Example Strategic Citizen: Milwaukee’s Jill Welytok

The local paper reports:

Once a month in southeastern Wisconsin, three groups of inventors meet with people who want to help them.
[…]
At their core is a Milwaukee-area woman aiming to help change a culture.
[…]
“If you have a good product that you can produce, or that someone else can produce within the appropriate margins, you have access to a worldwide network for promoting it,” Welytok said.
[…]
Welytok is pounding on that message with what she says are more than 100 clients of the Milwaukee law firm she started in 2005, Absolute Technology Law Group LLC. She’s also hammering out her message at monthly meetings of three inventors and entrepreneurs clubs that meet in Mequon, West Bend and downtown Milwaukee.

Welytok has been facilitating the Mequon and West Bend groups for two years. She formed the Milwaukee group last month with some prodding from David Linz, southeast regional director for the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Network.

Welytok jumped on it – no surprise from a woman who wrote six books, earned a master’s degree in computer science and sat for the patent bar exam while she stayed at home raising three kids.
[…]
“Jill should be the celebration of this town. She understands innovation, entrepreneurship and how moms and pops can take their dreams and convert them into real businesses or markets – and she’s honest with people about whether it will work or not,” said Dan Steininger, co-director of the Successful Entrepreneur Investors group and an organizer for BizStarts Milwaukee, a nonprofit group that fosters innovation and entrepreneurship in southeastern Wisconsin.

Her name is Jill Welytok, a patent lawyer who grew up in Skokie, Ill., watching her dad invent the motion-sensitive fish that wiggles on a plaque.

Milwaukee is better off for having people like her.

“YouTube bans terrorism training videos”

Found via SlashDot:

The Google-owned portal will ban footage that advertises terrorism or extremist causes and supporters of the change hope it will blunt al-Qaeda’s strong media online campaign.
[…]
n addition to the ban on terror training videos, the new YouTube guidelines includes bans on videos that incite others to commit violent acts, videos on how to make bombs, and footage of sniper attacks.

The internet has become a powerful tool for terrorism recruitment. What was once conducted at secret training camps in Afghanistan is now available to anyone, anywhere because of the web.

Chatrooms are potent recruitment tools, but counterterrorism officials have found terrorist-sponsored videos are also key parts of al-Qaeda’s propaganda machine.

“It’s good news if there are less of these on the web,” FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said. “But many of these jihadist videos appear on different websites around the world, and any time there is investigative or intelligence value we actively pursue it.” [Source Link: World News Australia]

Well its about time given that whole “do no evil thing.

Side note, this appears to be partially as a result of the work of Sen. Lieberman:

The move comes after pressure on the internet search engine from Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman.

I think this would an example of a Strategic Citizen practicing his own National Security Strategy. I mean that in a good way.

Briefly: Fifth Generation Warfare and Super-Empowered Individuals

Let me state for the record, that while I think SEIs (Super-Empowered Individuals) are a type of actor that can undertake 5GW:

5GWers do not need to be SEIs.

SEIs can do more things then 5GW.

There is some overlap in the thinking and the people doing the thinking on 5GW and SEI.

They are not the same thing!

Note: This is my current working definition of 5GW…

5GW is the secret deliberative manipulation of actors, networks, institutions, states or any 0GW/1GW/2GW/3GW/4GW forces to achieve a goal or set of goals across a combination of socio, economic, and political domains while attempting to avoid or minimize the retaliatory offensive or defensive actions/reactions of 0GW/1GW/2GW/3GW/4GW powered actors, networks, institutions, and/or states.

..and this is a good (as any) definition of an SEI (from ZenPundit)…

A super empowered individual, in my view, is autonomously capable of creating a cascading event that grand strategist Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett has termed a ” system perturbation”; a disruption of system function and invalidation of existing rule sets to at least the national but more likely the global scale. The key requirements to become “superempowered” are comprehension of a complex system’s connectivty and operation; access to critical network hubs; possession of a force that can be leveraged against the structure of the system and a willingness to use it.

…which is distinct from a Strategic Citizen…

Ordinary individuals and/or Super-Empowered Individuals who
successfully make use of any of the technological, socio, economic, or political domains to have a strategic impact on the world.

…and Strategic Citizens may or may not undertake Strategic Citizen 5GW as a possible range of activities. The Strategic Citizen 5GW style is defined as:

The purposeful action of 5GW by Strategic Citizen (SC) actors who are unconnected in any way except for the desired related end effects to be achieved through the sum of the individual actions.

As Arherring wrote at Dreaming 5GW, SEIs have a range of possible activities:

This is how super-empowered individuals relate to Fifth Generation Warfare theory. Super-empowered individuals may choose to follow any doctrine they desire: 4GW, Global Guerillaism, socialism, tribalism, terrorism, anarchism or capitalism. They may apply their leveraged knowledge in the manner that best suits their goals and aspirations. It makes sense that Super-Empowered Angry Men are most likely to choose the most violent and destructive doctrine within their means. I do not think the essential nature of Fifth Generation Warfare with its long-term planning horizon fits that description. For super-empowered individuals with a strategic mindset, 5GW may be an attractive doctrine and super-empowered individuals may prove to be 5GWs most effective practitioners

Questions? Comments? Additions? Correction? Disagree? Agree? What say you?