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Why The US Will Lose a Cyber War
An anonymous reader writes "There's not another nation in the world that can wage kinetic warfare as effectively as the United States, and that's probably at the heart of the reason why the United States will lose a war fought in cyberspace, leading cyber security analyst Jeffrey Carr writes."
I've written about cyber warfare before and made some insightful points.
The bottom line is this: We *CAN* win at cyber war but what we must do is ensure our warriors are comfortable and well nourished as they enter the battlefield. When a warrior is scheduled to go online, make sure they get a well balanced meal the night before. Lower carbohydrates and plenty of protein, preferably from vegan sources. For breakfast a high protein meal is a must, perhaps with some fair trade coffee lightened with a hint of organic soy milk. Some vitamin B complex and Omega 6 fatty acids will also help the brain stay alert during his mission.
That's the nourishment side. Now to comfort.
Low level, indirect lighting. High contrast, high refresh monitors at a distance that helps reduce the amount of EMR the soldier absorbs. Comfortable Pro Shiatsu massage chairs to keep the blood from pooling up in the back and torso.
On of the most important things is the soldiers' nervous system care. If they are to be sitting at a computer all day long, they *must* have proper care both before and after their missions. I'd recommend an on-staff Chiropractor to break out the micro-subluxations that will inevitably form during the hours sitting in a chair. Even a good massage chair will let some develop, but they won't be serious if attended to within reasonable time. The last thing we want is a great cyber warrior crippled by subluxation (or worse, given cancer or heart disease by one) Chiropractic is by far the cheapest method of this. That's why we are petitioning the Veterans' Association to bring us on board in their long term care facilities. We can extend their lives and make the duration better quality.
Take care,
Bob
Chiropractic Saves Lives!
Large empires have always fallen when new technologies have arisen. They allow someone else to take the new number one place. China is extremely viable candidate for this, even without the whole cyberwar thing.
Google+ vs. Facebook, and why Google+ will fail
The problem with defending the U.S. in a cyber attack is that there are so many targets and its economy has become so utterly and completely dependent on the internet and its computer systems. They're a very easy target because there are so MANY targets to hit there. Now, contrast that with a place like North Korea, which has almost no internet infrastructure and whose ragged economy probably wouldn't take a hit if every computer in the country exploded tomorrow. That's asymetric warfare taken to the nth degree. North Korea in that situation basically CAN'T loose a cyber war against the U.S. The worst that could happen is that the U.S. would stop their attack. And with enough attacks, one is bound to connect. And even one successful attack on an important sector or piece of infrastructure could produce chaos in the U.S.'s very large and powerful house of cards.
In comparison, what has North Korea got to lose? Their few power plants are running on 50's tech. Most of the country lives in abject poverty with no electricity (much less internet access). They're like Battlestar Galactica, a ship with such old technology that a computer virus doesn't even phase them. How the hell is the U.S. going to fight a cyber war against them and NOT lose?
Now, that's an extreme example. China, Russia, Iran, et. al. are a little more dependent on their network/computer infrastructure than North Korea. But NO ONE (outside of the first world, certainly) is as dependent on their IT infrastructure as the U.S. That's a real vulnerability that's almost impossible to plug.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
no such thing as a cyber war. If i were to guess, it would be koreans who win a cyber war because they're pros are starcraft. The US might be able to win at halo though, so it would be some sort of give and take.
In related news, Ghadaif rings up PMs and says "See, it ain't so easy, now is it ?" !!
DoD has all of their cyber security task force in house and well within arms reach. What this guy is preaching is that DoD should be more lax on spending in this sector and make it easier for start-ups to get this kind of money....
The last thing we need is some start-up company handling billions of dollars worth of military secrets using modified Norton Antivirus code....
If shit really truly hits the fan, you unplug.
Is it me or is the article a load of bollocks? "The Chinese will win because the I Ching teaches them synchronicity"! Haven't soldiers consistently exhibited synchronicity? The "gut feeling" that a valley is unsafe. The WWI idea that the "third light" was unlucky, so they extinguished the match after lighting two - years before someone figured out that the time to light three cigarettes was just long enough for a sniper to notice, aim, and fire!
