"...it being my intention to write a thing which shall be useful to him who
apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of
a matter than the imagination of it; for many have pictured republics and
principalities which in fact have never been known or seen, because how one
lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he who neglects what is
done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation;
for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets
with what destroys him among so much that is evil.
Hence it is necessary for
a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it
or not according to necessity."
--Machiavelli, _The Prince_
Introduction
While the net is still in its infancy, already the potential
for its use as an intelligence tool is becoming widely recognized. It is
worthwhile to explore the actual scope of exactly how useful and in what areas
the net will apply in.
A good place to begin such a discussion is with some
definitions of terms; all things being equal, I will start the defining process
with the terms in the title of this document.
[Please note that this document is a 'consideration' of the potential and capabilities offered; as such, it paints a broad stroke and sacrifices detail. A roadmap for the serious practitioner is presented, and should suffice to advance his or her own thinking on the matter.]
The Net
Of all terms to be used in this document and the media in
general, the most broadly defined is the 'net,' 'cyberspace,' or whatever the
term-of-the-week is. For the purpose of this document, the 'net' is the virtual
communication structure made possible by a very simple but fundamental
conceptdata is data. Once something is reduced to digital format, it doesn't
matter what it 'is'--text, graphics, photos, audio, video, all flatten into
Turing-level bitstreams that the observer needs to properly interpret (referred
to as 'reader makes right').
This concept is the force merging the old phone
companies with cable companies, with content companies, with cellular phone
companies, with Internet companies, and so on. What becomes important are the
features of the connection between communicating parties--throughput, bandwidth,
interactivity. "How fast are you? How dense?"
So we see that the net has
many featurestelephones, public and private, short- and long-lines, cellular;
telephone related tools, such as pagers, facsimile machines, voicemail;
interaction metaphors that exist in the network, such as electronic mail,
bulletin boards, mailing lists, newsgroups, chat mechanisms (IRC, chat 'rooms'),
multi-user environments (MUDs, MUCKs, MUSHs, MOOs), gopher, the world wide web,
archives and search tools; virtual communities and voluntary associations, such
as cypherpunks; network tools, such as remailers, public-key cryptosystems,
security packages, authentication mechanisms, reputation markets; and a variety
of community input/output tools, such as scanners, printers, wire/information
services.
The net isn't just about communication pathways, but also about
computing resources. 'Data is data' isn't enough; you quickly find out that
everything is local--raw computing power and data storage are going to be
available, any user in the net can have access to as much of either as they
wish.
Communicating parties can be anywhere. The channel has grown up to be
diverse, complex, and robust; content is anything that a representation of can
be generated in digital format. As a result, the enabling tool--the computer--is
becoming more than a modeling system for old 'paper' applications
(two-dimensional constructs such as spreadsheets and word processors), and
transforming into an integrated piece of the dynamic, multi-dimensional
representations. It is Project Augment writ large.
This is the net--a fluid
domain of ever-shifting patterns of links and nodes, parties exchanging bits of
this and that, things that may represent the real world, or have no worldly
connection whatsoever.
Intelligence
Two senses of the term intelligence will be used in this
document. Intelligence can be the discovered/acquired variety, such as
espionage, and I will also link the domain of operations, even though this
addition is a common misconception. There is also cognitive intelligence, which
allows us new ways to think about things; to limit the discussion, I will only
use this interpretation in conjunction with the first sense of the term.
In
the combined kingdom of the intelligences, information is what it is all about.
Accurate information effects risk, allowing it to be predicted and prepared for.
Information creates and then degrades models, for nothing stands still.
Information mechanisms create new abilities for deception through the creation
and manipulation of 'truths.' Jointly, all of these create opportunities for
arbitrage, playing the appearance of reality off against what actually is real.
Tool
Tools are systems, processes, or mechanisms that allow, support,
enhance, or amplify an ability. As such, tools can be hard (wedge, lever,
screw), soft (computer applications, the communication network), or wet
(cognitive concepts and abstractions); increasingly, human tools are rooted in
all three domains.
An Observation
Keep in mind while considering the net as an intelligence
tool that the main beneficiary and main target for some time to come will be the
United States of America.
The reasons for this are an interesting twist on
an old metaphor. One of the primary justifications for governments is that they
act as a redistribution mechanism for the wealth of the governed; depending on
the form of government, much of the spending is oriented in varying proportions
at 'guns' (defense spending) or 'butter' (social programs). As economics has
become a more obvious factor in international power and prestige, investments
have been made in 'cows,' or mechanisms that kick off cash to be spent on guns
or butter. The inefficiencies of government planning and spending aside, the Law
of Unintended Consequence paid off for the U.S. investment in the net; by
accident, this cow is paying off in both butter and guns (as a force multiplier,
e.g. the Gulf War/Desert Storm). But guns and any technology in general are
tools, and tools are value neutral--their use defines their 'moral' value.
Espionage
Espionage is the process of gathering or receiving data by
clandestine means. By definition, espionage is illegal; it is a process of
breaking laws to gain intelligence data.
