#this post ended up just being really abstract and high level and many rhetorical questions

[rebeccadumaurier]

will martha wells dare to imagine the end of capitalism? and other thoughts on system collapse (and the rest of the murderbot diaries)

I'm writing this post because the wait for System Collapse is killing me and I need something to do. These are not so much predictions of specific, concrete events—I am terrible at predictions and bad with plot—so much as exploring existing thematic arcs in the series and tracing them to what I think are their natural ends. (Also, this post uses "bot" and "construct" interchangeably because I'm lazy. Sorry, MB.)

Some points I think the rest of the series (SC and onwards) may hit on:

Further development, and let's say "stress testing," of ART and Murderbot's relationship, and bot/construct relationships in general

Every day I go insane about this conversation MB has with ART early in Artificial Condition, which is not very subtle foreshadowing:

[ART said], My crew always considers me trustworthy. I shouldn’t have let it watch all those episodes of Worldhoppers. “I’m not your crew. I’m not a human. I’m a construct. Constructs and bots can’t trust each other.” It was quiet for ten precious seconds, though I could tell from the spike in its feed activity it was doing something. I realized it must be searching its databases, looking for a way to refute my statement. Then it said, Why not? I had spent so much time pretending to be patient with humans asking stupid questions. I should have more self-control than this. “Because we both have to follow human orders. A human could tell you to purge my memory. A human could tell me to destroy your systems.” I thought it would argue that I couldn’t possibly hurt it, which would derail the whole conversation. But it said, There are no humans here now.

But in the future there will be humans who could tell ART to do something undesirable to MB (technically, NE already did this to some extent, but it didn't fully address the issue). Artificial Condition in fact explicitly notes ART doesn't have a refutation to that particular argument, and that's why they can't trust each other. We get some initial glimpses in Network Effect of this—ART makes its own decision to save Murderbot, and thankfully its crew agrees with the plan, but we can't expect ART and its crew to be in agreement forever.

Frankly, a lot of ART's plans seem to rely on either (1) its humans / the people in charge of it agreeing with it or (2) them not being around to disagree, which is going to be a problem sooner or later, especially as Murderbot's view of humans is not as ... positive as ART's. Network Effect dances around this problem because both the Preservation people and ART's crew are good people who largely support ART and MB in their decisions, but I don't think that will always be the case.

(Side note: I am once again thinking of Murderbot's surprise that Don Abene allowed Miki to override her orders in Rogue Protocol, and the bot spectrum of "cannot disobey orders literally ever" (like SecUnits) to "can disobey orders in the right circumstances" (like Miki) to "can mostly just do whatever but ultimately bots still have their programming" and how MB views ART's place on that spectrum. Also I am once again begging Murderbot to please reflect more on Miki's death, but given its current level of emotional repression, I am not optimistic about this.)

Leading me to my next point—

The question of ownership, independence, and property in the Murderbot universe

As Murderbot has mentioned various times, the people of Preservation call themselves "guardians" of bots rather than owners, but it's still very much ownership (and MB is right to point this out and express discomfort about it). MB knows it's fortunate that its owner—sorry, guardian, Mensah, allows it a ton of freedom, but legally, MB is still Mensah's property. Mensah's approach is a single, individual band-aid in that it may (for now) allow MB to live a life more or less of its choosing, but it doesn't address the larger systematic issue that actually, owning these bots is fucked up and many people exploit the bots they own, including people who think that they're already being incredibly generous and goodhearted simply by not abusing bots. (I'd need to go back and review, but I got the latter vibe from many of the Preservation bot owners in Fugitive Telemetry.)

Martha Wells seems like she will address this larger issue later. I don't know how, but I'm sure "Murderbot gets dragged into it and has to *gasp* talk about its feelings" will happen somehow, since that recurs frequently.

What healing from trauma looks like for a bot/construct

Dr. Bharadwaj has already suggested that Murderbot could use therapy ("trauma treatment" but like ... sounds like it's therapy combined with some other self care / community care strategies), and Murderbot is not subtle about its whole "I have been through many horrific things but I will pretend it's totally fine and not a big deal" coping strategy. I'd be interested to see what role ART plays in this—it's quite scarred from the events of Network Effect, will need to heal, and is unlikely to do the "yeah whatever that's just what my life is like" strategy MB adopted, because that's not what its life is like.

(Side note: in NE, MB says being taken over by targetControlSystem "would be like having a governor module again. No, not again. Never again." To MB, the loss of control ART experienced is similar to what MB's life was like every day until it hacked its module. I'M SO. 😭)

But therapy for a bot would look very different from therapy for a human, and I'm doubtful there's any therapists out there equipped to handle it. The "nicest" humans, if you will, seem to be the PreservationAux citizens, and they still have a long way to go on their understanding of bots. Also, much like in real life, therapy is not a cure-all for everything and there's a lot of terrible therapists, issues with psychiatry, etc. I will not get into—so I'm not actually saying that Bhadwaraj's idea of "trauma treatment" is the specific route MB will take to heal, I'm just curious what it's gonna take to get it to open up and be willingly emotionally vulnerable.

