Julian Assange is the tech world’s Donald Trump — discuss

Lately it has occurred to me how much Julian Assange has in common with Donald Trump: Both have a talent for attracting media attention. Both have really unusual hair. And both are addicted to the spotlight, so much so that if they go too long without some form of media attention they have to manufacture “news” to attract it.

This week, The Donald served up his “election bombshell” — offering to give $5 million to charity in exchange for seeing President Obama’s birth certificate and college transcripts. Because, as we all know, that kind of information is vitally important to the future of our country. (The Donald refused to share his, though, when asked by Adam Gabbatt, a reporter for the U.K.’s Guardian.)

[ Want to cash in on your IT experiences? InfoWorld is looking for stories of an amazing or amusing IT adventure, lesson learned, or tales from the trenches. Send your story to offtherecord@infoworld.com. If we publish it, we’ll keep you anonymous and send you a $50 American Express gift cheque. ]

Similarly, Assange sat down for a video interview with CNN this week in which he talked a bit about the latest Guantanamo documents released by WikiLeaks, as well as what life has been like for him cooped up in a windowless room in London’s Ecuadorian embassy for the past four months:

“It’s a little like living in a space station, because there’s no natural light and you’ve got to make all your own stuff. You can’t go out to shops and so on,” Assange told CNN in an interview Thursday.

Maybe Assange does have it confused with Tralfamadore after all.

Earlier this week, well-known hacker Adrian Lamo posted an email he’d received from Assange in June 2010, shortly after it became known that Lamo was the person who’d tipped off the U.S government about Bradley Manning and his role in leaking 251,000 State Department cables. (That email was first published on Wired’s Threat Level blog shortly after Lamo received it.)

Assange apparently thought he could manipulate Lamo into acting on Manning’s behalf. The letter, though, kind of says everything you need to know about the WikiLeaks founder.

Manning’s defence team, which I have commissioned, urgently requires all emails and chat logs you alleged to have come from Mr. Manning. Please send them to me, if necessary through our online submission system. They will be used strictly for Mr. Manning’s defence, but must be complete.

In addition, it would be helpful if you described Mr. Manning as a “whistleblower” who had already lost his access over an unrelated issue, held no data, and was of no meaningful threat to anyone. In particular Mr. Manning was not an “alleged spy”, and it is wrong for you to describe him as such, or to suggest that there were no other approaches to resolving the situation.

It would also be helpful to all concerned if you stopped trying to justify your behavior by whipping up sentiment against Mr. Manning in other ways. Your most effective personal strategy is to say you were scared due to your previous experiences, unthoughtful due to recent drug problems, and made a decision which you now bitterly regret and would under no circumstances repeat. Going around like a poor man’s Tsutomu, constantly drawing attention to yourself through the destruction of a young romantic outlaw figure, will leave you permanently reviled by history-and me.

Just a few points.

1. According to Lamo, Assange never commissioned any defence team for Manning, who was then being held in Kuwait. My take: The Albino Aussie thought he could socially engineer Lamo into giving up emails that Assange would later use to discredit him.
2. Apparently Assange thought he could bully Lamo into acting like some kind of Bradley Manning spokesmodel. Did I just say “Albino Aussie”? I meant Audacious Aussie. Actually, I meant something else, but InfoWorld won’t allow me to use that kind of language.
3. By “poor man’s Tsutomu,” Assange was presumably referring to Tsutomu Shimomura, the American computer security wonk who along with New York Times reporter John Markoff tracked down hacker Kevin Mitnick.

When Assange talks about “constantly drawing attention to yourself through the destruction of a young romantic outlaw figure,” you gotta wonder if he isn’t projecting just a little bit of his own self image there.

I asked Adrian if it was OK to quote that email, and he agreed. He also added the following comment, which I’ve edited for space:

If I could comment on it, I’d just note that this letter displays Assange’s immediate and personal concern with Manning at a time when he denied any knowledge of his activity, and also at a time when Assange was still denying any knowledge of the stolen diplomatic cables and defense information.

Perhaps more pointedly, it also shows the disassociation between Assange and the underlying facts, even then. No lawyers were ever sent to Kuwait. Assange contributed only a fraction of Manning’s defense fund, far less than he had promised, and a great deal less than the donations which he took in which were allegedly for Manning’s defense….

Lastly, the letter really shows what I felt was the case from the beginning – the man really believes light will bend for him, or so to speak, that his word will become form. This is dangerous in any leader, and is one of the big reasons he has alienated those around him in the course of this unique series of events.

A lot of readers want to know why I’m so down on Assange. I realize that to some folks — especially young impressionable types — Assange is some heroic figure, like a cross between the Matthew Broderick character in “War Games” and Woodward & Bernstein, with maybe a little Mother Teresa thrown in. I have a more jaundiced viewpoint than that.

For the record, I think the allegations of sex abuse against Assange were trumped up, and I still don’t understand why the Swedes couldn’t interview the man in England. However, I believe Assange took something that could have been a force for good in the world — WikiLeaks — and turned it into a force for ego.

I’m hardly alone. Even Anonymous has dumped him. The Anons were easily Assange’s most fervent supporters; my hunch is that most of the documents published by WikiLeaks originally came from Anonymous.

But earlier this month the Anons publicly abandoned its support via Twitter (of course):

The end of an era. We unfollowed @Wikileaks and withdraw our support. It was an awesome idea, ruined by Egos. Good-bye.

Hackers have realized they don’t need WikiLeaks — they can do it themselves. In fact, yesterday Hacker News reported that some of the Anons are planning to launch their their own “WikiLeaks on steroids.” Called the TYLER project, it’s scheduled to go live on Dec. 21 — which, not coincidentally, is also the day the world is supposed to end, according to the Mayan prophecy (and Hollywood).

That ought to be fun to watch. I’m sure Assange will be watching it too, most likely from his Ecuadorian space station. And I have no doubt that he’ll use that occasion to get himself in front of the cameras, once again.

So have at it, Cringesters: Is Assange a publicity hungry hero, an egotastic evildoer, or both? Weigh in below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Julian Assange is the tech world’s Donald Trump — discuss,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.