"Netwars" and Activists Power on the Internet

by Jason Wehling

Since the so-called Republican victory in the last U.S. election, 
the political Left in America has been sent reeling. In many 
places including the major media, we have been told that this 
victory spells a new revolution, a revolution for the Right with 
a massive 17% of the potential electorate voting republican. 
Regardless of the truth of these claims, many there have felt 
that their activist work has been for not and that it has been 
largely ineffectual. Interestingly a Rand corporation researcher, 
David Ronfeldt, argues that contrary to the impotence felt by 
many social activists, they have become an important and powerful 
force fuelled by the advent of the information revolution. 
Through computer and communication networks, especially via the 
world-wide Internet, grassroots campaigns have flourished, and 
the most importantly, social elites have taken notice.

Ronfeldt specializes in issues of national security, especially 
in the areas of Latin American and the impact of new 
informational technologies. Ronfeldt and another colleague coined 
the term "netwar" a couple years ago in a Rand document entitled 
"Cyberwar is Coming!". "Netwars" are actions by autonomous 
groups -- in the context of this article, especially social 
movements -- that use informational networks to coordinate action 
to influence, change or fight government policy.

Ronfeldt's work became a flurry of discussion on the Internet in 
mid-March when Pacific News Service corespondent Joel Simon wrote 
an article about Ronfeldt's opinions on the influence of netwars 
on the political situation in Mexico. According to Simon, 
Ronfeldt holds that the work of social activists on the Internet 
has had a large influence -- helping to coordinate the large 
demonstrations in Mexico City in support of the Zapatistas and 
the proliferation of EZLN communiques across the world via 
computer networks. These actions, Ronfeldt argues, have allowed a 
network of groups that support the EZLN to muster an 
international response, often within hours of actions by 
Zedillo's government. In effect, this has forced the Mexican 
government to maintain the facade of negotiations with the EZLN 
and has on many occasions, actually stopped the army from just 
going in to Chiapas and brutally massacring the Zapatistas.

Ronfeldt's position has many implications. First, Ronfeldt is not 
independent researcher. He is an employee of the notorious Rand 
corporation. Rand is, and has been since it's creation in 1948, a 
private appendage of the U.S. military industrial complex. Paul 
Dickson, author of the book "Think Tanks", described Rand as the 
"first military think tank... undoubtedly the most powerful 
research organization associated with the American military." The 
famous "Pentagon Papers" that were leaked to the press in June 
of 1971 that detailed the horrible U.S. involvement in Vietnam 
was produced by Rand.

Ronfeldt himself has authored many research papers for Rand, but 
his ties to the military do not end there. Ronfeldt has also 
written papers directly for the U.S. military on Military 
Communication and more interestingly, for the Central 
Intelligence Agency on leadership analysis. No, Ronfeldt's 
opinions were not written for aiding activists. It is obvious 
that the U.S. government and it's military and intelligence wings 
are very interested in what the Left is doing on the Internet.

Netwars: the Dissolution of Hierarchy and the Emergence of 
Networks

Ronfeldt argues that "the information revolution... disrupts and 
erodes the hierarchies around which institutions are normally 
designed. It diffuses and redistributes power, often to the 
benefit of what may be considered weaker, smaller actors". 
Continuing, "multi-organizational networks consist of (often 
small) organizations or parts of institutions that have linked 
together to act jointly... making it possible for diverse, 
dispersed actors to communicate, consult, coordinate, and operate 
together across greater distances, and on the basis of more and 
better information than ever." 

Ronfeldt emphasizes that "some of the heaviest users of the new  
communications networks and technologies are progressive, 
centre-left, and social activists... [who work on] human rights, 
peace, environmental, consumer, labour, immigration, racial and 
gender-based issues." In other words, social activists are on the 
cutting edge of the new and powerful "network" system of 
organizing.

All governments, especially the U.S. government, have been 
extremely antagonistic to this idea of effective use of 
information, especially from the political Left. This position is 
best stated by Samuel Huntington, Harvard Political Science 
professor and author of the U.S. section of the Trilateral 
Commission's book-length study, "The Crisis of Democracy". 
Basically writing in reaction to the mobilization of people  
normally isolated from the political process in the 1960's, 
Huntington argued in 1975 that "some of the problems of 
governance in the United States today stem from an excess of 
democracy... Needed, instead, is a greater degree of moderation 
of democracy."