What sort of intelligence data is
this? Strategic? Tactical? Economic? Political? Social? Technological? To be
flippant, 'Yes.' All of this sort of data can be illegally gained from the net,
and increasingly so. Espionage targets are commonly communication paths--it is
hard to pull this kind of information out of peoples' heads, so you have to wait
until it is being communicated, and the net is rapidly becoming a primary form
of communication.
Superficially, human intelligence (HUMINT) looks like
espionage, but by definition, HUMINT requires a certain level of cooperation to
gain much of anything useful. No, communications systems are either the enabling
tool for humans, or the mechanism of their spectacular indiscretion. Signal
intelligence (SIGINT) has, therefore, become the primary focus of espionage work
in modern times; attacks on communications systems were always a Soviet
priority, and the U.S. designated considerable resources as well, particularly
in the vehicle of the National Security Agency (NSA).
Is Open Source Intelligence (OSI) Espionage?
The Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) Scientific & Technical Analysis group recognizes many
mechanisms for gathering intelligencephoto intelligence, signal/communications
intelligence, technical intelligence, foreign literature, proof-of-concepts
demonstrated by U.S. work, and the fundamentals of reality that apply for us all
(physical laws, mathematical properties).
HUMINT plays against these many
mechanisms in a continual tug-of-war for those evaluating and analyzing
intelligence datacontext vs. objectivity, quality vs. quantity, speed vs.
accuracy, security of the source vs. use of the data, intent vs. realized
actions.
Because of the burden associated with such evaluations,
considerable effort is put into gathering from open sources, those for which no
illegal action is necessary to derive data from. Historically, diplomatic
services have concentrated on gathering this variety of data, and with good
results; clandestine services have regularly augmented their regular espionage
activities with OSI data, or in certain instances, relied upon it completely.
Reasons for this vary, but trends point to the intelligence product customer's
desire for current reporting. Espionage is a low volume, but more long-range
'intent' driven intelligence; the political consumers of intelligence data
"don't have the time" for the development of clandestine intelligence sources.
Much of what is readily available on the net is 'current reporting' sorts of
data--perishable, high volume information about what is going on right now. If
viewed as a linear spectrum, on one side is HUMINT, the most valuable data when
accurate, because it can tell you why rather than just what, with long term
implications. Down the spectrum, you hit SIGINT; being a 'fly on the wall' party
in a trusted exchange of communication can yield valuable data, but you have no
control over topics or flow, it is purely a target of opportunity. Eventually,
at the other end of the spectrum, you hit OSI--historically shown as useful, but
totally beyond your control. Don't mistake the part for the whole; OSI is not
espionage, and only a part of real intelligence.
When you start combining
the net with the concept of OSI, it begins to look very attractive, seductively
so. Plenty of current reporting, good data, and dirt cheap; it is like being on
the receiving end of a fire hose, so much data is pouring through the net. OSI
on the net has a number of flaws, however
- What is the provenance of the
information? What do you really know about the source?
- The noise vs.
signal ratio on the net makes the analysis job a unique task, and almost
requires that OSI be viewed only as supplemental to HUMINT and espionage
sourcing;
- There is no 'pure' data; everything is either perverted, skewed,
cooked, filtered, or outright manufactured;
- You get what you pay for;
given that you're sitting on the receiving end of a fire hose, what is the
benefit to the source in releasing the data? Playing the game of 'who benefits'
is necessary to assess OSI;
- Given the information overload difficulty
(ever try drinking from a fire hose?), filtering is essential on the analysis
end, including automated pre-filtering, but there is the unlikelihood of any
serious operator following tradecraft using keywords in the clear;
- How do
you summarize the output of a firehose? Given the level of dynamic data, you
can't keep pace with an iterative review of continual reassessment;
- Large
bodies of real-time current reporting are useful, but have real drawbacks;
decisions tend to get made prematurely, and based on data with all of the
aforementioned drawbacks.
Net-based OSI (NOSI--pardon the author's weakness
for horribly appropriate puns) does serve a useful function of augmenting
research, but should not be relied on as a single source, or be used to
substitute for real espionage or operational capacity. NOSI can however be
useful in providing different viewpoints and to contemplate and prepare for
widely varied scenarios.
A Brief Interlude
I would like to briefly point out the egregious,
delinquent behavior on the part of the intelligence community and law
enforcement agencies.
The debate over strong cryptography has been, at the
time of this writing, waging for many years. The governments of the world would
seem to want to outlaw strong cryptography, or make weak, key-escrowed
cryptosystems the de facto standard.
They point out many reasons for this,
including the potential use of strong cryptosystems by drug dealers, terrorists,
child pornographers, and criminals of any ilk. These same people are also the
ones who point out that industrial espionage is occurring at an alarming rate,
and guesstimate losses over $100 billion (U.S.). For some odd reason, they don't
see the connection.