Also, It will take a lot to convince me that synchronicity is of primary importance in a cyber-war. We are not talking about pursuing agents through second life, we are talking about finding weaknesses in web-connected devices that control infrastructure, and viruses that will make the centrifuges in a uranium processing plant wear out. I think the author is talking complete bollocks.
Now there's plenty of reasonable ways to talk about US weaknesses in cyber warfare (which IMHO is commonly overstated: what seems like weakness can often be a strength. It may merely be the case that the US is more subtle about its cyber shenanigans), but this article seems to meander into complete incoherence. Jung's synchronicity? I Ching? Seriously? Seems like someone's watched too much Serial Experiments Lain.
missile the 3 gorges dam and china is fucked
We will lose the cyber war because we have laws that aim to criminally punish curious individuals. Most importantly Microsoft was a whore and gave SOURCE CODE to our largest cyber adversary, CHINA, for the promise of sales that never even happened. How easy do you think it is to find a nice fat 0-day when you have the source to something that no one else has....
Regardless of whether or not the U.S. would win a cyberwar (or even if such a thing exists), the article makes no testable or even clear assertions on any such thing. It's all about Carl Jung and "interconnectedness" and mind/body material/immaterial synchronicity and at root:
"The Book of Changes or Yijing. It’s a divinatory oracle that dates back to the Qin dynasty and teaches that the universe is composed of parts that are interconnected. The yarrow stalks used in the Yijing symbolize those parts, while the casting of them symbolizes the mystery of how the universe works (Pauli's quantum indeterminacy). Chinese emperors and generals have used this oracle since approximately 300 BC, and it may still provide a glimmer of insight into the mysterious nature of this new age of cyber-space-time and how cyber battles may be fought and won. Unfortunately for Western nations, synchronicity has its origins in the East. Western nations have a tradition in causality, not synchronicity. And the US Defense Department is deeply grounded in traditional western thinking and practicality..."
Seriously, this article makes the argument that the DOD doesn't understand cyberspace because it spends insufficient time casting stalks and reading from a 2,300-year-old book of divinations. Made my eyes roll so hard it hurt my head. Possibly the biggest piece of bullshit I've ever seen on Slashdot. Yeah, the DOD is just too "practical" (insufficiently magical?), there's your argument.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
"We are now threatened with a script kiddie gap that leaves us in a position of potentially grave danger."
Senator John F. Kennedy, American Legion Convention, Miami Beach, FL http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=74096#ixzz1UdOSia3p
The United States has spent the better part of the last two decades using its resources to help media conglomerates imprison computer users. Now the government doesn't understand why they can't seem to recruit the best and the brightest to save us.
population.
now about the other 990 million...
they might be rather upset.
China infrastructure is on the cheap with safety not that good all over the place. Look at the China high speed rail crash and after that they where very quick to bury the train cars.
Maybe they can hack a us nuke plan and likely at most trigger any number of auto shut downs / safety's but there own plans are likely lacking the same auto shut downs.
they shut down the power grids, by twiddling some bits in a computer, and laughing about grannies who would be without power.
of course they got away with it, because they were well connected politically and ideologically to the 'free market uber alles' people.
you could also argue the financial crisis of 2008 was a cyber attack on the part of the bankers, hedge fund managers, ratings agencies, insurance companies, and government regulators who all colluded to create massive fraud of the Synthetic CDO "industry", which wiped out vast mountains of money ... all using little numbers in computers, swishing things to the Cayman Islands and so forth.
thank you, for posting this. i feel like my life has changed after reading it. so beautiful, so simple, so sincere.
Not if we blow up their computers first!!!!
So China is going to win a cyber war because they believe that the universe and its parts are interconnected?? What kind of opium is this guy smoking?