Huntington blatantly maintained that "the effective operation of 
a democratic political system usually requires some measure of 
apathy and non-involvement on the part of some individuals and 
groups... this marginality on the part of some groups is 
inherently undemocratic but it is also one of the factors which 
has enabled democracy to function effectively." In other words, 
major U.S. policy makers feel democracies are acceptable if they 
are limited and not very democratic.

To stop this increase in public participation, this "excess of 
democracy", Huntington argued that limits should exist on the 
media. "There is also the need to assure government the right to 
withhold information at the source... Journalists should develop 
their own standards of professionalism and create mechanisms, 
such as press councils, for enforcing these standards on 
themselves. The alternative could well be regulation by 
government." Obviously the government is interested in the 
control of information. If private institutions like the major 
media need regulation, be it self-regulation or directed by the 
government, the idea of free, uncontrolled flow of information on 
the Internet must mean that a new "crisis of democracy" has 
re-emerged in the eyes of government (and other) elites.

To fight this, Ronfeldt maintains that the lesson is clear: 
"institutions can be defeated by networks, and it may take 
networks to counter networks." He argues that if the U.S. 
government and/or military is to fight this ideological war 
properly with the intent of winning -- and he does specifically 
mention ideology -- it must completely reorganize itself, 
scrapping hierarchical organization for a more autonomous and 
decentralized system: a network. In this way, he states, "we 
expect that... netwar may be uniquely suited to fighting 
non-state actors".

Ronfeldt's research and opinion should be flattering for the 
political Left. He is basically arguing that the efforts of 
activists on computers not only has been very effective or at 
least has that potential, but more importantly, argues that the 
only way to counter this work is to follow the lead of social 
activists. Ronfeldt emphasized in a personal correspondence that 
the "information revolution is also strengthening civil-society 
actors in many positive ways, and moreover that netwar is not 
necessarily a 'bad' thing that necessarily is a 'threat' to U.S. 
or other interests. It depends." At the same time, anarchists 
should understand the important implications of Ronfeldt's work: 
government elites are not only watching these actions (big 
surprise), but are also attempting to work against them.

The Attack Has Already Begun

The U.S. government's antagonism to political activism is not 
new. During the late 1960's and early 1970's, the Federal Bureau 
of Investigation began what is now known as COINTELPRO, or 
Counter Intelligence Programs. These programs sought to "expose, 
disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" various 
political groups, such as the Black Panthers, AIM (the American 
Indian Movement), ecological, anti-war, and women's rights 
groups. Many feel that these FBI activists have not stopped, 
pointing to the disruption and harassment of Earth First! in the 
mid- to late-1980's.

Because of the very nature of the Internet and these growing 
communication networks, the issues are inherently international 
and transcend traditional national boundaries. For these reasons 
it is important to watch for attacks on these networks wherever 
they occur. And occur they have. Since the beginning of this 
year, a number of computer networks, so far confined to Europe, 
have been attacked or completely shut down. 

In Italy on February 28, members of the Carabinieri Anti-Crime 
Special Operations Group raided the homes of a number of 
activists -- many active in the anarchist movement. They 
confiscated journals, magazines, pamphlets, diaries, and video 
tapes. They also took their personal computers, one of which 
hosted "BITS Against the Empire", a node of Cybernet and 
Fidonet networks. The warrant ridiculously charged them for 
"association with intent to subvert the democratic order", 
carrying a penalty of 7 to 15 years imprisonment for a 
conviction.

Closer to home, a number of computer networks have recently been 
attacked in Britain. The Terminal Boredom bulletin board system 
(BBS) in Fife was shutdown by police after the arrest of a hacker 
who was affiliated with the BBS. Spunk Press, the largest 
anarchist archive of published material catalogued on computer 
networks has faced a media barrage which has falsely accused them 
of working with known terrorists like the Red Army Faction of 
Germany, of providing recipes for  making bombs and of 
coordinating the "disruption of schools, looting of shops and 
attacks on multinational firms." Articles by the computer trade 
magazine, Computing, and even the Sunday Times, entitled 
"Anarchism Runs Riot on the Superhighway" and "Anarchists Use 
Computer Highway For Subversion" respectively, nearly lead one 
of the organizers of Spunk Press to loose his job after the 
smears were published. He has asked that his name not be 
mentioned. According to the book "Turning up the Heat: MI5 
after the cold war" by Larry O'Hara, one of the journalists who 
wrote the Sunday Times article has contacts with MI5.

