Cyberwar: The Social Singularity Has Happened

Cyberwar: The Social Singularity Has Happened

Hello again ATS.

As all of us know, about once every month or two a subject appears on ATS ( as well as the web and all MSM for that matter ) that spawns so many threads, theories and attention that people become horribly burned out on the entire subject.

Information overload simply destroys curiosity for the casual reader.

Usually these stories are fairly straight forward ( at least on the surface ) a plague here, a political scandal there, a spree killing just to mix things up a bit. And, while many of these stories have tangents and strings to pull upon to see what falls out, they are still fairly up front and obvious in concept.

This time around, however, the "flavor of the week" is not so easy to identify or categorize. We find ourselves looking at quite a number of events - some seemingly unrelated - that all, IMO, connect, like dots, to form a very frightening picture. One I will expound upon shortly.

Of course I am discussing the subjects of North Korea, Sony, DDoS attacks, the film The Interview - all much hyped and discussed - but also lesser discussed tangents, such as Google, Governmental attempts to control the Internet, the War on Terror and how all these things ( and others ) come together to lead one to a singular and frightening conclusion.

A Cyberwar is being fought, as you read these words, and it is unlike any other war of the modern age. In this war private entities and Corporations are acting as nation states - utterly disregarding international law freely and without fear of consequence.




Hell, George Orwell gave us the entire game plan sixty-five years ago

We were warned, but were blind to the specifics and failed to heed the warning.

How This All Connects and Why It Matters So Much To Everyone

To begin to grasp the bigger picture, one must be aware of a few historical facts that are coming together all at once:

1) The Internet, whether one wants to believe it or not, is the primary source of information dissemination in the world. Once the properietary domain of newpapers and printers, then onto radio and television networks - finally evolved into the Internet. Nearly everything has gone digital - including the television you watch and the telephone calls you engage in. All, in essence, part of the Internet.

Jim Morrison, of the doors, famously and accurately said He who controls the media controls the mind.

2) War has always been a "for profit" endeavor. War always boosts a warring nations economy. Looking around and not seeing that prosperity happening, despite well over a decade of war does not imply that it is not still true - it only implies that those profitting from the war are no longer spreading the wealth. Since the endless cycle of war was started by the US, top Corporations have enjoyed record profits, year after year, and the world has created more billionaires than had ever existed - in total - before the war years began. War profiteering is nothing new, but the level of current profiteering is beyond imagination and defies the principles of every civilized nation on Earth.

3) Those truly in power, the ones hiding behind the thrones of the world, are becoming so jaded that they no longer feel a need to fear the people and are coming out into the daylight without shame. Megacorporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy have spent the last decade showing us, time and time again, that they are above the law and do not fear judgment nor retribution. Think about all of the policies enacted into law throughout the world that serve only corporate interests... Mandatory drug testing, background checks, credit checks, etc.

4) Domestic spying ( particularly in the digital realm ) is now not only known to be fact and accepted without revolt. It is even tolerated from private companies, like Google and Microsoft ( And Sony, I might add ). Not only are governments watching us, but Corporations are openly doing so as well. Corporations who are seemingly above the rules of, and not obliged to follow any Constitutional or certain legal rights of others. Don't believe me? Your ISP and most search engines are violating your right to privacy not just daily - but non-stop.

Their excuse / catch? They own the delivery system we choose for information access. Which is like saying the Post Office should have a right to read every letter you send or receive because they own the delivery system... Same for Fed-Ex or UPS. But somehow nobody cares what you order from China off of Ebay or write to your high school best friend. They don't need to. Your Cyber footprint contains more than enough information to classify you, categorize you, build predictive models of what you will do, and fit you into a shoebox that is much smaller and much more precise than most people would ever want to know about.

Now For The Meat

Now let us take all of the above and apply these thoughts to current events. A parody movie is made by a Japanese studio with ties to Hollywood. "Hackers" just happen to bust into Sony and steal not only several unreleased films - but a slew of embarrasing interoffice exchanges and the fact that the movie "The Interview" contains footage of the death / assassination of North Korean Leader Kim Jung Un.

Immediately disproportionate worldwide chaos erupts. The Internet comes under attack. Every nation hit or involvd blames every other nation hit or involved. Rhetoric escalates to the point where Kim Jung Un actually threatens to use nuclear weapons on Sony - a building... a private business in a sovereign nation.

War threatened against a business people.

But here's the interesting part. The business is busily engaging in illegal war itself!

