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Old 11-26-2013, 21:08   #4
Peregrino
Quiet Professional
 
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Occupied Pineland
Posts: 4,701
Interesting concept. Shortly after the Muslim Brotherhood Spring (OK, if you insist - the "Arab Spring") my then boss recommended I read Revolution 2.0. Thank god I bought it on Kindle for $2. I'm still plowing through it months later. Personally, I think our policy wonks are overstating the utility of social media WRT igniting political movements. Everything I've read addresses it in a vacuum without taking into account the duration and depth of the respective population's underlying grievances. Generations of oppression and repressed potential stacks enough kindling for an impressive conflagration. I think social media is more the spark, and just like starting any fire with a match, insufficient tinder and preparation results in burnt fingers and no bonfire. It takes time and lots of repressed discontent to create the conditions for revolution. To illustrate my point - does anyone believe social media could effect a revolution in any western democracy in the near future? How about in 25 years (probably less considering how quickly they're progressing) in one of the current socialist inspired economic disaster zones (Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, etc.)?

As for the US using it as an offensive tool - I'm not holding my breath. And that's all I consider social media to be - a tool, another component of a shaping campaign. I've yet to see a modern psyop campaign (outside of commercial marketing or democrat politics) that I considered effective. Not timely, not targeted, and certainly not exploitable for strategic or operational gain.
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A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (42B.C)
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