John Robb's Blog, page 5

Some More Thoughts on Automating Populism

Here's some more thinking on how Trump (with Bannon's help) could (~will) use social networking to turn the populist insurgency that got them into the White House into a dynamic (or extremely dangerous, depending on your perspective) political force.

A transition to a networked political party is likely to happen first in populist movements like Trump's.  The rest of the political spectrum will follow quickly thereafter.


Within a handful of years after its emergence, all political parties will be networked parties.  


These networked parties will all feature direct democracy via smartphone voting.  This will make it possible for party members to decide how their political representatives vote.  Is this potentially dangerous?  Sure.  However, direct democracy is one of the few ways to rapidly rebuild the legitimacy of a system that has lost it.  


Trump has a significant first mover advantage.  He is one of the few politicians/parties able to tie party votes on the network to real world decisions at the highest level.  


The "Trump party app" will only work if it is limited to Trump supporters.  Only Trump supporters can use the app to vote on important political decisions that Trump makes in the White House.  

How Trump and Bannon Could Automate Populism

We live in a world where we can get nearly everything instantly.  

Instant information.  Instant entertainment.  Instant communications.  Instant transactions.    

Simply and rightly, we have come to expect our decisions to yield instant results from the systems that serve us.  

Well, that's true for every system except our political system.    

We're only allowed to interact with our political system, in a meaningful way, only once every two years and only then by filling out a multiple choice quiz in an election booth.  

That's akin to an Internet that only available for a couple of hours every two years at 1,200 baud.   

It's crazy in this day and age.  Worse, there's increasing evidence it is driving us crazy.   We are filling the time in between these electoral events with around the clock political warfare.  A ceaseless drumbeat of outrage and conspiracy, amplified by the online echo chambers we spend our time in.

Fortunately, I don't believe this disconnect will last long.   A form of direct democracy is coming.  One that lets people directly influence the decisions of the people they send to Washington.

A form of interactive democracy that doesn't require any changes to the constitution since it works at the party level and not the national.  

When it does, it's going to hit us fast, taking off like wildfire since it fulfills a fundamental need that the current system does not provide. 

Here's a quick example from the perspective of the Trump insurgency.  Other political parties would need different approaches, but they could if done in the right way (simple approach, scaled quickly by using disruptive marketing, grow from there), grow as quickly as this.  

Here's how quickly populism can be automated:

Trump or Bannon picks an issue: the narrower and more inflammatory (disruptive marketing) the better.  Make the vote a yes or no.
Trump asks his supporters to tell him what they want (he doesn't ask those opposing him). 
His supporters download the app to their smart phones and vote.  
A little programming and marketing magic radically improves the number of Trump supporters using the app and reduces spammers/non-supporters attempting to skew the vote down to a trickle.
Millions of Trump supporters download the app and vote.  
Once the decision is in, the app makes it easy to call or spam message to the user's Congressional representatives.  Millions of calls roll in.  
A bill that codifies that issue is fast tracked in Congress.  Massive pressure via the app and the White House gets it passed quickly.
Connecting action and results quickly generates buzz.  Repeat.  This time with 10 m downloads.  
The app evolves. The pressure from the network increases.  It consumes the Republican party.

Notice how the system, in a barebones fashion, could become a staple of governance nearly overnight.  

Notice too how this doesn't in any way change the system of governance that is already in place.  It's a plug and play upgrade (for many and something deeply scary downgrade to many).  

Regardless, networked politics is coming.  It won't matter if you like it or not.   It's inevitable.

How networked politics evolves from this humble beginning is the tricky part.  

Get it wrong and we're making the same mistakes we did with the governance of the nation-state prior to WW2 or in replacing feudal with representative governments -- it could end in horrific violence.  

Get it right and we could zoom forward economically, socially, and culturally.

Sincerely,

John Robb

PS:  This example is barebones.  I've left out most of the nuance.  If you want that, you will need to hire me to help you design and build it.  I'm an idealist, but I'm also a mercenary capitalist.  

