Swarm Intelligence

How do the simple actions of individuals add up to the complex behavior of a group? How do hundreds of honeybees make a critical decision about their hive if many of them disagree? What enables a school of herring to coordinate its movements so precisely it can change direction in a flash, like a single, silvery organism? The collective abilities of such animals—none of which grasps the big picture, but each of which contributes to the group's success—seem miraculous even to the biologists who know them best, according to a fascinating article in National Geographic (a similar article appeared recently in the New York Times.)

Swarm behavior was a trendy topic when observers were stuggling to understand the movements of rioters in Seattle and elsewhere. The use of mass text messages was heralded as the key technological innovation leading to the emergence of the "smart mobs" that brought down trade summits around the world. Like so many other things, such talk has all but disappeared in a post-9/11 world where protest mobs hardly merit a mention in mainstream press coverage, and text messages are as mundane as McDonald's.

But swarm intelligence, not just as a way of coordinating street battles, is a rich field of study for anarchists. The notion that highly complex projects and behaviors can be coordinated without any centralized authority has been an article of faith for anarchists for a long time. Indeed, old time anarchist Peter Kropotkin prefigured much of today's conclusions about swarm behavior with his research (this links to an excellent article by Stephen Jay Gould about Kropotkin and his findings) on the role of mutual aid in evolution.

But now, biologists and computer scientists (and the military) have taken a serious interest in swarm intelligence, and their research is helping to explain how important decisions are made by groups of animals numbering in the thousands, even when many individuals disagree. That's the wonderful appeal of swarm intelligence. Whether we're talking about ants, bees, pigeons, or people, the ingredients of smart group behavior—decentralized control, response to local information, simple rules of thumb—add up to a shrewd strategy to cope with complexity.

The research has lead to another conclusion: crowds tend to be wise only if individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions. A group won't be smart if its members imitate one another, slavishly follow fads, or wait for someone to tell them what to do. When a group is being intelligent, whether it's made up of ants or anarchists, it relies on its members to do their own part. It should be clear that such conclusions apply not only to rioting. If anarchists as a whole are concieved of as a swarm—unique individuals without leaders following simple rules of thumb (e.g. don't behave oppressively, always try to prevent arrests, create alternative means of subsistence, don't snitch, etc)—the extent to which we follow our own rules and behave responsibly determines our strength. Unfortunately, many anarchists do imitate one another, slavishly follow fads, and wait for someone else to tell them what to do, and the result is that the entire swarm is endangered (look no further than Operation Backfire.)

Swarms accomplish incredible feats, from building underground cities to evading larger, faster predators at a moment's notice. They do so by relying on their keen sensitivity to local information, reliable means of direct communication, and an uncompromising individuality while simultaneously maintaining certain universal behavioral principles. Such a strategy may seem simple, obvious even (and no doubt some will even say, inaccurately, "We already do that!"), but the results are infintely complex and undeniably effective. Swarms do not require all individuals to think alike or agree; swarm intelligence is in fact an approach to making decisions despite differences. Adopting such a strategy would no doubt prove profitable for a decentralized swarm such as ours.

The Day's News...

• Georgian police have trotted out every imaginable crowd control weapon in their battles with protesters in the past weeks. In addition to tear gas, rubber bullets, and stink bombs, they have also used truck-mounted ultrasonic sound devices that temporarily disorient victims, as this video shows.
  

• An article in BusinessWeek reveals that groups of shoplifters are stealing millions of dollars worth of merchandise from chain stores by utilizing well-organized teams, foil-lined bags to fool alarms, and internet auction sites to sell their goods. Thanks to one of our readers for the tip on this encouraging and illuminating piece.

• An excellent article from Bloomberg thoroughly explains the origins, dynamics, and implications of the falling dollar in easily understood language. In addition to mentioning that everyone from Korean shipbuilders to Iraqi bankers are trying to move away from the dollar, the article also points out that rapper Jay-Z flashed a wad of Euros in his latest video.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "Our epoch does not need to write poetic slogans, but to realize them."-- Situationist International
  

The Day's News...