Two sources told Recode that Sony is using hundreds of computers in Asia to perform distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks on sites that are hosting exposed files from the original hack. But apparently this isn’t happening in a sketchy warehouse somewhere—sources say that Sony is working with Amazon Web Services (Amazon’s cloud service) to launch the counterattacks.

Using counterattacks to contain leaks and deal with malicious hackers has been gaining legitimacy. Some cybersecurity experts even feel that the Second Amendment can be interpreted as applying to “cyber arms.” But this approach could also escalate cyber-battles in unintended ways. It’s understandable that Sony Pictures wants to take countermeasures, but it also probably shouldn’t have kept its passwords in a folder named “Password.”

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That's right. Sony, presumably in concert with at least one Sovereign nation is engaged not only in war against another Sovereign nation but is also openly and admittedly targeting civilians with Cyberwarfare. All under the auspices of intellectual property.

And the picture begins to come into focus, as does the implications. Corporations, now legally given personhood, are moving onto the next level - Self governing entities - Corporation nations if you will...

I pledge allegiance to my employer and to the profit margins that they stand for...

Corporations become Countries unto themselves, countries that can and do circumvent all laws of man and extant nations at will and with total control of other nations through financial blackmail or bribery.

Corporations that control all media and the means of dispersing it, accessing it or utilizing it. Controlling the very content allowed and all editorial aspects thereof. Corporations that feed you the illusion of choice when collusion is their agenda. Corporations that overload you with information to the point where you can no longer digest it mentally in anything resembling an effective manner. Companies that provide you with enough mindless and distracting drivel to keep you sated and sedated. Drugged and sitting on the couch, laughing and absorbing the propaganda with blee.

The above making all artifical boundaries, individual governments, cultural identities and even the basic truth all moot and meaningless. Baal, the almight dollar, taken from you and empowering them as Gods upon the world. Larger than Nations with no regard to humanity - other than as a feeding mechanism for the money making machine.



While we've been busy arguing about Democracy, Republicanism, Socialism, Communism, and any other ism.... Oligarchy has conquered the world. Think me insane, delusional, hyperbolic or delusional?

If so then, for the first time every, I pray you are right.

Thanks for reading

Very interesting....In essence capitalism could work if the greed and control factor were removed....same goes for the military industrial complex as Eisenhower was afraid of.....sadly we humans are not evolved enough to move forwards and seem destined to succumb to corruption through power.....its quite sad really if only we could find the middle ground that is so deeply needed ...

great thread ...nothing insane about it except it might be a little too realistic

Corporatocracy then becomes Idiocracy?

*DUN DUN DUN*

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point."

interesting take on it all.

I agree with you that corporations have become a soulless legally protected entity with person-hood who now act like freaking sovereign nations.

I disagree that this is a recent issue, or rather that it is a modern endeavor on their part. Corporations since the colonial era have been acting as governments over the territories under their influence. We have even, in not too far off recent memory, the actions of Shell in Nigeria. Chiquita fruit company funding death squads in Colombia and smuggling coc aine to Europe..ect. There is actually a long ass list of known corporate offenders to humanity without even going into banking scandals.

Even before these recent things, we now know of the colonial governments that were under the influence of trade companies that operated with authority derived from what ever crown they paid tribute to.

What we are seeing now is a change in the face of these operations. Like kings pretending to surrender power to parliaments, governments are pretending to surrender power to corporations. Where do the lynch mobs go? You cant hang the king, he has no power. You cant hang the government leaders, they have no say in what a corporation does in another country....you cant hang the corporations leadership because they are not a real thing, though they are protected like a real person now.

its a perfect system. (for them)

The fix? I cant say that without being declared an enemy of state for stating the truth we all see.

Its good to stay vigilant though. Live your life with the express purpose of growing stronger and wiser for yourself and yours.

If we cant act now for obvious reasons, we can at least prepare. No not prepping. Get educated, healthy, wealthy and wise. Pass that on to those that follow. Make drone slayers. Make outstanding human beings and try your damnedest to become one.

Other than that, watch our new system to power rise....watch with learning eyes.

EDIT TO ADD:
None of my friends believed me that demolition man was edited to swap in pizza hut. LOL I had to get a VHS copy and play it for them after watching the movie in digital format.

a reply to: tadaman

I agree that there are historical equivalents to this - though I don't think they were as all encompassing as this set of circumstances will be.