How Trump and Bannon Could Restructure US Politics Overnight

We live in a world where we can get nearly everything instantly.  

Instant information.  Instant entertainment.  Instant communications.  Instant transactions.    

Simply and rightly, we have come to expect our decisions to yield instant results from the systems that serve us.  

Well, that's true for every system except our political system.    

We're only allowed to interact with our political system, in a meaningful way, only once every two years and only then by filling out a multiple choice quiz in an election booth.  

That's akin to an Internet that only available for a couple of hours every two years at 1,200 baud.   

It's crazy in this day and age.  Worse, there's increasing evidence it is driving us crazy.   We are filling the time in between these electoral events with around the clock political warfare.  A ceaseless drumbeat of outrage and conspiracy, amplified by the online echo chambers we spend our time in.

Fortunately, I don't believe this disconnect will last long.   A form of direct democracy is coming.  One that lets people directly influence the decisions of the people they send to Washington.

A form of interactive democracy that doesn't require any changes to the constitution since it works at the party level and not the national.  

When it does, it's going to hit us fast, taking off like wildfire since it fulfills a fundamental need that the current system does not provide. 

Here's a quick example from the perspective of the Trump insurgency.  Other political parties would need different approaches, but they could if done in the right way (simple approach, scaled quickly by using disruptive marketing, grow from there), grow as quickly as this.  

Launching the populist app:

Trump or Bannon picks an issue: the narrower and more inflammatory (disruptive marketing) the better.  Make the vote a yes or no.
Trump asks his supporters to tell him what they want (he doesn't ask those opposing him). 
His supporters download the app to their smart phones and vote.  
A little programming and marketing magic radically improves the number of Trump supporters using the app and reduces spammers/non-supporters attempting to skew the vote down to a trickle.
Millions of Trump supporters download the app and vote.  
Once the decision is in, the app makes it easy to call or spam message to the user's Congressional representatives.  Millions of calls roll in.  
A bill that codifies that issue is fast tracked in Congress.  Massive pressure via the app and the White House gets it passed quickly.
Connecting action and results quickly generates buzz.  Repeat.  This time with 10 m downloads.  
The app evolves. The pressure from the network increases.  It consumes the Republican party.

Notice how the system, in a barebones fashion, could become a staple of governance nearly overnight.  

Notice too how this doesn't in any way change the system of governance that is already in place.  It's a plug and play upgrade (for many and something deeply scary downgrade to many).  

Regardless, networked politics is coming.  It won't matter if you like it or not.   It's inevitable.

How networked politics evolves from this humble beginning is the tricky part.  

Get it wrong and we're making the same mistakes we did with the governance of the nation-state prior to WW2 or in replacing feudal with representative governments -- it could end in horrific violence.  

Get it right and we could zoom forward economically, socially, and culturally.

Sincerely,

John Robb

PS:  This example is barebones.  I've left out most of the nuance.  If you want that, you will need to hire me to help you design and build it.  I'm an idealist, but I'm also a mercenary capitalist.  

A BIG Start-up Opportunity in Politics?

The New York Times pointed out yesterday that Trump ran his candidacy like an Internet start-up.  His goal was to use Internet technology to disintermediate the established system (parties, media, etc.) of getting a President elected.  Bannon even brought into the team start-up culture mantras:

"move fast and break things"

“figure out what needs doing, and then just do it. Don’t wait for permission.”

I agree and I've been saying something similar for a year. 

However, I have one important caveat. Unlike wildly successful Internet start-ups, Trump didn't build a technological platform.  Instead, he ran an open source political insurgency using social networking.

While open source insurgencies are extremely powerful (they have toppled governments and fought wars), they are very difficult to govern with.  For example, open source insurgencies dissolve into infighting without an active enemy to fight.  Trump's work around for this has been labelling the media as the opposition party and generating controversy. 

