In my previous post, I talked about the super-empowered individuals described in Glen Reynolds' book, "An Army of Davids." Some of the characteristics of these individuals is that they can cause great damage in proportion to their size and effort. Just think about the effects of the 19 terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. Or consider any of the terror bombings over the past five years.

One feature about these individuals is that they lack a strong defensive system. Their success in operations depends on stealth, speed, coordination, camouflage, dispersion, and adaptability, not in their ability to defend against counter attack. Just look at what happened to the fourth plane in the 9/11 attack. As Glenn Reynolds points out, the attackers were thwarted by a handfull of unarmed and untrained civilians.

Consider the swarming bloggers on an individual basis as super-empowered individuals. Could any one or two of the bloggers mentioned in Hugh Hewitt's book, "Blog," have "survived" a counter attack from major media or a powerful politician? I doubt it.What halts the counter attack is the presence of other super-empowered individuals - in this case other bloggers -  to either refocus the attention on the objective, or take up the banner and attack (see Paterico's Pontifications posts among others on the Jeff Goldstein DoS attack).

Some of the tools available to a swarmer, for example quick communications and the ability to organize a swarm on an issue, have some defensive capability, but only if they bring other swarmers to the fight.