Free availability of strong cryptography that is easy to
use would go a long way toward protecting everyone's secrets--governments,
corporations, individuals. The criminals will have it too, just the way they
have computers, and pay phones, and automobiles, and a number of other
potentially deadly tools. One of the strengths and inherent dangers of freedom
is that the citizens have the opportunities to be responsible for and to
themselves, without Big Brother or Big Daddy 'protecting' them from themselves.
The issue for governments isn't about their citizens' freedom--the real
issue is that they have spent considerable time, money, and effort to develop
SIGINT intercept tools. The longer they resist strong cryptosystems, the longer
all those old tools still work. Once strong cryptosystems come into regular use,
all those high-tech espionage tools go the way of the dinosaur.
Processing
Distance means nothing. Any individual can now theoretically
have access to as much processing power as they would like and afford, and the
dollar to MIPS ratio is falling like a stone. What does having those available
CPUs translate into?
One of the most interesting demonstrations of
free-market intelligence applications was the massively parallel cooperative
process cryptanalysis of commercially available weakened cryptosystems.
Communications plus massive processing gives a new twist to the idea of
community memory--application of the experience, expertise, and brainpower
(computer and human) inside a voluntarist community. This is similar to Vernor
Vinge's example of a group of humans with a workstation being able to 'ace' any
standard intelligence test. Computer supported cooperative work, or community
processing, has been particularly potent with the cypherpunks--testing ciphers,
designing remailers and chains, pointing out logical fallacies in government
programs--they operate as an intelligence think-tank.
Other than such
think-tanks or Helmer-Dalkey Delphi pools, the processing power available on the
net, coupled with the informational resources (including NOSI) and community
memory, has direct application towards non-intelligence community (IC) outcome
forecasting, predictions of future trends, gazing into the crystal ball.
Single-outcome (likelihood of a single potential outcome) assessments and
binary solutions along Bayesian lines (iterative re-assessments given in
probabilistic terms over time) can be quickly derived, and in fact constitute a
noticeable fraction of the actual 'signal' content of the virtual communities.
More interesting is the application to multiple spectrum-like predictive
efforts; this forecasting technique allows far more accurate estimates, and maps
well back to real-world situations.
A continuum of a problem space is
defined as a set of potential options that could be selected as 'game' turns;
these options are mapped onto a linear space that expresses the relative degrees
of some characteristic of the option space. Against this set of options are
mapped the players involved with their potential alignment to an option based on
past behavior, actual policies, stated positions, and likelihood of resource
dedication to the problem; this provides a coherent mechanism to balance
probability estimates of the actions of the players and potential outcomes. NOSI
is particularly useful to research and tracking player profiles to map their
behaviors and policies. What is striking isn't that this can be done, since IC
agencies have operational programs doing such, but that the resources necessary
are within the grasp of non-IC bodies.
An example, quite relevant to the
net, is the issue of cryptography. Options along a spectrum range from the left
and 'all crypto is illegal' to right with 'strong crypto is freely available and
open.' Many law enforcement agencies (LEAs) would fall on the far left of the
graph, and as you move toward the right you encounter the financial community
('strong crypto for internal networks, weak crypto for consumers'), the general
population ('confused, uncertain, reactive'), and so forth until you begin to
hit the other end of the spectrum with cypherpunks ('strong crypto should be
free, and we write the code for it') and crypto-anarchy ('strong crypto and
privacy are historically inevitable'). Resource allocation is particularly
telling--LEAs having access to the government coffers, lawmakers, policymakers,
media, etc. and the cypherpunks have access to the processing power, community
memory, and net. So far the positions have stalemated, but then again, nothing
stands still. Events continually occur which effect the players and their
positions, and change the balance of power; this is the strongest indicator that
Bayesian iterative reassessment is essential, and actually maps the predictive
graphing into three dimensions.
Operations
Espionage and operations are different concepts; as stated
before, espionage is the use of illegal means to gain data for intelligence
purposes. Operations in general tend to mean the use of illegal means for other
purposes, although at times operations are not illegal, merely clandestine. The
techniques used in espionage and operations are commonly referred to in the IC
as 'tradecraft' and the net is a rich place for technique. The net is also a
very useful place to mount conventional operations such as war, unconventional
operations such as terrorism, and provide operational support across that
spectrum.
Tradecraft
What is immediately attractive about the net is how it
replaces certain older mechanisms in a fairly clean fashion--why risk using
physical dead-drops, cut-outs, or forwards when you have available a number of
mechanisms that can be made virtually risk free to the diligent operator?
Remailers, remailer chains, and public-key cryptosystems such as Pretty Good
Privacy (PGP) turn the net into an intelligence playground. An operator can
blend in with millions of others and get an account with any one of hundreds of
services, ranging from America Online (AOL) or Netcom to hometown mom-and-pop
Internet service providers (ISPs), giving them electronic mail (e-mail), Usenet
news, telnet, ftp, and world wide web (WWW) access. After downloading a copy of
PGP and calculating a few keys, the operator can get an account on an anonymous
remailer or the head-through-tail of a remailer chain.