Because Trump's start-up didn't build any technology, he doesn't have a cohesive social network to synergistically unite his political supporters.  A synergy that could turn it into a dominant political force.  It's still operating in open source insurgency mode (something Steve Bannon understands in his bones). 

This means there is still a massive opportunity available.  

An opportunity to build the first political social network that replaces a traditional party apparatus.  One that operates completely different than any political party we've had in this country.  

A political platform that provides direct participation (think apps) in the political process on a daily or hourly basis rather than once every two years.    

A platform that could grow to 60 m active participants in less than two years.  

A platform that establishes norms of conduct and expectations of the future rather than rips them down.  

A political network that allows us, as a country, to aspire to greatness again. 

Sincerely,

John Robb

PS:  This window of opportunity will close fast.  Anyone could launch the moonshot to get this done and before it even comes out of stealth alpha, the competition could be over.  

PPS:  This is likely to be a phase transition in our political system.  This means that any errors at the start are amplified manyfold downstream (think in terms of assumptions built into the US Constitution haunted us later in our history).

Political Networking (how social networking is changing politics forever)

Social networking is changing politics, that fact should be clear by now.  A simple proof:  Trump wouldn't be in the White House without it.

But where is political networking taking us?  That's the BIG question. I've been doing lots of thinking about this (it's going into my book). Here's my shorthand for where our political system is headed. We have three political networks to choose from:

Insurgency
Orthodoxy
Participatory

Insurgency

Trump used an open source insurgency (I first wrote about this back in 2004) to become president. This insurgency didn't just with the election, it:

blew up both the Republican and Democrat parties
did it without much organization or advertisement spending
accomplished it despite vocal and strident opposition from the entire media establishment (from NY to Hollywood), all of academia, and most of Silicon Valley

Trump's insurgency worked like open source insurgencies in the past (from the Iraq war to Egypt/Tunisia).

An open source insurgency is a loose network (meshed) that is composed of many individuals and small groups working independently, but united by a single purpose (in this case: electing Trump).  
Open source insurgencies are much more innovative than their bureaucratic counterparts. They constantly coming up with and trying out new ideas. For example: the seventy to one hundred groups in the Iraqi insurgency rolled out new innovations (tactics to weapons) in days, while it took months for the US military to counter them.
Trump accelerated and directed this insurgency by interacting with it.  For example, he accelerate the innovation of the insurgency by paying attention to it (read Gustavo's essay for more). Tweets and media mentions incentivised innovation and spread new ideas across the insurgency in minutes (not days/weeks).   Trump also selected targets for the insurgency. In many, many instances, Trump directed the insurgency to silence individuals in the opposition through a torrent of online/offline abuse.

Trump's currently trying to adapt this insurgency to govern.  Where will it take us? Early results suggest that Trump's insurgency is better suited for dismantling a large, bureaucratic government and international order than running it. It's also the type of network that will erode the rule of law over time.

Orthodoxy

The second form of political social networking I'm seeing is found in the opposition to Trump's presidency.  Right now, it's known as the #resistance   The orthodoxy wasn't planned, it:

arose out of the ashes of the political parties and it is growing without any formal leadership
is ALREADY firmly in control of nearly all public forums
enforces opposition to Trump

The orthodoxy is an open source insurgency in reverse.  It uses social networking to crack down on deviation and dissent. 

The orthodoxy is tightly interconnected network that uses social networking to exert pressure on people to accept the orthodox position (in this case: #resistance to Trump).
Online orthodoxies grow through peer pressure and disconnecting deviants from the network.  It doesn't innovate.  It rejects, cajoles, and pillories.
This online orthodoxy is growing at an accelerated pace because Trump feeds the outrage that fuels it.

How will an orthodox network govern?  It will eventually formalize compliance with the orthodoxy. Compliance, evidenced by a long social networking history, will qualify people for positions of authority and power. Any deviation will result in bans, loss of income, etc. until the target repents.  This orthodoxy will work in parallel to the rule of law and likely exceed its coercive power over time.

