(New Orleans Superdome after Katrina, 2005. Photo FEMA).

I fully intended to step right up and write something high-minded and well-considered this morning about another really interesting expansion of Executive Branch authority this morning. It is really interesting, and highly classified, and profound about the digital medium in  which we shop, and bank and flirt and rant in the cyber world. Since I used to be in the business, I am in a position to contemplate what the breathless press accounts actually mean.

I elected to stay hunkered down and not go out. I was moving some of the survival stocks around at the farm, trying to get ready for the kitchen upgrade and I was feeling pretty good, at least until that large box of dry stores tugged at something in my neck and I realized, for the millionth time, that I had got out to the mystery zone in front of my headlights.

In a well-considered response, I stopped doing anything constructive and moved into recovery mode. I mixed up a mild cocktail of Ibupropin and whiskey and wrapped the heating pad around the offending muscles.

I had been interested in the commercials, and was resigned to the fact that the thug Ravens were going to kick the crap out of the San Francisco 49ers.

I had the iPad with me in the brown chair, and was catching up on correspondence as the Raven kicked the crap out of the hapless 49ers. I saw an article in the Times that caught my attention more than the inept fumblings of the team from San Fracisco.

David Sanger and Thom Shanker wrote that John Brennan, counter terror Czar and nominee to be the next director of the CIA, drew up the new highly classified protocols for offensive cyber operations. We used to be very leery about the whole thing.

In bygone days, there were strict prohibitions on what we could do in the cyber world. I was still on active duty, and was notified that some wild-eyed cyber warriors planned to take down the Taliban’s computer command and control network. My guys gravely informed me that the computer servers to be attacked were not in Afghanistan, but rather in a data center located in a nation that happened to be a close ally.

What’s more, the Taliban was not the only customer that patronized the center, and there was no estimate of what the consequences might be if we manipulated the data processed there virtually, or just fried the servers kinetically.

Conducting kinetic operations in an allied nation can be problematic, as you might imagine, and this newly disclosed doctrine of pre-emptive operations is the result of long discussions. The Chinese, among others, have been looting our intellectual property for years, and it seems past time for something to be done.

There is a lot of that going around. “Step right up! The time to act on (fill in the blank) is now!

In this case, though, we don’t know exactly what it is that can be done, much less have a discussion about whether it should be done. I know enough to be concerned about another expansion of the National Security State, which is operating in terra incognita, quite apart from the traditional structure of jurisprudence.

I am in favor of killing bad guys, as a general rule. But the whole concept makes me a little nervous. After the excesses of my beloved Intelligence Community in the 1960s, some significant restrictions were imposed on what we could do and not do. Executive Order 12333 was our guiding document. It set limits, and told us we could not conduct medical experiments on service members, for one thing, or conduct assassinations for another.

We thought it was sort of funny, at least until the details of the MKULTRA LSD program leaked out, along with the rest of the Crown Jewels from the covert Cold War world. The system was out of control and needed to be reined in.

In the view of many of us who served then, the pendulum swung way to far in protecting the rights of bad people who probably should have had something nasty happen to them, but this is just like the Taliban computer network. Some of the nasty stuff is happening right here, and technology has overwhelmed the old rules about what constitutes a “US person” who is entitled to the protection of the Constitution, and enemy combatants who are not.

Who would have imagined something like the STUXNET attack on the Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges?  And what happens when these weaponized bugs are set free in the cyberwild?

I do not know. I do know that the National Security State, a bipartisan creation of Congress and the Executive Branch of Republicans and Democrats, Bush and Obama, makes me really nervous.

Thankfully, the drugs and whiskey worked, and the blow-out of the 49ers by the dominating Ravens proceeded apace. The commercials were great- I particularly liked the Mercedes commercial in which Lucifer, portrayed by William Dafoe, almost gets a young man to sign on the dotted line to exchange his soul for a brand new CLA-class sedan.

(The lovely and talented Beyonce. Photo CBS).

Thankfully, the young is saved by the revelation that the new German machine is really quite affordable. I watched the halftime show with Beyonce, hoping for a wardrobe malfunction. She did not provide one, though her performance was electric, as was the astonishing 108-yard kick return by Jacoby Jones that looked like the last nail in the coffin of the 49ers.

Then the lights went out, and then it was late August of 2005 and things were getting scary.

It was a powerful moment that dragged into over a half hour. I started to get a little giddy. This year, CBS charged between $3.8 million and $4 million for every thirty second spot shown during the game. If my math wasn’t addled by the therapeutic cocktail, that 37-minute interruption could have been billed by the network at a cool $275 million.

I realize that a quarter billion dollars doesn’t mean much to us anymore, but still.

The darkness at the most viewed sporting event in the world was an eerie quotation of the awful stinking inhuman hell that existed after Katrina knocked down the levees and swamped the city. Remember the lines of people waiting to get into the Superdome as Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast? It was slow motion disaster. Why didn’t all those people leave the city?

They didn’t know what was going to happen, and it seemed safe enough.

It is sort of like sitting across the table from William Dafoe, or waiting in a long line to seek refuge from the storm. Step right up.
450px-People_lining_up_for_shelter_in_Superdome_in_New_Orleans.jpg

(Nope. Not Superbowl fans. New Orleans residents line up for salvation 2005. Photo FEMA).

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com