Historical perspectives on military and intelligence privatization – codes and ciphers in China’s warlord era

Intelligence as an organized activity in the modern era began as an amateur’s game, made more serious by the deadly business of war throughout the 20th century. And while much attention has been paid to the evolution of the early effort of pioneers which became the basis for the major nation-state programs of the major conflicts that convulsed the globe in the three world wars of the last century, we occasionally have reason to be reminded of, and to reflect upon, the efforts which the intelligence studies history has nearly forgotten.

Among those are an interplay of requirements, technology, and actors which resulted in one of the most interesting artifacts we have ever had privilege to lay eyes on – one of the earliest codebooks used by a private military company. (An item that we had hoped one day to be graced to acquire, but unfortunately as the years have passed it seems that is not to be.)

The nearly continuous conflicts of the Chinese warlord period resulted in the development of a major market for mercenaries and arms merchants engaged by the various factions to support and supply their forces. Communications of the day were primitive, but the telegraph had made ingress to the country and represented the only effective link between the forward representatives of the private military companies of the day (often individual entrepreneurs and adventurers) and their larger networks of investors, suppliers, and strategic level intelligence (usually provided solely through open sources and RUMINT).

The security of these communications were however a paramount consideration in the ever shifting political currents of an intensely factionalized country. Thus, a variety of code systems and ciphers came to be employed by those smart enough, or experienced enough, to pay attention to such matters.

The technology of the day required almost all messages to be sent via Morse, and messages would pass through any number of hands during transmission, receipt, and delivery. Further, the system was a heavily Anglicized development which did not handle Chinese characters well, although a numeric transliteration system was in use. Additionally, major companies (especially in the banking and shipping industries) had adopted a series of brevity codes in order to save telegraph transmission costs when handling routine message traffic (although not without push-back from the major telegraph providers, who saw lost business opportunities in the shorter messages and increased costs due to the greater difficulty and greater error rates which were incurred in sending enciphered text – the net neutrality battles of the Victorian Internet).

It is out of those commercial codes that the early efforts arose to provide for secure communications amongst those in the private military industry of the day. A number of firms published primitive codebooks for both brevity and security purposes - a commercial market for cryptology which would preserve elements of the nascent American signals intelligence establishment during the turbulent days following World War I. Many of these codebooks were adopted throughout the private military industry in China, and evolved in modified fashion throughout the course of operations. In one surviving example which we are familiar with, the phrase tables had been extended to cover a wide range of situations the original designers had no doubt never envisioned. The sometimes hastily scrawled handwritten notes of nearly a hundred years ago are still quite familiar to anyone that has ever been in the field, attempting to obtain logistics support or to acquire new munitions and matériel.

The 21st century has seen the world of cryptography come full circle. Now, it is again commercial technology - commonly available at the individual level through public key and elliptic curve encryption as well as widely published, mathematically robust algorithms such as AES / Rijndael - that is featuring prominently in the forward theatres of the Long War, where the private military industry finds its most active current markets and the field of communications security has some of its most interesting opportunities for substantial new contributions.

We would wish to see this sort of history better explored by the academics of the intelligence studies field, and the longstanding nature of the private military enterprise taken into account during the all too often overwrought discussions around the privatization of intelligence and of warfare. The literature of intelligence, and of national and international security studies, would no doubt greatly benefit - and who know what young minds might thus be inspired to accomplish?

Gray and black markets for small arms

Global Guerrillas points us to a fascinating World Bank study examining pricing dynamics in illicit markets for weapons – particularly the venerable AK series rifle.

Of course, these are dynamics familiar to anyone who has spent any time operating in conflict zones. Acquiring and holding iron in a place where a working weapon is your constant companion – especially if you are ever required to outfit others in addition to yourself - tends to accumulate levels of knowledge about these marketplaces. It is nice, however, to see this from a formal academic perspective – even if the tone draws a bit too much from the small arms disarmament lobbyists that also tend to write on the issues of global weapons trade.

What is lost in the economic and statistic sets however are the narratives of these weapons. Robb correctly states that “there is a global pool of assault weapons that quickly flows to wherever there is demand” and very interestingly goes on to note “I suspect we are already seeing a similar globalization of supply for services like IED construction and emplacement.”

It is the stories of these transactions that matter to us as intelligence professionals – both at the individual level (for tactical purposes) and in the aggregate (for operational and strategic reasons.) The market for weapons (just as the marketplace of violence) does not exist simply for its own sake – the demand is created by consumer perceptions, intentions, and reactions.

We are reminded how much the narratives of such specific transactions are frequently lost, or glossed over, due to the complexity of the underlying details. Immediately after the end of initial major combat operations during OIF I in 2003, we noted a large volume of handheld imagery being distributed by the various embedded press services which focused on seized arms caches and other weapons stockpiles. There were a number of quite distinctive weapons recovered, many of which by the very fact of their existence said quite a lot about the nature of illicit Hussein-era acquisition programs.

In another case in a particular foreign country that has become a key battleground in the Long War, a particular variant of a common German manufactured submachine gun came into our possession for a time due to the necessities of self-protection in a dynamic environment. That particular weapon, when examined as it was being prepared for service, proved to have come out of the former Yugoslavian conflicts before somehow winding its way to very different shores. No doubt it too would have had quite a story to offer.

The origins and traces of these stories are often quite surprisingly still available in the marketplaces themselves. Just like the sales of the weapon, the explanations of their origins and lineage are preserved in a hand to hand oral tradition. Such traditions frequently impact values based on both the buyer’s and merchant’s perceptions, and as such are sometime subject to manipulation on either side in the bargaining process. But there are common levels of understanding throughout such markets which tend to moderate these effects for informed participants. One of the most striking examples of this are the transactions which involve locally manufactured clones of popular weapons designs – particularly cases involving those clones for which the original designer has not granted license. Uninformed participants may think they are buying (or selling) original major branded items, but knowledgeable traders understand the differences in reliability and tolerances caused by often quite radically different standards of quality assurance.

Perhaps the most fascinating arms market we are aware of is found in Darra, Pakistan. (See the interesting travel guide writeup here.) The stories of these weapons, many locally created designs adapted from a dozen different components of other major small arms systems, are quite fascinating indeed. We also like the bizarre and unusual small arms of the Philippines, which also has quite an interesting history of indigenous production dating as far back as WWII.

There are lessons in these stories for the intelligence professional – not only in the specifics of conflict and cooperation which characterize current issues, but also in the shifting trends in the players that make up these stories. Most 20th century weapons trade dynamics were dominated by state actors and state level production, with the private dealer and the indigenous manufacturer an interesting but essential anomalous side note. The increasingly privatized conflicts of the 21st century, from the Long War onward, will not be – in either their physical or virtual aspects.