Who is Murderbot outside its day job? (aka its hypercompetence with regard to security)

One of Murderbot's defining traits is that it's an incredibly competent person, even when (often especially when) surrounded by much less competent people. The Goodreads blurb for System Collapse implies this won't always be the case:

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!

My first reaction is: "hey, why is Murderbot the only one who has to figure that out?!" (Not that I think ART or the humans are jerks who don't care about its problems or don't want to help; I think Murderbot has trouble asking for help or even imagining people want to help it, e.g. its assumption in NE everyone just left it behind to die when it was captured.) The inherent question with characters who define themselves through their hypercompetence at something is: who do they become when they can no longer rely on that? (For example, who is a star athlete when they get a permanent injury? Who is a brilliant painter when they go blind? etc.)

ART already had to grapple with that to some extent when it lost control of itself in NE and couldn't rely on itself or its crew, so it resorted to kidnapping MB to fix the problem. But that doesn't deal with the larger identity crisis / struggle for self-definition at play, which is essentially: Who is Murderbot when it's not useful, when it's not able to do what it was created to do?

Speaking of which, this is very relevant to my title question—

Will we see Martha Wells envision the end of capitalism???

The Murderbot Diaries is the story of a single bot and its friends / enemies / etc., and I'm perfectly happy if it stays that way and focuses on MB's internal journey. But Martha Wells seems like an ambitious enough author to imagine wider solutions to the problems that plague the Murderbot universe, which is namely that corporations are evil. If corporations were not so evil, we wouldn't have our corporation-hating traumatized-by-corporations created-by-a-corporation-and-struggling-with-it protagonist. There's indentured servants in Rogue Protocol. There is literally a space version of the Underground Railroad in Fugitive Telemetry. It is impossible to understand this series without understanding that it is a very, very vicious critique of capitalism, and without this critique laying out its foundations, we would not have most of its characters, including Murderbot itself. Preservation is already a first step in that it seems to be some sort of utopian commune devoid of corporations or privatization—which is a huge step in itself, that Wells envisions a world devoid of capitalism—but it's one small (and still imperfect, re: earlier discussion of treatment of bots) planet in a large, dysfunctional universe.

So far the series has been Murderbot dealing with individual evil corporations (GrayCris, Barish-Estranza, etc), but mainly in the context of one crisis at a time, with regard to saving only its friends / clients. (It's fine with leaving Eletra to Barish-Estranza in NE, for example.) I do not think Murderbot will singlehandedly destroy capitalism or that its goal is to do so—it's not a fix-everything save-everyone hero, no one is, one of the points of the series is that you should not attempt everything alone—but this series has done plenty of exploration of the evils of capitalism; I would like to see Martha Wells explore how we could end it.

[twotonedechoes]

Midnight Oil

//I finally come back to post writing and it’s just a blurb of pre-sundering/tempering Emet-Selch and Lahabrea working late. Truly, I am a master of fiction. Anyway, enjoy?

The growing crick in his neck awoke him, alerting Hades to the awkward position he had fallen asleep in, nigh collapsed over his desk. With a groan, he blinked back sleep, pushing himself upright in a shuffle of papers and shimmering concept crystals. His mask had fallen away as he slept, but alone in the illustrious office of Emet-Selch, he did not immediately bother to replace it. Rather he fell back against his chair, his hood falling away as well to leave both his fair features and snowy hair exposed.

Scandalous, to be sure, but he couldn’t be arsed to care at the moment. His golden eyes glimmered, reflecting the shifting stars above, clearly visible though the tiered glass ceiling so far above him. A beautiful night, and he had nigh spent the entirety of it locked away in his office. It was not an uncommon occurrence in these chaotic, uncertain days.

Following that thought, his gaze drifted down and out his open office door, settling on the closed and locked one directly across the hall from his own. Not so very long ago, that door as well would have stood open in ever ready invitation, and she might well have been there, even at this hour. Seated at her own desk, she might have looked up as he did, and after ensuring there were no witnesses to be seen, slid her mask away momentarily to spare him a scandalous wink and shared smile.

His eyes softened as he pictured her there, his own lips turning up in the present as he imagined blowing her a kiss in return, weaving a bubbly heart of aether to float across the hall and burst gently against her cheek in a flood of perfume and warmth. He could almost hear her laughter at his sappiness, see her lips form the words, “silly man”, as she shook her head in fondness before they both returned to their work with renewed vigor, and a lingering shared smile.

A scene that had played out countless times, and yet one he had never tired of enacting. And oh, how he missed it now. The smile faded as his thoughts returned to the present, and the door across the hall remained closed, the office within sterile and empty. She was no longer welcome therein, having rescinded her station in such anger and haste. 14 were now 13, and there was no time to fill the vacant office, and so it remained empty, a hollow reminder of the schism between them all and the heavy choice they had made.

It was only the first of many high prices they would pay along the path they had chosen, and the ever-present knowledge of the sacrifice that was to come burned as an uncomfortable coal in his breast.

