The engineering society IEEE's general magazine Spectrum has a featurette on "Open Source Warfare" in the November online version. It's written by Robert Charette, who normally tracks software failures at his blog Risk Factor. The article is a good one, as these things go, spurred on by John Robb's recent book Brave New War. Robb is a RAND researcher who has been writing about so-called open source warfare for a few years now. I thought I'd post this here because it's obviously of concern to me that the term open source is being applied in this way. What it means to the RAND researchers and people who think the concept makes sense, is captured by my title here though: jihadists and insurgents are said to be more efficient at innovating their techniques because they are "free from the administrative burdens of maintaining their own infrastructure..." and can rely on Wal Mart and Fedex to supply and ship the things they need to make household bombs. So, my analysis of open source is useful here, in that I think they are absolutely right about this, but that it is only one piece of what makes open source distinctive... but lacks many others. There is no mention of the intellectual property related aspects, or the specific mode of openness that characterizes software projects, much less the specifc IT tools people use. But it is correct about one thing, which is the reliance on existing standardized infrastructures and hardware, such as the widely shared PC architecture, file formats (for insurgents' videos), the Internet, secure international credit transactions for online purchasing and so on. The phrase "administrative burdens" is a peculiar one though. Much or the article focuses on the weapons acquisition process of the US Military, arguing that the process simply takes a long time. The implicit argument seems to be that this process and the time it takes to acquire weapons should be changed and shortened. I wonder though, whether this is just another way of arguing that the military should have less oversight, more secrecy, and less accountability... which would be pretty much the opposite of what open source can and has achieved in other areas.

No time like this very second to point all you anthropology people (once again) to the debate about the role of your discipline in enlightening soldiers to the nuances and minutiae of cultures and cultural difference. As the debate about the army's Human Terrain System (HTS) gets uglier, I thought this would be an appropriate time to link us to some the antagonists. In one obscure corner you will find the work of one Ann Marlowe, writer of - not kidding - such works as "The Book of Trouble: A Romance" and "How to Stop Time: Heroin from A to Z", who has just published a scathing review of said HTS in the amusing slash scary Weekly Standard. (Dynamic link, so check it out fast!) In the Red, White and Blue corner, you will find the writing of a Mr. Dave Dilegge, editor of the curious and fascinating Small War Journal, who takes umbrage with Ms. Marlowe and hurls compelling counterpoints and blog daggers at her. And in the hipster corner, you will find the latest (rather blasé) blurb on the whole mess in the Danger Room. You will also find there links to Wired's continuing coverage of this increasingly heated discussion. So glad my discipline of sociology is untouched by internal strife or critique of its methods and social utility.

