The Fog Of War: Myth and Battle: LA

By Mr. VI

So, this weekend, the blockbuster Battle:Los Angeles comes to cinemas. Supposedly a tale about the military in the face of alien invasion in an urban city, its roots are embedded in an actual historical event - as all the best stories are.

They receive nutrients from their connexion to actuality - the best lies contain the truth. Consider the way rumour spreads; the harder something is to believe, the more effort must be expended to keep it in mind and not simply dismissed, but if something is likely then it endures more easily; circumstance and past history provide a bulwark -there is a body of experience which must be put aside for reasonable doubt to mushroom into disbelief.

War movies are so popular because they are phantasmal versions of actualities, ghostly offspring and things that could be possible. They are primal things; ordinary people in extreme circumstances and threats.

As I mentioned in a previous post, it is this extremity that crosses boundaries and connects the audience, playing on the natural human ability to empathise.

And the actual event was just that: The Battle of Los Angeles, or the Great Los Angeles Air Raid on the 24-25 Februrary 1942. More detail is available here, but suffice to say it was believed that LA was under attack by hostile forces and artillery responded for over an hour.

According to the new movie, the objects which were retaliated against were an alien scouting mission, and the film concerns what exactly happens when the main body of the alien invasion fleet arrives.

"Science bears a clear parallel tomilitary organisation and the instrumental application of armed force in that its practitioners are always attempting to extract ‘patterns’ from ‘noise’, to find regularities in the fog of
randomness, to uncover the ‘laws’ governing the behaviour of nature, to reveal the hidden order behind its apparent chaos."

From http://twitter.com/brainsturbator

The Scientific Way of Warfare: Science and the Management of
Techno-social Systems of Warfare (PDF).

Netwar- the swarm, 2.0, and its effect on conflict.

The rand corporation published this white-paper on the subject that I think many of you may find interesting. (Not surprisingly, many of these are ideas I played with liberally during the creation of Fallen Nation.)

"Editors’ abstract. As with other new modes of conflict, the practice of netwar is ahead of theory. In this concluding chapter, we suggest how the theory of netwar may be improved by drawing upon academic perspectives on networks, especially those devoted to organizational network analysis. Meanwhile, strategists and policymakers in Washington, and elsewhere, have begun to discern the dark side of the network phenomenon, especially among terrorist and criminal organizations. But they still have much work to do to harness the bright side, by formulating strategies that will enable state and civil-society actors to work together better."

The use of "bad guys" and "good guys", used so liberally throughout, is rather comedic. However, the central premise is sound.

Also of particular note:

Why have the members assumed a network form? Why do they remain
in that form? Networks, like other forms of organization, are held together by the narratives, or stories, that people tell.

The kind of successful narratives that we have in mind are not simply rhetoric—
not simply a “line” with “spin” that is “scripted” for manipulative ends. Instead, these narratives provide a grounded expression of people’s experiences, interests, and values.

First of all, stories express a sense of identity and belonging—who “we” are, why we have come together, and what makes us different from “them.” Second, stories communicate a sense of cause, purpose, and mission. They express aims and methods as well as cultural dispositions—what “we” believe in, and what we mean to do, and how.