• Analysts now expect losses on subprime loans to reach $300 to $400 billion (in a market valued at $1 trillion), meaning 30-40% of borrowers are expected to default on their loans. That's a lot of empty houses. Others believe more losses are still to come, which could spark the worst recession since the 1930s.

• With the screenwriters' strike entering its second week, Americans are faced with a second entire week without late night talk shows, and the possibility that major primetime programs will be cut-off midseason. Now, stagehands at Broadway theaters have gone on strike, bringing all but 8 productions to a halt. The implications for spectacular culture are still unknown.
  

• As the U.S. Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people changed their definition of privacy. He says that human beings can no longer expect governments and companies not to spy on them; instead "privacy" will now mean having the right to expect that governments and companies won't tell other people what they learn when they spy on you.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."-- Napoleon Bonaparte
  

The Day's News...

• A slew of bad news for the capitalist economy today: the Chairman of the Federal Reserve said that economic growth is likely to slow noticeably in the coming months, that the housing collapse has not yet reached its low point, and that a recession is possible though unlikely. Retailers reported worse than expected sales figures for October, following a dismal September. Gasoline prices rose 1.8% last night, and gas now sells for $5 a gallon in some parts of California.

• A three-meter tidal wave is predicted to surge down the English Channel in the next 12 hours, posing an "extreme danger to life and property", experts have warned. Coupled with storms and high tides, the wave could leave swathes of the east coast under water.

• A retired AT&T employee claims that the company gave the National Security Administration access to all of its phone and web traffic. Allegedly, the NSA was also allowed to hook into the company's telecom network in order to access traffic from dozens of other telecom providers as well.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it."--Margaret Thatcher
  

A Note To Readers

Readers of this blog, old and new! This blog can benefit greatly from your feedback, suggestions, ideas, and insinuations. If there are stories, strategies, tactics, or concepts that would be a good fit for the C.S.A. blog, send them to Lobsterbeard@gmail.com. Please read this post, which explains the blog's raison d'être, before sending.

Today a reader sent along this note:

"I was wondering if you noticed this article on the theft of shopping carts. In your August 8th post you stated that, because of the condition of the economy:

"First, we should keep doing what many of us do already: stealing, especially from large corporations."

I would like to propose that a strategic thing to steal would be these shopping carts. Each cart is worth one hundred dollars and if enough carts were taken then the store would be somewhat chaotic the next day. Imagine that on the day after Thanksgiving there were no carts at Target or whatever."

A good idea, indeed. Imagine, too, if the carts where then redeployed in some inventive fashion, perhaps in an unpermitted shopping cart race through the center of town, or as a snake-like barricade on wheels, or distributed to the city's homeless population. Sounds like it has potential, no?

Another exciting tactic, which could be utilized independently or in concert with the above mentioned, is the donning of superhero costumes by large gangs who then raid expensive supermarkets. This tactic has been used to good effect in Germany, serving both to meet material needs and as excellent propaganda by the deed.

As our reader notes, the holiday shopping season is an especially important time for economic sabotage. Retailers make a large portion of their annual income between Thanksgiving and New Year's, so anything that disrupts the annual orgy of consumption would be felt acutely. Perhaps even more critically, holiday sales figures play an important psychological role in the economy, as they are usually interpreted as a signal of the economy's broader health and an important indicator of "consumer confidence." With investors already concerned about the possibility of a recession, poor holiday sales figures would be tremendously unwelcome news. Additionally, it is expected that the full extent of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown will not be known until after the New Year, meaning that poor holiday sales figures and deeper than anticipated losses from bad loans could be reported around the same time, potentially forming a devastating one-two punch of bad economic news.

The Day's News...

• Late night talk shows have come to a grinding halt as the Writers' Guild Of America has gone out on strike, with 12,000 screen writers setting up picket lines today in Los Angeles and New York City. While most programs are recorded weeks or months in advance, the possibility of televisions across the country showing nothing but re-runs is a possibility should the strike continue. The last strike, in 1988, lasted for five months and cost the industry $500 million.
  