CHICAGO, May 8 — For months, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and other governors have warned that their state National Guards are ill-prepared for the next local disaster, be it a tornado a flash flood or a terrorist’s threat, because of large deployments of their soldiers and equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then, last Friday night, a deadly tornado all but cleared the small town of Greensburg off the Kansas map. With 80 square blocks of the small farming town destroyed, Ms. Sebelius said her fears had come true: The emergency response was too slow, she said, and there was only one reason. “As you travel around Greensburg, you’ll see that city and county trucks have been destroyed,” Ms. Sebelius, a Democrat, said Monday. “The National Guard is one of our first responders. They don’t have the equipment they need to come in, and it just makes it that much slower.” For nearly two days after the storm, there was an unmistakable emptiness in Greensburg, a lack of heavy machinery and an army of responders. By Sunday afternoon, more than a day and a half after the tornado, only about half of the Guard troops who would ultimately respond were in place. It was not until Sunday night that significant numbers of military vehicles started to arrive, many streaming in a long caravan from Wichita about 100 miles away. Ms. Sebelius’s comments about the slow response prompted a debate with the White House on Tuesday, which initially said the fault rested with her. Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, said the governor should have followed procedure by finding gaps after the storm hit and asking the federal government to fill them — but did not. “If you don’t request it, you’re not going to get it,” Mr. Snow told reporters on Tuesday morning. The debate was reminiscent of the Bush administration’s skirmishes with Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana, also a Democrat, after Hurricane Katrina. But after an angry flurry of words, both sides seemed to back down a bit later Tuesday. Ms. Sibelius said she now had enough equipment and personnel to deal with the problems in Greensburg, and the White House acknowledged that the governor had requested several items that the federal government supplied, including a mobile command center, a mobile office building, an urban search and rescue team, and coordination of extra Black Hawk helicopters. Nonetheless, the governor and officials in other states again expressed concern that the problem could occur again as the stretched National Guard system struggled to respond to disasters at home while also fighting overseas. As State Senator Donald Betts Jr., Democrat of Wichita, put it: “We should have had National Guard troops there right after the tornado hit, securing the place, pulling up debris, to make sure that if there was still life, people could have been saved. The response time was too slow, and it’s becoming a trend. We saw this after Katrina, and it’s like history repeating itself.” The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which came under strong criticism after Hurricane Katrina, seemed to respond more quickly in Kansas. Several of the agency’s mobile disaster recovery centers are in Greensburg assisting residents, and the agency said it had moved in 15,000 gallons of water and 21,000 ready-to-eat meals, enough to feed 10,000 people. State officials said the problem with the National Guard’s response had more to do with equipment than personnel. In Kansas, the National Guard is operating with 40 percent to 50 percent of its vehicles and heavy machinery, local Guard officials said. Ordinarily, the Guard would have about 660 Humvees and more than 30 large trucks to traverse difficult terrain and transport heavy equipment. When the tornado struck, the Guard had about 350 Humvees and 15 large trucks, said Maj. Gen. Tod Bunting, the state’s adjutant general. The Guard would also usually have 170 medium-scale tactical vehicles used to transport people and supplies — but now it has fewer than 30, he said. On the other hand, General Bunting said, it had more cargo trucks than it needed. The issue is not confined to Kansas. In Ohio, the National Guard is short of night vision goggles and M-4 rifles, said a Guard spokesman, Dr. Mark Wayda. “If we had a tornado hit a small town, we would be fine,” Dr. Wayda said. “If we had a much larger event, that would become a problem.” The California National Guard is similarly concerned about a catastrophic event. “Our issue is that we are shortchanged when it comes to equipment,” said Col. Jon Siepmann, a spokesman for the Guard in California. “We have gone from a strategic reserve to a globally deployable force, and yet our equipment resources have been largely the same levels since before the war.” In Arkansas, Gov. Mike Beebe a Democrat, echoed the concerns of Ms. Sebelius. “We have the same problem,” Mr. Beebe said. “We have had a significant decrease in equipment traditionally afforded our National Guard, and it’s occasioned by the fact that it’s been sent to the Middle East and Iraq.” He added: “Our first and foremost consideration is to guarantee that our soldiers have the resources, including equipment, to do the job and protect themselves. Having said that, my preference would be for the federal government to provide that equipment and not strip the state’s resources, which could adversely impact the state’s mission in times of crisis, which is what happened in Kansas.” Last year, all 50 governors signed a letter to President Bush asking for the immediate re-equipping of Guard units sent overseas. But officials in several states, including Kentucky, Minnesota and Texas, said Tuesday that they were not facing equipment shortages. National Guard units overseas are often assigned engineering missions, and the skills and equipment — bulldozers and trucks, for example — are also what might be required to deal with a natural disaster at home. White House officials said that the Kansas National Guard had at its disposal in the Midwest and the Plains states, everything it needed. By Mr. Snow’s count, that included 83,000 National Guard soldiers; 99 bulldozers; 61 loaders; 246 dump trucks and 59 graders. “There’s a lot of stuff available,” Mr. Snow said. “So, again, I think this is one where the equipment was available and everybody was moving as rapidly as possible.” In Congressional testimony, senior National Guard officials have said that since Sept. 11 units under their command had equipment shortages as forces deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Responding to concerns that the National Guard would not have sufficient personnel or equipment to respond to natural disasters, Guard leaders and state officials developed plans to ensure that if a state is in short supply of people or gear when a hurricane or tornado strikes, it can borrow from other states. But borrowing does not solve every problem, state officials said, and coordination can take time. The destruction from Hurricane Katrina ultimately required the help of 50,000 troops — and they came from all 50 states. Training is another issue. At a Washington news conference in February, Ms. Sebelius said, “The Guard cannot train on equipment they do not have.” She added later: “And in a state like Kansas, where tornados, floods, blizzards and wildfires can seemingly happen all at once, we need our Guardsmen to be as prepared as possible.” Two recent reports have raised questions about Guard preparedness. An independent military assessment council, the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, released a report in March that stated: “In particular, the equipment readiness of the Army National Guard is unacceptable and has reduced the capability of the United States to respond to current and additional major contingencies, foreign and domestic.” Another report, released in January by the Government Accountability Office, concluded that the ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have “significantly decreased” the amount of equipment available for National Guard units not deployed overseas, while the same units face an increasing number of threats at home. Late Tuesday, in a statement, Ms. Sebelius repeated her message: “I have said for nearly two years, and will continue to say, that we have a looming crisis on our hands when it comes to National Guard equipment in Iraq and our needs here at home.”

