I just came upon this in Foreign Policy:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/28/spy_kids_nsa_surveillance_next_generation (may be paywalled)
Well worth the time to read it. I think Mr. Stross may be too pessimistic in the second half, but his basic insight is important.
1. Things weren’t always the way they are now, and they won’t be that way forever. Although Stross does not specifically address it, the atomized, international, deracinated world he describes bears a lot of similarities with many pre-industrial societies. The nation state and its attendant norms, values, and security apparatus are all relatively recent developments. Two hundred years ago, independent security contractors roamed Europe selling their services to the highest bidder. We have a particular problem in the U.S. because we don’t even know our own history, let alone
2. If your values and beliefs are too deeply ingrained, you mistake them as Truth rather than the culturally constructed opinions that they are. This has helped polarize our politics, and it also makes us vulnerable to threats who just don’t see the world through the same lens (see suicide bombers, et. al.). In 2007, a staff section in my division did a very simple generational analysis where they looked at recent Iraq history through the eyes of the largest and most dangerous cohort–mails between 15 and 35. In three pages, they managed to completely demolish all of the easy assumptions upon which a bunch of 60ish, wealthy, Christian and Jewish, Americans had based their war plans.
3. Just because something worked yesterday doesn’t mean it will work tomorrow. Particularly in hierarchical, authoritarian organizations like the military and the intelligence services, leaders will almost always be at least one and generally two generations removed from the majority of their worker bees. Generals and SESs who have spent their careers following and giving orders tend to want to change their subordinates’ cultural norms by fiat rather than alter the organization to fit the new generation. There are exceptions–generally small teams (think special operations) that can handpick their people and reward entrepreneurial spirit–but they are the exception. Generational change threatens everything the people at the top have built–their authority, their prestige, even their jobs. They will not change without a fight, and most of them will be unable to even realize that they are impeding progress.
Finally, if Stross is correct, it raises a really difficult question. Panicking is not the answer. We need to figure out how to adapt our institutions to function in the brave new world. Simply creating an island of anachronism won’t work either; the forces driving change are too powerful, and they are drying up the very labor pool we would need. Where do we go from here?
James W. Vizzard 