Messages can be
exchanged between operational entities through the remailer chains, providing
cut-out, forward, and drop services simultaneously. If proper selection of key
sizes, remailer chains, and latency factors is made, no traffic analysis will
penetrate the secure and authenticated message traffic. Messages can also be
dropped through mailing lists, into newsgroups, left on ftp directories, buried
through steganography in graphics files, faxed, or transferred in so many other
ways it defies making a comprehensive list. Rational, thoughtful parties who do
not break or violate tradecraft procedure need never worry about compromises to
their communications, which opens the door for a number of additional
techniques.
Organization/Command-and-Control
You can't be an organization without
organization, or can you?
The conventional view of organizations is that
they revolve around a 'mission order' or intent; wisdom has it that this
automatically implies a centralized coordination around the concept, with a
hierarchical structure. Even spontaneous organizations play the game of 'follow
the leader,' just like governments, armies, corporations, and clubs.
The net
changes things considerably, or at least provides a set of options that have
rarely been tried. It is important to note that even though much of the net was
built and intended as a support tool for the military, they have not taken
advantage of the changes it allows and enables in the adherence of an
organization to a mission or intent.
Hierarchies make organizations function
around commanders, where each step in the organizational pyramid act as the
'peripherals' or tools of the rank above it. Commanders need skills of
leadership, originality, inventiveness, and increasingly honed skills of
management of complexity.
What changes in voluntarist groups (every member
of the group agrees on the definitions and intent/mission of the group,
unanimously) in the net is that they can accommodate as many commanders as they
can get and form a heterarchy (authority is determined by knowledge or function,
not position), or virtual nervous system for the organization.
Heterarchies
satisfy a number of cybernetic principles
- Principle of Maximal Autonomy,
which defines the purpose of the net as a provider of tools for localized use
rather than centralized control;
- Principle of Redundancy of Potential
Command, which states that power and authority resides where information
resides;
- Principle of the Subsidiary, which states that problems are best
solved in the sub-system where they arise.
Interestingly enough, military
organizations in tactical wartime situations reduce down to de facto
heterarchies, but this is an unintended consequence, and becoming less the
reality with the increasing power of centralized military C4I technology.
Organizational configurations can be thought of with new metaphors derived
from network theory; the old 'cell' structure is replaced with star networks, or
networks that look like fishnets. These organizational nets can be dynamically
structured, have stable and mobile points, and view all points as equal, with
'command' being an agreeable arbiter or mechanism to gain perspective (a
strategic viewpoint as opposed to tactical).
Dynamic nets get 'pulled' or
distorted by the command node (grab a knot in a fishnet and support the net from
it); this provides that command and control of the organization is dynamic,
moving always to the micro level and relying on the macro level for perspective.
Management of the net becomes functionally based--knowledge is always resident,
immediacy provides that command is always 'forward,' and if there is coherent
'baton passing' then heterarchies in tactical situations can act as dynamic
'role based' temporary hierarchies. Given secure communications and information
sharing through the heterarchy, the organization is a solid community memory,
providing no weak central repository of authority, no Clausewitzian 'centre.'
Organizations of this sort have enormous advantages in conducting
intelligence work; they will tend to be small, are tightly directed, hard to
detect, hard to stop, camouflage well, and the infosphere/information
environment can accommodate any number 'inside' the same virtual territory.
Recruiting
Operational organizations obviously require a high degree of
security and trust; the cornerstone of such relationships is the proper
selection of personnel. Mechanisms to attract 'like-minded' individuals are the
foundation of the Internet--newsgroups, mailing lists, web pages, virtual
realities. Weeding out of potential members through a thorough background
investigation is possible as never before for non-IC or LEA organizations
willing be operational for that purpose. Records such as phone, credit, banking,
education, legal, travel, medical, and insurance are obtainable; your average
individual wags a very long electronic 'tail' of documentation. Personality
profiling can be augmented with additional data sources, such as video rentals,
grocery purchases, or sniffing and tracking all of the subjects traffic.
The
reversal of this process is also important--'legends,' or manufactured personal
histories, can be created and seeded across the relevant databases.
Armament
The missing piece of the 'Table of Organization and Equipment'
is armament, or weaponry. It may seem odd to link people directly with weapons,
but that begs the question, what is the purpose of a weapon? Weapons are about
force, control, denial--some of the best work by implication, but real weapons
aren't those you hold in your hands, but those you hold in your mind. Weapons
don't have conflicts; conflicts are between people of will, those with a moral
determination to change things. Subversion and conflict aren't 'bad'--without
them, we would have perpetual status quo, stasis.
The best weapons, those
that make men dangerous, are tools of thought--system analysis, operations
research, game theory, cybernetics, general semantics, etc. Operationally
speaking, knowledge and understanding of the opposition is the most important
sort of information to possess (the Soviets even thought it more important to
control information regarding themselves over espionage against NATO targets).