Why is it that Chinese students come to the U.S. to learn? Why is it that they in turn are constantly trying to hack into our networks thousands of times a day to steal our information? I'm sick of people undervaluing the U.S. for no good reason. Clearly this author doesn't know anything about what he's talking about, getting all philosophical like this. SHEEEITTTTTTTTTTT
Go study.
well seeing how bad the rail system is that may fail on it's own.
There is only war. period. Different wars may be fought with different weapons, but be assured that both parties in a conflict will use the most effective weapons they have for a given situation.
If that happens to be the US's conventional army they will use that. It is not a coincidence that the Pentagon has adopted a new strategy that will classify major cyber attacks as acts of war, paving the way for possible military retaliation.
Any serious cyber attack on the US that can not be countered with technology WILL result in someone's internet infrastructure being bombarded back to the stoneage.
(charleton heston voice) We will never be cyber invaded because we have a well armed cyber militia. Oh sure, if you were to cyber-invade france, france where the only criminals have crypto, that'd be easy. The citizenry can't defend themselves. But here in the good old US of A, we have private ownership of crypto, rootkits and exploit frameworks. We got college kids with fuzzers, aging hippies with portscanners and investment bankers with spam botnets. You try to cyber invade here and you'll have your ass handed to you. Even if you were able to get by the United States Cyber Force, the best equipped and best trained body of griefers and trolls in the whole world you can't stand against the will of the American Cyber Republic
Carr's notion of "war" is outdated. The short history of internet hacking has shown that a) national borders are close to meaningless b) a defined start and end of hostilities is difficult, if not impossible to ascertain and c) the attackers and defenders need not belong to traditional defense establishments.
What the US government should do (and they may require this already, I don't know) is create a standard that would ensure security is built into any system developed for government use. Of course, relying on existing operating systems with known vulnerabilities means that the foundation of US government security is shaky.
The whole "Wolfgang-Pauli-Karl-Jung-I-Ching-We're-too-grounded-in-a-causal-mindset" seems like a pretty specious argument for why we would lose a war. I have a feeling that Carr read a book by Nicolescu and wanted to show people how smart he is.
is not to play it. Too bad US, the country most vulnerable to its potential effects, already did their first moves (i.e. stuxnet).
It is quite understandable how the government would lose in cyber warfare: We all know .gov sites look ugly and are fat and bloated, and clearly their back-ends don't look any better.
But it would seem like USA, Inc., the big corporations that pretty much define USA, are far better at it than other foreign big corporations, such as, say SONY.
Although Amazon's cloud failures are quite discouraging, if North Korea attacked, I doubt Amazon would even notice.
Not to mention China would NEVER attack Amazon, or even USA for that matter. Everything we sell is made in China!! They want us to be online 24/7/365. In fact, I would go as far as to say, China would probably PROTECT us.
Because it can! wait...
The author seems to have bought into the hype about "web 2.0" and "web 3.0,' as if somehow they can operate without physical hardware. DDOS can be remedied by an inbound filter, or in extreme cases renumbering your server and updating DNS after placing a blackhole route on the attacked IP at the ISP level. Infiltrate a server, and it might require a reload and reboot to recover. Sure, you might lose a few days data if you've been sloppy, but if you're keeping proper backups, it'll be good again in a few days. Attack physical hardware, such as cable plants, colos, and satellite farms, and it may well be down for weeks to months -- plus once you know it's being worked on by the relatively few people who have the know-how to fix them, you can get them too. Take out power and water at the same time, and your enemy will have higher priorities than fixing their Internet infrastructure. In a cyber war, a real one where a declared enemy is using the Internet to actually do damage, I suspect the US Military will simply destroy the enemy infrastructure. Physical attacks can't be firewalled against.
You serious?
You used the word "effectively". I ask again. ARE YOU SERIOUS?
That would be the "war" part. These silly little hacking games that go on all the time, even if they have a government behind them, are not cyber war. They don't cause any real amount of trouble, don't advance any strategic objective. They are a nuisance more or less. Real "cyber war" would be like any other war in that the objective would be to hurt an enemy.
