The ORBs of GOG

John Paul Jones, 2002, updated 2004

As the cyber curtain falls over an unwitting world, enmeshing the industrialized nations in an inextricable sheath of surveillance, cyberspace becomes the surreal theatre of warfare wherein the controllers of the internet will dominate distant battlefields while comfortably ensconced in remote bunkers and underground cities, unleashing death, destruction, and mayhem from Opto-electrical Rotating Browser Bots (ORBs) connected, via the internet, to mobile machines equipped with TROLL cams and the most sophisticated weapons yet devised by humankind. Whoever controls cyberspace will control the world.

To those who control cyberspace, war will resemble a sophisticated artificial intelligence game, a new techno-sport, but to those at the receiving end of the incredible new technology, war will be dirty, ugly, monstrous, and horrible, as always. Even so, history will offer no precedent to this anti-revolutionary warfare, because, first, there will be no outside nation to help those who resist, and secondly, the possibility of gaining victory over the adversary will be remote indeed, since the brains behind the machines will be out of harm's way.

But first, the people of the industrialized nations must become utterly dependent upon the internet. Already we see what appears to be a deliberate strategy to accomplish this: web-based software that cannot be registered or used without first connecting to the internet; web-based hardware that cannot be run unless connected to the internet; the elimination from the marketplace of any portable, hand-held device, which could substitute for a desktop or laptop PC, which essentially makes all hand-held devices mere extensions of an internet-dependent desktop device; the lure of unfiltered and uncontrolled information available only on the web, which, in addition to free porn and free email, lures many into internet-dependence; the plan envisioned and promoted by CIA asset Ellison, CEO of Oracle, to make the "the network [the internet] the computer," which simply means that the real powers (the CIA and NSA) of the information age will work quietly behind the scenes to make Ellison's vision a vestige of reality. These trends, and many others, tend to assure the advent of TOTE (Technology of Total Enslavement).

Next, once most people in the industrialized nations cannot think or dream of living without internet access, the content of the internet will begin to be filtered and controlled, and, of course, taxed to support GOG's voracious appetite. This is tricky for the powers that be. By not filtering internet content, they run the risk that too many people will catch on to what they're up to. On the other hand, if they blatantly filter the content, people will disconnect from the net in droves and ire against the powers will fulminate and fester. However, since their goal is total control, they no doubt plan to become the gatekeepers of cyberspace--a truly frightening prospect when you consider that the dehumanization of the kleptocrats will be exacerbated even beyond our present capacity to endure as they become increasingly isolated from interaction with the general public in their cyberized ivory towers and can destroy at will any individual by manipulating their digital image.

Future cyber-warriors, instead of scrambling outside to jump in the cockpit of a human-controlled aircraft, will instead buckle themselves into an ORB (Opto-Electrical Rotating Browser Bot). This device will remain stationary but simulate real flight by spinning the "pilot" around inside the ORB as the pilot directs. Using the ORB, the cyber-warrior will remotely control a hovercraft equipped with sensors and multiple cameras of various kinds; the information from the mobile unit (the hovercraft) will be fed, via the internet, to the ORB in such a way that the pilot will have the illusion of actually being buckled into the mobile craft. When the pilot turns the ORB to the left, signals are sent at the speed of light through the internet, then wirelessly transmitted from a remote station in the mobile unit's vicinity, thus positioning the mobile craft's cameras in that direction.

Likewise, inside the ORB, there will be cameras and sensors to feed information to the control center or another pilot, so they can see and communicate with the pilot remotely. That way, multiple mobile units can not only operate in sync, just as they would if they were flying along-side each other in formation, but if need be, they can view what's transpiring inside another ORB. This will also allow pilot crews to be shifted out without needing to land the mobile units. Global Hawk technology can control an aircraft remotely, honing in on a specified target or sending the craft to a designated destination, but the drawback, of course, is, first, that you lose a lot of flexibility which goes with having a "hands-on" human controlling the craft.

Secondly, a non-internet control system depends, presumably, upon GPS satellite communications to triangulate and locate the mobile craft, and any war machine or surveillance system that depends upon satellite transmissions will be severely impaired in the event of a thermonuclear war, which will, I'm told, creates atmospheric interference that could render GPS tracking unreliable. Not so with an internet-based surveillance/war machine, since DARPA designed the internet to withstand a nuclear exchange by automatically re-routing traffic around damaged nodes.

The TROLL cam system will allow the ORB pilot to hover outside a building, then target the building's inside TROLL cams for monitoring, thus allowing the pilot to see the target(s) before and after they exit a building. Already the underground bunkers, the hover craft, and the TROLL cam system are rumored to be in development. As for the ORBs themselves, which are the stationary units that interface with the mobile craft via the internet TROLL cam system, there's not, to my knowledge, any evidence that they've been under development, but as for me, I nevertheless have no doubt that they are being developed, very secretly, and news of them will be forthcoming in time.

[Underground tunnel-maker machine.]

Sources: "Surveillance Nation", Dan Farmer, 2003, Technology Review "", Technology Review