This comes from building cognitive models of the objectives, constraints,
assumptions, dependencies, patterns, and complexities of your opponent. Game
theory can be used to create and test scenarios, factoring in operational risks
and consequences. Building and testing models is one of the primary functions of
the technology embodied in the net; augmenting an operational organization, it
acts as a powerful force multiplier.
Operations and Operational Support
Societies and cultures are founded
upon and maintained by their 'social contract,' the terms and conditions that
govern the relationships between members of the society; older, more complex
societies have developed considerable infrastructure to support the elements of
their social contract. The workings of the social contract and this supporting
infrastructure can be termed a 'dependency infrastructure,' 'value chain,' or a
number of other names, but the function is the same--to provide an economy of
scale of function to support the level of complexity and specialization for the
society.
This dependency infrastructure is more and more essential to the
functioning of a society as that society progresses from primitive levels to
advanced technology; the most basic levels of the chain mimic the
hunter-gatherer/agrarian stage of social development, and successive stages work
to further insulate the advanced levels from the details of the previous stages.
Dependency infrastructures closely parallel Maslow's Hierarchy of
Needs--behavior is directed, but what drives that behavior? Basic dependencies
are physiological (survival instinct, food, drink, health) and safety related
(both physical and emotional, clothing, shelter, a feeling of protection);
advanced dependencies, which manifest when basic dependencies can be fulfilled,
include those of affection (family, a sense of belonging), esteem (self respect,
achievement, appreciation), and self fulfillment (application of personal
potential).
Elements of the dependency infrastructure and social contract
include executive and legal councils; civil services including macro and micro
scale administration; social services such as education, healthcare, emergency
services like police and fire departments; power systems, including electrical,
fuel distribution; water and sanitation; transportation systems and maintenance,
including motor vehicles and highways, trains, aircraft; financial mechanisms,
such as banks, credit cards, equity markets; communication mechanisms, including
telephone networks and media outlets; spiritual support; labor markets; legal
and judicial bodies.
What does all this have to do with conflict? Simply
that all conflict--from conventional warfare to terrorism--has to do with
selection and control of the social contract and dependency infrastructure.
Control over a dependency infrastructure gives control over the leverage points
of a political economy; damage to a dependency infrastructure can disrupt the
economy of scale it provides, making the burden of the social structure too
heavy to be self sustaining.
Attrition warfare, waged for centuries and
hitting a zenith with the American Civil War (19th Century) and World War I,
sought victory through overwhelming or forcing a failure of the opponent's
dependency infrastructure.
Manoeuvre warfare, a more recent refinement,
seeks victory through position or taking control of the key elements of the
opponent's dependency infrastructure.
Guerrilla warfare relies on making
opportunistic attacks on the opponent's dependency infrastructure to make the
moral and material costs of the conflict too great for the opposition to
maintain.
Political warfare seeks control of the society through the
creation and manipulation of an alternative dependency infrastructure or social
contract, commonly through the use of propaganda and psychological warfare.
Terrorism is about actions directed against the opponent's dependency
infrastructure and social contract intended to focus media attention in a
certain way; terrorism as a form of war is commonly an adjunct to one of the
other forms of warfare.
Thinking about warfare in terms of social contracts
and dependency infrastructures allows a uniform method of considering conflict
in general; this sort of conceptual model or 'cognitive artifact' is a force
multiplier, a tool that makes any actions or operations potentially more
effective in achieving the intent or mission.
This is the most striking
point of technology's impact on warfare--conceptual models and cognitive
artifacts are becoming force multipliers, evolving the organizations to fight
new forms of warfare using the models to augment operations, or play off a
'model to reality' arbitrage that raises intelligence and deception to a new
plane (the fashioning of illusion to achieve real aims).
'Conventional' Warfare and the Force Multiplier
Technology and the
mechanisms of the net have begun the transformation process of
warfare--attrition warfare (direct physical occupation and control of the
opponent) has turned in the direction of manoeuvre warfare (analysis of the
opponent to discover dependencies and operations to leverage against those
points).
Look how the principles of warmaking have been effected
-
Maintenance of objective; mission intent can be communicated to all operational
parties to insure they can work within the framework established;
- Economy
of force; intelligence and analysis can be used to 'rightsize' and meter the
force used, or insure overwhelming force is used;
- Flexibility,
Contingency; intelligence and communication tactically allows operational
parties to react to changing situations and still remain inside the objective
framework;
- Initiative, Tempo; the orient-observe-decide-act loop cycles
considerably faster, and allows operational parties to continually make
decisions and act on them;
- Manoeuvre, Leverage; intelligence and analysis
have evolved to where dependency points can be identified and acted against;
- Ground is no longer a place to stand or move, but becomes a process, as
embodied in calculations of physical tactical positioning, force
multiplication/division, or conflict in an 'infosphere';
- Security,
Deception; the rich technology and technique provide new levels of security,
strategic and tactical;
- Simplicity; this point has a tendency to become
lost in the wealth of options now available, usually in the direction of
over-finesse;
- Entropy; accurate information negates entropy;
-
Training, Readiness; the full gamut from education to operational simulation has
been radically advanced; this is the most serious point of improvement;
-
Mobility, Mass; technology has also radically improved this point, with
miniaturization just being the beginning; a man with a laser targeting system,
global positioning system, and communication system can be carrying only a few
kilos of gear, yet have devastating firepower at his command.
