No Fear of the Future found this tidbit in a magazine for PMCs, nestled among the Blackwater blimp ad and a How-To article on private sector PSYOP.
An Eskimo village with multiple federal PMC subsidiaries that is currently hiring intelligence analysts in Iraq, forklift operators in Bethesda and El Paso, Iraqi Intelligence Analysts in DC, Special Ops Support in San Antonio, and linquists.
Can you do the math? I want to meet the Northern Virginia lawyer who put this corporate org chart together.
If you think this new outsourced branch of the 21st century market state is going away after the elections, keep dreaming. It’s a brave new world.
As states continue to hollow out, privatization of what they used to do, including war, will continue.
But wait. This means PMCs could be hiding out anywhere. If an Inuit Village can actually be a PMC, then maybe that reclusive group of supposed hippie leftovers way back in Sonoma County aren’t just pot farmers. Maybe they finance their PMC arms purchases from marijuana sales and do espionage for private interests. Who would suspect a 60 yo graybeard with a ponytail and tie-dyed t-shirt of being a double agent or crack shot with an Uzi. Be scared, be very scared.
Seriously though (well, sort of.) With all these PMCs running around beholden to whomever, then things start getting complicated. That uniformed guy taking photos of you at the antiwar demonstration. Is he a cop, in a PMC, a cop from another jurisdiction hired by the PMC to aid local police, or who knows what.
When I helped organize antiwar protests in L.A., LAPD usually had a video squad. They walked among the crowd videoing and were clearly identified as LAPD video. Ok, at least I know where the videos are going. But if it’s a PMC, then who knows where the videos go and why they were hired. Things just get much more opaque as PMCs flourish and grow. Like, who is really in charge?
For more on PMCs, check my review of Licensed to Kill. Hired Guns in the War of Terror by Robert Young Pelton.
I suppose most people don’t think “it can happen here” so don’t really get too distressed about the whole PMC thing.
Problem of course being, that history tends to disagree.