How, oh how, could it have come to this?

He had not yet given up hope of finding another way… but the plans must carry on. Preparations must be made, and it would require all they had and more to ensure all went as planned. Never before had creation on such a grand and lasting scale been attempted, not since those first mythical days of yore and lore when their ancestors had first gained thought, and formed earth of tumultuous star. Those beings who had formed themselves of wild aether, forging sentience and melding into existence the very laws of reality… would they  know what caused this calamity, were they still around to be questioned?

In desperation, he had tried to find them, searching the Underworld for traces of the first of them–the most ancient of Ancients–in hopes they might yet hold knowledge of the fell Sound that heralded their doom, but if traces remained still, they did not care to answer his calls.

With a sigh so deep and heavy he felt it within his very core, Hades stood, taking his mask in hand, but leaving the mass of theoretical composites, prototype concepts, and aetherological formulations in a jumbled mess atop his desk. There was little need to see them filed away. He would be returning to them once more all too soon. His shoulders pressed heavy with the weight of both responsibility and the hopes that his people had placed upon him–upon all of the members of the Convocation–and it was with a tired shuffle he made his way down the long, gilded corridor. The people even now believed in their leaders, believed in their ability to find a way to save them all from what seemed certain doom.

He desperately hoped he could prove worthy of that faith.

He had nigh reached the end of the corridor, hand reaching forth to open the grand double doors that led from the Hall of the Offices of the Convocation to the entrance hall of the Capitol when a sound from behind caught his ear. He could not be certain, but it had seemed to be the sound of a concept synthesis failing to catch, followed by a quiet swear. He half turned, looking back down the corridor whence he had come. The hour was unholy late, and tho the Convocation members–dedicated men and women all–had ever been known to work long into the night, surely no others had been fool enough to remain this late…

Or so he thought. From further down, beyond his own office, a faint flickering glow passed into the hall, as of that of a form moving before a dim light. For a moment, he considered shrugging it off, and continuing on, but curiosity got the better of him. Leaving the doors unopened, he turned, replacing his mask and hood as he made his way once more down the long hall. Once he had reached his own office once more, with that of the 14th standing locked and empty across from it, he could make out which of the others the glow emanated from, and it came as no further shock to see it confirmed once he arrived to peer in the open doorway.

The Esteeemed Lahabrea stood, hands pressed to either side of his desk as he leaned heavily, staring down at the shattered remnants of a broken concept crystal. That would be the failed synthesis then. Tho his back was turned, Hades could clearly see the man’s frustration in the rigid set of his shoulders, and the harsh grip of his hands against the lip of the desk. It would seem all was not going to plan.

“The idea, I believe, is to keep the concept within the crystal. ” Hades drawled by way of greeting, leaning against the door frame with arms crossed, “Not to spill it willy-nilly across your desk. Tho I suppose it does make for a fetching conversation piece. Very abstract. Emotional. A heartfelt expression of the turmoil of our time. Well done, really. I hadn’t thought you the artistic sort, but I suppose such times bring out the artiste in all of us, ay?”

Lahabrea’s shoulders stiffened yet further at the uninvited intrusion, and it was only the most rigid of ingrained manners that graced him to turn and bow a stiff and most unwelcoming greeting in return. “The most honored Emet-Selch,” he said, voice clipped and carefully clear of all emotion, aside from mayhap a touch of annoyance. “To what do I owe the late pleasure of your visit?”

Despite it all, Hades’ lips twitched up into a smirk as he watched his comrade in his careful and meticulous observation of politeness. Even so startled, even with agitation clear at hand, let no man say Lahabrea ever lacked for the right words, the textbook perfect reactions. In gentler times, it had been something of a game for Hades, trying to needle and poke at the man in an attempt to provoke him into loosening that unshakable reserve, and commit a faux pas. Yet tho Lahabrea’s tone often belayed his annoyance, and his body language might turn stiff and sharp, never had his words been aught less than polite and proper. One might as well be speaking to a recording or a retrieval program, for all the variance he showed. As if he was actually incapable of replying in a manner inconsistent with less than perfect manners and social graces.

It had been an endless source of amusement to Hades, when there was time yet for such frivolity as a bit of light hazing. Not that it had ever come from a place of dislike. Far from it. The esteemed Lahabrea, or at least he who wore the title at present, was an earnest and nigh bafflingly brilliant young man. Far younger than would normally be considered for nomination to the Convocation, in fact. His theoretical work and aetherological postulations had raised many a brow for their unconventional demonstration of  universal connectivity and advanced understanding of the nature of elemental convergence. Even as but a student of the Akademia, he had caught attention for his confidence in debating his elders, making himself no stranger to discourse within the Hall of Rhetoric long before most grew bold enough to do more than spectate. Soon enough, he was giving lectures of his own, and drawing no small crowds.

The attention was not unwarranted. His grasp of the very fundamentals of creation were on a level far beyond that which all but the most dedicated of researchers could hope to attain, and yet for him the understanding had seemed to come naturally. Soon enough he had attained professorship within the Akademia itself. His ambition matched his brilliance however, and was not to be placated. When the previous Lahabrea had made her decision to gracefully step away, the young man had put his name forth for consideration, presented with no shortage of letters of recommendation, and documentations of his qualifications.