Yet for all
these advances, direct war operations are becoming few and far in between. It
takes an advanced political economy to field this sort of force and afford the
effort.
Far more cost effective, other forms of warfare derive similar or
greater benefits from technology and the net, and so they are becoming the
primary mechanism for engaging in conflict.
Other Forms of Conflict/War
Conflict arises internal to countries when
there is dissatisfaction with the dependency infrastructure and social contract,
or in expansionary conflicts, where one group attempts to impose their control
over another group's dependency infrastructure or social contract.
What the
'conventionals' call Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) are operations other than
conventional warfare, an odd exclusionary definition. These can be operations to
force failure of parts or the whole of a dependency infrastructure; or an
insurgency, which is the creation and popular adoption of an alternative
dependency infrastructure and social contract. A good example of this is the
American Revolution (18th Century), which established a new social contract then
fought to hold it. The adoption of an alternative dependency infrastructure or
social contract is essential to establishing a viable revolution. This in fact
is one of the strengths and reasons for success of the communist mechanisms for
conflict--they supply an alternate, attractive, albeit unworkable social
contract and dependency infrastructure that allows some continuity of control
and stability for a society post-revolution. It also helps explain the nature of
political Islam revolutions, which embody a social contract and infrastructural
elements, in many ways antithetical to democratic or secular notions.
These
sorts of conflicts have rules of thumb the way conventional conflicts do, and
find technology and the net just as usefulhave superior knowledge and
intelligence; select the conflict setting and parameters (time, place, rules);
know the territory; strict security and secrecy; sanctuary from detection or
attack; have a focused core membership and imaginative leaders; be
decentralized, establish no patterns; build a strong support base; wage
psychological warfare. A detailed look at how the net augments this sort of
warfare is instructive.
A Roadmap to Political Warfare
Political warfare (polwar) strives to
create an alternative social contract and dependency infrastructure and induce
their popular adoption. This is commonly achieved through efforts of agitation,
subversion, rioting, propaganda, psychological warfare operations,
disinformation, diversionary diplomacy, economic manipulation and attacks,
terror attacks, and guerrilla or paramilitary actions.
Agitation, Subversion, and Rioting
These are popular movements
demonstrating overtly and covertly the rejection by members of the population of
the 'prior' social contract and dependency infrastructure or elements thereof.
Revolutionary movements need to build the support base of societal elements
disaffected with the dominating social contract and dependency infrastructure.
It is this core that establishes the alternate structure and acts as an example
for potential new members and the society at large. The net is an ideal tool for
management of this basemembers can be educated through the medium of the net;
establish alternative structures for civil, police, and military matters; and
organize events and initiate 'flash crowds' (spontaneous actions) designed to
disrupt the existing social contract and attract recruits to the new contract.
Sophisticated targeting and profiling of the support base can supply
leverage along Pareto simplification--effect the twenty percent of the social
structure that creates eighty percent of the social support and stability.
Propaganda, PsyOps, Disinformation, Diversionary Diplomacy
Propaganda and
psyops efforts have a ready tool in the net, as can be seen in how it effects
some of the rules of thumb for such operations
- Fix target and channel, use
existing channels; the medium may or may not be the message, but the net does
act as a considerable leverage point--the net is becoming a well defined entry
point to the media cycle; once in the cycle, stories feed on themselves, and
propagate through the more 'conventional' media outlets;
- Target pressure
points; demographics on the net work highly in favor of targeted messages,
providing numerous specialty forums with near-ideal spreads in income and age
factors;
- Stress micro at the micro level, stress macro at all levels; the
net is an international mechanism that can be used to manage local or topical
messages, and with the same stroke of the pen, have wide distribution;
-
Test messages and iteratively design them; while careful controls to limit
distribution of test messages would need to be used, a 'natural selection' takes
place that tends to kill messages that are non-viable, and propagate viable
ones;
- Be flexible, run the operation in place; newcomers can't expect to
manage propaganda efforts on the net, but once established inside of certain
communities, operators can manage quite well;
- Know the context; the net is
well structured to assimilate newcomers into the rules and nomenclature,
providing a continuity of context that is quite striking;
- Set the tone
properly, positive/prophylactic/negative; the net is designed to move
information and it does so quite well; it also acts as a valuable forum to
release information that is beneficial to the operation, acts informatively, or
'flames' the opposition;
- Timing, duration, and repetition of message are
critical; the net has an extremely fast cycle of turn-over, but also has a way
of rehashing topics and messages continually;
- Keep the content simple and
emotional; this requires skill in construction of the content for the net, which
tends to apply logic more than most media, but a direct message still cuts
through the noise;
- Evoke group identifications; if managed in context, the
net is a structured yet highly fractured social community; evocation of group
identities is greatly situation dependent;
- Don't misstate facts, present
alternative interpretations; this is already the mainstay of the net, like a dog
worrying a bone;
- Establish trust; voluntary communities on the net are
structured with de facto reputation markets, and past performance is a major
factor in how a message is received and interpreted;
- Use no new issues,
exploit existing ones; hijacking old topics and putting a new 'spin' on it is
another favorite 'indoor sport' of the net;
- Aggregate the message;
starting with the basic concept of any message and evolving it over time works
well in the net, but only if the other rules are not violated (trust, context).
