Jochen Fromm wrote: > Although it is therefore obvious that a blowback can happen > in this case, it would perhaps interesting to find out the > circumstances when it happens exactly There unintended consequences in many things, but that doesn't mean individuals or nations can be expected not to protect their interests. Most useful drugs have side effects, for example. Further, it's not obvious what the world would look like today if somehow the Soviet Union had survived and the many direct and covert actions the U.S. made to undermine communism had never occurred.
My take is that leaders are not likely to abandon covert operations. So either the autonomous organizations need to made non-autonomous (but sufficiently anonymous), or they need to be quietly hunted down when their work is done. Or, better, certain high risk approaches shouldn't be taken at all without lots of agonizing by professionals on the long term consequences (like with computer models). My guess is that many of the people that come up with this stuff realize that the blowback make take decades and by then their career will be done (esp. elected officials). They'll have their glory and the collective memory will fade about the how the pieces fit together. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
