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A Comment on Technology and (the supposed) Technological Disparity
September 3, 2012
“Technology is a product of human ingenuity. If one man can imagine something, I guarantee you that another man, somewhere, can imagine a way to fuck it up.”
–SSG John Mosby, U.S. Army Special Forces, northern Afghanistan, 2002
(The above quote is one I spouted off with while in the ‘Stan, to another E-6 on my ODA, who was bitching about the fact that a) we didn’t get the same goodies that some of the SMUs were packing around, and b) the fact that a lot of the intelligence we were getting from higher, from signals intercept and satellite photos, was flat fucking wrong. It demonstrates my attitude, even today, to an over-reliance on technology. This article is a further discussion of those thoughts. –J.M. Added Note: Since I’ve started teaching classes again, some of my thoughts expressed in this article have been modified/advanced. I’ve added those in my typical parenthetical additions.–J.M.)
People are asking important, pertinent questions about the information I’m posting on here. I’m relieved to see that. However…
I recognize we’re a culture (both Western Civilization in general, and American culture specifically) that values technology. Hell, I’m GLAD I live in the 21st Century. I guarantee my daughter’s birth was hell for easier than it would have been 100 years ago, and light years beyond what it would have been 200 years ago. In a nutshell, technology is our friend.
Unfortunately, we sometimes place TOO much emphasis on technology. It is easy to look at the technological advances made in the last three decades—Hell, in the last decade, even—and think, “We are SO fucked!” Quit being a pussy, and quit being so god-damned pessimistic.
Hajji is running around the mountains and towns and villages of Afghanistan RIGHT-FUCKING-NOW, escaping, evading, and fighting (successfully) the most powerful military that this planet has ever seen. Afghanistan, for those that don’t know, was a modern, civilized, largely westernized nation prior to the 1970s. Today though, like 10 years ago, the Afghan culture is a throwback to the 10th century.
Yes, they have cellphones and laptops…but we can’t seem to hunt them down and kill them all using Signals Intercept Intelligence operations. Yes, they have modern vehicles. I mean, after all, we DID pay the Paki ISI millions of dollars to “smuggle” Toyota Hi-Luxes to them throughout the 1980s and even into the 1990s…yet, we can’t seem to use UAVs and rotary-wing aircraft, even with the latest generation FLIR and thermal imaging devices, to eradicate them all (as I’ve said repeatedly, I’m not about to discuss the TTPs of how to defeat thermal imaging and NODs on an open-source internet blog that is readily accessible to Hajji in Shit-StainiStan. Not happening….It’s really pretty simple though, as participants in some of my training classes have had the opportunity to witness…-J.M.)
This is a group of people who go to war with a blanket, some rice, and a fucking single spare magazine in their pocket for a reload. Fighting the finest trained fighting force the world has ever seen; men who can generally bench-press twice the average Talib’s bodyweight, if not three times, wearing the latest body armor and Generation IV+ night vision and thermal imaging goggles, carrying the finest, most advanced weapon systems on the planet, with optics that, twenty years ago, were largely the stuff of “Starship Troopers” fantasy. These fourth-world, illiterate peasants are fighting, and largely winning, against technological assets so advanced that, for the most part, it might as well be magic to them.
They don’t bitch and whine about the fucking technological disparity they face. They deal with it and use their native ingenuity to overcome the obstacles presented.
We, as potential future American guerrillas, have advantages those poor goat-fuckers never dreamed of having. We can get online, right now, WHILE you are reading this, and order the exact same technological tools that the U.S. military is using (seriously. I didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago that you could actually order a pair of AN/PVS-23s….granted, they’re $12,000, but still….). We have a cultural grasp of technology, both its strengths and weaknesses that a bunch of goatherds from Afghanistan cannot hope to equal, even with years of schooling. So, when I hear some self-proclaimed, “by-God American patriot and militiaman!” whining about how we’ll never be able to successfully counter and defeat the statists, I want to throat punch them.
Here’s Mountain Guerrilla John Mosby’s Guerrilla Advice 101 for today:
Quit fucking whining. Quit fucking worrying. Get off the couch, out from in front of the laptop, and do P.T. Lift weights, run, go snowshoeing, go hump a ruck. Shoot your weapons. Not at the local range, seated at the bench. Get off your ass, shoot silhouettes, and MOVE while you’re doing it. Use cover and concealment. Wear your tactical load-out.
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