The perception of power

One of the first times we met I noticed a book on your table: “The Prince” by Machiavelli. What have you learned about power in 10 years of WikiLeaks?

“My conclusion is that most power structures are deeply incompetent, staffed by people who don’t really believe in their institutions and that most power is the projection of the perception of power. And the more secretively it works, the more incompetent it is, because secrecy breeds incompetence, while openness breeds competence, because one can see and can compare actions and see which one is more competent. To keep up these appearances, institutional heads or political heads such as presidents spend most of the time trying to walk in front of the train and pretending that it is following them, but the direction is set by the tracks and by the engine of the train. Understanding that means that small and committed organisations can outmanoeuvre these institutional dinosaurs, like the State Department, the NSA or the CIA”.

Julian Assange, La Repubblica, Stefania Maurizi.

#actualité

1. Le 4 janvier 2017,
Karl, La Grange

My conclusion is that most power structures are deeply incompetent, staffed by people who don’t really believe in their institutions and that most power is the projection of the perception of power. And the more secretively it works, the more incompetent it is, because secrecy breeds incompetence, while openness breeds competence, because one can see and can compare actions and see which one is more competent.

J’ai l’impression qu’il fait un raccourci (enfin dans le passage cité), ce raccourci apparaît ici. small and committed organisations

Understanding that means that small and committed organisations can outmanoeuvre these institutional dinosaurs, like the State Department, the NSA or the CIA

N’est-ce pas tant la taille des groupes gérés, plutôt que le secret de la structure de pouvoir, qui génère cette incompétence. La transparence (ou l’abondance de l’information) est un moyen comme un autre de cacher l’information car elle donne l’impossibilité du recul tout autant que le secret. Elle désensibilise aussi. Donc bien que la transparence (je préfère parler d’accès) de l’information est importante, la taille des structures l’est tout autant à mon avis.
2. Le 10 janvier 2017,
GM

Dans le fond, Assange ne manque pas d’une certaine ironie…