Wal-Mart as 4GW actor

Recently, some news came out regarding Wal-Mart's intelligence program.

A former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. worker said he was part of a large surveillance operation that included snooping on employees, stockholders and others, according to a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday.
Security worker Bruce Gabbard was fired last month after 19 years with the company for intercepting a reporter's phone calls, the paper said...
Gabbard said that as part of the surveillance, the retailer infiltrated an anti-Wal-Mart group to determine if it planned protests at the company's annual meeting last year and deployed monitoring systems to record the actions of anyone connected to its global computer network.

It's clear that the nation-state no longer has a monopoly on intelligence and security operations. It's not impossible that Wal-Mart or similarly capable organization may in the future gain the direct capacity to engage in fourth generation warfare. The example of Chiquita may serve as a warning of what multinationals risk if they do not acquire such capability: having to pay protection to regional 4GW actors.

... federal prosecutors said the Cincinnati-based company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the [AUC].
The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia’s civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country’s cocaine exports. The U.S. government designated the right-wing militia a terrorist organization in September 2001.
Prosecutors said the company made the payments in exchange for protection for its workers. In addition to paying the AUC, prosecutors said, Chiquita made payments to the [ELN], and the leftist [FARC], as control of the company’s banana-growing area shifted.