Hello everyone- sorry for the lateness of this post. Blogger.com said that the site servers were down for maintenance so I gave up after tapping F5 very patiently for a few hours. I was going to talk about the recent viral infection the US Air Force experienced in one of their drone bases but in the hours since yesterday something much more interesting has happened:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/world/africa/cyber-warfare-against-libya-was-debated-by-us.html?hp
Cyberwarfare! The pinnacle of military computing. In the Naval Science class I must take for NROTC, the advanced Naval technology we are taught brings to mind Sun Tzu's famous maxim, "To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill". This occasion is unique- in the handful of times software (namely viruses) have been used as a weapon this is the first time it has been announced so candidly to the public. The issues at stake come surprisingly close to the issues that arose at the advent of nuclear weapons. There is a reluctance to use them for fear of escalation; because viruses as weapons are such unconventional forms of attack there is some guarantee of mutually assured destruction. In short, nobody wants to be the first one to open the can of worms that is cyberwarfare. And not only has the command decision to pass up on digital weapons been made once, but twice. This brings into question just how big the threat of cyberwarfare is? As a destructive force it can disrupt enemy radar and shut down OpFor traffic control, but bearing in mind that congress recently passed a piece of legislation allowing for an executive 'kill-switch' for parts of the internet, how much of an impact will cyberwarfare have in civilian lives?
Since my blog concerns this exact issue - Cyberware - I'm interested in how this potentional threat would change operations within the military. Will the military become less useful or more needed with the uses of cyberware? Even though attacks on a nation's software and systems is not a physical act of war (will not include combat) will a country react to an attack with military force? Even though there may be a fear of using these types of attacks, they have occured (Stuxnet) and many individual hackers have set foot in this realm. I doubt individuals will be affected much at the onset of this warfare, because most likely the public will not be aware of the issues and attacks or at least won't know the depth of the damage. However, if military action is taken against a country that has launched a cyber attack, then civilians will be impacted just as much as they have always been in times of war.
ReplyDeleteI found this article interesting, and it's a good starting point for further exploration. The analogy with germ warfare doesn't seem strong to me. The problem with cyberwarfare is that it is already being done by many different kinds of parties, from the Chinese government to the "cybercrime mafia" to the NSA and CIA which develop techniques that may be primarily for spying, but provide the underlying infrastructure to get into other countries' systems and sabotage them. It doesn't seem like "don't let the genie out of the bottle" given all that's already going on. My sense is that what we choose to do will make no difference to what gets developed in China, Iran, Israel, etc. I don't think they are holding back for the reasons the article talks about. It might be interesting to see some more discussion on this. I think I saw a recent report on these issues from a high-level government group, but can't find it at the moment.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the provocative article.
--t