In the end, nigh the sole detraction against voting for him to fill the empty shoes had been his age. That, and a demonstrated rashness in action. Perhaps due to his seeming instinctual understanding of creation magics, he was quick to use them. Sometimes a bit too quick. This however had ultimately been attributed to a simple quirk of youth, and it had been counter-argued that surrounded by his elders, and with the pressure of office looming above him, it was unlikely to become an issue.

Nor had it, in most cases. It was but one of his few flaws that being so accustomed to his brilliance seeing him through, on the rare occasions when his calculations or theories were incorrect and failure followed, he did not take it well in stride. Thus was surely the root of his annoyance this night. To have not only failed in synthesizing whatever concept he had intended to encapsulate, but to so immediately after have the failure verbalized in so demeaning a manner surely did not sit at ease upon his pricked pride.

Considering how high tensions had been running of late, Hades chose the course of prudence, and relented from any further teasing.

On that matter at least.

Pushing off from the wall, he invited himself further into the office, picking up the shattered crystal shards to inspect them as he answered. “I was curious to see who else could possibly be fool enough to choose their desk over their bed. I was not expecting to find you. Have you naught else to do with your time? Surely a man of your age has other amusements to be chasing late into the night?”

Posture rigid and alert, Lahabrea tracked his guest’s movements, the harsh set of his mask giving the appearance of hostility, even when it was not intended. “Even if I were to, would you not agree that those of our station have no time to dedicate to frivolity? With all due respect, Emet-Selch, if I have time for amusement, then I have time for work.”

Hades allowed the man’s words to hang in silence a moment, seemingly more interested in investigating the shard of crystal he held to the light. “Spoken like a true believer,” he said at last, making a game of reflecting a spot of rainbow light onto the desk. “Surely your dedication to our chosen course is unwavering, unrelenting… Unsurprising, given as it was–as I recall–your idea.”

It seemed a hint of relief touched the harsh set of Lahabrea’s shoulders as he nodded. “It was and remains the single best chance we hold. There is no erring from our set course. No room for uncertainty.”

“So you say,” drawled Hades, holding the shard higher. “And yet…” His eyes drifted out of focus as his vision shifted, tracking the paths of aether that had been woven and shattered, rather than the simple sight of the remains. “This concept was for an advanced aetherial binding, was it not? The same sort used to wick away the imaginary phantoms called forth by unsettled children in slumber. Albeit on a much larger scale. How… curious that you might be found working on such a niche application, when you hold such certainty in the power of this… Zodiark.”

He half turned as he spoke, maneuvering the crystal shard in his hand to shine an almost playful splash of rainbow light on the harsh mask of his comrade. The tension returned to Lahabrea’s stance, as his lips tightened into a thin line for a brief heartbeat, before he bowed.

“My esteemed and honored colleague, forgive my indelicacy in bringing it to word, but you will find a strand of your hair has once again escaped its bindings, and is visible for all to see. I would not wish you to dishonor yourself with this indiscretion, plague you as I know it often does.”

Keep your mind to your own business. He could not have said it more politely… or plainly. Hades reached up, pulling the errant strand through his thumb and forefinger. It had ever been a stubborn one. With a sigh, he set the shard back upon the desk, tucking the hair back behind his mask once more before he made as if to leave, only for the movement to stall err he followed through. Rather, half turned, he reached out, placing a hand on his comrade’s shoulder.

“Have care, Lahabrea. We all wish for a solution which weighs less heavy in cost, but you benefit no one by working yourself to the bone in search of one. Go home. Rest. See to your loved ones. All too soon they–” He stopped himself from going on, from voicing it. They all, every one, had those they knew and held dear who would be among those to step forward that final day. How could they possibly forget, even for a moment, when Elidibus himself–

“Get some rest, my friend.” He said again, giving the younger man’s shoulder a soft squeeze as he shuffled off.

It seemed there would be no reply, but as Hades reached the door, Lahabrea turned and spoke again, and for once there was a thread of emotion within it, a plea filled with regret. “Emet-Selch! Please, tell her I–”

Regathering himself, Lahabrea shook his head, and bowed once more. “A good night to you as well, my esteemed comrade.”

Hades paused at the doorway, and then nodded. He would not push. Not on that matter. “Good night.”

In the corridor behind him as he made his way once more to the grand double doors, he heard the familiar sounds of another concept crystal being readied for synthesis. He was not surprised to find his advice unheeded, nor did he doubt in the least that the man would yet be here when he again arrived in the morn. They all had their own ways of coping with what loomed ahead. For Hades however, what was most important awaited him at home, and he would keep her waiting no longer this night. The darkness of night was too great to spend alone.

