Mesan Alignment post war

Sigs wrote:The MA in their new nation can know the identity of every agents, but only a handful of agents will know who they are working for, those at the top who die before they surrender. If one of the agents in the know is killed their entire network is written off. Basically this would be a cell structure like the once used in the revolt in Mobius, if one guy is compromised he can only identify a handful of people in his cell, the higher up you go the more can be ID'ed but safeguards can be placed there, the G intelligence services cant be all over the galaxy.

What if they don't know they've been compromised? If counter-intelligence can isolate a leak or, even better, feed it false intel, they can keep the enemy in the dark about the channel having been detected at all (or mislead them). If they don't know they've been compromised, they won't be redoubling efforts to establish more channels.

That is what the Ghost Hunters were doing: when they identified some possible agents, they didn't take them out of the loop immediately, but instead backtracked the flow of information and/or money as far as they could, to identify more people in the network.

In a cell structure, that would be tracking to the next cell up and the one after that, if possible. That could lead to actually backtracking to trips to the Felix Wormhole.

Freighter with a DB in its hold. Space is huge, sneaking a freighter that looks like every other freighter in the galaxy through the verge, parking it in an unidentified and unoccupied system shouldn’t be too hard, different system every year since I think there would plenty of empty systems in human occupied space.

That's a good idea. The MAlign would definitely have the resources to build such a ship.

You don’t control anything, this is intelligence so that you keep up to date over the centuries you are building up your strength, so you can take advantage of any technological breakthroughs in the rest of humanity while also working on your own research. Playing galactic chess obviously doesn’t work as well as they though, spending the next 600 years building their networks, keeping informed and building up their industry and military would work. If in 600 years they want to go conquer the rest of humanity they can do so, if they want to retry their plan, they can do so safe with the knowledge that there is a large MA fleet at their back should they need it, but that is centuries in the future, centuries that will separate the SEM/RoH/SL from the events of 1922-1923, so in 600 years chances are that people will have more pressing issues than to dig up who killed 100,000,000+ million people in 1921-1922 and possibly billions of slaves before hand.

Even spies need some handlers who give them instruction on what their masters are looking for. Without a control loop, the spies would continue spying on the same instructions as before and could eventually drift away from what's important. I'm not saying that the spies are dumb and would eventually begin spying on toilet-paper-making technology. I'm saying that they would not see the big picture. They may all be spying on the same thing everywhere and no one would notice the important game-changer happening in a previously-unimportant Verge system. If this had been in place before the first Manticore-Haven war, the spies would be looking at the SLN and the Fleet 2000 programme, ignoring the war between neobarbs.

Another point is that inserting or turning agents takes effort. I really don't see how you can do that with a two-year lag between the person on-hand and the final decision makers. They'd need to keep a significant presence closer by, which negates the isolation, because it is a risk that it can be tracked down.

That’s what the intelligence network is for, they keep tab on all the secret military technology and gather information about leadership of each nation, wars, international relations, everything else can be bought on civvie street. The MA keeps tabs on the rest of humanity while expanding, first they create a core of 30-40 industrialized systems over a century, build up those systems and expand from there. In 2523 they can be a nation of 1,000 systems with a strong central government, an industry that is properly organized for the good of the nation, and a powerful military. You have the same technology as the rest of humanity and whatever you have researched in the mean time. Technology from Manticore and Haven will eventually make its way to the rest of the government, technology from the MA will not make its way to the rest of humanity. The MA can safely plan, set up a schedule they follow and only they know about and launch a war if they so choose at the most advantageous time for them and the least advantages for the rest of humanity.

What's the last time that you found online plans for current military designs in the civilian, open market? Nations keep current military technology under secrecy classification until it's no longer important to keep that technology secret. Corollary: any technology that has been declassified is no longer effective against that military. So access to civilian designs does not help in military terms.

Even if they they get unrestricted access to the military secrets, they're always behind and at least two years by the time their ships come back. Their R&D may never find anything game-changing. You cannot assume the R&D you start on wormhole theoretical physics will result in creation of artificial wormholes at will. So at best they'd have warships with the same technology as the rest of the Galaxy.

