Did you notice that both the ‘Times’ person of the year and his two runner-ups represented starfish organizations, or very starfish-like hybrids?
By starfish, I’m referring to the decentralized, versatile organizations referred to in “The Starfish and Spider” by Brafman and Beckstrom. Unlike our traditional hierarchical organizations (the spiders), components of a starfish are motivated by a common ideology but operate independently of one another. They’re far less vulnerable to attack, and can adapt to a changing situation. Of course, spiders benefit from economies of scale and specialization. They key, they argue, is finding the ‘sweet spot’ between the two extremes.
Lets go back to our three nominees, each in their own way sitting on a ‘sweet spot’.
Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor of Facebook, got man of the year for creating a virtual replica of your neighborhood. You aren’t constrained by physical or geographic boundaries, yet can stay safe in your bubble of trust. And this online entity is now the third biggest ‘country’ in the world, except it knows a lot more about its ‘citizens’ than even China can claim.
The Tea Party still puzzles people because it’s so hard to pin down. It has no leaders, just a libertarian ideology with a conservative streak. Yet it drove the electoral tidal wave this November, and will continue keeping politicians on their toes.
Finally, Assange and Wikileaks embody both the damage starfish can do and how very hard it is to defeat them. Whether you agree with them or not, the fact that Manning and Assange gave US foreign policy a major black eye armed only with CDs highlights the potency of starfish organizations.
Why does this matter for insurgencies? Because decentralized organizations have gone mainstream, and like any tool they can be used for good or ill. And once they spawn, they’re nearly impossible to defeat by conventional means.
Cue Wikileaks: with its leader arrested, its website down and its finances cut off, it has only grown stronger as anonymous and not-so anonymous allies have come to its rescue.
This is particularly scary because the ‘weapons’ deployed against wikileaks are just about the best any government has a its disposal; international cooperation, cyber warfare and control of the financial system are all cutting edge tools in counter-insurgency, yet they’ve all failed to work!
What then? Brafman and Beckstrom recommend either turning the starfish into a spider, or becoming a starfish in response. Since its neither desirable nor possible for a government to change its structure overnight, I would lean towards turning the starfish into a spider.
Rather than punish, empower Assange for his work at the expense of his anonymous partners, and watch as wikileaks becomes just another syndicated news-source.
By the Barefoot Economist
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