FermanMonteRae

“Consider what would happen if one of these parties gave up their mobile phones, fax and email correspondence—let alone the computer systems which manage their [subscribers], donors, budgets, polling, call centres and direct mail campaigns. They would immediately fall into an organisational stupor and lose to the other.”

And how to induce that “organisational stupor?” Foment the fear that any correspondence could leak at any time.

“The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive ‘secrecy tax’) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaptation.”

…

The last decade has shown just how prescient Assange was. Take, for example, the Russian hackers who published private files from the World Anti-Doping Agency after Russia’s athletes got banned from the Olympics for doping. “Now a group like WADA has to take everything they say to every person into account. They have to think, this could leak,” says Dave Aitel, a former NSA staffer and founder of the security firm Immunity who focuses on cyberwar and information warfare. “The idea is, ‘If we can prevent them from having secrets, they have to operate very differently.’”

That move comes straight from Assange. “It was a crappy, annoying manifesto,” Aitel says. “And it was ahead of its time by many years.”