Geodog

The Ants of 9-11

One of the themes of Supernova is decentralization, and in preparation for the conference I've been rereading Steven Johnson's Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. I had a strange experience tonight where just before picking the book up I ran into this interesting op-ed, The Best Anti-Terror Force: Us in the Washington Post today arguing for the power of decentralization in so-called "homeland defense".

On Sept. 11, 2001, American citizens saved the government, not the other way around ... While the U.S. air defense system did fail to halt the attacks, our improvised, high-tech citizen defense "system" was extraordinarily successful.

Confronted by a cruel and diabolical surprise that day, those with formal responsibility for protecting our country from air attack could not defend us. ... This is not surprising given that the command-and-control structure required so many baton handoffs in the 77-minute response window between the crashes of the first and fourth terrorist aircraft.

What is surprising is that an alternative defense system, one with no formal authority or security funding, did succeed, and probably saved our seat of government. The downing of United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania was a heroic feat executed by the plane's passengers. But it was more: the culmination of a strikingly efficient chain of responses by networked Americans.

Requiring less time than it took the White House to gather intelligence and issue an attack order (which was in fact not acted on), American citizens gathered information from national media and relayed that information to citizens aboard the flight, who organized themselves and effectively carried out a counterattack against the terrorists, foiling their plans. Armed with television and cell phones, quick-thinking, courageous citizens who were fed information by loved ones probably saved the White House or Congress from devastation.

It is an interesting take on decentralization. I'm not sure that I buy the whole argument, but it is a nice illustration of the power of decentralization, and how rapid a response you can get when people tied together in an efficient decentralized communications infrastructure can do what Johnson argues ants do, which is act locally based on local knowledge.