202 WorldForce and the birth of the three-stage system

In the Neolib era, Ecofin AltaSphere never directly disposed of a longa manus militaris on the ground, so they were accustomed to juggling the political micro- or macrocosms on AutoPilot. This revelation intentionally slipped out of the mouth of Mago-Dragon, one of the pre-galactic Ecofin AltaSphere managers who was then sent on a kamikaze mission to the Calf Peninsula, his declining and aging PoSt/ate of origin. AutoPilot was pretty good at what it did: for example, it had managed to put Ellada, the ancient cradle of democracy that had been somewhat lost to the dolce vita lifestyle, back in line. In that case, AutoPilot left the world speechless at its effectiveness, depriving citizens of the ability to access their money by instantly blocking all ATMs and later directly targeting their income. Of course, AutoPilot favored reducing the incomes of the "unproductive" such as retirees, the unemployed, the disabled, artists and others. Apart from a few demonstrations a bit more boisterous than the usual, everything had precisely fallen back into dis/order. A perfect example of how Gov Neolib still managed to directly handle difficult situations without brutal interventions. In any case, the specialty of the AutoPilot was to get the poorest countries into debt and then extract their essential marrow, and this had worked perfectly in many territories and subcontinents, like South America.

In Neolib Gov's transition to the quantum era, many pressing reasons had emerged for the creation of an operational center that was not just the immaterial AutoPilot, which by then was no longer functioning as well as it had before. One of the main reasons was the preparation of the Great Escape, an operation that was entering the crucial period of building and testing space elevators, which were essential for the installation of the first human colonies in space. It was necessary to ensure intensive production to implement the project but, at the same time, control over the populations obliged to support such massive production was continuing to breakdown. The need for a global operation with which AltaSphere would be able to both directly access information and act on the ground without going through all the political mediations related to local national or pseudo-imperial interests was thus born. This would be facilitated by the ongoing quantum implementation and completed the transition to Gov Q, a completely new phase. The code name was WorldForce, WF for short – a hybrid entity with ramifications covering all world areas.

During the Neolib era, it would have been impossible to accomplish all this, especially before the two great imperialisms of that period had definitively downsized themselves in the rocambolic ways I told you about. You might wonder if all the Neolib Gov infighting was suddenly pacified and all the other regional and PoSt/warring imperialisms miraculously started marching in unison. Of course not!

On one hand, the fall of the great hegemonic imperialisms due to unforeseeable causes was athe decisive blow to Neolib Gov; on the other hand, just surviving the inevitable chaos produced by Gaia's septicaemia demanded that PoSt/ate oligarchs, even those with domineering ambitions, at least seek limited common ground on how to control resources with in order to escape.

This was the main goal of the WF. Plus, as Gaia's septicaemia progressed, the balance between PoSt/ates and AltaSphere Ecofin's bicephalous machines became increasingly unstable. The former head (heirs to nation-states) had to control precarious territories and populations, the latter (heirs to capital) were in the throes of maintaining accumulation in an increasingly entropic global process of production-destruction. So the WF was also supposed to mediate between these two struggling poles and, although centralized, it was supposed to ensure the terrestrial aspect of capitalism's transition to space. It was in this equation, at first sight impossible to solve, that quantum technology intervened.

The WF had already covertly emerged as the intelligence of World Governance with the ability to juggle biohypermedia, using varied hacker networks. With this institutionalization and enhancement, the often underground activities that in the 20th century Cold War had been developed by the two major blocs unified under one command. For this reason, from a functional point of view the WF had inherited the know-how of the great national intelligence agencies of the past. The very same agencies that had based their raison d'être and experience by participating in maneuvers and operations of all kinds (repression, war, invasions, plots, coups, state sponsored massacres, etc).

Thanks to the paradigm shift enabled by quantum technology, the WF would also become a strategic longa manus capable of directing large financial, technological, and global projects precisely for these purposes.