Participatory

This form of social networking doesn't have an example in the US yet.

The Movement 5 Star in Italy is a political party run as a social network.  It is running number one in the polls, has mayor in Rome and Turin, and recently deposed the Prime Minister.
The political representatives the M5S sends to Rome must vote the way the party tells them to vote.  They aren't independent.
The M5S is a participatory political party.  The people in the party debate the issues and vote on how their representatives should vote in Rome.

The participatory party is still young, but it combines the fluidity of the "insurgency" with the solidarity of "orthodoxy."  

A participatory party could be run as a cell phone app.  This would allow it to scale... to 70 plus million members is possible. 
Unlike current political parties, this party wouldn't just vote every 2 years to elect candidates.  It would operate continuously.  Voting on all major issues.
A participatory party could arise independently, growing virally, or it could coopt an existing political party from the inside out.

How would a participatory network govern?  Unlike the other systems, it has the best chance of working within the confines of the current US Constitution.  It also has the strength to tame political distortions caused by globalization without resorting to the extremes of either the orthodoxy or the insurgency.

My bet is on a participatory political system made possible by social networking.  It's the best chance for a better future.  A system where we put social networking to work for us instead of against us.

Of course, the reality is probably something different: we're prepping for a civil war.

Sincerely,

John Robb

How Trump's Use of Social Networking Changes Governance

The Trump presidency operates very differently (obviously) than those of his post-WW2 predecessors.  First off, its goals are completely different:  it's dismantling the neoliberal system.  A system that earlier administrations built up over decades.  Second, and equally as interestingly, it operates more like a network than a bureaucracy.  Specifically, the Trump administration is:

More autocratic than bureaucratic.  Single decision maker (softly autocratic) rather than decision through a consensus of bureaucratic elites.  This is faster, particularly within a network setting, but more prone to error.


More socially networked than hierarchically networked. Its external social network is on the same level as the governmental bureaucracy.  The social network is now a means of governance on par with the bureaucracy.   


National governance isn't just in Washington anymore, it's be conducted everywhere at once.  Everyone, from the government bureaucrat to the corporate executive to the owner of a Twitter account is now an active participant.  It is now much more participatory than it has EVER been.

Reactivity

What makes Trump's networked autocracy (potentially) effective is in how it stays reactive to the rapidly evolving needs of its supporters.  It does this through:

Big Data Analysis:  Both Bannon's Cambridge Analytica and Kushner's San Antonio Moneyball operation dig deeply into social networks to profile voters.


Online chatter:  Direct online feedback on Twitter or Facebook, as well as chatter in groups like the_Donald, the 358,000 member pro-Trump social network on Reddit.


Intuition:  A salesman's gut.  All Trump.  Trump has an intuitive feel for what the target audience wants and needs.  A gut that's greatly enhanced by feedback from social networks. 

Reactive Networked Autocracy

Based on these differences and the evidence of the first few weeks, we can expect this administration's style of governance to operate very differently than the legacy cold war bureaucracy that ran our country since WW2.   Here are some of the major changes:

Incremental change vs. Rapid change.  Bureaucrats make changes slowly and incrementally.  Autocrats can make wholesale changes.   Social networking makes it possible to route around bureaucratic roadblocks to create de facto change before the bureaucracy can catch up.   


Adherence to Ideology vs. Adherence to Common Sense.  US bureaucratic governance is based on neoliberal ideology and the sciences of social complexity (economics, etc.).   Social networking has made people increasingly aware to the gap between results/common sense and ideology/models (a similar gap toppled the USSR).  Trump exploits that gap.


Serial vs. Parallel focus.  Bureaucratic governance mass media coverage focuses on one problem at a time (serially), or as closely to that as possible.  In contrast, networked governance can focus on many in parallel.  This makes it very difficult for gatekeepers to exercise control.

Sincerely,

John Robb

PS:  Despite expectations, even policies that look deeply unpopular errors (like the travel ban on 7 countries) are actually supported by a popular plurality of Americans.  Here's the seemingly (given the coverage) impossible results of a recent national Quinnipiac poll that had a question on a travel ban.