The advantage in your plan is that they have a centralised economy of 1000 systems dedicated to mobilising for war. If that is possible, they'd win not in quality of their military hardware, but quantity. Throw more ships at the problem than the enemy has missiles, you win anyway.

But can you imagine controlling a population of one trillion for half a millennium? The MAlign was an organisation in the shadows, moving the Mesan pieces like puppets via their infiltration of Manpower and the other big companies, as well as the Solarian League intelligence, military, and media. They were not a state. Even in Mesa, a seccy and slave revolution was bound to happen soon. Green Pines and the crackdown that followed it was the spark that lit the powder keg, but sooner or later something else would have done it. Revolutions can be put down, but how many can they be before the populace as a whole begin to question the government? And revolutions only need to succeed once, whereas the establishment needs to succeed every time.

Which would this new 1,000 system entity be ruled and be kept on-goal for that long? If it is tyrannical, it invites revolutions. If it pretends to be open and representative, someone is going to get access to sufficient technology to go back. Policing 1,000 systems is impossible, especially if they are all space-capable and trading with each other. A ship being lost in all that traffic and being redirected is a statistical certainty.

To be honest, I question even the possibility of isolationism for the long term. That applies to Darius as well. The MAlign must know their isolation there has a limited lifetime and they can't put off the rest of the plan now that it's been activated.

The Renaissance Faction is now out in the open but only as an alternative to the SL 2.0 and a relativly small association/alliance to protect it's members in the aftermath of the League having to pull back and change.

Understand that the Alignment Alpha's that we see in the Mannerheim SDF are only the tip of the deeply imbedded people in the 12 Star Nations that make up the initial RF. It's not that the RF can't do what it was designed to do, it's that it will have to grow more slowly and continue (as always planned) to keep it's actual purpose a deep secret and be a gathering point of information for the Alignment.

Think of it as a super spreader of COVID-19. Not the Alignment, the premises and the social and genetic improvements but done in a way that does't trigger an overt clash with the Beowulf Code and other things which the Alignment want to crush. Oh, they plan on taking over but they will have to do it the way originaly planned with the RF- subversion of medical, social and political systems and indoctrination at basic levels.

At the moment, probably the wisest move by the Alignment is not force any more of it's plans into open attacks on the GA or even the SL. But it can keep gathering information and slip things in just the way it was planning to.

Brigade XO wrote:The Renaissance Faction is now out in the open but only as an alternative to the SL 2.0 and a relativly small association/alliance to protect it's members in the aftermath of the League having to pull back and change.

Understand that the Alignment Alpha's that we see in the Mannerheim SDF are only the tip of the deeply imbedded people in the 12 Star Nations that make up the initial RF. It's not that the RF can't do what it was designed to do, it's that it will have to grow more slowly and continue (as always planned) to keep it's actual purpose a deep secret and be a gathering point of information for the Alignment.

Think of it as a super spreader of COVID-19. Not the Alignment, the premises and the social and genetic improvements but done in a way that does't trigger an overt clash with the Beowulf Code and other things which the Alignment want to crush. Oh, they plan on taking over but they will have to do it the way originaly planned with the RF- subversion of medical, social and political systems and indoctrination at basic levels.

At the moment, probably the wisest move by the Alignment is not force any more of it's plans into open attacks on the GA or even the SL. But it can keep gathering information and slip things in just the way it was planning to.

I agree that is the correct path, but Darius is being lead by a 1/2 dozen control freaks with a superiority complex whose daddy just died they will want to be hands on and bring the warped plan to fruition... now.

Darius will hide for a year or 2, rebuilding it's network, building it's fleet before it acts. It should wait 20, allowing the RF to grow in power and popularity, before they reformulate the plan.

But wait 2-600 years? the RF will go their own direction, with their own flavor of the Detweiler plan. Darius (locked even further in it's echo chamber) will have a further warped, twisted version of the plan, with it's denizens being "purer than pure", and the RF version being a distant 2nd fiddle with tainted blood lines.

