At the Texas Regional Infrastructure Security Conference last week, I heard Howard Schmidt speak. He mentioned the Spanish Armada.

Doubtless you all remember that in 1588 King Philip II of Spain sent a huge fleet of ships to conquer the England of Elizabeth I (130 ships and 30,000 men), but weather and other circumstances intervened and the invasion failed. Many factors led to this invasion, ranging from Elizabeth not having married Philip like her sister Mary had done, to Elizabeth like her father Henry VIII being a Protestant and Philip being a Catholic with authorization from the Pope to go take back England for Holy Mother Church, not to mention the usual great power land-acquisition game that was popular at the time; Philip already owned large chunks of Europe through the inheritance and marriage policies of his Hapsburg family, and large parts of the New World through conquest.

Howard Schmidt went straight to an even more basic reason: control of commerce.

He didn’t go into detail about what that meant, but suffice it to say that Brittania did not rule the waves in those days; if anybody did, it was Spain. Yet Spanish pay packets and treasure galleons were constantly at risk from English freebooters such as Hawkins and Drake, and one pay ship was even siezed at harbor in Plymouth on its way to Flanders to pay the Spanish army.

Schmidt drew an analogy with the Internet. Increasing amounts of commerce pass over the Internet, making it the sea of commerce of these days. We don’t want any one government or other entity controling the Internet.

I agree with him.

I would also take the analogy further (as I already did years ago in a column). One reason the Spanish Armada lost was that it depended on huge ships that were slow and hard to maneuver, while the English depended on smaller ships and boats, many of them not even military. The English were also watching, saw the Spanish coming, gave warning, and got ships behind them, thus gaining the advantage of surprise and position even before the weather intervened. The English wore the Spanish down by bombarding them as they were approaching Flanders, even before the Spanish were ready to attack, and then the English followed up by drifting fireships into the anchored Armada. By the time the main naval battle took place, the Spanish had lost so enough warships that each side had about the same number of ships of the line, but the English still had advantages of maneuvering tactics and firepower. The English won. Then the weather wore away many of the remaining ships as the Armada crawled around the north of Scotland to get back to Spain.

Early warning, communications, surprise, maneuverability, and initiative won over centralization, plodding planning, and sheer size.

Let’s keep the Internet decentralized.

-jsq