No wikis for you!

Interesting brief article on crowdsourcing young Army officers…

They might not build $150-million F-22 stealth fighters, but in other ways insurgents and terrorists are amazingly tech savvy. For one, they’re hip to using grungy, bare-bones websites to spread tactics and ideology across the planet on the cheap, transforming once-isolated local and regional conflicts into genuine threats to global stability. Author John Robb calls this “open-source warfare,” and believes it’s the most important force shaping the 21st century.

If so, we’re screwed. Seven years after the launch of Wikipedia — the user-edited online encyclopedia that brought the “open source” concept to the masses — the U.S. Army is still playing catch-up. The Army’s idea of harnessing the ‘net is to launch isolated websites, put generals in charge and lock everything behind passwords, while banning popular open-source civilian websites. Colonel James Galvin, head of the Army’s “Battle Command Knowledge System,” openly admits that when it comes to the collaborative internet, the bad guys have a “niche advantage.” (Wired)