The latest Principles of War seminar series featured John Rendon of the Rendon Group who spoke on the topic of strategic communication. This is an issue dear to my heart as a former PR man with a technology bent familiar with the monolithic industrial-age government department system and its lack of timely communication capability.
Rendon hits all the buzzwords mentioning tipping points, communities of interest, long tails, social networks, user-generated content, Blink, etc. Without getting bogged down in all the jargon the presentation remains interesting for an audience wider than just MountainRunner and yours truly. Rendon gives insight into the problems a modern-day government faces in an unpredictable news cycle, and highlights the dangers of not knowing how a diverse and asymmetric audience will receive your message. His speech is wide of scope and blasts through a slew a topics. His scenario of a cyber attack perpetrated on a sovereign country by a community of interest geographically located in America raises an interesting legal point related to the legality of the US invasion of Afghanistan: can a country claim the right of self defence if attacked by a group within a sovereign country? Rendon brings up a number of diverse issues, connecting them in interesting ways that will give you a new appreciation of the problems in “official” communication in the 21st century.
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Daily Links 12/27/2007 « Umbrella added these pithy words on Dec 27 07 at 6:04 pm[...] Strategic communication [...]
IJ added these pithy words on 26 Dec 07 at 12:11 pmOn the legality of the US invasion of Afghanistan. More and more people are asking if a country can claim the right of self defence if attacked by a group within another sovereign country. However this takes us into the realms of international law which all permanent five members of the UN’s Security Council seem happy to ignore.
For example, Time magazine published an interview this month with Russian president Vladimir Putin. He suggests that Russia has a lukewarm attitude towards the United Nations.
Might still makes right. The P5 won’t agree to anything else.
purpleslog added these pithy words on 27 Dec 07 at 7:15 pm“On the legality of the US invasion of Afghanistan. More and more people are asking if a country can claim the right of self defence if attacked by a group within another sovereign country.”
Who is asking?
Why could a country not claim self-defense?
The host government of the country were the attack originates from is to either presumed to have a monopoly on force and therefore implicitly allowed the attack to occur (unless they explicitly tired to counter it) or to not really be in charge (aka not a legitimate government).
In either case, why would the country attacked not have a moral right of self-defense?
Younghusband added these pithy words on 28 Dec 07 at 12:53 am@purpleslog If a bunch of hackers based out of the US dos-attacked China, causing a couple of planes to crash and some hospital deaths totaling 3000 people, would you consider the US government as illegitimate?
purpleslog added these pithy words on 25 Jan 08 at 7:07 pmI missed the reply.
If the USG said to china “too bad – we didn’t do it” and if the USG made no legitimate effort to get the hacker terrorist, then from China’s PoV, the US is either really behind the attacks, or is no longer in control of its territory (not legitimate as a gov).
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