Militarisierung der Gesellschaft, zusammengefasst.

[Kristian Köhntopp <kk@shonline.de>]

Gefunden als comment in 

http://slashdot.org/articles/98/12/18/2221244_F.shtml

Eine sehr schöne Zusammenfassung dessen, was hier unter "Militarisierung
der Gesellschaft" behandelt wird.

Kristian

This is worth it's own submission imho - but... (Score:1)
by David Rolfe (drolfe@nospam.unf.edu) on Saturday December 19, @02:27PM 
(User Info) http://booty.mit.edu
This is my thoughts on the whole thing - This is a really far reaching
thread - I wonder why there are so few
posts! 

>>Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 23:42:27 -0800 (PST) 
>>From: Phil Agre 
>>To: "Red Rock Eater News Service" 
>>Precedence: Bulk 
>> 
>>Some notes about cyberwar, hyperreality, electronic commerce, and the 
>>visual ethnology of entomophagy. And a couple of URL's. 
>> 
>> 
>>I don't normally get emotional about political issues. I don't know 
>>why, but I don't. Nonetheless, in October 1997 I heard something 
>>that I found so disturbing that I haven't been able to write about 
>>it until now. At the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, 
>>the conference organizers put together a plenary panel presentation 
>>about so-called cyber war. The presenters were all US military guys, 
>>both officers and military academy intellectuals, who have developed 
>>what is apparently an entirely new US military doctrine for the cyber 
>>world. I judged these guys to be honest about their reasoning, and 
>>I was hardly alone in finding everything they said to be astonishing. 
>> 
>>Their starting point was military procurement. You are probably aware 
>>that it has been US policy for several years to encourage the military 
>>to buy its equipment from civilian sources whenever possible. In most 
>>people's minds, this is a common sense policy that responds to the 
>>recurring outrages over $400 wrenches and the like. In fact it is an 
>>extremely important phenomenon that can be well understood in economic 
>>terms. Although you wouldn't realize it from reading the newspaper, 
>>the modern global economy does not remotely approximate the economic 
>>vision of Adam Smith. The fundamental reason for this is information. 
>>Adam Smith's economy -- the economy of efficient competition -- only 
>>works right in the absence of large economies of scale. Economies of 
>>scale arise when goods can be produced more cheaply after substantial 
>>up-front investments, whether in factories, machines, or any other 
>>cost that must be distributed across an entire production run. When 
>>economies of scale are large, only large producers can prosper, and 
>>when economies of scale grow, industries tend to become concentrated. 
>> 
>>The most important economies of scale derive from the information 
>>content of a product, that is, the information work that is necessary 
>>before the first copy of the product can be manufactured. Software is 
>>famous for its extremely large economies of scale: almost all of the 
>>cost goes into making the first copy of a given program, after which 
>>successive copies can be manufactured very cheaply. This is one of 
>>the several reasons why monopolies dominate so much of the computer 
>>industry: a million companies make software, but with few exceptions 
>>only one company ends up dominating each category of software once 
>>the market in that category matures. Computer hardware exhibits large 
>>economies of scale as well, inasmuch as computer chips have a large 
>>information content. As more products start to have computers inside 
>>of them, and as information technology is used more intensively in 
>>the creation of other products and services, economies of scale that 
>>affect information technology markets start to affect markets in those 
>>other products as well. 
>> 
>>This is the military's dilemma: on the old model, the military could 
>>support a parallel industry to produce things to its own specs. With 
>>the growing pervasiveness of information technology, however, this 
>>becomes impossible. As the military starts to represent a smaller 
>>and smaller proportion of the market for goods with high information 
>>content, military-only producers become radically less efficient than 
>>civilian producers. As the ratio between the costs of military-spec 
>>goods and civilian goods becomes overwhelming, the military has no 
>>alternative to shutting down its parallel industrial system and buying 
>>its equipment on the civilian market. 
>> 
>>And this is where the problems start. The military once maintained a 
>>parallel industrial system for the simple reason that its requirements 
>>really are different from those of the civilian market. The civilian 
>>computer industry, for example, has steadily produced computer systems 
>>whose security against intruders is just terrible. One reason for 
>>these security problems is that the civilian market simply doesn't 
