[In my latest piece on Motherboard, I’m considering the ‘game’ mechanics inherent in foreign policy, and the real reason Wikileaks threatens the players of a broken, game-like system of international diplomacy]
Remember a while ago when the World Trade Center blew up and we blamed that one guy who sent us tons of videos from his secret supervillain hideaway in the mountains of Afghanistan? And how the most powerful and thorough military forces in the world threw their arms up in the air after a couple years of failed searching? Well, they seem to be doing just fine right now at closing in on a different guy. Except this guy’s crimes are not blowing up buildings. They’re something much, much worse: Making a lot of people in high places very nervous about their reputations.
I was reading a rather scathing Glenn Greenwald rant the other day in light of the recent Wikileaks domain shut-downs and it got me to thinking — As Julian Assange & co. brace for impact amidst the throes of what is quite possibly the word’s first large-scale info war, what is the real meaning behind this desperate race to shut up the whistleblowers at any cost?
Here’s one way of thinking about it: Everyone in the world is playing a huge game, and Wikileaks is the jerk that flipped the table over and pulled all the aces out of everyone’s pockets.
