Scientia potentia est: Intelligence in Raiding

[Manson]

By North East Somerset, this essay is taken from RaiderCon 2015. It's a great overview of his career and intelligence operations.

A bit of Latin in the title, but this is not an elaborate essay backed up with synthetic sources. It's a personal story about my time in the game, and why I believe "knowledge is power" in Nationstates.

In early 2004 I joined NS, aged 13, with a group of friends from school. I found my interests extended beyond answering issues though, and got involved in a variety of activities, including International Incidents RPing, but also began participating in informal invader groups. Eventually, after getting my main nation deleted (I've never really received a proper explanation for this, but it was probably due to a contentious invasion of a region called The Unforgiven, and the natives lying to the moderators who took sympathy with them) I became involved with DEN through joint missions. They were professional raiders and took it all a lot more seriously than what I'd experienced before, but as I dug deeper I found they were also disjointed and disunited. Clearly there were also major problems with leaks, and the Leadership under MCS was inactive as well, but they were still better than what I'd experienced before. Seeing the potential for improvement though, I co-founded The New DEN as Praedonia, then a Captain (but ultimately Colonel and 3rd in Command of the DEN). Our subgroup ended up uniting under General Franks who took control of the various factions as Field Marshal, consolidating his leadership over the brand through consistent activity and his charisma.

For a while, it was a fairly effective lean mean raiding machine, and unquestionably the best at the time, despite the leaks. Some new tactics were brought in, but generally it was just a matter of good old fashioned dedication. We scored a decent number of victories. But this was not to last, for Defenders were becoming ever more politically dominant in the game - and our counter-intelligence systems were totally inadequate. As Defenders moved forwards with large multi-lateral alliances like RLA and ADN, and ever growing sophistication and knowledge, we stood still, doing what we had always done. Little aware of the fate which awaited us.

The fate that awaited us was Grippsholm, aka. The Red Factions. Franks was always going to retire at some point, but it was hastened by a series of deletions of his nations. Grippsholm took over, but he worked for the RLA, who were engrossed in political arguments with ADN. At some point Unistrut gained knowledge of the operation and threatened to reveal it, which led to him destroying the DEN. From my perspective, I had seen this coming for a long time, but my demands for more robust counter-intelligence efforts had been largely ignored. Something had to change, or this would just be repeated again and again.

That something different was GB&I, founded in December 2004, but not properly started till March 2005. Originally it was part of a DEN strategy to gain a foothold in the British sphere of regions, which were quite significant at that point - but it ended up being established as a region in it's own right, complete with a set of Laws to act as a framework for a British Parliamentary System. GB&I soon began to interact with other regions, namely by joining the ABI, an alliance of British regions. Therein began a conflict between USK, led by the Mighty Pump, who was Military General of USK and General-Secretary of the RLA - and our sphere of interests who wanted to conduct raiding operations. This precipitated the Battle of Palestine in April 2005, in which GB&I was forced out of the region after two months in occupation by a coalition of defender groups summoned by USK. The battle involved 102 nations from various defender groups such as the RLA and the ADN, and 84 on the side of GB&I, mainly from The Union, of which GB&I was a protectorate at the time.

This was a large battle for the time. But it would have never happened were it not for our Lead nation on Palestine going inactive. He turned out to be a spy as well. 50 posts, not properly vetted. We had to do better. And so it was from this that I began setting up counter intelligence activities, talking with other regions, and building up knowledge about our enemies. GB&I went from strength to strength, and by late 2005 it had left the ailing ABI, and joined ACCEL. Around the same time we also formed the Quadruplex Alliance with Global Right Alliance, Scarfaces and Sangria Sands - who often provided us information.

It was in December 2005 that the DEN successor region, Invaders, had their forums destroyed, by Ketoprofen and TRF. As I had predicted, the purist raiding set up was incredibly vulnerable to infiltration, because of the low standards of contribution required to reach high levels, and the lack of interaction outside of military activities. Just like with TBH and DEN, they had been infiltrated, and deleted. But we were safe, in GB&I.

This time though some Defenders tried to distance themselves from it from the outset, with the RLA claiming that they were rogue agents. The Agents themselves claimed to be working for TPC not RLA Intelligence. Blackbird was of course Delegate of TPC, as well as in charge of RLA Intelligence. The idea he wasn’t involved in this is preposterous, as I’ve outlined in post #2929, #2932 and #2936 from August 31st 2014, in The Rejected Times thread.

Blackbird proclaimed the "the operation as a shining success" and "an appropriate correction for their insolence" - before later backtracking under political pressure from ADN, and his dual identity of Cortath in TNM. The Mighty Pump, GB&I’s enemy in USK, weighed in with "All that was destroyed was posts. Posts by irritating people, who can't punctuate properly, which have little to no use for anybody." Pump further lashed out at ACCEL, denouncing those who were "trying to make the situation awkward for Cortath." This was a sign of the times, that defenders were able to say such nonsense with such indignation, and mainly get away with it.

ACCEL had some significant alliance with members, namely The New Meritocracy, but also some other regions like Conservative Paradise, Galts Gulch, Alpha Omega, etc. It had experienced members who knew what they were doing, it had connections - it had the means to build knowledge. There were problems though along the way, such as the Cortath who was Consul of TNM, but also the dual identity of Blackbird. The toleration of this was absurd, and it was purely a matter of political willpower to remove him from ACCEL, which eventually was achieved.

