What do science fiction writer William Gibson, global guerrilla theorist John Robb, libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, and the late historian David Halberstam agree about?

Still, it is hard for me to believe that anyone who knew anything about Vietnam, or for that matter the Algerian war, which directly followed Indochina for the French, couldn’t see that going into Iraq was, in effect, punching our fist into the largest hornet’s nest in the world.

— The Late Halberstam’s Final Verdict on Bush: “He’s No Truman”, by Adam Howard, alternet.org, 5:38 AM on July 5, 2007.

One could add Napoleon in Russia and the British in America. Funny how fighting in Russia in the winter wasn’t like Italy in the summer.

History is relevant to management of future risk. We can continue to treat information security as if single machines or companies could be secured, even though there is no perimeter. Or we can realize that black swans can fly over walls, start building coordinated detection and response, and produce usable metrics that make sense to technologists, executives, and customers.

-jsq