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54 Are the Androids Dreaming Yet?

John Masters stood up to address General Stanley A. McChrystal and his military staff in Kabul. The topic, of course, the war in Afghanistan. The main war lasted only eight weeks, but this did not end the conflict. A level of tribal violence and insurgent warfare rumbled on for years, killing around 30 people a week. Masters’ job was to explain the dynamics of Afghanistan and provide politicians and military commanders a framework to understand what was going on.

Think about your country for a moment. What maintains the fabric of society – police, family, the local charity club, church, newspapers, the broadcast media? All these institutions work to keep us civilized, but what happens if a country loses them? There are institutions in Afghanistan, good and bad: tribes, gangs, corrupt officials, families. Masters had spent a year investigating these interactions, and questioning the returning commanders. He and his team believed that understanding the dynamics of the conflict was the key to bringing peace to Afghanistan.

If you live in an industrialized country, you rarely see society without its civilizing web in place. One interesting ‘experiment’ that shows what happens when it fails was the 1976 traffic police strike in Finland. Finland is a fantastically law abiding country where most people obey both the written and unwritten laws. During the strike, this behavior changed. Many people began parking illegally but refrained from blocking the roads. A few took advantage of the absence of police to drive incredibly fast – twice the national limit. These would be labeled as ‘defectors’ in game theory. Without traffic police, a different automotive

[Photo of military conference with banner in background containing non-Latin script]

General Stanley A. McChrystal

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