The oil and railroad tycoons of the nineteenth century are an analog. So was the East India Trading Company - the latter more of an example of a private company taking on a nearly National power unto itself.

There are others as well.

The commonality to all of these, however, is that once the power shifted to Corporate or private interests, the balance of power in the world dramatically changed soon after. In the East India Company example, Barbary piracy was one of the big factors in the United Kingdom losing their status as the worlds Superpower and opening the door for the US to later fill that role.

a reply to: Hefficide

well maybe.

I removed this from my last post. It fits better here as an example of the historical precedence of what I am arguing.

*ADDED*One example that comes to mind is something that happened a couple hundred years ago when Japan was first opened up as a major trade destination for Europe but before the opium wars with China and Japan to a lesser degree.

....Dutch trade ships destroyed the catholic samurai movement and subsequent revolt against a tyrannical prince in Japan that was started by Jesuit priests. This movement was thwarted by protestant supporters of rival royalty to the catholic kings of Europe...These "protestant" trade companies wanted the trade routes enjoyed by catholic countries in the east like Spain. The Catholics were made to look like instigators of the revolt, and subsequently were destroyed by armed dutch TRADE SHIPS. These ships were given permission in Europe first to carry out war against Catholic forces in the east, then they negotiated with the ruling class of Japan and the regional prince of the territory in question so as to secure exclusive trade rights to the ports of Japan once the "rebel Catholics" were defeated. Then they killed the competition off and moved in. All in the name of religious and cultural purity but really it was all just about profit. They even convinced Portugal to revolt against Spain for independence in a time of great prosperity for the Iberian peninsula.

Interesting side note: Japan not only had Catholic Samurais but a Japanese messiah like a Christ. He was rumored to have been built up to slowly convert all of Asia once Japan was made Catholic. Miracles and the whole nine. If this forceful removal of the revolting forces by modern European ships had never happened, Japan may have become a deeply Catholic country. Maybe other parts of Asia later on as well.

As strange as it sounds, I fully believe that the Internet will be the front line for the next world war. We'll call it "Cyber warfare: The Battleground of the future"

I am not sure how this will come about, but it seems to me that Hackers are the new Terrorists and are becoming a bigger threat than anyone ever imagined. An unseen anonymous enemy is the scariest kind of enemy.

Interesting Article Here Regarding This

I said this in another thread.

Microsoft is the one i believe who hacked Sony. Because of the internet information guard bill that microsoft has been fightign on court for i think nearly a decade?

The coming court case should be next spring. If passed within the US it allows them and many other companies as well denial of giving up information even with a warrent to better safeguard clients information or rather safe guard what they don't want people to know.

the sony play station and the microsoft x box are just the surface of the corperate wars that are brewing. Both are pretty decent in telecomunications. Sony develops phones and wifi products so they know how to screw around with the web.

Microsoft has all the reasons to knock out sony which is competeing against HD with their blueray lol. As cheasy as all this sounds. It all leads up to data mining and keeping your own information from being datamined. Just within the U.S. if the bill is passed they wouldn't exactly have to hand over any record that could point fingers to who did it.

The NSA and google are holding off from giving information in court cases as well, long enough well for them to hope this bill is passed.

Something about the E.P.A. Microsoft is fighting for its data held in a dublin server bank. From what i hear Dublin has one of the biggest and most secure data banks in the world.
So i can imagine microsoft is having some trouble claiming some dubious information that is held there. Who knows what it is? *Client information?*

I don't trust many of these companies and i believe many of them steal credit card numbers that are not in their database.
Well not on purpose, but some individuals who have capiabilities do it for extra flow or give u.ser log keys to script friends who use them to hack. Who knows. I'm ranting. But either way it does not look good.

Would it suck if sony released their automated robotic army well microsoft sent out their Amazone drones?

SONY’S TROUBLES The hack, which was launched Nov. 24, only affected computers with Microsoft Corp’s Windows software, so Sony employees using Apple Inc Macs, including many in the marketing department, had not been affected, according to the person familiar with Sony’s operations, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the attack. - See more at: indianexpress.com...

The reason Orwell's predictions were so accurate is because he'd seen flavours of the Military Industrial Complex previously.