"World Without Oil" is an alternative reality game--not a video game or a "world" but more like a cross between a writing contest and a role-playing game. It asks participants to imagine what an oil shock would look like, and what living without oil will do to their lives, in real time, as the "oil shock" scenario unfolds. Thus it shares something with the scenario stylings of our vital systems friends, but one that is going directly to the people--albeit probably to preteens, hipster bloggers and youtube users first. What makes it so interesting is that it is actually very technically thin: just a web site where you submit links to content you create on your website, blog, video or by telephone. The site "masters" grade the content and choose the winners--presumably with the aim ofcollecting  a set of scenarios that might otherwise be difficult to generate. I'm skeptical that this particular game will get interesting, but the real issue is that it is pure genius.  I'm sure there will be others... DHS, please take note.

From the website of the Centers for Disease Control: "The theme of the 12th Annual National Public Health Week is "Preparedness and Public Health Threats." CDC, the American Public Health Association (APHA), and hundreds of partner organizations will encourage Americans to prepare effectively for public health threats, from bioterrorism and natural disasters to disease outbreaks." One of the events perhaps worth 'attending' is a satellite broadcast and webcast on pandemic influenza planning designed for "state and local preparedness partners, emergency responses specialists, public information officers, hospital and community-based health organization planners, and any other public health professionals interested in pandemic influenza planning and exercising."

