The modern age has not just made the world flat, it has made it transparent. Just as the internet lowered the barriers to entry in the areas of reporting and commentary from everything from pet cats to grand strategy, so too has it changed the ability of military forces to move with any degree of confidence that they can control who knows where they are when.
A great example of this real-time OSNIT has been around for centuries, but what has changed is the timeline has moved from weeks to instantaneous. If there is an IP connection, you are being watched in real time. No way to block it – you just have to live with it.
For Mr Guvenc, 51, and a group of four friends, the parade of military hardware through their city is irresistible. Sipping coffee from a stunning balcony with a panoramic view of the channel, they explain that the photographs they share online are pored over by military strategists and analysts around the world.
“Usually these ships are out of sight. We don’t know what they are doing,” explains Devrim Yaylali, 45, an economist who has been spotting ships for nearly 30 years. “The Bosphorus or the port is the only place you can see them.”
His friend Yoruk Isik, 45, an international affairs consultant, chips in: “Here, you can be in Starbucks with an espresso and a ship is literally 250 metres away.” The sharp bends and strong currents in the channel means that the boats must slow right down to manoeuvre, making them easy to photograph. “There’s no other place on earth where you can capture them so well.”
That is the easiest way to do, but it applies world wide. Sure, you can sneak B-2 in to Diego Garcia, if you wanted to. Are you going to be able to hide a large scale movement anywhere else?
Real time video is no longer a competitive advantage that we have. It is quickly becoming a global commodity.
Smartphones, drones, commercial imaging satellites, and just the byproduct of a much more populated, connected, and vigilant world; we are all under the all-seeing eye. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
There are some positives to this. You have more effect with well positioned presence ops, feints, or for the highly sophisticated – “gaslighting” the enemy so their OODA loop becomes a mobius strip.
That last bit. That is the fun part. What isn’t fun is knowing that you have to assume that wherever you are, if you can see something besides water, even a small terrorist cell may know right where you are real time. Regardless of what you may or may not see, you may be seen anyway.