>>need security beyond a certain point. Another reason is market 
>>failure: because of network externalities, the market offers greater 
>>rewards to companies with rapid time-to-market (and thus proportionally 
>>lesser rewards to companies with other positive attributes) than an 
>>efficient market probably would. Whatever the reason, the military 
>>finds itself stuck in a very bad situation: they are obligated by both 
>>economics and policy to acquire computer systems that cannot withstand 
>>entirely plausible attacks. 
>> 
>>The gentlemen who presented the military's viewpoint on this subject 
>>at TPRC were entirely forthright about the problem. They seemed 
>>genuinely sad about it. But orders are orders, and they have followed 
>>through on those orders by developing the military doctrine that would 
>>seem logically to follow from them. And this is the doctrine that 
>>I found so frightening. If the military is obligated to use public 
>>communications networks, they observe, then national security requires 
>>that those public networks be designed to military specifications. 
>>That's the choice: either you build separate military communications 
>>networks to military specifications, or you put the military on the 
>>civilian networks and build those networks to military specifications. 
>>And it's not just communications networks, but every last category of 
>>products that the military is obligated to acquire from the civilian 
>>marketplace. 
>> 
>>That's bad enough, but it's just the start. In the new world, the 
>>military guys said, warfare is no longer conducted along borders 
>>and boundaries, with front lines and supply lines and all of that. 
>>Warfare, in fact, can no longer be comprehended in spatial terms. 
>>To the contrary, in a world where communications infrastructure 
>>is everywhere and every element of communications infrastructure 
>>is a sensitive military target, war has no spatial limits. And when 
>>terrorists can use public communications networks to conduct endless 
>>low-level attacks anywhere in the world from anywhere else in the 
>>world, war has no temporal limits -- they actually used the phrase 
>>"permanent war". 
>> 
>>That's not all. War, on these guys' conception, is now conducted 
>>in every aspect of society. Foreign manipulation of the content 
>>of American news media, for example, is "cultural war". Taken all 
>>together, the result is -- and this is their term -- "total war". 
>>You might have thought that the Soviet Union had fallen, that the 
>>United States was by far the greatest military power on earth, that 
>>the heavy cloud of the Cold War had lifted, and that it was time for 
>>the United States to stand down from its total mobilization, disband 
>>the national security state, end the culture of secrecy, reshape the 
>>military in some reasonable proportion to its plausible adversaries, 
>>and get to work on the rest of society's problems. You might think 
>>all of that, but you would be wrong. In the world of the Internet, 
>>it would seem, things have only gotten worse. We are now in a world 
>>of permanent, total, omnipresent, pervasive war. Cold War plus plus: 
>>all war, all the time. They said this. 
>> 
>>The military guys' view of the emerging nature of war has numerous 
>>consequences, and they spelled some of them out. They stated, for 
>>example, that in the event of war it would create no precedent for 
>>the government to take control of facilities that are sensitive from 
>>a military perspective. But they asserted that war is no longer an 
>>event but a permanent state, and they had also asserted that virtually 
>>the entire productive infrastructure of the country was relevant 
>>to war as it is now defined. During the question period, therefore, 
>>I asked them where the boundary between military and non-military 
>>facilities could be found, and they answered, with seemingly genuine 
>>distress, that the boundary does not exist. The consequence, which 
>>they did not spell out, is that the emerging economics of information 
>>infrastructure have required the United States government to adopt 
>>as official policy an authoritarian variety of communism. 
>> 
>>Precisely because this is all so shocking, I find it hard to take 
>>as seriously I should. It's the sort of thing you hear on AM radio. 
>>Describing it to you, I feel like one of those guys who has heard 
>>somewhere that the United States government was officially abolished 
>>sometime in 1933, and that some document somewhere proves this for 
>>certain. ("No, it's true! I heard it!", they're all saying as they're 
>>reading this, and if the past is any indication they'll tell me about 
>>it in e-mail messages, all of which will sound impressively specific 
>>and nailed-down, even though they don't quite provide me with the 
>>information that I would need to verify their claims in any library 
>>that I have access to.) I don't claim that the guys who presented 
