After Open Source, Open Access, Open Data And The Rest, Here Comes The Open Jihad

from the massively-parallel-codevelopment dept

Even to those of us who are not experts in foreign policy, it is obvious that the security situation is deteriorating across a huge swathe of the Near East and Africa, as attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Cameroon and elsewhere multiply. Western analysts seem to be struggling to come up with a cogent explanation for this increasing success. That makes this short but illuminating post by John Robb particularly valuable. He describes what is happening across this vast area as the "open jihad." Here are its key characteristics:

Open jihad evolves (gets better) through massively parallel co-development. All of the groups in the open jihad, no matter how small (even down to individuals), can contribute. They do this by:

1. tinkering with tactics, strategies, and technologies that can be used to advance the open jihad.

2. testing the efficacy of these innovations by using them against the enemy. In other words, throwing them against the wall to see what sticks.

3. copying the innovations that work.

These are also some of the key features of open source -- hence the name "open jihad." Their appearance in the context of international violence is a reminder that they are not limited to the digital world, with things like open source, open access, open data and all the other "opens," but are a set of very general principles for producing extremely rapid innovation in any domain. That might provide a clue to governments struggling to deal with this growing threat to stability that they ought to try something similar, rather than resorting to traditional responses that are doomed to fail when dealing with a new kind of enemy.

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Filed Under: open jihad, open source