From there I served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs for ACCEL, and Secretary of Intelligence - in control of their organisation, The Invisible Hand. This gave me considerable resources, and contacts, across Nationstates. Meanwhile In GB&I I stressed the importance of building up diplomatic ties and intelligence networks with the kind of systematic efficiency that once had been reserved only for raiding activities. We had over 50 embassies, and were beginning to hit well above our weight in international affairs. By 2006-7, we were able to co-operate on raids with an ever changing but wide band of mainly forum based regions, like Gatesville, EoE, TLK, LKE, Europeia, Catlandatopia, and many others.

We were engaging in raiding activities with a wide variety of partners, and were able to lead some missions. But more importantly we also had a lot of exposure to intelligence networks from across the game, and were able to gain considerable insight into the affairs of ADN and FRA, through connections and spies. By this point the ADN was so leaky everyone knew everything going on there, and it wasn’t long till its demise was underway. We always took the approach with TITO, that if it kept itself to itself, we wouldn’t bother it either. Actually, around this point, we were forced to invest in some spying on raider regions, specifically TBoB and BoC, because they were opposing our interests and generally being troublesome. But this was to be short lived, and as they demised, successor raiding organisations co-operated closely with our sphere.

GB&I began to be closely tied to TNI, LKE and EoE - we then formed the Congress of Sovereigns with them. Co-operation led to a series of major military battles, the largest of which was Marxist Leninist Party, an 89-82 victory, with Congress of Sovereigns (TNI, GB&I, LKE, EoE) and Catlandatopia, fighting against FRA, ADN, TITO et al, in June 2007. By now I was Director of Intelligence in TNI and LKE as well as GB&I.

With the demise of EoE and LKE, a new alliance, SRATO was formed. TLK and Europeia, up and coming regions, joined it alongside GB&I and TNI. These regions had all worked together in the undercover War Council, alongside Gatesville, which had been involved in various GCR coups, including the occupation of Lazarus which was wrested from the control of Northern Chittowa, by then an FRA stalwart. In August 2008, a large battle was fought in Rajahland, in which SRATO accumulated 108 troops along with it’s allies, although they lost against the 120 that the defender forces accumulated. This showed even then the considerable might of Defenders and their numerical superiority. Most GCRs will still defender leaning, but increasingly neutral.

TNI went from strength to strength, particularly in intelligence matters. A huge database was set up, to help protect us from the increasing threat of the FRA, which we knew had a growing interest in our sphere. By now Europeia had emerged as a new powerhouse, and it was to go on to become one of the greatest regions in NS history. Independence as a philosophy became the modus operandi of the sphere, rather than cumbersome multi-lateral alliances. I built up a network of intelligence offices across a variety of regions, with considerable resources at my disposal, and a common and effective system for operations.

It would be around this point I can give an example of what we achieved from what I wrote last night in Gameplay, here; http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic ... 2&t=346730

Of course knowledge isn't all about intelligence. The raiding revival couldn’t have happened without the mastery of update timing, which I also worked on in the early stages, culminating in Halcones’ tool which he shared with us. Knowledge extends to many facets, it isn’t all about understanding your enemies, but understanding the system as well is crucial. To that end I also worked on Influence, and was instrumental in finding the equations, which came in useful during the TSP and Osiris coups of 2013 - again proving that regions which engage in raiding, can be crucial participants in major NS Gameplay events. Also I solved the passwording influence equation which was crucial in the victory in Nazi Europe. With knowledge, came opportunities. But we could have never got to this position to take advantage of such innovation, if we were unable to insulate ourselves from our ideological enemies, the defenders.

I can only say that we gained, through various missions, intelligence trading and connections with FRA & UDL - a direct and deep insight into the inner workings of the defenders who sought to take us down. This became crucial in combating them on an even footing. We took the fight to them. I don’t believe that without the Intelligence and Military resources of the “political regions that raid” sphere, that the great Raiding revival that started in 2011, would have even been possible. The political regions, by fighting defenders at their own game, took the pressure off purist raiding orgs, allowing their more vulnerable model to survive whilst Defenders poured their diplomatic, intelligence and military efforts into trying to defeat what we have subsequently branded the Independent and Imperialist spheres.

Today, a wide spectrum of NS regions accept Raiding, including many GCRs, most of whom were under the wing of Defender alliances when I started the game. Indeed, to exemplify the shift, both of the two newest nsinkers which in many ways represent the modern game have been able to engage in raiding, and its been a pleasure to be involved in Balder for example to see this through. This massive achievement of bringing raiding activities to such a wide spectrum has been made possible by the commitment of all those who chose to widen the scope of their activities and thus knowledge. People like Todd McCloud and Evil Wolf for example, but by no means only. The widening of raiding activities from small and vulnerable groups, to the most advanced political regions in the game, has benefited raiding as a practice tremendously, indeed, it was crucial in its survival.

Raiding was looked down on by Defenders as a failing art, a backwards system. And in some ways it was very single dimensional, predictable - and easy to infiltrate. What a long journey it has been that we can stand where we do now. Raiding, far from being wiped out as a practice, has matched and even beaten Defenders, on countless occasions; diplomatically, politically, militarily - across the board. Something that was unthinkable when I joined the game, and would never have been possible without the knowledge we have built up and utilised over the years. Knowledge of all aspects; military, politics, diplomacy - gained through a variety of networking and intelligence, as well as plain old learning through experience.

What this story is really all about though is my realisation. A realisation out of necessity really - out of the destruction we endured, the defeats we suffered - the blatantly inferior position we were in. I made a decision to not go on being weak, but to fight back. But I came to understand we could not do this without understanding how the wider world worked, and being actively involved in it. We had to acquire knowledge, to have any real power.