• Losses from defaults in the $1 trillion sub-prime mortgage market may reach $250 billion in the next year, a concern that has depressed stock markets around the world. Additionally, as foreclosures have risen, it is becoming increasingly clear that the sub-prime crisis will disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic homeowners.
  

• An article in the New York Times highlights the growing bicycle economy in Portland, Oregon. The proliferation of bike dealers, makers, repair shops, and a plethora of other businesses has thrilled government officials, who welcome the boost they have brought to the city's capitalist economy. The article raises important questions for anarchists, who are sometimes guilty of latching themselves and lending their credibility to easily recuperated subcultural phenomena.
  

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things."--Winston Churchill
  
  

The Strategy Of Death

A little over a year ago, Brad Will was killed by paramilitaries in Oaxaca City in southern Mexico. The news of his death emerged overnight in a series of confusing reports and macabre photographs, each new piece of information more plausible and more unwelcome than the last. It was a sickening and deeply saddening spectacle, a friend's death played out in a halting stream of data. Unsurprisingly and not inappropriately, it was only about three hours after the initial reports came out that I heard someone say we were going to have to consider the strategic implications of our friend's death.

Looking back on the past year, it goes without saying that Brad's death has in fact had strategic implications. Most obviously, his murder became the primary justification for the full-scale invasion of Oaxaca City by the Mexican federal police. That was easy to predict. The knowledge that our enemies would use Brad's death strategically rightly informed the discussions of our own strategy from the beginning. As much as we may have desired a long period of private, solemn mourning, we knew immediately that the circumstances of his death demanded otherwise. Personally, I was torn by this knowledge and the moves it inspired in those around me. "Can we cut the activist shit?," I thought to myself. "I want to just feel crappy and tell stories, not establish 'working groups.'"

And frankly, the things that have inspired me since then have largely not come out of working groups. There was a beautiful, well-organized memorial service in New York about a week later, but it wouldn't have been nearly so memorable if a small, autonomous group of friends had not cut the lock off of a building that had housed a squatted community center (a project in which Brad participated) during the parade that came after it. The entire parade went charging in, throwing open the doors and dancing around the inside of the building that had been forcibly locked-up years earlier. I will never forget the joy and bewilderment on the faces of some of the former squatters who were there that day.

And the trend of autonomous action continues. Nearly a year to the day after Brad was shot, a lone, unknown figure on a bicycle rolled by the Mexican consulate late at night, tossing two hand grenades at the building's facade.

While there is certainly a place for large, public events, whether memorials or demos or both, in honor of the dead, the idea that the anniversary of Brad's death might become a sort of unofficial time for autonomous direct action is an appealing one. There are no shortage of examples for how such a thing might work, Devil's Night and May Day being the first two examples that come to mind. While specific days of action can sometimes serve to contain or delay action rather than multiple it, a fully decentralized structure, something closer to a holiday than a 'day of action,' can help ensure the effectiveness of such a strategy.

Which brings us to the question of how to remember Brad, or rather, how to disseminate the memory of Brad. Letting his memory fade into obscurity would undoubtedly be both a strategic and personal loss. While I have heard a number of armchair critics express their distaste for his elevation to "martyrdom", I would remind them that the story and mythology of the Haymarket Martyrs radicalized and animated a generation of anarchists (including Emma Goldman), and in fact continues to do so today, a hundred and twenty three years later. While a mythology that serves to canonize imperfect individuals is unhelpful at best and alienating at worst, a mythology that inspires and teaches and motivates is as powerful a weapon as we have.

If we don't claim the mythology, others will. As we've seen countless times, even the dead are not safe from the ideologues. While none of our lives have a moral, the stories we create become the mythology of the past, a past that is always changing as it is shaped by the present. The first line of a poem by the musician Sun Ra bears repeating: "If you're not a reality, whose myth are you?" The choice is ours, or at least we can choose to contest the definitions foisted upon us. The terrain of mythology is governed by strategy as well, and we must not cede it to abstract forces. The loss we suffered in the death of a friend will only be compounded if we miss the opportunity to turn his memory into a weapon. And, in fact, I can think of no better way to heal than for Brad's memory to become a living presence in our own lives.