 

Trump's Rollback of the Neoliberal Market State

What is Trump doing?

Trump is rolling back neoliberalism and everything connected to it.

To understand what this means, here's a narrative of Trump's insurgency.   It explains what he is doing and what he is likely to do.  It starts with the rise of neoliberalism.

This scene captures the moment (from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)

The rise of Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is an ideology of extreme free market capitalism that was popularized by Thatcher, Reagan, and Pinochet.  By the end of the cold war in the 90's, it became the default economic ideology of the United States when both the Republicans and the Democrats adopted it.  Neoliberalism improved the world.  Unfettered access to US markets (the most valuable in the world) led to twenty plus years of rapid economic globalization that lifted billions of people out of poverty and made many countries rich.  However, neoliberalism came at a cost to the US.   Worse, it destroyed the only engine of prosperity and political stability in the US, the US middle class.  It did this through:

Asymmetric competition.  The US was, and still is, the only major nation in the world to fully embrace neoliberalism.  Every other country or economic bloc, from China to the EU, has barriers in place to rig the market to create or protect good jobs at home (think:  Germany, China, South Korea, Japan...).  These barriers work and incomes in these countries has zoomed while US incomes stagnated.  


The Neoliberal Trade (jobs out, wealth in).   For decades, the US traded millions of good jobs in manufacturing and services for tens of thousands of amazing jobs on Wall Street (NY) and Silicon Valley (CA).   This inflow of wealth at the topline created a sense of prosperity even though the median income and the quality of life of the middle class collapsed.  


Non-cooperative elites.  It didn't take long before the power and the wealth of the elites benefiting from unfettered globalization became immense.  In fact, these US neoliberal elites became so powerful, they were able to completely opt out of the US system of taxation -- none of the elites, from Apple to Google to Wall Street banks/funds to the wealthiest American citizens pay taxes.  With most of the wealth generated by the US immune to taxation, the US government quickly became a bankruptcy in progress ($20 trillion in debt and growing fast).  Worse, this perpetual fiscal crisis eliminated any chance that government services (like in health care, retirement, etc. proposed by Bernie Sanders) could be formulated to cushion the damage done by neoliberal economics.

The Neoliberal Market State

The effects of neoliberalism put US political elites in a bind.  Neoliberalism made it impossible for the US, as it had for two centuries, to grow the middle class economically anymore.  The US economy didn't provide good jobs to the middle class anymore due to the neoliberal trade and it didn't have the funds to cushion the loss of income with services due to the tax avoidance of non-cooperative US elites.  So, it decided to double down on neoliberal ideology by applying it to US cultural identity.   Cultural neoliberalism now became the primary political good of the state.  By making this shift it became what my friend Philip Bobbitt predicted in his epic 2002 book, The Shield of Achilles: a market state.   A market state, in contrast to the nation-state's focus on broad economic prosperity and cultural integration, focuses on providing opportunity to the individual.  Although Bobbitt couldn't articulate it fully at the time (none of us could), the US market state provided opportunity to individuals through:

Open borders.  Low barriers immigration.  H-1B visas and green cards galore.  Citizen of the world.  Work and live anywhere.  Borders controls should be lax.  Extreme version:  sanctuary cities, illegal immigrants become undocumented immigrants


Expanded identity.  Become whoever you want to become. LGBTQIAPK....  >>  Intersectional feminism.  Affirmative action and associated efforts at compensating past discrimination.  Extreme version: patriarchy, cis gender, "old white men"  


Multiculturalism.  Anti-assimilation.  All cultures celebrated.  Expanded cultural identity revered (hyphenated).  Cultural resurrection and diversity.  Extreme version:  traditional US culture was/is inferior to all other global cultures, deprecation of tradition as biased/flawed