He was born in "British India" and his dad worked in their "Opium Department" so I'm sure as a young man he puzzled over the obvious injustices and illogicalities of that system the same as people do today.

a reply to: Hefficide

If everyone just stopped working, their spell will fail.

a reply to: qwerty12345

I proposed this years ago, as well as many other people on the internet. Let the world's chattel (worker drones), whatever you want to call us, not go to work for two or three days, hell maybe even a week. Everything would grind to a halt, let's see what all their robots and drones could do then! Nada! People are too afraid to not go to work. There has got to be something we can come together for, what will be the grand idea? Or our reason for global unity? Or will we just play along with this charade that is playing out on so many levels and in no way benefits the masses. Who the frig knows! I just know that I am sick of it, sick of working to get nowhere, living week to week on meager earnings, no future in my job, same old same old, Sick of people f**king each other over to get a leg up. LOL sorry I ranted, but thanks for letting me type my views, freedom is here in this venue for now! Thanks so much Hefficide for that awesome truthful narrative that is our lives, you nailed it! Love to you all, even the asses that are screwing everyone!

a reply to: TM62

We would also die in the millions. No food or water or electricity or communications, hospitals, police, fire, ect ect.

Ever seen the movie Metropolis?

We need the system as much as they do at this point.

No anarchy. That would just be suicide for us all.

originally posted by: tadaman
a reply to: TM62

We would also die in the millions. No food or water or electricity or communications, hospitals, police, fire, ect ect.

Ever seen the movie Metropolis?

We need the system as much as they do at this point.

No anarchy. That would just be suicide for us all.

I don't consider standing for our rights as anarchy, isn't anarchy defined as revolting against gov't.? Do corporations fall under the government umbrella? We would not all die in a week I shouldn't think! No one wants to jump, yet we are all at the edge of the cliff anyway. Maybe our Sun will do us the favor and just wipe out the grid, then we would have no choice! Kill the power and cyber warfare wouldn't happen, sadly we all are so dependent on it, am I right? Are they to big to fail? We NEED them? I think a quick death would be better than them taking us piece by piece.

interesting development. After a protracted period of time with no Internet access at all ( though nobody seems to want to source who knocked them offline - North Korea now has Internet access again.

a reply to: TM62

What you are proposing and what I am saying have nothing to do with hurting corporations.

We have BILLIONS of humans dependent on the system for SURVIVAL that they were born into world wide.

If it is shut off for even a few days millions would die. That is just the simple truth to it.

That level of anarchy for the sake of spite or coming up-ins to the power elite is irresponsible and short sighted.

Its not about a corporation suffering or the upper echelon...its about us not surviving to gloat about it.

They would not suffer anyways. Population control is one of the main points of Agenda 21 for example. If 90% of us died off they would be as happy as pigs in filth. They have everything they need to survive even natural disasters. You really think ending our civilization will make them skip a beat? These are families and traditions that span around history and the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires. They are ousted out of one country and a family member just gifts them a kingdom elsewhere to rule and wage war with their former lands now defiant.

The long run is the only smart play. You have to think in hundreds of years for direction like they do. You have to think in terms of decades for movements. What you are proposing is like sending all your pawns to kill a knight and die while ignoring the entire board and the perpetual stale mate we have been born into.

Forgive my stupidity on this subject, but how can war bring us out of a depression?
Maybe during the second world war because it put a people to work but now
those jobs are going elsewhere. Meantime we spend trillions on war?
I think its a myth, another lie told by the elite to justify war.

a reply to: tadaman

How funny you used pawns for your analogy, I was thinking also of the Grand Chess Board, hmmm. But alas you are correct those (my) thoughts were extremely short sighted in retrospect. I tend to blurt out crazy # when backed against the wall, LOL. I totally admit my folly. Your description of the time frame that this has been in play is spot on, generational and before any of us realized there was actually a problem. When the world started noticing anything is when technology made it possible, and this must be part of the plan, thank you kindly for bringing me back to sanity. Playing into their hand is not something I chose to participate in, but then I have no choice

a reply to: orbitbaby

A very simplified summary can be found [url=http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/2180/economics/economic-impact-of-war/]here[/url.

The above does not address the post war economy ( at least for the winning side ) caused by the post war tech boom as previously militarized technologies find their way into the consumer market.

a reply to: TM62

Hey no worries. If there was a recording of everything I have ever said I dont know if I could ever again get even a cup of coffee anywhere in the world. LOL

Its good to get passionate and for blood to boil. Thats means we still care and are yet willing. Its also good for cold headed thinking and cold blooded reasoning to factor in too. That means we are still in the game and hungry for it. Balance and our prosperity lie somewhere in between those two sides.

Have a good one.
Hold it down.