Nexus 7: America’s Orwellian Project in Afghanistan – a pilot for USA?

Now that America will soon start its “withdrawal” of troops from Afghanistan, the brainiacs over at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, have developed Nexus 7, which, “aims to tap that data [“exabytes” collected by American troops during the war] to find out more about the U.S.’ alleged friends: the people of Afghanistan, and how they interact with their government and with one another.” Much of this data also comes from America’s amorphous and ever growing intelligence apparatus:

On the military’s classified network, however, Darpa technologists pitch Nexus 7 as far-reaching and revolutionary, culling “hundreds of existing data sources from multiple Agencies and Services” to produce “population-centric, cultural intelligence.”

They boast of Nexus 7’s ties to special operations and to America’s most secretive surveillance groups, and its sophisticated tools to “perform automated cross-correlation and analysis of massive, sparse datasets — recomputing stability indicators within minutes of new data updates.”

In practice, that means Nexus 7 culls the vast U.S. spy apparatus to figure out which communities in Afghanistan are falling apart and which are stabilizing; which are loyal to the government in Kabul and which are falling under the influence of the militants.

As if this does not sound frightening enough, tracking the movements and actions of an entire nation some 7,000 miles away, someone with intimate knowledge of the project ominously asked, “Let’s take that God’s-eye view…Instead of tracking a car, why not track all cars?” Such a mindset is a cause for great concern. Following the deadliest month for Afghan civilians in the history of the decade long war, has American imperialism become so cold and calculated that the Afghan people are not only shown a disregard for life, but their liberties as well? And if this project can be done halfway across the world, how much longer until Americans are mere cogs in a “population centric” model?

via Nexus 7: America’s Orwellian Project in Afghanistan « Antiwar.com Blog.