Chronical of Higher Education, Tuesday, March 13, 2007 Anthropologists Discuss Where to Draw Ethical Lines in Dealing With National-Security Agencies By DAVID GLENN American military and intelligence agencies have increasingly been turning to anthropologists and other social scientists for "cultural knowledge" about actual and potential adversaries. But many anthropologists are deeply anxious about offering such assistance, fearing, among other things, that their insights might be used simply to help torture and kill people more effectively. At a panel discussion that was Webcast from Brown University on Monday afternoon, several members of a temporary committee of the American Anthropological Association discussed how and where the discipline should draw ethical lines when anthropologists engage with national-security agencies. (An archive of the Webcast should be available later this week.) "How do we balance the costs? What potential damage is done to our reputation as scholars, as a discipline, when we do engage?" asked Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, a professor of anthropology at Rhode Island College and a member of the committee. The committee, which is formally known as the Ad Hoc Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology With the U.S. Security and Intelligence Communities, was created last year, and it has been asked to provide recommendations to the association by the end of 2007. The panel is meeting this week, largely in private, at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. Ms. Fluehr-Lobban cited the danger that all anthropologists might come under suspicion if some anthropologists were known to be employees of national-security agencies. All scholars doing fieldwork in certain countries might find it more difficult to develop relationships with people who provide cultural information, and they might all be at higher risk of being arrested for espionage, she suggested. "When you say 'CIA,' when you say 'military,' flags go up," she said. But Ms. Fluehr-Lobban also said that it might be worthwhile for anthropologists to bring their expertise on "cultural complexity" to national-security agencies, where such insights are sometimes lacking. Indeed, Ms. Fluehr-Lobban's husband, Richard Lobban, who has done fieldwork in Sudan for nearly 40 years, spoke from the audience about his reluctant decision to lecture occasionally at the Naval War College after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Despite his dislike of the military, Mr. Lobban said, he had decided that Osama bin Laden was "a much greater evil." Mr. Lobban is also a professor of anthropology at Rhode Island College. One topic that came up repeatedly was the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, a pilot project that began in 2004, in which the CIA and other intelligence agencies paid for graduate education for scholars in certain scientific and social-science subfields, in exchange for a commitment to work for the agencies for a certain period of time. The recipients were not required to disclose to their professors or their fellow students that they are intelligence analysts in training (The Chronicle, March 25, 2005). The program, Ms. Fluehr-Lobban said, raises a number of questions about informed consent. Another contested topic was the journalist Seymour Hersh's assertion, in an article published in The New Yorker in 2004, that the American soldiers who sexually humiliated prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison were inspired directly or indirectly by The Arab Mind, a 1973 book by the late anthropologist Raphael Patai. One committee member, Laura A. McNamara, an anthropologist employed by the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories who studies decision making among nuclear scientists there, said there was no strong evidence linking Mr. Patai's book to the Abu Ghraib torture, and warned her fellow panelists that "we need to be cautious about ruining our credibility with false accusations." Ms. McNamara is one of two committee members who are working closely with national security agencies. In a recent essay, she argued that too many conversations about anthropologists and the military tend to "recycle the same issues" about secrecy and informed consent. Anthropologists who work with military and security issues today, she wrote, often face different, more subtle ethical challenges than did Vietnam-era social scientists. In a comment from the audience, James Der Derian, the director of the Watson Institute's Global Security Program, asked whether there was a danger that the anthropology association would "become ethically pure but intellectually impoverished." Mr. Der Derian suggested that even if anthropologists tried to keep their hands pure, military and intelligence agencies would turn elsewhere to seek information about the cultures of their nations' adversaries. "Who's going to rush in where anthropologists fear to tread?" he asked. In a telephone interview on Sunday, Alan H. Goodman, the association's president, said he did not expect the committee to reach any conclusions during this week's meeting. "I don't expect anything to be resolved," he said. "We want this to be very open. This is our first real chance to talk to each other." Mr. Goodman, who is a professor of anthropology at Hampshire College, added that the committee's work was part of a larger conversation about the rise of "applied anthropology," in which scholars are employed by corporations, public agencies, or nonprofit organizations. The association needs to think about "the increased degree to which anthropologists are working for corporations that want some control over the dissemination of results," he said. "And that's related to what this committee will discuss. Is working with intelligence agencies really just a continuation of the same types of things that one might be doing for a corporation, or is there really something special about working in intelligence that makes it entirely different?"

The New York Times thinks so, in this editorial. That Sinking Feeling How do you know when it’s time to improve the country’s roads and bridges, the water systems and power grids that the United States relies upon? There have been plenty of warning signs: spiking traffic congestion and spectacular blackouts. But at what point does the issue move from the province of anxious engineers to an outright national priority? When sinkholes start swallowing repair trucks, it’s a pretty good bet that it’s time to pay attention. As William Yardley reported recently in The Times, the country’s water and sewer lines, many of them a century old, are in terrible shape, leading to those collapsing roads. And the Army Corps of Engineers reported earlier this month that more than 120 levees around the country could fail in a major flood. New Orleans needs to remain an exception, rather than a sad model for the future. According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, just fixing the nation’s aging wastewater infrastructure will cost as much as $390 billion. A report to be released next month by the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton notes that a successful business environment also demands more reliable energy, water and transportation systems. The report cites a Transportation Department finding that freight bottlenecks — with planes circling at overcrowded airports and cargo stacked up at overcapacity ports — are costing the United States economy $200 billion annually. That means that America’s ability to compete isn’t just a matter of being inventive and having a good work ethic, but also depends on the ability to deliver products reliably and on time. The first president with a master’s degree in business administration — hint, he’s the current Oval Office occupant — should convene a task force of federal, state and local officials to address the growing problem. If a company kept its factories in the condition that America keeps its infrastructure, you’d expect it to lose business.