Here I interrupted the Boomernaut to point out that, according to his account of the future, the imperial hypothesis, announced in great pomp and circumstance at the beginning of the third millennium had, in the end, resoundingly resurfaced. Prompt was his response:

Yes. In a sense, that hypothesis resurfaced, but Gov Q more than a single postmodern empire of governance of humanity configured itself as a "scapuma empire" and sought to confirm, in a completely new sense, the old and false prediction that Gaia's septicemia made concrete: that is, the "end of the world" before the end of capitalism. In fact, Gov Q intended precisely to perpetuate capitalism beyond the "world," a world now in deep doodoo. So "world" meant the one based on the biosphere.

Quantum algorythmics made WorldForce action's run smoothly, even if, at the executive level, all the complexity of the peripheral Earth joints had to be adjusted. Part of the detached cores were directly piloted from those space command centers in low Earth orbit, already in operation. The rest were made up of a network of operational nodes delegated to private SecurServ organizations. Privatization took place through an extension of the franchise principle applied to the armed forces and public services. Especially in more peripheral and weaker countries, the local franchisees were subsidiaries of large groups such as Blackwasser, Wagniria, etc. – veritable multinational "security" (read: war) corporations, listed on the remaining stock exchanges opened after the demise of the City, submerged with much of London. The SecurServ business and stock market sector was consolidated with that of armaments, becoming essential for the very survival of Gov Q. In the large SecurServ compartment, there were also stakeholders who didn't directly manage troops and tanks: these providers supplied digital technologies for control, without which wars would have already been lost from the start. For example, beginning with the wars of the 21st century, constellations of orbiting satellites had changed warfare tactics and strategies. They enabled armies to coordinate front lines and pinpoint enemy positions through encrypted transmissions of drone footage. The first stage in a gamification and robotization of warfare that also became part of bioipermedia. The operators and providers of these new and sophisticated warfare services were part of private SecurServs, including many techno-tycoons. Those who could not afford such services when facing a war risked losing it even if they had superior forces on the ground.

Governance had, however, operated the quantum re-engineering of the engine animating the old AutoPilot revealed by Mago-Dragon. It had empowered and automated, with a myriad of bots, the usual mechanisms of underground lobbying, aimed at creating conditional or mechanical reflexes especially in the local administrations of the lower-ranking PoSt/ates. The century of Middle Eastern wars was a classic example of interminable and tragic regional conflicts. Ecofin AltaSphere didn't intervenedirectly, but focused its attention and efforts on making sure that everything played out to its advantage no matter what. Besides, wars had always been much appreciated, just like the old, but still valid, French adage "il faut acheter au son du canon et vendre au son du violon." It was not just a matter of pampering the armament sector, now also heavily implicated in quantum technologies. Armaments also had to be "consumed," and infinite and unlimited growth in production found its balancing point in the destruction produced by wars in Ecofin's strategy.

So, even the new WF integrated with Gov Q didn't unnecessarily expose itself to "world wars," but acted directly only when the interests of the Ecofin HighSphere were really at stake. Special attention was paid to all aspects pertaining to the deployment of infrastructure and preparatory activities for the now essential and imminent space migration of elites. The procedures that governed the WF prevented it from appearing in local conflicts, in the suppression of riots or limited rebellions. It was of vital importance that they did not touch Gov Q's ganglion. The growing chaos and the resulting complexity of the situation meant that this task sometimes became difficult.

The operational and armed wing of WorldForce was an indispensable cog for the Ecofin AltaSphere's entanglement with Gov Q. This entity allowed for a more total and inclusive hegemony of AltaSphere interests, which implied reducing the autonomy of the PoSt/ates to an increasingly formal and facade-like structures. Friction, hostilities or wars could not be entirely avoided, but in the end they fed the production/destruction machine anyway. As long as they didn't become uncontrollable to the point of damaging AltaSphere's space strategy. PoSt/ates that still retained some semblance of sovereignty and administrative and political capacity were given an algorithmic delegation of management of the basic tasks of controlling their territories and populations, making sure they produced. Everyone know that, even with the Great Escape, Gov Qwould continue to suck the marrow it needed from the biosphere.