Quote of the day: William Gibson

One of my mostest favoritest blogs/podcasts out there is Christopher Lydon’s Open Source, which is currently on a summer’s hiatus due to some financial flibbertigibbet. The concept of Open Source is to take the open source software development design and apply that methodology towards a radio show. Concepts, guests, questions, nearly every aspect of the show’s content and production is brought about by the show’s producers in conjunction with the readers of the web site. The audience is freed from its passive cage, and is now an integral part of the discussion.

While the show is off the air for now, the man who hosts it, Christopher Lydon, however, has not been on hiatus. He continues to post to the Open Source site on such topics as Emerson, and lately, his conversation with William Gibson. He has a new book out, called Spook Country, but unlike most book tour type of engagements, this one was merely two intellectuals, sitting down to discuss.

And here’s one thing that popped up:

I met a number of Department of Defense people about 14 years ago, and I was so impressed that they were on top of the asymmetric war paradigm, and so commited to not repeating the mistakes of Vietnam. Where did those guys go? I think they were fired, or frightened into silence. I know I comforted myself on the day of 9/11 by remembering those people. I was thinking: we have some really hip people in the Pentagon and maybe we won’t make the obvious and ridiculous mistakes that the terrorist wants us to make…

According to the emergent paradigms of warfare, when you invade another country, you just lost. Period. When you use air power against relatively undeveloped people, you lose. Period. Those are at the top of the list of things you don’t do if you want to win against non-state actors, but they’re culturally counter-intuitive… Everything the United States has done — I really can’t think of a counter-example — is the opposite of what the theory of asymmetrical warfare would suggest you do.

You can read or listen to the full show here.

=c