same dim, comfortably dangerous instincts that undid Mubarak. These kids can't possibly amount to much. The youth of these groups, the very fact that they were not the varsity team, their intimate fingertip familiarity with virtual spaces - all this gave this new generation of movements energy, appeal, attraction. Even in countries that looked technologically “backwards” by American standards, linked systems speed-bred revolution, they gleefully filled in for a failed traditional media, and they accelerated and enabled the creation of groups as different as the Syrian Electronic Army and Occupy Hong Kong.®” Traditionally, such a long list of hopeless exclusions (no money, no friends, no access, no power) added up to an easy judgment of irrelevance. But ISIS was like the the Iranian bloggers and American social justice campaigners and Swedish digital pirates and vengeful Houthi fighters who were all staring back, confidently, at the people who had the money, the friends and the power - and the drones. Obama and Mubarak and - fill in the blank with a powerful name or institution - were too slow. Out of touch. Their connections were all wrong. So while the individual parts of the new networks - young students, poorly trained armed fighters —- were soft and human and easy to destroy, they still tore unstoppably at old power. Tied together, the connected systems themselves were capable of more than their individual strength might suggest. What they shared wasn’t simply a single issue or identity. It was cheap, constant connection. And they were, frankly, furious. The old guys were crafty, of course. They tried to shut down the technology itself. Or they aimed at crucial points on the network. “Arrest or kill the leaders you can find!” was the sort of order that bolted stability back onto Iran, for example. Other governments found they could crack the will of the protesters by going after their relatives. “Relational repression,” as it became known, was the closest a big