Australian of the Year: Julian Assange

The problem this creates for governments becomes an organisational dilemma it must solve. If the conspiracy must operate in the shadows, how does it communicate, plan, makes decisions, discipline itself, and meet new challenges? The answer is, by directing information flows. But once those flows are disrupted or corrupted and the organization’s goals have been publicised, then the electorate is stirred to radical action and the power of the conspiracy is diluted, but alas rarely extinguished.

Members of a conspiracy collect data about the world in which they operate, process it amongst themselves and then act on the result. Their “actions” are aimed at altering or maintaining a preferred (political) environment.

Assange’s end game is to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the conspiracy’s dynamic environment. The point is not to evaluate if a particular leak is effective in say modifying a government policy or directive. Instead, the goal is to disable the conspiracy’s data collection and processing systems, which will at first slow then impede the cabal’s functioning, to the point of destroying its abilities to be effective. Once it is no longer effective, it will shut itself down and the cabal will be no longer.

And that’s his point.

He isn’t after a change in one policy, such as Western governments conspiring to keep autocrats reigning over hundreds of millions of Muslims from North Africa to the Arabian Gulf. Not at all. On the contrary, his goal is to remind us of the conspiratorial functions of every government. All governments lie to their electorates, some peddle bigger lies than others. Some lie with greater regularity.

What are our instincts about government? Will we be smitten with the Stockholm Syndrome and see governments as opaque as they are becoming more and more transparent? Or will we celebrate that someone, somehow displayed the courage and applied the technology to unmask those in the West who deceive their electorates both in times of peace and in times of war, for what is most likely their personal gain.