[disaffectednotes]

Corona & culture / cultural studies - Scattergun virus thoughts

Putting some scattered thoughts down, largely inspired by a steady diet of high-fibre podcasts in recent weeks. These notes are fragments, really, and hardly add up to more than passing thoughts, given the unfolding situation and the partiality of any knowledge right now. I’ve noticed in myself the will to “master” the situation by consuming as much information as possible – even as I know this will inevitably fail. Perhaps the following can be read in the same spirit of failed mastery, or to sublimate the anxious energy that’s all around...

“We’re all in this together.” The virus as the “great equaliser.” Such appeals to the common good and common ground have been… common. War mobilisation rhetoric is also doing the same work of unifying the disparate population. At the same time, disgruntled jokes are made about celebrities and royals getting tests when frontline medical staff cannot. It’s also clear that this virus will rip through some communities more than others, as reporting this weekend about effects in black communities in the US has made clear. Arundhati Roy also made this clear too in her excellent piece for the FT this weekend. India is only just at the start of this. The economic crisis has reached many poorer countries before the virus itself hits.

On the cultural level, some of this mobilisation of fellow-feeling and resentment has been played out through celebrity culture (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/arts/virus-celebrities.html). There will be people on this list more expert in celebrity culture than me (paging Celebrity Studies scholars), but commentary is engaging in the cyclical argument about how this will be the end of celebrities. As if seeing in 1080p the smooth interiors behind celebrities cocooning at home will rupture the culture industry and the star system. And yet, the hatred is real. “The film Parasite, in which a poor South Korean family cleverly cons its way into the home of a rich one, has been converted into a well-worn social-media retort whenever celebrities offer glimpses inside their own manses; the reference succeeds partly because so many superrich people have such blandly similar minimalist homes.”

More abstractly – how do the universal and the particular interact in this moment? We seem to have the interaction of universalism in the sense of appeals to and mobilisations of public health (with its birth as a discipline in Soviet healthcare, no less) and the particularity of suffering.

Closer to the question of Cultural Studies as an intellectual formation: what reconfiguration of economy, culture, society etc might follow from this. After the financial crisis a decade ago, there was, no doubt, a new opening onto political economy in cultural studies. As Randy Martin put it in 2015, “the very architecture by which knowledge of the social has been made legible – the grand trinity that partitions economy, polity and culture – has come undone, and from these ruins issue all manner of challenge and possibility.” Of course, this pandemic event adds another dimension to the broken trinity – or, put differently, where do quasi-natural factors like novel viruses fit in the trinity? Chuang and Rob Wallace suggest the historic spread of pandemics cannot be untied from urban development, intensive agriculture and capitalist markets. If there’s no unsullied “nature” outside global capitalism, this also suggests the open question of whether this is an exogenous or endogenous shock to an interlocked world system.

Another plank of this concerns the status of the “economy” as an object, and what its abstract claim is on politics (in our really-existing world of market-dependence, obviously). E.g. the increasing attempts to weigh up the economic cost of lockdowns vs care of population. Already as part of a wide-spread legitimacy crisis post-2007-8, there was a growing sense, I think, that people did not see their lives reflected in GDP figures (see Will Davies on this). Sure, the numbers are going up, people seemed to say en masse, but I’m not seeing that in my life. Wellbeing budgets (e.g. NZ and UK) were one attempt to deliver a fix for this gap between lived experience and economic indicators.

What is being asked for here is an unprecedented global demobilisation and isolation, almost concurrently. There’s anxiety about this. It’s unknown territory. Above all, those clamouring for a return to the Service of Goods right now seem to be desperately ensnared by the oikodicy that Joseph Vogl talks about. “A theodicy of the economic universe: the inner consistency of an economic doctrine that—rightly or wrongly, for good or ill—views contradictions, adverse effects, and breakdowns in the system as eminently compatible with its sound institutional arrangement.” Nothing needs to change; just get the people back to their stations and everything can carry on. The hangover from this governmental largesse will surely come in the form of austerity lashings for many.

On the conjuncture in which this virus appeared – it seems important to remember the crisis of legitimacy that has been underway (at least) since the last financial crisis. This has had several effects, I think, on trust in politicians and trust in experts. Lockdowns have played out in rather draconian ways, I think, because flows of trust between citizenry and state are at low levels. (Equally in those countries that English-language media are lumping together as “Asian” or “East Asian”.) The US and the UK have fumbled their management terribly, and lost a lot of time to quell the virus in the process. Aside from the obvious political disaffection and so on surrounding elected officials, there was already an epistemological crisis surrounding the “expert” and expertise, the media and information sources — and now? It seems to be going in two directions. In some ways, epidemiologists and other public health actors seem to be trusted; in part, they seem to be figures of faith for acting in the best interests of the public / society / everyone. Goodwill seems to be carrying their message through, helped by endless news reports of deaths. And yet conspiracy theories continue to be rife – 40% of US Republicans believe the virus is a Chinese concoction from a lab; on the weekend, we’ve seen 5g mobile towers burned in the UK in some sort of anti-tech connection with China. It will also be interesting to watch the anti-vaxxer groups in the wake of this, themselves one of the chief symptoms of a rear-guard response to the epistemological crisis around science.

