptocracy ain't so unified

ARTICLE: With Cash, Defectors Find North Korea’s Cracks, By NORIMITSU ONISHI, New York Times, October 19, 2006

Another good omen suggesting the kleptocracy ain't as unified as imagined. As usual, we tend to overestimate the strength of enemies, counting too much their capacity for war and underestimating our capacity to influence everything else.

Don't forget!

Tom will be speaking at Pop!Tech tomorrow at 9 AM EDT.

For those of us who won't be in attendance, we can watch it live on their website.

For Iran, soft-kill authoritarianism

POST: Iran limits ADSL bandwidth

ARTICLE: Iran bans fast internet to cut west's influence, Robert Tait, The Guardian, October 18, 2006

Simple equation: the more we pursue policies that strengthen hard-liners, the more they will disconnect the masses from the outside world and thus the less our influence over Iran's evolution.

The rule: soft-kill authoritarianism with connectivity, but hard-kill totalitarianism with regime change--however achieved.

Thanks to Terry Collier and Jacob Heim for sending this in.

Quoth the weblog evermore

ARTICLE: The Most Important Culture War, By James H. Joyner Jr, TCS Daily, October 17, 2006

More evidence of the blog as virtual quote machine. I give fewer interviews, but get quoted more often.

[Editor's notes:

1. Joyner writes Outside the Beltway, which I link in Tom around the web sometimes.

2. TM Lutas is already active in the comments.]

Thanks to Jeff Hasselberger for sending this in.