One of the 'problems' of the net from a psyops perspective is that many of
the communities are already highly skeptical because of the education and
experience of the individuals using the net. Disinformation tends to be harder
to manage, but somehow always manages to find willing minds. Deception, the
minor religion of the intelligence community and net alike, has an abundance of
opportunities in the net, particularly the use of back-end active measures to
damage perceptions of data or channels.
Economic Intelligence and Attacks
The net offers a prime opportunity for
exactly this sort of operation; money is mostly virtual, and there are endless
opportunities.
Operational groups can use economic intelligence and attacks
for funding as well as the operational value of the mission. Without a
'political' objective, many of these operations are simply 'crime,'
interpretations are irrelevant to considering their potential and application.
Net Crimes
The functionality without the ideology
- 'Computer crime'
including break-ins, credit card fraud, cell phone cloning, phreaking (theft of
service), and piracy can all be used to generate cash and provide capabilities
to the organization;
- Blackmail takes on a new dimension through monitoring
or sniffing an individual's message traffic and e-mail; monitoring of pipes to
newsgroups or through anonymous remailers can provide leverage on individuals,
forcing them to provide funds or information;
- Espionage can be directly
engaged in, through break-ins, sniffers that monitor net traffic through the
net, scanning e-mail, and other measures;
- Sabotage can destroy critical
systems or data, or be used to cover for other operations;
- Insider trading
can be accomplished by monitoring financial activities of corporations or market
makers and subsequent use of such information in trading;
- Money laundering
becomes greatly enhanced through the net, as does control of clandestine assets.
An example system for such transactions is easy to postulate; chained
remailers with one remailer in the chain being the actual end-user, hiding
dropped traffic with decoys to/from a public news posting pipe, all message
traffic buried in a nested cryptosystem (two public key depths with 3DES/CBC and
initialization vectors wrapping a message using a codebook managed by a
pseudo-random number generator like Snefru). Such a system could be a secure
bank, information store, dead-drop, cut-out, and forward; the only price to pay
would be system support and processor time.
Information Warfare
Dependency infrastructure and social contract
elements maintained by systems connected to the net face attacks as well; these
attacks are referred to as 'information warfare,' (infowar) and as much as I
dislike the term, I will use it here. Potentially effected infrastructural
elements includetelephone communication networks and collaterally reliant
systems, such as emergency services; power grid, water, and sanitation
management; financial networks, including automated tellers (ATMs), credit
cards, debt and equity markets; technology related or dependent industries, from
hospitals to airlines; media organizations; transportation network coordination;
government agencies, from social security to the intelligence and law
enforcement bodies. Any of these systems could be targeted by an infowar attack.
Why is infowar possible? While the real world has numerous inherent
constraints and limitations, the digital world is infinitely malleable--the
burden is on the user/observer. The organizations that have become dependent on
the technology of the net have placed their trust in their systems, even though
they are insecure and not always reliable, because they have had no choice.
Automation has become the only way for such organizations to expand their
functions and capabilities (from international switching of phone calls to
clearing a credit card from half-way around the globe). But what technology
gives, it can also take away.
Information warfare will likely play a part in
some future military conflict along conventional lines; the point of the attack
will be denial of service (DOS) of some elements in the military C4I chain
(command, control, communications, computers, intelligence). Given U.S. reliance
on C4I as a direct force multiplier, it stands as being one of the most probable
first targets. Such attacks will take technical sophistication as well as access
to knowledge (and possible physical access) of C4I systems, not something
casually gained. For example, one of the highest probabilities for such military
infowar is the American Sixth Fleet (Middle East), which regularly
services/repairs approximately 25 U.S. warships in Haifa, Israel. Along similar
lines, all U.S. F-15 warplanes in Europe are serviced by Israel Aircraft
Industries; Israeli development of infowar capabilities in their LAKAM group
would make the potential for such an attack even greater.
Infowar is also
more subtle attacks on the dependency infrastructure or value chain; misuse,
perversion, or manipulation of data can be devastating in the right situation.
Attacks along these lines have some distinct advantagesthey are highly
leveraged, have a low cost of entry, don't require being in any particular
location, are both strategically and tactically useful, have an extremely high
tempo, make up for a lack of numbers or resources by substituting time and
inventiveness, are hard to monitor capabilities or detect attack, provide both
moral and material surprise, can be synchronized or simultaneous anywhere in the
net, and have an extremely high value in damaging the morale of the opponent.