Sigs wrote:Freighter with a DB in its hold. Space is huge, sneaking a freighter that looks like every other freighter in the galaxy through the verge, parking it in an unidentified and unoccupied system shouldn’t be too hard, different system every year since I think there would plenty of empty systems in human occupied space.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's a good idea. The MAlign would definitely have the resources to build such a ship.

What problem would that solve (a DB in a freighter) that could not be solved by a small transport (like the Tankersley) only with a military grade compensator and the streak drive? After all a freighter with a dedicated setup to carry a DB is just as odd, if inspected, as the streak drive would be; it might be easier to hide the oddity of the streak drive. It might also be easier to set up some trade arrangement on planets of interest so the ship stops there, instead of hiding in empty systems (which requires preplanning to achieve a rendezvous).

If the streak drive is too much, then do without it.

tlb wrote:

Sigs wrote:Freighter with a DB in its hold. Space is huge, sneaking a freighter that looks like every other freighter in the galaxy through the verge, parking it in an unidentified and unoccupied system shouldn’t be too hard, different system every year since I think there would plenty of empty systems in human occupied space.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's a good idea. The MAlign would definitely have the resources to build such a ship.

What problem would that solve (a DB in a freighter) that could not be solved by a small transport (like the Tankersley) only with a military grade compensator and the streak drive? After all a freighter with a dedicated setup to carry a DB is just as odd, if inspected, as the streak drive would be; it might be easier to hide the oddity of the streak drive. It might also be easier to set up some trade arrangement on planets of interest so the ship stops there, instead of hiding in empty systems (which requires preplanning to achieve a rendezvous).

If the streak drive is too much, then do without it.

Why not a normal regularly scheduled ship making a scheduled deep space rendezvous with the Darius freighter? Or better yet, use a deep space buoy for the data tradeoff so no one sees each other.

Sigs wrote:Freighter with a DB in its hold. Space is huge, sneaking a freighter that looks like every other freighter in the galaxy through the verge, parking it in an unidentified and unoccupied system shouldn’t be too hard, different system every year since I think there would plenty of empty systems in human occupied space.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's a good idea. The MAlign would definitely have the resources to build such a ship.

tlb wrote:What problem would that solve (a DB in a freighter) that could not be solved by a small transport (like the Tankersley) only with a military grade compensator and the streak drive? After all a freighter with a dedicated setup to carry a DB is just as odd, if inspected, as the streak drive would be; it might be easier to hide the oddity of the streak drive. It might also be easier to set up some trade arrangement on planets of interest so the ship stops there, instead of hiding in empty systems (which requires preplanning to achieve a rendezvous).

If the streak drive is too much, then do without it.

Theemile wrote:Why not a normal regularly scheduled ship making a scheduled deep space rendezvous with the Darius freighter? Or better yet, use a deep space buoy for the data tradeoff so no one sees each other.

Sounds good; the more normal, the easier to hide in plain sight. As long as the regular ship is crewed by operatives.

phillies wrote:I believe there is a former world leader who tried this build up industry etc approach. Joseph Stalin. His motivation was perhaps more defending his country from capitalist imperialists, but there was perhaps also a long-term objective. In the end his state planning approach mostly failed, though it was good enough to stop the German fascists.

Yeah, I'm sure he is the only world leader who has ever tried to build up his nations industry.

Sigs wrote:Yeah, I'm sure he is the only world leader who has ever tried to build up his nations industry.

Mao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace Too bad about the 20-76 million who starved during that period, but mass murder and communism are basically synonyms for a reason.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
What if they don't know they've been compromised? If counter-intelligence can isolate a leak or, even better, feed it false intel, they can keep the enemy in the dark about the channel having been detected at all (or mislead them). If they don't know they've been compromised, they won't be redoubling efforts to establish more channels.

And I suspect that at some point over the centuries they would be able to catch that false information and build a separate intelligence gathering network.

That is what the Ghost Hunters were doing: when they identified some possible agents, they didn't take them out of the loop immediately, but instead backtracked the flow of information and/or money as far as they could, to identify more people in the network.

