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Direct from the mind of the guy who bought you the "I will kill you" presentation at DEF CON 23, is another mind bending, entertaining talk. This time it's bigger and badder than before.
Are you sick and tired of your government? Can't wait another 4 years for an election? Or do you want to be like the CIA and overthrow a government overseas for profit or fun? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions than[sic] this talk is for you! Why not create your own cyber mercenary unit and invoke a regime change to get the government you want installed? After all, if you want the job done right, sometimes you have to do it yourself.
Find out how over the last 60 years, governments and resource companies have been directly involved in architecting regime changes around world using clandestine mercenaries to ensure deniability. This has been achieved by destabilizing the ruling government, providing military equipment, assassinations, financing, training rebel groups and using government agencies like the CIA, Mossad and MI-5 or using foreign private mercenaries such as Executive Order and Sandline. Working with Simon Mann an elite ex SAS soldier turned coup architect who overthrew governments in Africa, Chris Rock will show you how mercenary coup tactics directly applied to digital mercenaries to cause regime changes as the next generation of "Cyber Dogs of War".
The YouTube video promises to teach you, among other things:
- How to gather intelligence to analyze a government's systemic weaknesses on financial, societal values and political climates that is leader- or country-specific to structure your attack.
- How to identify and prioritize government resources, infrastructure and commercial companies and how to use these compromised assets to stage the coup.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by t-3 on Tuesday September 20 2016, @08:29AM
Nobody who would seriously entertain notions of gaining power (through whatever means) believes "voters" can decide anything... Revolutions are NEVER bottom up, they start in the middle class - those who have assets and education but are not of the ruling class. The poor have nothing, so must be coerced into fighting and dying. The poor also don't notice and rarely care about the political structure of the government - they have nothing to lose regardless of who comes into power. This is why the middle class has been systematically whittled down to near-nothing and a culture of wilfull ignorance has been promoted. If the people who disrupt power are weak and untrusted, then power has nothing to fear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @09:58AM
Yes, you are right. The revolutionaries are never the deprived masses themselves, but the would-be rulers in shadows, who have risen up to a glass ceiling and for whichever reason can't negotiate it out. Therefore, essential ingredients of an revolution are: frustrated rising power class which met their systemic boundary, the boundary itself (notice how in UK, any commoner can be made a peer by royal appointment? Boundary removed to prevent revolution.), and space for fictive, hypothetic, or inconsequential "improvement" of status of lower rank masses, usually a temporary material gain (e.g. lower taxes, small amounts of property rights, etc.) which will be gradually recuperated subsequently by expropriation under various pretexts.
However, you are wrong if you think that there can be a society without some sort of middle class, establishment-supporting class. Historically they were various managers: military professionals, economy runners (large industrial, natural resources or agricultural producers, importers, etc.) ... once they realize they wield the power, they will seize it, and "ruling rights" of incumbents are worthless. However, they can't efficiently rule (watch for others who might threat their reign) AND keep their business going, so they have to delegate some authority or significant function to someone ... and the cycle turns. Especially dangerous (for incumbents) are socially disruptive technologies, if they are too cheap to require established economic giants for their development, and are well aligned with existing social structure. However, up to present day we haven't really had that, because as long as living essentials' monopolies are still in place (food, water, energy, living space, long distance communication channels), the social structure cannot be rebuilt.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @03:24PM
1) You sound very much like Benjamin from "Animal Farm." Why do you want to be a cynical ass? Does it help things or hurt things to be detached and pessimistic about everything, lending your obvious intelligence to demotivating those who want to bring about positive changes? I guess there is something to be said for the sad satisfaction of watching an old war horse get sent off to the glue factory, but I can't help but feel it would be better to stop the pigs from running roughshod in the first place.
2) Correct that almost all "revolutions" come from the middle class, but I would suggest most people don't want a revolution. They want incremental improvements in the current system. I don't know anybody seriously advocating murdering people worth over $10M, or mass food shortages, or even outright rioting. They just want things tweaked a bit, and that frequently does come from non-violent actions.
3) There may be a systemic effort to shrink the middle-class in a 1984-style way to lock in the status quo. Personally I think it is more the natural course of human events. Consider the past 1000 years of human history. How much of it has had a thriving middle class? During the Middle Ages, with nobility oppressing surfs? During the French Revolution? During the Enlightenment?
It is a very rare and modern phenomena to have a substantial middle class, usually brought on by something large and possibly traumatic (the Black Death, World War 2, the Industrial Revolution). I'm guess it is more likely that the separation of the rich and the poor is more reversion to mean. This is not to say that this trend should be simply allowed to occur without contest; but don't always go looking for conspiracy in the face of the common.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @04:07PM
> but don't always go looking for conspiracy in the face of the common.
You must be new here. When it comes to anything even vaguely political making conspiracy out of mundane is all that this site does.
It is tireseome as fuck though. Lowest common denominator quality thinking.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Tuesday September 20 2016, @05:56PM
1. I don't really understand where you're coming from, but that probably cuts both ways. I don't see myself as being pessimistic, merely pragmatic; history bears out everything I wrote, although I was a little hyperbolic about the state of affairs today. Detachment is necessary to gain perspective, once you have an rational point of view you can think about change in a practical way.
2. I agree that most people don't want a revolution, or at least don't know that they want one. As I said, most people are too busy staying alive and living to be concerned about politics and all of the mostly petty games "powerful" people play. It's my belief that revolution in the traditional sense will only feed back into the loop of history rather than breaking the cycle of suffering and apathy. The "revolution" that is needed now is cultural, global, and possibly impossible: the concept of government needs to dissappear. As long as people consent to being "governed", the same issues will occur, because humans as a whole cannot escape the animal tendencies of dominance and it's varied ills until we reject animal social structure.
3. The middle class has been a dominant force in the past 1000 years, but it's not often taught that way. England achieved her historical dominance due to a thriving and empowered middle class, while France and the American Colonies ended at revolution due to discontent in the middle class. The Enlightenment was a middle class thing - organized religion and nobility waned in influence as the artists, merchants, and scientists gained it. The middle ages show a prime example of the rise of the middle class with the development of larger towns and cities and the subsequent weakening of feudal hierarchies (serfs could escape to towns and become free). In the modern (post WWII) era, even though technology continues to connect people in unprecedented ways and make access to information so easy and rapidly approaching universal, and basic education has long been commonplace, there is still a definite ruling class which believes in Hobbes and Plato and rejects the ability of the common people to govern their own lives. These Hobbesian viewpoints and oligarchic tendencies combined with rampant corruption ensure that the middle class is marginalized and that freedoms are steadily restricted "in the interest of the common good" while bread and circus keep the masses occupied.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @08:23PM
I apologize. I had been under the impression that your post was one of those "don't bother voting, it doesn't change anything" type of despairing type. If that had not been your intention, than never mind.
Interesting point about the middle ages. I would agree that the rise of the middle classes (due to things like Industrialization, or the Black Death) did lead a good portion to the ending of the old system. You are correct that as a general rule, the middle class (or rather, people with resources but relatively little power) are the ones which cause various revolutions. However, I would assert that if you just look at human history, it is rare to have a strong and thriving middle class. The past 60 years in the US have been the exception, not the rule.