The Crisis of the Neoliberal Market State

As we now know, the rise of the neoliberal market-state didn't actually solve the internal contradiction of the neoliberal economics -- that barrier free trade allows a few people to take everything at the expense of everyone else.  Like its economic cousin, cultural neoliberalism only benefited a minority of Americans (particularly those already benefiting from economic neoliberalism in NY and CA) while offering nothing but increasingly acrimonious identity politics to the majority.  All of this might have continued indefinitely, but for the financial crisis of 2008.  That crisis set in motion a deep unrest within the majority.  An unrest that powers Trump's socially networked insurgency.  An insurgency that is now actively dismantling the neoliberal market state through the following:  

Reversing economic neoliberalism by actively support job creation domestically like all other countries (from China to Germany).  More mercantilist.   Success measured in good jobs created instead of extreme wealth accrued.  Trump to workers:  "I'm fighting for you"


Reversing cultural neoliberalism by building strong borders, controlling immigration, and demanding integration with traditional culture.  Provoking  identity politics to create confusion.  Trump tells his insurgency:  you are "the best"


Finally, and most importantly to me, Trump isn't dismantling neoliberalism to return to the old nation-state.  He's building, with the help of social networking, a new model of governance for the US.  One that operates more like Russia and China does (a reactive authoritarianism).

Sincerely,

John Robb

PS:  Here Bobbitt's book on the market state.  

How Networked Propaganda Unraveled US Politics

A simple to change to how propaganda is developed and distributed has fundamentally altered US politics. 

For our purposes, propaganda is the systematic use of...

biased,
false, and/or
misleading

...information to influence the decision making of a target audience.  

What makes propaganda different than getting conned by a used car salesman is that propaganda is systematic -- i.g. it uses the media to influence groups of people.  Even though we don't want to admit it, propaganda is the essence of political (as well as economic) competition, from the local election to superpower conflict during the cold war.  Propaganda (from commercial brands to political ideologies) is everywhere and we soak in it every day.  

Until recently, propaganda has been limited to governments (and corporations in the commercial realm) because it was expensive and difficult to do, particularly at a scale that influenced national political discourse.  As of this last election, it's clear that era is over.

The social networking I helped get going back in 2001 now makes it possible for nearly anyone to conduct a propaganda campaign, and that change is blowing up our political system (to good or ill), fast...  

Here's what changed.  Political propaganda is shaped by the medium of media it is dependent on.  Up until recently, that medium has been broadcast media.  This created the following dynamic:

The high cost of broadcast media (raise the most money and you usually win)
reduces the number of participants (two major parties with tens of thousands working in their hierarchies) 
repeating fewer messages ("It's the economy stupid").

On the positive side, the broadcast dynamic forces broad coalitions and consensus.  On the negative, it produces stasis and stagnation.  We had both until this election.  In this last political season, broadcast propaganda was rapidly replaced by socially networked propaganda.  A replacement that was accelerated by a presidential candidate who by natural inclination was drawn to it.  Socially networked propaganda has a radically different dynamic:

Lower costs (nearly zero)
makes it possible for a huge number of participants (millions, in sprawling networks)
producing, adding to, and sharing a huge variety of political messages (supporting and attacking from every angle).

As you can see, the negative side of this dynamic is that it splinters and fragments consensus by enabling lots of different narratives.   The positive side is that it is extremely responsive and innovative.  

So what does the shift from broadcast to socially networked propaganda mean?  How will it change our politics?  It suggests that traditional political discourse is over since reasoned political debate and decision making is now impossible in this environment.  It also means that until we find a way to harness this new medium, a new political dynamic will dominate.  A dynamic characterised by cacophony:

All political discourse is at risk of becoming a cacophony of networked propaganda (see my article on the Russell Conjugation to see how facts are turned into propaganda).
Some political leaders learn how to create a cacophony on demand (Trump) by enticing the production of networked propaganda.  
Over time, non-cooperative networked groups/tribes produce so much propaganda, the cacophony becomes perpetual.