At the level of everyday life, it will be interesting to experience the new tempos and rhythms of everyday life that will come out the other side of this. Obviously, people are right now being enlisted in a series of new habits around social distance, but time is also being enlisted too. We check the news to see updates on the length of lockdowns, the next meetings, the rise over the past 24hours. Morbid scoreboards measure out days and deaths, for our fascination and horror. We hear that lockdowns will come ago. Six weeks, two weeks, maybe six months, up to two years, maybe five years. Yet the future as a space of projection feels utterly blank. Who can plan anything, other than as a coping mechanism with an asterisk of a disclaimer (to be confirmed)? Epidemiological metaphors, otherwise describing dynamics visualised on graphs, have slid into the language with almost universal recognition. Flatten the curve (even in German they say this, auf Englisch). Now people speak casually about “the hammer and the dance.”

Another cultural question of everyday life – what will survive of neighbourhood businesses, given the economic ruin that is already evident in unemployment statistics and massive companies going on rent strike. In Berlin, neighbourhood places like cinemas, bars, restaurants and cafes, unable to open for weeks, have taken to asking people to support them by buying vouchers and merchandise online. Cancelled gigs and events ask people who can afford to ignore refund, so that music venues and theatres and promoters and artists can come out the other side. I’m sure similar things are happening elsewhere. But there’s a chance this could alter the face of local communities (in places already changed by gentrification, no doubt, and other processes).

Equally – what will cultural policy and support for cultural industries and artists look like? Responses already seem divergent. Germany has trumpeted a huge package of money for operators at all sizes (https://news.artnet.com/art-world/berlin-senate-bailout-process-1820982 & https://news.artnet.com/art-world/german-bailout-50-billion-1815396). In Berlin, bookshops are essential services and remain open. In Australia, the other case I know something about, anxiety was rising before the lockdown that this could decimate those artists already struggling with high costs of living and piecemeal work (https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/anwen-crawford/2020/19/2020/1584580982/coronavirus-cancelling-culture). I don’t know that any systematic response has emerged to this situation from the Australian government(s). Meanwhile, Jerry Saltz suggests the art world could look different after this – https://www.vulture.com/_pages/ck8ivxorc0000yeyerntsmxxj.html. By that we can also include the mass sackings of culture workers with barely any hope of reinstatement anytime soon – https://hyperallergic.com/551571/moma-educator-contracts/

I wonder if there might be a new “paranoid style” in culture and everyday life. What does life look like after we have been so thoroughly inculcated into logics of the other (and self) as virus vectors? It seems hard to imagine that sociability will not be affected by this sustained mentality. I imagine there could be an ecstatic return of sociability? Matched with paranoid moments? Prevailing at different points? Except, I think we already being prepared for a staged return to normal social mixing. So the ecstatic moment may not come. People wonder out loud too about parallel epidemics of loneliness and mental health from weeks of limited social contacts.

In cultural production, it will be interesting to see how this paranoid style might play out in formal and generic novelties, rather than simply the pandemic *content* that will be pushed through the Netflix pipe. The “bottle episode” format might become even more of a mainstay. And the lockdown nostalgia genre (like the “blitz spirit”) is probably already in the making. Will “flatten the curve” become “keep calm and carry on” kitsch?

It’s interesting to watch what Adam Tooze called a clumsy rewiring of globalisation – where Zoom comes to the fore as platform, where relations to flying around the world become more fraught and second-guessed. This ad hoc reconstitution of institutional and individual practices is obviously apparent at universities. It will be fascinating to see what the afterlife of this moment will be in the sector. Again, like the ecstasy of reunion with friends (and strangers), will the metaphysics of presence reassert itself as a thousand and one postponed conferences are launched onto the market for papers and academic attention? Or will the convenient and environmentally sustainable virtual conference finally become more acceptable? For those at a distance from the conference centres of the northern hemisphere, there’s been a certain obliviousness among, e.g., European academics about the many costs involved in travelling from, e.g., Australia for a conference. The Fridays for Future movement and others had already instilled greater awareness about this; so perhaps this accelerated acquaintance with these technologies will make the option viable. I’ve been part of several online reading groups already in the past fortnight, and their decentralisation has been inspiring. For example, one group hosted in Ireland had its largest number of participants in India and Israel. Obviously cultural, symbolic and financial capital will continue to accrue among the big-name academic cities and campuses, but these initiatives have opened onto new constellations of community, discussion and collective endeavour.

What are the subjective effects of all this? Some psychoanalysts co-wrote a letter a couple of weeks ago about their patients with some striking insights.

“And yet, against the predominant narrative of trauma and the dangers of isolation, we find many patients who are doing fine or even doing better, who like externalized chaos, or whose melancholia is abated by the nearness of death and reproach; those who are used to doing their own thing and who find their anxiety and sadness contained and cohered by the pervasive force of a virus that shuts all down. We hear those who have longed for everything to be cancelled, for life as we know it to be paused, hushed and stopped, even to the point of daring to express their own desire to, in fantasy, be one of the affected, which is to say, infected. Many admit that they are feeling strangely fine—no more FOMO—and even a few are looking forward to enjoying the spiteful reality that the virus effects all, rich and poor. Beyond this, there might seem very little worth saying. Some now don’t talk at all in session, while indicating that they are talking all the time, like the run on social media. Symptoms, despite so many breaks in the fabric of reality, persist, sometimes blindly and deafeningly so; it feels crushing. The continued contact can be important, but perhaps only for that—to know the analyst is still there.”