It is not coincidence that this attack has started first against 
anarchists and libertarian-socialists. Anarchists are currently 
one of the most organized political grouping on the Internet. 
Even Simon Hill, editor of Computing magazine, admits that "we 
have been amazed at the level of organization of these... groups 
who have appeared on the Internet in a short amount of time". 
According to Ronfeldt's thesis, this makes perfect sense. Who 
best can exploit a system that "erodes hierarchy" and requires 
the coordination of decentralized, autonomous groups in 
cooperative actions than anarchists and libertarian-socialists?

These attacks may not be confined to anarchists for long. In the 
U.S. where the use of the internet is far more widespread, a 
number of bills are before Congress that would affect a large 
number of political views. One is S390 (and HR896), which aims to 
change the FBI charter so that it can investigate political 
groups. It has bipartisan support from members in both parties. 
This bill would effectively legalize COINTELPRO operations 
against political freedom. 

But even more sinister as far as computer networks are concerned, 
is S314. This bill would prohibit not only individual speech that 
is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent", but would 
prohibit any provider of telecommunications service (such as an 
Internet provider) from carrying such traffic, under threat of 
stiff penalties: $100,000 or two years in prison. According to 
the Centre for Democracy and Technology, "the bill would compel 
service providers to chose between severely restricting the 
activities of their subscribers or completely shutting down their 
Email, Internet access and conferencing services under the threat 
of criminal liability." In other words, one option before the 
U.S. government is to just close down the Internet.

The U.S. government is not the only institution to notice the 
power of the Internet in the hands of activists. The Washington 
Post ("Mexican Rebels Using a High-Tech Weapon; Internet Helps 
Rally Support", by Tod Robberson), Newsweek ("When Words are the 
Best Weapon: How the Rebels Use the Internet and Satellite TV", 
by Russell Watson) and even CNN (Sunday, February 26) have done 
stories about the importance of the Internet and network 
communication organization with respect to the Zapatistas. 

It is important to point out that the mainstream media is not 
interested in the information that circulates across the 
Internet. No, they are interested in sensationalising the 
activity, even demonizing it, though they correctly see that the 
"rebels" possess an incredibly powerful tool. 

Netwars Are Effective

A good example of the use of this powerful tool is the incredible 
speed and range at which information travels the Internet about 
events concerning Mexico and the Zapatistas. When Alexander 
Cockburn wrote an article exposing a Chase Manhattan Bank memo 
about Chiapas and the Zapatistas in Counterpunch, only a small 
number of people read it because it is only a newsletter with a 
limited readership. The memo, written by Riordan Roett, was very 
important because it argued that "the [Mexican] government will 
need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective 
control of the national territory and of security policy". In 
other words, if the Mexican government wants investment from 
Chase or elsewhere, it will have to crush the Zapatistas in order 
to gain "investor confidence". This information was relatively 
ineffective when just confined to print. But when it was uploaded 
to the Internet (via a large number of List-servers and the 
USENET), it suddenly reached a very large number of people. These 
people in turn coordinated a protest against the U.S and Mexican 
governments and especially Chase Manhattan. Chase was eventually 
forced to attempt to distance itself from the Roett memo that it 
commissioned.

Anarchists and the Zapatistas is just the tip of the proverbial 
iceberg. Currently there are a myriad of social activist 
campaigns on the Internet. From local issues like the 
anti-Proposition 187 movement in California to "nation-wide" 
campaigns like the anti-roads activity in Britain, the network 
system of activism is not only working -- and working well as 
Ronfeldt admits -- but is growing. It is growing rapidly in 
numbers of people involved and growing in political and social 
effectiveness. There are many parallels between the current 
situation in Chiapas and the drawn out civil war in Guatemala, 
yet the Guatemalan military has been able to nearly kill without 
impunity while the Mexican military received a coordinated, 
international attack literally hours after they mobilize their 
troops. The reason is netwars are effective as Ronfeldt concedes, 
and when they are used to coordinate activity and spread 
information they have been very influential and effective.

