Remember Erik Prince, the ex-Blackwater mercenary who seemed to be building a private army? He’s up to his usual hijinks, this time expanding in China:

Former associates of the 47-year-old Prince told BuzzFeed News that the controversial businessman envisions using the bases to train and deploy an army of Chinese retired soldiers who can protect Chinese corporate and government strategic interests around the world, without having to involve the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. […]

In an email to BuzzFeed News, a spokesperson for Frontier Services Group [which is Prince’s current company] provided a statement and strongly disputed that the company was going to become a new Blackwater, insisting that all of its security services were unarmed and therefore not regulated. “FSG’s services do not involve armed personnel or training armed personnel.” The training at the Chinese bases would “help non-military personnel provide close protection security, without the use of arms.”

And to that I say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ because who knows what the hell is actually happening.

My previous impression was that Prince is a bumbling idiot. The BuzzFeed article doesn’t disabuse me of that notion. But! Apparently being a bumbling idiot is not much of an obstacle to paramilitary success. More likely, I’m underestimating his abilities.

Still, one of the parts of the ~dystopian future~ that I never would have anticipated is the way that people can hack their way to the top. This has probably always been true to varying degrees — think of the old pop-culture meme about women sleeping with their bosses to get promoted. It probably didn’t (and doesn’t) actually happen often, but to the extent that it did, those women were doing an end-run around the established decision-making structures.

Maybe I’m more of a Silicon Valley idealist than I realized, imagining a system based on meritocratic principles. But hey, you can even make the argument that people who figure out how to circumvent procedural checks and balances (not just the legal kind) are displaying a certain kind of merit. A certain kind of competency.

Is it the good kind?

Artwork by Icarus Hall.