The commanding heights of the New American Century II

The second commanding height of the new American century is communications, it is a battle of ideas. What you will see as you watch the Commanding Hieghts is the rejection and acceptance of ideas where change signals success or failure. You will see new ideas rejected and scorned as the sigmoid curve of change evokes itself upon circumstances.



You do not have to buy the commanding heights, you can watch it online here. This broadcast is 101 required viewing for institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.

The commanding height beyond what Lenin described them as is the battle for ideas of how socities should function. That battle now is being played out on the internet in the newest chapter of this ongoing struggle. The McCain campaign in 2000 first tapped into this phenomenon, Howard Dean tried a run with it, so did Ron Paul, and Barack Obama was the first succesful candidate to succesfully execute and coordinate the internet as part of a succesful campaign.

But now the internet is under attack and a battleground as important as the high seas and littoral water on which commerce is conducted. State sponsored hacking and assymetric attacks have made the internet a place of opportunity and conflict. Take your own pick of where a challenge in computer security resides, but the real fact is this. We currently have agreements were COTS products like Microsoft's opeerating system is provided to say (as an example) China so that the government can verify that the software has no back doors. This source code that is provided is of course the basis for the back doors.

The commanding heights of information will be when the verification of security is known by all.

Now I know that the NSA and those who have a reliance on auditing and tracking information will not like this supposition. But an economy and a culture has more to lose than gained when security and transparency are not promoted.

George Tenet made probably his best speech at Georgetown when he observed (pre-911), and I paraphrase, that the open source intellignece and internet has made the idea of a central repository of intelligence an idea of the past. Unless it is the intent to take a society to POL POT where during his time in power Pol Pot imposed a version of agrarian collectivization whereby city dwellers were relocated to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects with the goal of restarting civilization in "Year Zero". You should promote innovation and communication to increases commerce. The dark ages, Pol Pot, North Korea, all the closed societies where lack of an education and dogma supplant reason have as a consequence poorly functioning economies.

So similar to the statement by Bill Clinton and his observation, heh.. Globalism is a fact, will it be on par positive or negative? is the same question that needs to be asked of the internet and communication.

Not only has there got to be free commerce on the seas, there has to be free commerce of ideas. The commanding heights society will have to perform both. It is a battle of ideas and as we will witness watching the commanding heights, is that similar to the Gutenberg press change is upon us.

I think any empirical study would show that where the printing press proliferated so did commerce. The battle for ideas did not start when the PBS series picked it up in their narrative, it has been going on for quite some time.

But the succesful leader and succesful economy will endorse the internet and communication and information security and privacy as a vehicle of strength, not an obstacle to retreat from.

The library of Alexandria is at our finger tips, this is a core commanding height where efficient communications and data that is secure is available. This communication challenge is the second commanding height. The destruction of the new digital library will coincide with the destruction of that society taht does so. Two of five commanding heights that are essential is naval power and communications and information, failure at these two ruin cultures and economies.