Other things to say… but I’m running out of steam and you’re probably running out of patience… so now in the form of suggestive promissory notes for further thoughts…

These ideas all came from listening to Adam Tooze talk about the current crisis and how it compares to 2008: Incoherent American power — soft power and culture yet literal bankruptcy of American social model, meanwhile Fed is efficiently fighting spotfires and Trump is a clown show; running 2008 playbook but at high speed; public balance sheet taking over from private again; fiscal conservatism as cross to nail progressive politics to cross for years; expansionary fiscal policy nationally vs contractions and austerity locally; emerging markets pressure (South Africa — immunosuppressed HIV population + downgrade of currency); timing of crisis with oil shock and uncertain global supply chains; car-making is dead right now; VW is worried about liquidity; what might bailout conditions be?; German governments talking about mass buying VW electric cars to ensure work when factories can reopen, while aiding in VW’s need to increase electric sales.

Media companies — some experiencing a massive boost in visitors right now, but with drop off in advertising. Who wants to sell stuff next to death charts? Who is in mood for big spending? Media outlets cutting staff or closing.

Mutual aid groups and solidarity networks have sprung up informally – and been mirrored formally by state calls for volunteers. This puts me in mind of the anarchist / horizontalist moment of Occupy a decade ago. Then, since, the return to state by activists for Corbyn and Sanders. What now?

Also, what do social movements do to respond to what will be inevitably be an uneven roll out of crisis response? Plus, the draconian enrolment of police and military, with powers for six months to two years? How do groups organise against that? What are the forms of creative protest in times of physical distance? Cementing affected and affective communities somehow – maybe seeding these online to go “live” when restrictions are lifted. Thinking also about ACT UP and other social movements – e.g. How to Survive A Plague. Those movements, internationally, put their bodies on the line, staged die ins during AIDS-HIV crisis. Militant disobedience might be demanded to get better crisis response. (Sidebar: Fauci and Birx, both experts on HIV and AIDS; Fauci was targeted by ACT UP but was sympathetic.) Some small protests in Berlin on the streets in recent weeks, using social distancing. Calling on politicians and population not to forget refugees at EU’s borders. Others occupying empty apartments (& Airbnb) to call for homeless relief. Also, what could cultural protest look like right now? (https://hyperallergic.com/550091/illuminator-covid-19/).

What might the crisis do for an ethics of care – and awareness of social reproduction too. Some public health thinkers have talked about “social immunity,” particularly in the US. And the flipside seems to be the social contagion that Chuang invoke. (No doubt here all the biopolitical debates come up again, e.g. Esposito on immunity)

And there’s been interesting work on geographies of movement and exclusion. Various visualisations of how the virus moves around the world and what this illustrates about travel, business, leisure etc today. But also the unevenly distributed luxury of working from home – the NY Times piece about poorer workers in NY moving around the city much more than the knowledge workers who could “shelter in place”. Five bus drivers have died in the UK. Meanwhile, in Germany, the former socialist eastern part of the country has far fewer cases. This once again underlines a deeply sensed feeling of stasis – both a distance from the cosmopolitan cultural power of an EU-level project but also the literal (comparative) lack of infrastructure for things such as fast-speed rail links between cities from eastern German states into western states and beyond into other parts of Europe.

No doubt these reflections are parochial and limited, drawn from what has most captured my attention – selfishly – in a truly global crisis, and one with many months to run….

For rolling lists of good discussions on these topics:

https://the-syllabus.com/coronavirus-readings/

https://yourpart.eu/p/QuarantineSchool_COVID19

[lbcybersecurity]

Introducing Threat Operations: Thinking Differently

Let’s start with a rhetorical question: Can you really “manage” threats? Is that even a worthy goal? And how do you even define a threat. We’ve seen a more accurate description of how adversaries operate by abstracting multiple attacks/threats into a campaign. That intimates a set of interrelated attacks all with a common mission. That seems like a better way to think about how you are being attacked, rather than the whack a mole approach of treating every attack as a separate thing and defaulting to the traditional threat management cycle: Prevent (good luck), Detect, Investigate, Remediate.

This general approach hasn’t really worked very well. The industry continues to be locked in this negative feedback loop, where you are attacked, then you respond, then you clean up the mess, then you start all over again. You don’t learn much from the last attack, which sentences you to continue running on the same hamster wheel day after day. By the way, this inability to learn isn’t from lack of effort. Pretty much every practitioner we talk to wants better leverage and the learn from the attacks in the wild. It’s that the existing security controls and monitors don’t really support that level of learning. Not easily anyway.

