same dim, comfortably dangerous instincts that undid Mubarak. These kids can't

same dim, comfortably dangerous instincts that undid Mubarak. These kids can't possibly amount to much. The youth of these groups, the very fact that they were not the varsity team, their intimate fingertip familiarity with virtual spaces - all this gave this new generation of movements energy, appeal, attraction. Even in countries that looked technologically “backwards” by American standards, linked systems speed-bred revolution, they gleefully filled in for a failed traditional media, and they accelerated and enabled the creation of groups as different as the Syrian Electronic Army and Occupy Hong Kong.®” Traditionally, such a long list of hopeless exclusions (no money, no friends, no access, no power) added up to an easy judgment of irrelevance. But ISIS was like the the Iranian bloggers and American social justice campaigners and Swedish digital pirates and vengeful Houthi fighters who were all staring back, confidently, at the people who had the money, the friends and the power - and the drones. Obama and Mubarak and - fill in the blank with a powerful name or institution - were too slow. Out of touch. Their connections were all wrong. So while the individual parts of the new networks - young students, poorly trained armed fighters - were soft and human and easy to destroy, they still tore unstoppably at old power. Tied together, the connected systems themselves were capable of more than their individual strength might suggest. What they shared wasn’t simply a single issue or identity. It was cheap, constant connection. And they were, frankly, furious. The old guys were crafty, of course. They tried to shut down the technology itself. Or they aimed at crucial points on the network. “Arrest or kill the leaders you can find!” was the sort of order that bolted stability back onto Iran, for example. Other governments found they could crack the will of the protesters by going after their relatives. “Relational repression,” as it became known, was the closest a big power could get, quickly, to using one network to fight another. And there were other strategies: The Egyptian military, for instance, played a deadly serious long game. They gave in on a few points. They let the massed opposition and Islamic networks come to power. But this was merely a pretext, a way to map the ties of these groups, to coldly study how they functioned and record the secret sources of their power and influence and money. Then, when the Egyptian population tired of these failing, amateurish new leaders - as the military knew they someday would - the generals moved. Skeptics would demand of Castells: What the hell did any of these protests really accomplish? What sort of reevolootion was it that left nothing but chaotic sink holes in Tripoli and Damascus? What they accomplished, Castells conceded, was mostly destructive. But that was the point. This smashing at old laws, the cracking apart of ideas of power and control had changed the landscape. And it had revealed a hidden logic of connection. Irrelevant? That was like saying earthquakes or epidemics should be overlooked. In their vibrating apart of once-solid structures, networked social movements told a great deal. They revelaled interconnected fault lines. They 87 Even in countries: Edwin Grohe “The Cyber Dimensions of the Syrian Civil War: Implications for Future Conflict,” Comparative Strategy, (2015) 34:2, 133-148 64 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018296