What Are Their Options?

According to Ronfeldt's thesis, extreme measures such a S314 will 
not be the answer to the problems of that elites, especially 
people like Huntington, foresee. Certainly the government sees 
this free information network as an annoying problem and will 
likely work to change the current trends. Actually destroying the 
Internet is not likely for a number of reasons. The opposition to 
such an undertaking would be too great and the potential profits 
for companies from the internet too large for such an option.

A glimpse at the problem emerged when the government attempted 
last year to introduce the now infamous "Clipper Chip." This chip 
was to become the standard encryption for the U.S. The 
interesting part of the plan was that, while individuals, groups 
and corporations could send information across networks without 
fear of unwanted eyes peering into their documents, the 
government "Clipper Chip" would have a "backdoor" for 
intelligence agencies like the FBI. In other words, it was safe 
to all except the U.S. government, which would be able to read 
any message it wanted to. Basically the Clinton administration 
had little support, aside from the FBI, CIA, National Security 
Agency (NSA) and AT&T, who was contracted to manufacture the 
chip. While the opposition included a wide variety of the 
political spectrum from the far-Left to the far-Right. Apparently 
the Clinton administration didn't like the odds and proposed that 
the Clipper Chip would be a standard within the government only.

According to Ronfeldt's thesis, the idea of dismantling the 
Internet is not even an option. The internet and "netwars" are 
here to stay, maintains Ronfeldt. The trick is to be better at it 
than groups the U.S. government opposes. As has been stated 
above, that means creating government networks that can be more 
effective than those networks that have been created and 
maintained by social activists. Of course, this has inherent 
problems of its own. How will U.S. military leaders react when 
they hear that the military must "erode" it's system of hierarchy 
to evolve into a decentralized and autonomous network of smaller 
parts? Certainly there is a paradox in Ronfeldt's arguments.

Much more likely, at least for the time being is Huntington's 
notion of regulation of information. Currently, the question of 
how laws should be applied to the Internet and other computer 
networks is vague and undefined. 

In the U.S.A. it could fall into one of three related areas. 
First is print media, which is largely protected by the First 
amendment. Second is common carriers, such as the telephone and 
the U.S postal system -- they are governed by principles of 
"universal service" and "fair access." Lastly is broadcasting, 
which is highly regulated, primarily by the Federal 
Communications Commission (FCC).

One scenario is that the Internet would be subjected to FCC 
regulation. This might solve the problem voiced by Huntington -- 
where the government could create barriers and/or limit the free 
flow of information to better suit it's wishes. Obviously for 
social activists in the U.S. and elsewhere, a much better 
scenario is that the Internet, as well as all other computer 
networks, would be placed in the category of "common carriers," 
where universal access is assured. 

This placement has yet to be resolved, but the battle lines are 
already being drawn. Under the guise of saving children from 
pedophiles, there is now a media campaign that pushes for 
regulation against pornography and other "obscenity" on the 
Internet. Last year, Carnegie-Mellon University attempted to 
restrict campus users from assess to X-rated photographs on the 
Internet. Of course if this comes to pass this would be just the 
beginning -- the placement into the category of FCC regulation 
would be complete. On the other side is a large number of civil 
rights organizations and the Electronic Freedom Foundation argue 
for the "common carrier" approach.

What is happening in the U.S.A. will have obvious implications 
for here. Already in Britain, the Criminal (In)Justice Act has 
already outlawed "computer porn", again showing that these 
actions are not isolated events. As the internet becomes more 
widely reported in the media and its use continues to grow we can 
expect to see similar developments.

Another scenario is control, not via the government, but from 
private industry. Many people use the "highway" or "superhighway" 
analogy when describing the Internet. But a new analogy has 
emerged: the railroad or "super-railroad" if you will. Each one 
has very important connotations: the highway is based on free 
public access, the railroad is not. The problem springs from the 
growing pains that the Internet is currently experiencing. It is 
growing a very rapid pace. So rapid, that the "backbone" of the 
Net, the high-speed data transmission line over which information 
travels is becoming out dated. 