But the inability to learn isn’t the only challenge we face. Today’s concept of threat management largely ignores the actual risk of the attack. Without some understanding of what the attacker is trying to do, you can’t really prioritize your efforts. For example, if you look at threats independently, a seemingly advanced attack on your application may take priority since it uses advanced techniques and therefore a capable attacker is behind it, right? Thus you take the capable attacker more seriously than what seems to be a simplistic phishing attack.

Actually that could be a faulty assumption because advanced attackers tend to find the path of least resistance to compromise your environment. So if a phishing message will do the trick, they’ll phish your folks. They won’t waste a zero day attack when sending a simple email will suffice. On the other hand, you could be right that the phishing attempt is some kid in a basement trying to steal some milk money. There is no way to know without a higher level abstraction of the attack activity, so the current methods of prioritization are very hit and miss.

Speaking of prioritization, you can’t really afford hit and miss approaches anymore. The perpetual (and worsening) security skills gap means that you must make better use of your limited resources. The damage incurred from false positives increases when those folks need to be working on the seemingly endless list of real attacks happening, not going on wild good chases. Additionally, you don’t have enough people to validate and triage all of the alerts streaming out of your monitoring systems, so things will be missed and as a result you may end up a target of pissed off customers, class action lawyers, and regulators as a result of a breach.

We aren’t done yet. Ugh. Once you figure out which of the attacks you want to deal with, current security/threat operational models to remediate these issues tends to be very manual and serial in nature. It’s just another game of whack-a-mole, where you direct the operations group to patch or reimage a machine and then wait for the next device to click on similar malware and get similarly compromised. Wash, rinse, repeat. Yeah, that doesn’t work either.

Not that we have to state the obvious at this point. But security hasn’t been effective enough for a long time. And with the increasing complexity of technology infrastructure and high profile nature of security breaches, the status quo isn’t acceptable any more. That means something needs to change and quickly.

Thinking Differently

Everybody loves people who think differently. Until they challenge the status quo and start agitating for massive change, upending the way things have always been done. As discussed above, we are at the point in security where we have to start thinking differently because we can’t keep pace with the attackers nor stem the flow of sensitive data being exfiltrated from organizations.

The movement toward cloud computing, so succinctly described in our recent Tidal Forces blog posts(1, 2, 3), will go a long way towards destroying the status quo because security is fundamentally different in cloud-land. And if we could just do a flash cut of all of our systems onto well-architected cloud stacks, a lot of these issues would go away. Not all, but a lot.

Unfortunately we can’t. A massive amount of critical data still resides in corporate data centers and will for the foreseeable future. That means we have to maintain two realities in our minds for a while. First the reality of imperfect systems running in our existing data centers, where we have to leverage traditional security controls and monitors. There is also the reality of what cloud computing, mobility and DevOps allow from the standpoint of architecting for scale and security, but providing different challenges from a governance and monitoring standpoint.

It’s tough to be a security professional, and it’s getting harder. But your senior management and board of directors isn’t too interested in that. You need to come up with answers. So in this “Introducing Threat Operations” series, we are going to focus on addressing the following issues, which make dealing with attacks pretty challenging:

Security data overload: There is no lack of security data. Many organizations are dealing with a flood of it, and don’t have the tools or expertise to manage it. These same organizations are compounding the issue by starting to integrate external threat intelligence, magnifying the data overload problem.

Detecting advanced attackers and rapidly evolving attacks: Yet, today’s security monitoring infrastructure kind of relies on looking for attacks you’ve already seen. What happens when the attack is built specifically for you, or you want to actually hunt for active threat actors in your environment? It’s about a combination of better utilizing your internal security data and intelligently leveraging threat intelligence to look for the attacks you haven’t seen yet.

Lack of skilled resources: The fact is the industry can’t address the skills gap fast enough. We can (and are) focusing on education, but security requires a broad knowledge of technology and a lot of experience to become effective. So the answer lies in making less experienced practitioners more effective through smarter systems that guide them through their work. It’s not about replacing security analysts, it’s about scaling their impact.

Performing response and remediation at scale and working with the operational group: Finally, once you figure out what to fix, you face similar resource constraints in dealing with operations. So the key will be to figure out how to intelligently orchestrate and automate the response and remediation of these attacks.

What we are really talking about is evolving how the industry has dealt with threats. It’s not really about managing the threats anymore. It’s about building an operational process to more effectively handle the campaigns of your adversaries. That means leveraging security data through better analytics, magnifying the impact of the people you have by structuring and streamlining processes, and automating the remediation of threats wherever possible. In this series, we’ll map out what that looks like, and how you can get there sooner rather than later.

We’d like to thank Threat Quotient for agreeing to be the initial licensee of this content. As we repeat over and over again, without the support of so many forward thinking security companies, we couldn’t do the research that we do, and we certainly couldn’t provide it to you for free.

In the next post, we’ll describe how to accelerate your humans, making the analysts and responders you have more effective and efficient.

- Mike Rothman (0) Comments Subscribe to our daily email digest from Introducing Threat Operations: Thinking Differently