>>these novel military doctrine represent a perfect unanimity of opinion 
>>within the United States Department of Defense and its constituent 
>>branches of military service. But neither were they disgruntled 
>>mid-level drones putting on baseball caps, lurking in bars, and 
>>delivering packets of incriminating top-secret documents to David 
>>Duchovny. They were serious people, they were saying scary things, 
>>and they were doing an outstanding job of making these scary things 
>>sound like the inescapably logical conclusions of well-known and 
>>widely accepted premises. 
>> 
>>So what are we to make of this? The cyberspace ideology provides us 
>>with two contradictory approaches to the question. One approach is 
>>to laugh at the military guys and the rest of the big bad government's 
>>anachronistic control freaks, all of whose efforts to rein in the 
>>Internet are inevitably futile because of the inherent dynamics of the 
>>technology. The other approach is, quite the contrary, to rage at the 
>>military guys and mobilize political opposition to the dark ages that 
>>they and their whole anachronistic control-freak cabal are trying to 
>>substitute for the utopia that the Internet would otherwise bring us. 
>> 
>>You may recall that, as recently as a couple of years ago, proponents 
>>of the cyberspace ideology filled the Internet with manifestos against 
>>the Communications Decency Act and many other bad actions on the part 
>>of the government. Where have those people gone? Some of them remain 
>>in business, of course, including many of the sensible ones, but they 
>>no longer come close to defining the Internet's culture. The Internet 
>>is still an object of political controversy, but these controversies 
>>now resembles all of the world's other political controversies in 
>>their alignments of interest groups with their realistic understandings 
>>of the political process. Much of the controversy has gone underground, 
>>into whatever back room the computer industry is using to conduct its 
>>negotiations with those parts of the military that have opinions about 
>>the architecture of its products. 
>> 
>>What's not happening is any kind of broad-based public debate about 
>>the honestly monumental consequences of emerging military doctrine. 
>>Does anybody know that the government is moving toward a stance of 
>>total, permanent war? Does anybody care? Do we retain the capacity 
>>to pay attention to such things? 
>> 
>>At times like this I am reminded of the park rangers at the Grand 
>>Canyon who are at their wits' end because people have been falling 
>>into the canyon in unprecedented numbers, even if you control for the 
>>increased absolute numbers of people who visit the canyon. The reason 
>>why people keep falling into the Grand Canyon is officially a mystery, 
>>but the real reason, in my opinion, is that Americans believe way deep 
>>down that they are safe. War is now conducted by remote control. The 
>>consumer protection movement has done its job, not least by instilling 
>>the holy fear of lawsuits in businesses and governments of every sort. 
>>Theme parks offer expensively simulated danger that can't possibly 
>>hurt you. Fictional people are slaughtered by the thousands in mass- 
>>marketed entertainments that go out of their way to numb any emotional 
>>response to the carnage. Bombastic pundits systematically smear 
>>anyone who believes that life is endangered by the side-effects of 
>>industrial civilization. Crime is way down. The people who survived 
>>the Great Depression and World War II are old, and the people who 
>>lived through Korea and Vietnam don't talk about it. The news media 
>>pretty much ignore the rest of the world. Danger, if the concept even 
>>remains, is an abstraction, a symbol, something existentially far away. 
>> 
>>Perhaps as a consequence of all of this taken-for-granted safety, 
>>it has become harder and harder for Americans to comprehend danger 
>>- -- that is, to really *get* that by standing too close to the edge 
>>of the Grand Canyon, one could actually fall into it and actually 
>>die. Likewise with our political system. It is just *too* *weird* 
>>to comprehend -- to really *get* -- that the United States Congress 
>>is actually -- not in make-believe, not in the movies, but here, in 
>>this reality -- impeaching the president for no honest reason besides 
>>the maybe-or-maybe-not half-true answers he gave to a strangely worded 
>>question about which parts of someone else's body he had touched. 
>>And it is just too weird that the United States military establishment 
>>is in the process of declaring the country to be in a state of total, 
>>permanent war. We are numb. Please, someone, put us out of our misery. 
>> ... 
>>Digital Worlds Research Center 
>>http://www.surrey.ac.uk/dwrc/ 
>> 
>>article on Y2K and the far right 
>>http://www.splcenter.org/klanwatch/kw-4h1.html 
>> 
>>end 
>>
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