And like I said, at some point over the next 600 years they will figure it out, you can feed someone false info and they might never find out if that's the only source, even if the others are only peripheral sources things add up and quickly cut off that network. Most of this intel will not be time sensitive, they are just building up background information so they are kept abreast on what is going on in human explored space and they can build a database that will grow over the centuries so that if/when they decide to start creating a plan they have a solid background on all the major and minor players.

In a cell structure, that would be tracking to the next cell up and the one after that, if possible. That could lead to actually backtracking to trips to the Felix Wormhole.

Or they backtrack it to a handler of x number of cells, who gets captured andand gives up the next meeting place, a DB comes in to get the info, is ambushed and destroyed or its captured and the crew kills themselves to avoid capture. Create as many cutouts as you need and the MA would be safe.

Even spies need some handlers who give them instruction on what their masters are looking for. Without a control loop, the spies would continue spying on the same instructions as before and could eventually drift away from what's important. I'm not saying that the spies are dumb and would eventually begin spying on toilet-paper-making technology. I'm saying that they would not see the big picture. They may all be spying on the same thing everywhere and no one would notice the important game-changer happening in a previously-unimportant Verge system. If this had been in place before the first Manticore-Haven war, the spies would be looking at the SLN and the Fleet 2000 programme, ignoring the war between neobarbs.

And at some point over the decades this gets corrected. You don't think that at some point the MA will send a message to the handlers to direct them to look at something else? But more importantly the point is to get as much intel as possible rather than specific intel, unless its interesting piece of kit. Having intelligence on the RMN is just background information, having intelligence on the SEM and its economy and industry is once again just background information.


The whole point of this is so that if 600 years down the road the MA decides to go to war with the rest of humanity, or decides to reenact the plan from before or create a whole new one they can do so because they have plenty of background information. They can see how some nations are bound to react and it becomes easier to predict reactions if you have 600 years worth of intel on a nation.

Another point is that inserting or turning agents takes effort. I really don't see how you can do that with a two-year lag between the person on-hand and the final decision makers. They'd need to keep a significant presence closer by, which negates the isolation, because it is a risk that it can be tracked down.

Chain of Command. There is a group within human explored space that does all of this, the handlers, they get the very general instructions of "we want you to focused on x, y or z" and leave them alone, they get the rest done. I don't think that it would be too hard to sneak in 10,000 people in 100 different organizations split across a couple of hundred systems in 100 nations. With trillions of people, trying to find those 10,000 people will be hard, spread across hundreds of nations is nearly impossible. At some point the various national intelligence agencies will need to refocus on something more pressing rather than hunt an organization that may or may not exist anymore. After the SL is reduced there will be hundreds of nations causing problems galaxy wide, when there is now a new nation gearing up for war with Manticore/Haven or the Andermani and at some point the MA takes a back seat, especially if the MA is quiet for a couple of centuries. At some point they stop being a threat and they become the boogeyman.

What's the last time that you found online plans for current military designs in the civilian, open market? Nations keep current military technology under secrecy classification until it's no longer important to keep that technology secret. Corollary: any technology that has been declassified is no longer effective against that military. So access to civilian designs does not help in military terms.

Soon enough, military tech becomes widely available to other nations, if the original nation doesn't sell the tech the others will spend money figuring it out. If you cant get it from the SEM in 2320, you can get it from the Star Kingdom of Mobius, the Republic of Seraphim, or any one of the dozens or hundreds of nations trying to maintain parity.

Even if they they get unrestricted access to the military secrets, they're always behind and at least two years by the time their ships come back. Their R&D may never find anything game-changing. You cannot assume the R&D you start on wormhole theoretical physics will result in creation of artificial wormholes at will. So at best they'd have warships with the same technology as the rest of the Galaxy.

Yeah and in the next 600 years the MA will sure make an effort to do some more research, and improve your intelligence apparatus to get the tech you want quicker.

Being 20 years behind the curve on military tech wouldn't be a big deal since you have centuries to catch up and you need to focus on building your industry. They will have literarily centuries to improve their intelligence apparatus to cut the gap down.

