Time to talk me down again, people.

[Jackpine Radical]

I just had a crazy thought this afternoon.

The real battle against the financial dinosaurs has been won.

The news piece that sparked this thought was the one about a virus invading the computers used to control drones. I suddenly realized if some homegrown genius in Pakistan or somewhere (maybe with a US engineering education & internet design experience--there must be a lot of guys like that) can write a virus to infect one of our high-tech, multibillion-dollar weapon systems and collect information from it, he can even more easily write a destructive virus that just overwrites critical memory or something,

Every modern American military device is loaded with electronics, virtually all of it vulnerable to virus attacks. A battalion of hackers could take the whole damn thing down at will.

And beyond the military, the same can be said of the banks. It would be possible to scramble all the electronic records and communication lines that the international financiers use to track money in its various forms.

This is the first time in history that common people had easy access to intercommunication plus the ability to exploit the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the worldwide cerebral cortex that is the Internet, and upon which so much of modern life depends.

The people who really understand how to work this system to maximum effect are the kids. The amazing generation that is now awakening to their own power in places like Wall Street.

The revolution will not be televised. It is already being tweeted.

[onehandle]

1. No. Jump.

Real change can only come with martyrs.

And/or heads on stakes.

People died in the Jasmine Revolutions.

[malaise]

2. Excellent post

The kids now know more about today's technology than almost everyone else.
The good news is that eventually they can stop the wars since it is they who die fighting for oil.

[tridim]

3. The Wall Street systems are already compromised, by Wall Street.

[mike_c]

4. +1

The EEVIL, it burns us, precioussss....

[Coexist]

5. The revolution is being livestreamed and tweeted and FB'd and posted.

screw the television.

[Lizzie Poppet]

6. If push truly comes to shove...

If push truly comes to shove, and TPTB manage to block any meaningful change via the current methods, that still doesn't mean we have to resort to (physical) violence. We have means of communication that they can't stop (without doing the same thing to their own communication). We have the ability to bring much of their ability to use force themselves to a crashing halt. Their strategies, doctrine, and technologies are as obsolete as the static defense doctrines of the French prior to the Wehrmacht's (horrific) demonstration of just how much things had changed.

It may still come to bloodshed...but I think we have the ability to win without it. I hope with all my heart that's what comes to pass.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. I think you're right. It's a replay of the small, agile mammals

versus the lumbering, grotesquely oversized dinosaurs.

They may step on some of us, but we'll eat their eggs.

[Rabblevox]

9. Lizzie, I share your hope, not sure I share your optimism....

Specifically when it comes to tech, TPTB are indeed a step behind the curve, but that's just a function of any large-scale project. They catch up REALLY quick.

Don't doubt for a second that the govt and the banks have already bought many of the best hackers on the planet, and they control the mainframes.

And both the military and the banks have already built multiple redundancies into the system. Even if a genius did manage to crash CitiCorp, the Pentagon, or the Fed, it would be back online in minutes.

If push REALLY comes to shove, they can shut down the internet and cell-phone towers with a flick of a switch (not literally a switch), and be guaranteed that TPTB have hard-wired lines for just such a possibility.

I hope it doesn't come to bloodshed here (I really hate bleeding), and while Anonymous and other hackers are invaluable, they can't get us all the way there.

I really think it's going to take a critical mass of people willing to (in Mario Rubio's words) "Throw their bodies on the gears of the machine."

[Lizzie Poppet]

10. You're probably right.

TPTB are undoubtedly scrambling to catch up, and folks like Anonymous have only limited resources with which to try to stay a step ahead. We probably can't get all the way there without bloodshed (and let's not kid ourselves: a lot of it will be ours). I hope with all my heart that's not how it goes down...but that's a fast-fading hope.

[Desertrose]

8. Like maybe the 1%er's bank accounts suddenly show a loss while the 99%ers ...

....end up with some nice surprise deposits...untraceable of course.;)

[Jackpine Radical]

13. Yup. That's pretty much what I was thinking.

:loveya:

[NNN0LHI]

11. If true I promise this wasn't some homegrown lone genius in Pakistan

This would have to be another country doing something like this. Russia, China, N. Korea, Iran, the list is endless.

But I would bet my bottom dollar this was a state actor.

Don

[Jackpine Radical]

14. You may be right. I lack the technical knowledge

to even begin to appreciate what might be involved. I'm just continually impressed by the great forces of invention, for good and for evil, that have been unleashed on the world with the advent of the information and communication revolution the world has seen since about 1980.

[GeorgeGist]

12. I had similar thoughts ...

The revolution will be cyberised.
Machines can be socialized.

[McCamy Taylor]

15. Can't wait for them to hack all the new electronic medical records. We are all gonna die

when they start rewriting allergies, drug dosages etc.