From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 06:50:43 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Geodesic Warfare: The Mesh and the Net
Message-ID: <v03020904af681a1b2d85@[139.167.130.247]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Anthony Templar took the text file I had of

                          THE MESH AND THE NET

                    Speculations on Armed Conflict in
                          a Time of Free Silicon

                            MARTIN C. LIBICKI

                              McNair Paper 29

                                March 1994

                INSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL STRATEGIC STUDIES
                       NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY
                               Washington, D.C.

 bashed it quite nicely into HTML, and parked it at
<http://www.shipwright.com/meshnet.html>.


Somebody put a pointer to the original site -- which I have since lost --
on cypherpunks a couple of years ago, and I downloaded the text version,
then, thinking that I would have a copy of my own if it was ever taken off
the net. Altavista was just getting started at the time, and, like a
turn-of-the-century British dancehall character named Archie (the namesake
for World War I antiaircraft fire), Altavista was busy looking up the dress
of every website it could find, and telling everyone what it saw. :-). No
telling when stuff would go away, especially after the webmasters' bosses
found out about it.

It dawns on me that both comic book and internet protocol Archies were
aptly named, in hindsight...


Anyway, thanks to Anthony for doing such a nice job on what looks like a
65-page paper. It's about 250k+ in size.

Its e$ relevance, of course, is, what happens if there's a cash settled
market for force, and these increasingly smaller, autonomous, networked
weapons auction their services in that market? Also, the paper talks about
how these weapons could be used to effectively defend very small pieces of
ground, certainly at the level of your average suburban house. Personal
warfare?  The Swiss, the original Icelanders, and the pre-British Irish
must be smiling somewhere.

Lions and Tigers and Bears.

Oh, my.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
Lesley Stahl: "You mean *anyone* can set up a web site and compete
               with the New York Times?"
Andrew Kantor: "Yes."  Stahl:  "Isn't that dangerous?"
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/