Jared Cohen - The New Digital Age

Secretariat of Public Security compound in Mexico City: Venu Sarakki et al., “Mexico’s National Command and Control Center Challenges and Successes,” 16th International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium in Quebec, Canada, June 21–23, 2011, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a547202.pdf.

TIA was designed and funded to aggregate all “transactional” data: Dr. John Poindexter, “Overview of the Information Awareness Office.” Remarks as prepared for the DARPATech 2002 Conference, August 2, 2002. Posted by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/poindexter.html.

provision to deny all funds for the program: Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2004, S.1382, 108th Cong. (2003), see Sec. 8120; Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2004, H.R.2658, 108th Cong. (2003) (Enrolled Bill), see Sec. 8131.

some of its projects later found shelter: Associated Press (AP), “U.S. Still Mining Terror Data,” Wired, February 23, 2004, http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2004/02/62390; Michael Hirsh, “Wanted: Competent Big Brothers,” Newsweek and Daily Beast, February 8, 2006, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2006/02/08/wanted-competent-big-brothers.html.

An estimated 52 percent of the world’s population is under the age of thirty: “Mid-Year Population by Five Year Age Groups and Sex—World, 2011,” U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base, accessed October 20, 2012, http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/informationGateway.php.

“What defeats terrorism is really two things”: General Stanley McChrystal, interview by Susanne Koelbl, “Killing the Enemy Is Not the Best Route to Success,” Der Spiegel, January 11, 2010, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview-with-general-stanley-mcchrystal-killing-the-enemy-is-not-the-best-route-to-success-a-671267.html.

With more than four billion videos viewed daily: Alexei Oreskovic, “Exclusive: YouTube Hits 4 Billion Daily Video Views,” Reuters, January 23, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/23/us-google-youtube-idUSTRE80M0TS20120123.

CHAPTER 6

THE FUTURE OF CONFLICT, COMBAT AND INTERVENTION

“orient [us] away from violence and toward cooperation and altruism”: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011), xxv.

“The world begins to look different”: Ibid., xxvi.

deliberately excludes some 2.2 million ethnic Roma: Amnesty International (AI), “Romania Must End Forced Evictions of Roma Families,” press release, January 26, 2010, http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/romania-must-end-forced-evictions-roma-families-20100126.

The Roma are persecuted in similar fashion across Eastern Europe and, increasingly, Western Europe. In July 2010, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France led a campaign to forcibly repatriate his country’s foreign Roma population to Bulgaria and Romania. Within a month, more than fifty illegal Romany camps had been closed, and by September over a thousand Roma had been deported. See “France Sends Roma Gypsies Back to Romania,” BBC, August 20, 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11020429; “France: Renewed Crackdown on Roma: End Discriminatory Roma Camp Evictions and Removals,” Human Rights Watch (HRW), News, August 10, 2010, http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/08/10/france-renewed-crackdown-roma; “French Ministers Fume After Reding Rebuke Over Roma,” BBC, September 15, 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11310560.

“Online intimidation by hate groups”: Christian Picciolini in discussion with the authors, April 2012.

Julius Caesar: Julius Caesar, The Gallic Wars, translation by John Warrington with a preface by John Mason Brown and an introduction by the translator (Norwalk, Conn.: Easton Press, 1983); see also Dr. Neil Faulkner, “The Official Truth: Propaganda in the Roman Empire,” BBC, History, last updated February 17, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/romanpropaganda_article_01.shtml.

“Video: IDF pilots wait for area to be clear”: @IDFspokesperson tweet, November 19, 2012.

Neda Agha-Soltan: Nazila Fathi, “In a Death Seen Around the World, a Symbol of Iranian Protests,” New York Times, June 22, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23neda.html.

The videos were passed: Thomas Erdbrink, “In Iran, a Woman Named Neda Becomes Opposition Icon in Death,” Washington Post, June 23, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/22/AR2009062203041.html.

raided their offices: Information obtained in Jared Cohen’s research for his book One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007); see also Alison Liebhafsky Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999).

Hutu radio stations announced names and addresses: Allan Thompson, ed., with a statement by Kofi Annan, The Media and the Rwanda Genocide (London: Pluto Press, 2007), 49, http://www.internews.org/sites/default/files/resources/TheMedia&TheRwandaGenocide.pdf.

“virtually inoperable”: Dan Verton, “Serbs Launch Cyberattack on NATO,” Federal Computer Week, April 4, 1999, http://fcw.com/articles/1999/04/04/serbs-launch-cyberattack-on-nato.aspx.

Tom Downey’s revealing March 2010 article: Tom Downey, “China’s Cyberposse,” New York Times Magazine, March 3, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html.

gruesome video: Ibid.

perpetrator was soon tracked: Ibid.

took just six days: Ibid.

a bill (struck down one month later by the French Constitutional Council): Scott Sayare, “French Council Strikes Down Bill on Armenian Genocide Denial,” New York Times, February 28, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/world/europe/french-bill-on-armenian-genocide-is-struck-down.html.

“racist and discriminatory”: “Turkey PM Says French Bill on Genocide Denial ‘Racist,’ ” BBC, January 24, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16695133.

“singularity”: P. W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21 st Century (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), 102.

DARPA’s mission: DARPA, “About,” accessed October 9, 2012, http://www.darpa.mil/About.aspx; DARPA, “Our Work,” accessed October 9, 2012, http://www.darpa.mil/our_work/.

three Ds: Singer, Wired for War, 63.

iRobot, the company that invented: Ibid., 21–23.

Two PackBots were deployed during the Fukushima nuclear crisis: Amar Toor, “iRobot Packbots Enter Fukushima Nuclear Plant to Gather Data, Take Photos, Save Lives,” Engadget, April 18, 2011, http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/18/irobot-packbots-enter-fukushima-nuclear-plant-to-gather-data-ta/.

Foster-Miller, makes a PackBot competitor: Singer, Wired for War, 26.

And then there are the aerial drones: For descriptions of the Predator, Raven and Reaper drones, see Singer, Wired for War, 32–35, 37, 116.

31 percent of all military aircraft: Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman, “Almost 1 in 3 U.S. Warplanes Is a Robot,” Danger Room (blog), Wired, January 9, 2012, http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/drone-report/.