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Remember a while ago when the World Trade Center blew up and we blamed that one guy who sent us tons of videos from his secret supervillain hideaway in the mountains of Afghanistan? And how the most powerful and thorough military forces in the world threw their arms up in the air after a couple years of failed searching? Well, they seem to be doing just fine right now at closing in on a different guy. Except this guy’s crimes are not blowing up buildings. They’re something much, much worse: Making a lot of people in high places very nervous about their reputations.

I was reading a rather scathing Glenn Greenwald rant the other day in light of the recent Wikileaks domain shut-downs and it got me to thinking — As Julian Assange & co. brace for impact amidst the throes of what is quite possibly the word’s first large-scale info war, what is the real meaning behind this desperate race to shut up the whistleblowers at any cost?

I’m not going to say that either side’s crusade of information control is a 100% selfish affair, but the feds are certainly making it look that way with their reactions to recent events. Granted, they were none too pleased about the Iraq war logs, the Afghan diaries and Wikileaks’ other transgressions either. But something about these recent leaks — the diplomatic cables which reveal, among other things, intimate details of U.S. espionage against members of the UN and allied nations — that really seems to have been the last straw for the folks in power.

Here’s one way of thinking about it: Everyone in the world is playing a huge game, and Wikileaks is the jerk that flipped the table over and pulled all the aces out of everyone’s pockets.

Let’s Play A Game…

International relations have always been a game of sorts. Each player has their own agenda, and the goal is to interface with other players by making concessions and building systems of trust while remaining true to that agenda. Not too complicated.

But just like in any game of strategy, people cheat. Now, anyone will tell you that no one likes a cheater. But when everyone is cheating to some degree, the cheating becomes less of a disqualifying violation and more of an extension of the game’s mechanics.

That’s right — no matter how slimy it may seem, every player in the International Relations Game, as they see it, is simply playing with an expanded rule set. But unfortunately, this is where things get a bit out of hand.

A Broken Mechanic

In most traditional games, every player has equal capacity to cheat. But in the International Relations Game, the convergence of countries large and small doesn’t exactly make for a level playing field. The United States, for example, is much better equipped to, say, collect DNA samples and bank account information of foreign nationals.

This is what we would call a “broken” game mechanic. In videogames, developers are quick to fix such inconsistencies through downloadable patches. But the world’s economic systems are sadly not as easy to fix as an overpowered Zerg unit in Starcraft 2.

So with no clear way to balance out the cheaters, there’s only one clear option for players of the International Relations Game: Be really sneaky about how you’re cheating. Even if that means using secret diplomatic cables, etc.

Being “That Guy”

People always say they hate cheaters. But you know who they hate more? The “Rules” Guy. When everyone else isn’t playing by the rules, the guy who calls it out has always been the first one to get his head cut off.

Consider the now-viral story of Mitch Kahle, an activist whose vocal protest of an unconstitutional Christian prayer recitation during a Hawaii state Senate meeting caused him to be assaulted and viciously beaten by police officers and the Senate staff Sergeant At Arms.

Mitch Kahle was “that guy,” and on an international level, so is Julian Assange.

So what the Wikileaks crackdowns reveal about the nature of our international relations is actually quite familiar, as far as games go — Most players would rather continue playing a broken game than have someone reveal the secret cards hidden in their coat pockets. No one likes a killjoy, after all. Especially if that killjoy is making everyone in the world think twice about the people playing for their team.