The advantage in your plan is that they have a centralised economy of 1000 systems dedicated to mobilising for war. If that is possible, they'd win not in quality of their military hardware, but quantity. Throw more ships at the problem than the enemy has missiles, you win anyway.

Yeah but you are also keeping up with the rest of humanity, its not walking away for 600 years and coming back assuming nothing changes, its keeping up to date for 600 years and also doing research on your own. You eventually get all of the tech the rest of humanity has but they never get yours, improve your intelligence networks over the centuries and you get the advantage, over the next 200-300 years build up a network of people and start placing them into positions of importance. The further away from OB you get the less attention the galaxy pays the MA and eventually even if they catch one of your cells it just gets claimed as one nation spying on another.

But can you imagine controlling a population of one trillion for half a millennium? The MAlign was an organisation in the shadows, moving the Mesan pieces like puppets via their infiltration of Manpower and the other big companies, as well as the Solarian League intelligence, military, and media.

So? It's not whether it will work or not, its whether the MA thinks it will work or not. Who is to say that 300-400 years in the future they wont be able to start engineering a collapse into a dark age for humanity trough wars and destruction, suddenly they make an appearance with the ability to provide safety and security. There are multiple ways of doing something, and this way gives them the ability to try the galactic chess way or the conqueror way or anything in between. The point is having options, because things change and in 600 years the MA might not want to bother with the rest of humanity or they might want to coexist, or they can convince the rest of humanity that their way is best by showing them their nation and its success.

They were not a state. Even in Mesa, a seccy and slave revolution was bound to happen soon. Green Pines and the crackdown that followed it was the spark that lit the powder keg, but sooner or later something else would have done it. Revolutions can be put down, but how many can they be before the populace as a whole begin to question the government? And revolutions only need to succeed once, whereas the establishment needs to succeed every time.

That's why you don't make your population slaves and that's why you improve your industry and make life good for your people rather than oppress them. I think the MA will have more of a chance to unify their people and keep them unified than the SL or the GA.

Which would this new 1,000 system entity be ruled and be kept on-goal for that long?

Alot easier than trying to herd 1,700 indipendant nations pretending to be one nation. You start from the begginign and you create a common culture that unites people. You dont spend the next 600 years opresssing your people and you definitely don't start off by having slaves because that is just asking for trouble.

If it is tyrannical, it invites revolutions. If it pretends to be open and representative, someone is going to get access to sufficient technology to go back. Policing 1,000 systems is impossible, especially if they are all space-capable and trading with each other. A ship being lost in all that traffic and being redirected is a statistical certainty.

The MA controls the history, if you keep the existence of the rest of humanity secret no one can go looking for the rest of humanity, or you can be honest and embellish the atrocities that the rest of humanity is doing to each other. But what would stealing a ship accomplish though? How do you find the rest of humanity? The MA leadership wont put the address of Earth in the history books.

Its a lot easier when everyone starts from the same group of people. The MA starts with 1 planet in 1 system, once they are sufficiently large and industrially capable they expand from there. Write the history you want, just the truth would do. There are constant wars and atrocities happening in the rest of humanity, people are oppressed and murdered by the millions for minor advantages, while we in the MA have our glorious Navy to protect us, the Army, to protect us and out police force to protect us.

To be honest, I question even the possibility of isolationism for the long term. That applies to Darius as well. The MAlign must know their isolation there has a limited lifetime and they can't put off the rest of the plan now that it's been activated.

And they cant remain isolated for ever, but if you are 1,000 LY away from the furthest system occupied by humans it would be a while before anyone comes into your neighbourhood.


And Darius could be their Houdini part 2, go on to build a bae away from humanity and drop breadcrumbs to Darius and once the GA comes in, as a last action of defiance make the planet uninhabitable, leave the RF alone, they will either build up a powerful nation or break into a multiway war on who will be in charge of the RF once the MA is gone.

kzt wrote:Mao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace Too bad about the 20-76 million who starved during that period, but mass murder and communism are basically synonyms for a reason.

As long as the MA doesn't treat its minorities like America does, they should be fine. If they start using the police to abuse and kill their people like they did in Mesa and in the US they would have a problem.