Sincerely,

John Robb

PS:  The Washington Post picked up my article on Trump's inversion of US foreign policy.  Worth a read.  
PPS:  China isn't going to benefit from the US withdrawal from TPP.  Why?  It's an aggressive exporter and most of the other nations in TPP are (or want to be) too.

Open Loop Nation

The US, as a socio-economic system, is now running open loop.  

Not only that, it's running open loop in an extremely chaotic environment and that's bad news.  While open loop systems are extremely stable under controlled conditions, they can be just the opposite in complex, rapidly changing or uncertain environments.  In those environments they fail quickly or worse:  they run amok.    

What is open loop?  Open loop is a concept from control theory, but anybody who has ever worked with machines is already familiar with it.  

In a nutshell, an open loop system doesn't use a feedback loop to modify its performance, it simply runs at the level you set them at until you turn it off or it runs out of fuel.  A closed loop system is just the opposite.  It modifies its performance based on changing conditions.

For example, its the difference between a fire in your fireplace that burns until it's out of wood and a home heating system that turns on and off based on the temperature you set.  

So how does this apply to something as big and complex as the US?  

The US is a socioeconomic system.  We built it.  For the last hundred years it's been a closed system.  That means it:

has levers and mechanisms for adjusting its performance.
can measure its effectiveness relative to achieved results.  
can mitigate any damage or exploit opportunity when the environment or situation changes.  

However, those levers and mechanisms have frayed over the last couple of decades:

The levers and mechanisms of control the US has available to manager our socio-economic system are too weak to do so anymore.  From the Fed ZIRP to a chaotic media to porous borders to companies that avoid paying any taxes (Google, Apple, etc.).
There is no consensus over what constitutes success.  Who should benefit and how should they benefit?  Should we let the market dictate everything or allocate success based on identity or should we build a prosperous middle class?  
We've blundered into failures with security (9/11 to Iraq to ISIS), domestic development (rustbelt and Katrina response) to economic progress (the non-response to the financial crisis that we still haven't recovered from nearly a decade later).   

Now, there are forces at work in the US, driven by ubiquitous globalization and a rapid expansion in Internet social connectivity.  More importantly, from Trump's disruptive governance to a women's protest that was 3x bigger than any protest in US history, these new forces have exceed the ability of the US institutions to respond.  

What does this mean?  

The US doesn't have a control system anymore.  It's open loop.  

Sincerely, 

John Robb

PS:  There's a good article in the New Yorker on how many of the super rich on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley are now doomsday preppers.  

The Open Source Protest To Oust Trump

Trump's open source insurgency put him in the White House, will another open source insurgency remove him from it before the next election?

Potentially.  Let's dive into this. Last fall I wrote about the potential for an anti-Trump insurgency in the US that looked very similar to the protest that kicked Mubarak out of office in Egypt. 

Social media amplifies every incident, spreading the anger it evokes like contagion across the country.  Just watch.  This suggests that the next open source protest we are likely to see will form to force Donald Trump from the Presidency before the next election -- a Tahrir square moment in cities all across the US.  A massive and diverse open source protest that has one simple goal: the immediate removal of Donald Trump from office.  

Could this happen?  

Yes.  The massive, anti-Trump women's march swept every major US city makes it possible.  

Of course, the people who went to this march don't agree on all of the issues.  In fact, I'm not sure they agreed on most issues.  They did, however, all agree on one simple thing:  Trump shouldn't be President.  

This agreement and huge size of the protest is what I call the plausible promise of an open source protest.  It demonstrates, to many of the people attending the protest and many on the sidelines, that removing Trump from office through protest may actually be possible.    

This is a big deal, a plausible promise makes the likelihood of an effort forming to remove Trump from office through aggressive protest, much more likely.

It's also a big deal because open source protests are nearly unstoppable.  Once a protest like this gets going here, it won't stop until it drives Trump out of office, just like it ousted the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Libya.  

Sincerely,

John Robb

PS:  I wrote about some of these dynamics in my book: Brave New War.