Stress and duress
Suddenly technology-the great force multiplier of American net-centric warfare he helped give birth to-is the bane of Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld’s existence.
When technology gives U.S. troops information superiority over the enemy, it is good. When technology makes dumb bombs smart-and therefore more likely lethal-it is good. When technology captures obscene images at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and transports them on digital pipes for all the world to see, it is treachery-if not unpatriotic. Just maybe there is a thread of truth in Ted Kaczynski’s anti-technology manifesto.
So it was that Rummy’s rant morphed into an indignant musing on the unintended consequences of technology.
“We’re functioning in a-with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a wartime situation, in the Information Age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon,” lamented the embattled Pentagon chief in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Washington power brokers do not like surprises. On the other hand, Rumsfeld’s surprise is precisely the point. It is why official Washington is on Rumsfeld’s case. What irony that digital images have filled the information vacuum in an administration so short on words.
Technology, being disruptive and disobedient by nature, surprises folks all the time. Some adapt and capitalize. Others scream and curse. As such, expect lowly soldiers who shot the pictures-the ones so outlandishly responsible for bringing Iraqi prisoner abuses to the attention of Congress-to be punished. They are, of course, technology abusers. For others-that is, those with more stripes and civilian defense officials with ultimate responsibility for prisoners-offerings of conspicuous contrition, reluctant apologies and excessive excuses.
All this-which has caused far more buzz than the cicada invasion-should embolden those federal and state policy-makers busy writing laws to defeat the coming wave of video voyeurism that some fear camera phones have unleashed.
Wireless and Internet technologies have created a whole new breed of vigilantism, smut mongering and other interesting human activities. The political, legal, economic and cultural implications are enormous and largely unpredictable. But digital realism is not truth. It is sly and mischievous. The same technology that makes possible the collection, storage and transmission of digital images also enables its alteration. Like other technologies, there is potential plenty for good and evil. So beware.
This much is true: ringing cell phones-the technology equivalent of enemy combatants in President Bush’s world-now have company. Digital cameras will not be standard issue in Don Rumsfeld’s military.