The army has released General Petraeus' counterinsurgency manual, including instructions on civilian-military integration (see sections on "Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan" and "Civil Operations and Rural Development Support in Vietnam"). Note also the definition of culture as a "web of meaning" (Section 3.36), the "muscle on the bones" of social structure.

At two recent press conferences, Chertoff explained the DHS risk management approach and talked about how critical infrastructure protection works. A snippet: "So based on analysis that we have done through our infrastructure protection programs, we've identified a list of approximately a little over 2,000 individual national assets that have national or regional significance. These are truly the critical infrastructure across the entire country, and they reflect the kinds of things that you would imagine, in terms of power plants or dams that are located in an area in which an attack could have a regional or even a national impact. This does not include popcorn factories or hotdog stands or any of the stuff which came in for ridicule over the last year. It is a focused effort to put weight on those elements of infrastructure that represent something more than just the impact on population, but a regional or even a national impact."

In Austin and New York, respectively. Friend of ARC Simon Bertrang reports from New York that the "paranoid" version is that this was a test. Stay tuned for assessments of how these events show that we are not prepared. In any case, an interesting exercise for environmental detection and for identification of pathogens. Interesting difficulties in both cases in figuring out the source of the problem. Read on for the full New York Times story on New York...

A Rotten Smell Raises Alarms and Questions

It was the odor associated with natural gas — the telltale, unpleasant sulfur scent that typically signals a gas leak. But this time, it was lingering in many areas of Manhattan and northeastern New Jersey, coursing through buildings and leading to fears that it could ignite or that a dangerous chemical had been deliberately released. Schools and office buildings were evacuated. A subway station was shut, and commuter trains were rerouted. Government security officials were put on alert. Fire trucks raced through the streets, while Coast Guard vessels patrolled New York Harbor, communicating with tugboats and container ships. Twelve people with complaints of minor illnesses or injuries were taken to hospitals. The source of the odor? As of last night, city officials still did not know. But it lingered for an hour after first being reported around 9 a.m., leaving New York with another mystery on its hands and more than a few conspiracy theories to sort through. With anxieties about gas leaks rattling the nerves of the city, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg held a press conference to assure residents that the city’s air-quality detectors had found no cause for alarm. He hypothesized that the odor could have been caused by the release of mercaptan, a compound that smells like rotting eggs and is added to natural gas so people can detect and report leaks. Throughout the day, possible culprits — among them a minor gas leak in Greenwich Village and natural-gas pipelines in northeastern New Jersey — were considered and ruled out. The olfactory mystery in the New York region was matched by strange activity elsewhere. In Austin, Tex., police cordoned off 10 blocks of the downtown business district early yesterday after more than 60 birds were found dead overnight along Congress Avenue, which leads to the State Capitol. Air testing there failed to find a cause, but preliminary results determined that people were not at risk. In New York, the piercing odor was the talk of Manhattan, and it called to mind another mystery: the maple syrup odor that people reported smelling on separate days in late 2005 and whose source has never been established. In yesterday’s case, several people said they were overcome by the odor. “I feel faint,” said Ivolett Bredwood, a legal assistant who noticed the odor once she stepped off a New Jersey Transit train at Pennsylvania Station around 8:45 a.m. The smell trailed her as she walked to her office, at 99 Park Avenue, which was briefly evacuated. “It’s an awful, nasty smell.” The widespread uncertainty and potential for danger led the authorities to take numerous precautions as thousands of reports of the odor flooded into 911 and utility hot lines. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority briefly closed the subway station at 23rd Street and Avenue of the Americas, as well as a control tower at West Fourth Street. Service was temporarily halted on PATH lines terminating at 33rd Street. The major gas utilities — Consolidated Edison in New York and Public Service Electric and Gas in New Jersey — checked their transmission lines and reported no leaks, changes in pressure or other abnormalities. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection dispatched a mobile laboratory to the West Side with meters to test for ammonia, chloride, cyanide, methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide and volatile organic compounds. “That’s the hardest part, finding the source,” said Christopher Haas, a department specialist in hazardous materials. “Air is very dynamic.” Officials were reluctant to discuss terrorism precautions in great detail, but they said that the city regularly monitors the air with machines that can detect the presence of chemical, biological or radiological substances. At the Port Authority Bus Terminal, some alarmed passengers thought that their buses had problems. And at the Equitable Center, on Seventh Avenue between 51st and 52nd Streets, air vents were closed to keep the odor out. Two schools were evacuated. Norman Thomas High School in Midtown was emptied for about 50 minutes beginning at 9:30 a.m., while students at Public School 11 in Chelsea were taken to Public School 33 nearby. Jeremy Fleishman, a worker at a computer repair shop in Chelsea, said it smelled as if “somebody left the Bunsen burner on” in chemistry class. By 10:30 a.m., he said, “it mostly dissipated — or maybe we just got used to it.” At 980 Avenue of the Americas, a building that was briefly evacuated, a guard, Ralph Supino of Secaucus, N.J., said he called Con Edison but reached only recorded messages. “They were overwhelmed,” he said. For some, it seemed logical that the odor was tied to some sort of terrorist plot. At 1250 Broadway, which was also briefly closed, a guard, Miguel Contreras of Irvington, N.J., said that thought raced through his mind when he noticed the smell upon arriving at the bus terminal on his way to work. “You pray to God that everything is fine and it’s just a leak somewhere,” he said. Adding to the alarm was the strength and duration of the odor, which may have been aggravated by a weather phenomenon known as a temperature inversion. Inversions, which often occur when a warm front moves over a cooler, denser air mass, cause the temperature closer to the ground to be cooler and the air higher up to be warmer — a reversal of the usual pattern. Inversions can trap pollutants and odors, preventing them from being dispersed upward. David Wally, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s forecast office in Upton, N.Y., said a warm front approached the city between 7 and 8 a.m., making it “very possible” that an inversion trapped the pollutants and gaseous odor closer to the ground. The inversion eroded later in the morning, he said. The city recorded 4,500 more 911 calls than usual between 9 and 11 a.m., with most of the increase in Manhattan. The Fire Department responded to 450 calls, 41 of them for emergency medical assistance. Dr. Kristin E. Harkin, an emergency-medicine physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, said that strong odors can worsen the symptoms of people with chronic respiratory ailments like asthma and emphysema. Some suspicion fell on New Jersey, given the path of the prevailing winds and the prevalence of chemical and petroleum facilities in the state. Calls about the smell were received in West New York,Weehawken and other places. In Hoboken, the downtown police headquarters and several office buildings were briefly evacuated, according to Mayor David Roberts, who said he took an anxious call about the smell from his wife. Jack Burns, coordinator of the Hudson County Office of Emergency Management, in Secaucus, said that officials had ruled out the possibility of a mercaptan spill there. He added, “If it’s in New York and people can smell it in western Hudson County, that’s a lot of it, whatever it is.” Michael Williams, an accountant in Jersey City, said he delayed taking a smoking break for more than an hour because the odor was so intense. “I didn’t want to spark an explosion or anything,” he said. Reporting was contributed by Carla Baranauckas, Ken Belson, Thayer Evans, Cassi Feldman, Kate Hammer, Christine Hauser, David M. Herszenhorn, John Holl, Patrick LaForge, Colin Moynihan, William Neuman, Andy Newman and Ronald Smothers.