GEAS ASSESSMENT OF CATEGORY 3/OUTLAW PLANET
Category 3 offered a surprising model: an organization that was the quintessential Outlaw Planet group but which operated almost exclusively in the other superthreats. The Outlaw Planet-related problems known to be linked to Category 3 either had little actual impact (such as the Countdown Virus) or depended upon other superthreats (such as the "denial of happiness" attacks). This has proven to be a dilemma for GEAS modeling.
Two bodies of analysis have emerged. The first argues that Category 3 avoided Outlaw Planet-related attacks because the "community" of griefers, hackers, and pirates was already sufficiently broad and deep; Category 3's efforts would either be redundant, or effectively invisible in the noise. The second argues that any successful effort by Category 3 to boost the impact of Outlaw Planet would actually undermine the organization's own effectiveness against the other superthreats; Category 3 may have been dependent upon a semi-functional global infrastructure.