* This is a reprint of the review which first appeared in the Prague Post on September 6, 2014.
By John Kendall Hawkins
Julian Assange's new book, When Google Met Wikileaks, is not really a new book at all; it is a minimally edited transcription of a secret meeting he had with Google's Erich Schmidt back on June 23, 2011. It took place in rural England, while Assange was under house arrest and dealing with the aftermath of the funding-freeze on Wikileaks, arranged by the US State Department, in retaliation for his publication of war-related secrets leaked to him by Chelsea Manning, including the now-infamous Collateral Murder video. In agreeing to the meeting with Schmidt, Assange had been told that the Google head was writing a book and wanted his input regarding contemporary dissidents and the communication technologies they use. Joining Schmidt were Jared Cohen, Lisa Shields and Scott Malcomson, whom Assange later discovered were not merely Schmidt's buddies but members of the Council on Foreign Relations, with ties to the State Department.
In any case, on April 19, 2013, Assange posted to the Wikileaks site the transcript of this secret meeting, and made the audio available as well, so that his words and integrity could not later be twisted in the triangulating tactic of They Said/ He Said, the numbers game that collaborating character assassins like to play. The book also includes his New York Times review of the subsequent Schmidt-Cohen book, The New Digital Age, which is also readily accessible online. So why buy the book?
There are a few good reasons. First, the book includes excellent links and notes which, in e-book form, can be clicked, instantly bringing the reader a wealth of background and further information that serve to deepen and more fully contextualize the themes of the secret discussion. Second, the book contains an important introduction (the wryly titled, "Beyond Good and "Don't Be Evil"), which delves into the Google political philosophy, with disturbing examples of it in action. Third, WGMW is an extension to the scathing review he gave TNDA, which is a critical event worth celebrating in itself, and it more closely unpacks the clearly premeditated trashing of Assange that took place in their book. And lastly, of course, he needs the money.
WGMW is not the relentlessly sobering narrative Assange's Cypherpunks was, which suggested a future where you're either a data-encrypting activist, by default, or just another passive-ist consumer being pasture-ized and homogenized. It has a dialogical energy that lifts it beyond the diatribalism of rogue philosophizing that often sings the hacktivists' body electric, and, again, the supplementary links make the experience of reading the transcript rather interactive, which seems all too appropriate. But most importantly, the WGMW's subject matter and the themes that emerge from it, when weighed up against Schmidt-Cohen's pseudo-Nietzschean TNDA huff-and-puffery, reveal what seem like irreconcilable world views destined for interminable future clashes, two systems of thought seemingly in collision - anarcho-libertarianism vs. totalitarian-utopianism, or, to channel Julia Kristeva, the semiotic vs. the symbolic.
The most important accomplishment of the book is the connection Assange establishes between the Google Politic and the ambitions set loose in The New Digital Age. The Schmidt-Cohen tome was originally titled The Empire of the Mind, which is in much closer alignment to their politics than the wonky-sounding TNDA, because at work in their book is an idealized vision of the world after neo-con American Exceptionalism has forcibly broken through every global barrier and established its neo-liberal dominion over all people and resources of the earth, with future presidents being the new emperors at the end of history, as Francis Fukuyama hath ordained.
In his introduction to WGMW, Assange cites a 2010 Foreign Affairs piece Schmidt-Cohen wrote, "The Digital Disruption: Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power," in which the dynamic duo discuss in detail future "coalitions of the connected" made possible with technologies "overwhelmingly provided by the private sector." Assange pulls up this telling quote:
Democratic states that have built coalitions of their militaries have the capacity to do the same with their connection technologies. . . . They offer a new way to exercise the duty to protect citizens around the world [Assange's emphasis added].
Like the justification George W. Bush used to ignore sovereignty and make war in countries "too weak or unable to fight terrorism," the 'duty to protect' principle, is a militaristic co-optation and corruption of humanitarian intervention theory, as well as the clearest indication yet that the Internet has already been militarized and that we are now in the normalization phase. As a literal battlefield it is to be controlled by the strongest military, making Obama, as Commander-in-Chief, the principle 'decider' for future Internet policies. Schmidt-Cohen are the Good Cop face to a long-time extant US foreign policy succinctly summed up, absolutely unapologetically, by Bad Cops, like former Latin American CIA chief Duane Clarridge, who helped arrange for the overthrow of Chile's Salvador Allende. Says Bad Cop Clarridge, "We'll intervene whenever we feel it's in our interest to so, and if you don't like it, lump it. Get used to it world. We're not going to put up with any nonsense." There is no functional difference between the political principles espoused by Schmidt-Cohen and that of Clarridge. None.
But, Assange makes clear, alloy this political mandate with the technological vision Schmidt-Cohen reveal in The Empire of the Mind and you have a profoundly disturbing nightmare scenario that clearly threatens the sanity of our species if not its very existence. As Assange points out, there is in the Schmidt-Cohen manifestive a banality that seeks to assuage and seduce, like a 1950s TV ad high on Twilight Zone smack, which serves to distract from consequences and implications. So, for instance, Schmidt-Cohen tells us how good buddy Amazon can help solve so many problems with their ever-so-clever algorithms (but doesn't tell you how the two buddies collaborate with intelligence agencies).
"For example," the two tell us, "Amazon is able to take its data on merchants and, using algorithms, develop customized bank loans to offer them--in some cases when traditional banks have completely shut their doors." Oh, so, kinda like that cool subprime loan thing-a-ma-jiggy, right? But, getting stranger than strange,
As for life's small daily tasks, [Amazon's] information systems will streamline many of them for people living in those countries, such as integrated clothing machines (washing, drying, folding, pressing and sorting) that keep an inventory of clean clothes and algorithmically suggest outfits based on the user's daily schedule. [emphasis added]
And, if it stopped there, that would be sufficient to give pause to a sane person. But the two plough on with what may be the proverbial kicker. We mustn't underestimate the value of future holograph boxes, they tell us, in which you can find entertainment by immersing yourself in various virtual excursions: "Worried your kids are becoming spoiled? Have them spend some time wandering around the Dharavi slum in Mumbai." (What about a lesson in social justice; maybe send the kids to Ferguson with sniper guns? Maybe have the kids holographically visit Yemen to see what a cluster bomb does to an suspecting wedding party?) This is "transformative"? Visionary?
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