"Instead, as we have seen from all sorts of phenomena, from the Anonymous protests against Scientology to Al Qaeda terrorism, distributed movements with no central control are as powerful (and, in many cases, more powerful) than centralized armies."<p>Are you sure the Anonymous have done any long term damage to Scientology? Or that Al-Qaeda actually achieved anything meaningful against the occident? If you look at history, those who are more centralized are always the ones how are the more powerful. Up until the point they become too big and things start to break down. After that, it's back to normal and the more centralized win. Short-term imperialism and attempts at unification throughout history gives us good examples of how things unfold.<p>There's certainly a lot of nationalistic Chinese hackers, but I don't think they could pose any significant threats. The best they could do is adding noise so that the "real" government hackers go undetected. They would also become dangerous if coordinated by the government, but at that point they're no longer decentralized.<p>I think decentralization have its advantages when considered in the right context. But politics and religion are all about centralization and always have been.