One proposal from ANS, a joint venture between IBM and MCI is to 
privatise the Internet "backbone," thus creating "toll-roads" for 
the Internet. In other words, they lay the new cables, they own 
them and users will have to "pay as they go." Currently the 
Internet works on cooperation between the computers (nodes) that 
make-up the Internet. As information travels from here to there, 
all the computers inbetween cooperate by allowing and helping the 
information pass through to its destination. With a "pay as you 
go" system, the cost of communication would rise and would 
effectively limit the ability for social activists and many other 
groups from participating in these "netwars" or even using the 
internet.

This may be the long term solution, paralleling the fate of last 
century's new form of popular communication, the newspaper. Faced 
with the same problem, a cheap and accessible medium for 
expressing ideas available to the general population, the initial 
response was to enforce laws limiting its use (eg censorship laws 
and taxation). However, coercion is an ineffective means of 
social control and was soon abandoned in the face of better 
forces, forces implicit in the development of any commodity under 
capitalism, namely the increased concentration of capital 
required to produce said commodity for a profit.

As capital costs increased, the laws were revoked as market 
forces ensured that only those with access to vast amounts of 
money could start even a weekly newspaper. In addition, the need 
for advertising to run a paper ensured business control over its 
content. Hence, for example, we could see mainstream journals 
having free access web sites (funded entirely by advertising) 
while dissident publications (who do not desire advertising nor 
the control of editorial decisions this implies) will have to 
charge in order for their web sites to exist and pay their way.

Under these conditions, a "pay as you go" backbone, sites and 
publications subsidised by advertising and high initial capital 
costs, the need for laws to control the information super highway 
are limited. This, however, is still some way into the future. At 
present this option is not available.

What Might We Do?

It is clear than Rand, and possibly other wings of the 
establishment, are not only interested in what activists are 
doing on the Internet, but they think it is working. It is also 
clear that they are studying our activities and analyzing our 
potential power. We should do the same, but obviously not from 
the perspective of inhibiting our work, but opposite: how to 
further facilitate it.

Also, we should turn the tables as it were. They are studying our 
behaviour and actions -- we should study theirs. As was outlined 
above, we should analyze their movements and attempt to 
anticipate attacks as much as possible.

As Ronfeldt argues repeatedly, the potential is there for us to 
be more effective. Information is getting out as is abundantly 
clear. But we can do better than just a coordination of raw 
information, which has been the majority of the "networking" so 
far on the Internet. To improve on the work that is being done, 
we should attempt to provide more -- especially in the area of 
indepth analysis. Not just what we are doing and what the 
establishment is doing, but more to the point, we should attempt 
to coordinate the dissemination of solid analysis of important 
events. In this way members of the activist network will not only 
have the advantage of up-to-date information of events, but also 
a good background analysis of what each event means, politically, 
socially and/or economically as the case may be.

The Flower as a Gift of Thanks

In a recent communique from the Zapatistas, written on March 
17th, Subcommandate Marcos reiterated the importance of this 
network coordination. It is obvious from his words that these 
networks are making a real difference. He said, "and we learned 
that there were marches and songs and movies and other things 
that were not war in Chiapas, which is the part of Mexico where 
we live and die. And we learned that these things happened, and 
that "NO TO WAR!" was said in Spain and in France and in Italy 
and in Germany and in Russia and in England and in Japan and in 
Korea and in Canada and in the United States and in Argentina and 
in Uruguay and in Chile and in Venezuela and in Brazil and in 
other parts where it wasn't said but it was thought. And so we 
saw that there are good people in many parts of the world...".

Marcos obviously was touched by the fact that people have 
laboured all over the world for the Zapatista cause. So he closed 
the communique with a personal thank you: "And we want to say to 
you, to everyone, thank you. And that if we had a flower we would 
give it to you... and when they are old, then they can talk with 
the children and young people of their country that, 'I struggled 
for Mexico at the end of the 20th century, and from over here I 
was there with them and I only know that they wanted what all 
human beings want, for it is not to be forgotten that they are 
human beings and for it to be remembered what democracy, liberty 
and justice are, and I did not know their faces but I did know 
their hearts and it was the same as ours'... Goodbye. Health and 
a promised flower: a green stem, a white flower, red leaves, and 
don't worry about the serpent, this that flaps its wings is an 
eagle which is in charge of it, you will see..."
 