There are interesting comparisons and parallels between the factors of
conventional warfare and infowarthey both strike at the dependency
infrastructure and value chain, although at different levels; ground/terrain
concerns become issues of the infosphere, infostructure, connectivity, and
non-local capability of attack; tempo gains directly and in simultaneity;
leverage comes from targeting and the ability to 'pre-load' the attack; mass
equates to processing power, time, and connectivity; readiness is preparation
and planning, and adds preprogramming; security as always is security, timing,
penetration, and cryptography.
Infowar attacks use the net directly as the
weapon, and this area of investigation is one of the most interesting
possibilities provided by the introduction of the net.
Guerrilla Warfare and Terrorism
Although the line between these two
disciplines has blurred, they are still two distinct tactics of conflict.
Guerrilla warfare operations focus on military infrastructural elements, war
material, money and finance, command-and-control elements, supply, and staging
areas.
Terrorism operations focus on recognition, coercion, intimidation,
provocation, insurgency support, ambush, raids, assassination, bombings,
kidnapping, riots, hijacking; these tend toward civilian targets, usually
directly on the assumptions and terms of the social contract.
Terror attacks
have evolved. 'First generation' terror efforts focused on an exhaustion
strategy; targets were typically 'no retreat' hostage situations, which
eventually were successfully countermeasured with police methods and commando
strikes. 'Second generation' terror attacks aimed at recognition, a coercive
propaganda; targets were and still are 'no contact' profiles, with explosives
being the weapon of choice, and countermeasures focus on the criminalization of
the actors and actions, denying they have any valid political element.
Historically successful mechanisms for ending guerrilla and terrorist
actions have been through mitigation of the political circumstances that brought
them about; this approach has in recent years been ignored, with the emphasis on
non-negotiation with guerrillas and terrorists, and year after year the
escalation continues.
The net can be used to augment many of the elements
necessary to guerrilla and terrorist organizationsorganizational structures can
abandon the obsolete cell structures, move to star or hub-and-star structures
allowing direct control, only one level deep, yet with operational unit
isolation if necessary for compartmentalization; cut-outs, drops, and forwards
with chained remailers; communications gain security and authentication with the
use of available cryptosystems; recruiting becomes voluntarist, and allows deep
background investigations and legends/covers to be created; training can be
managed with multimedia tools and virtual reality simulations for operational
walkthroughs; funding can come from the net, or be laundered using it; the net
can become the weapon with infowar attacks; conventional targeting is aided with
target profiling and research; propaganda and spin control can be managed
through the net to prevent media control by IC and LEA sources.
In short,
the net is a ready tool for the hand of the guerrilla or terrorist, who will
certainly wield it.
Conclusions
Is the net a viable intelligence tool?
I believe I have
skimmed the surface enough to demonstrate that it has significant value in
tradecraft and operational support; it will also play an increasing role as the
domain of operations with information warfare.
The 'players' of 'games' in
the net can be anyone with access, more of whom there are every day; as with any
tool that can become a weapon, all it takes is a man with the will to wield it
as such. As the disparity between what can be accomplished using the net and the
laws and covenants governing society fall farther and farther out of step, the
potential for successful use of the net for intelligence purposes grows.
Can
espionage on the net be limited?
Certainly, with the adoption of freely
available and commonly used strong cryptography.
Common usage of
cryptographic technology would turn the private signal content of the net into
noise--one man's noise is another man's data, but only if you have the right
key. Currently however, using the net for espionage is a valuable target of
opportunity--better grab a pot because the sky is raining soup.
Can the
effects of small and large scale criminal and infowar attacks be limited?
While not as easy to solve, many things can be done
- No system is
secure, so don't rely on security to protect data; use strong cryptography.
Strong cryptography can also protect against spoofing, viral attacks
(authenticating all executable code prior to use), and many of the other ills of
the net;
- Since break-ins and attacks are going to occur, systems need to
be designed to accommodate 'safe failure,' including adequate controls on
deletions of data (write-once optical drives, or hardware control of the
write/erase functions of the storage), and common checkpointing (periodic
back-up of stored data). Critical systems should have redundancy, and be
prepared for the inevitable failure.
Can the operational utility of the net
be limited?
This is the 'ontological judo' of the Adversary--for the net to
exist, it has to remain freely accessible, and as long as the net exists, ways
will be found to move data from point 'a' to point 'b,' regardless of the
controls. The net isn't the sort of place that can be 'occupied' in a military
sense; it could be shut down, but nobody can 'take' the net and hold or police
it, and it will resist any such attempts. I'm not even sure it could be shut
down at this point; the technology to re-establish it, even in a covert form,
are wide-spread enough to make an 'official' shut-down improbable.
Another
point to remember is this--for an insurgency to work, there needs to be an
alternative social contract and dependency infrastructure established. Consider
the net--it already comprises such a system, and this is what makes it such a
potent intelligence tool.
"...it is necessary for him to have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly
as the winds and variations of fortune force it, yet, as I have said above, not
to diverge from the good if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to
know how to set about it."
--Machiavelli, _The Prince_