Ok well two things to keep in mind about that:
1) In such a case, the US would probably take more drastic measures. It would be easier than you think for them to cut off all Internet in and out of the US. That would work for the moment to keep things secure. They then could set about cutting the cables to the attacking country, via sub, bombs, etc. Once that country was off the net, they re-enable their link back to the world. That a cyber attack can be shut down by turning off routers or cutting cables means its long term effectiveness is rather limited.
2) It is a war which means that it will be responded to as such, namely with physical force. If a nation started destroying US infrastructure by hacking, you think the US government would really sit back and say "Oh well it is cyber, so we have to just use computers in response."? Hell no, they'd start blowing shit up. See how well that cyber war goes when stealth bombers take out your power grid, your telecom centers, and so on.
There would be no "cyber" war, there would be real war.
Also in general it seems the government is reasonably well prepared for such a thing by virtue of having their own private systems for a lot of stuff. The government has its own phone system, its own internets, and so on. They were created for other reasons (the phone system because the PSTN got slammed when Kennedy was killed and the government wanted communications that couldn't get interrupted like that, the internets for security against espionage) but they also have the fairly useful function of limiting the damage someone could do to the government and military with a cyber attack. It isn't like a hacker could go and turn off NORAD or something.
Finally, who the fuck is this guy? A "leading cyber security analyst"? Only according to himself. He is the "CEO" of some shit company who's site doesn't appear to have a functional domain, just an IP, and that is run in Wordpress. The guy is just trying to use scare tactics to sell worthless shit to CEOs. Slashdot shouldn't publish crap like this.
This is just another example of either someone who's feeling a little insecure or is trying to exploit the insecurity of others for their own ends.
Both strategies have a long tradition in the USA and all the defence related FUD has been found to be baseless when the truth leaks out (usually against the wishes of the govt/military).
Ultimately there is absolutely no need to fight a cyber war. if the USA was ever attacked, the most effective defence would simply be to pull the plug on all incoming/outgoing IP traffic. Most americans simply wouldn't notice (except when the amount of SPAM decreased, or their favourite porn sites became inaccessible) and for most facilities that are targets for attack, there's no legitimate reason to have them exposed to the internet anyway.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Whether or not the US is adequately prepared for "cyberwar" is certainly an open question.
However, this article is riddled with neologism ("cyber-space-time" really?) and magical
thinking (e.g. I Ching, synchronicity).
If the Internet really isn't a hardware-software system, what is it? Why not claim it has a soul too
and that we should sing to it?
The real issue is that the Internet infrastructure is public resource controlled by private interests.
That's what makes the DoD's job of defending it difficult. Defense cannot simply issue edicts like
"upgrade all your router firmware right now."
I do not propose we retreat back to a paper-based information system. I propose we go back to clay tablets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N34MmqmxqD0
And then in typical American reactive manner we'll dump a bunch of money into cybersecurity and thereby create the military-IT complex...
I would envision a typical response to be either cutting off the Internet connections from an attacking country (by physically destroying the cables with air strikes), or pinpointing the location of the attackers and turning them into red mist.
Well, since the attackers would be a BotNet of compromised XP PCs located all over the US mainland, I don't think that would be effective. But I could certainly see some bonehead launching cruse missiles, then wondering why they appear to be circling back to base.
Place nail here >+
The author seems to be of the opinion that cyberspace is some strange and mysterious entity that is beyond the ken of standard reasoning. From his comparisons to the I-Ching (aka Yi Jing) and Jung's synchronicity, it appears that he approaches cyberspace from an almost religious perspective (the only other alternative being that he approaches it from the perspective of bad pop science...). He even goes so far as advocating the new name of "cyberspacetime" to wrap the idea in even another layer of mystery (obfuscation?). That he buys into this strange idea is bad enough, but then he decides to criticize the DoD because they don't share this outlandish view. I'm just happy that he's not the one making national security decisions.
There is a hidden agenda within the uS government; not to protect the airwaves, etc. but to achieve goals of the tax system, and to insure their longevity ...not as servants of the public,but as professional beggars. Their solution is like two cans communicate; a single string held taunt between the two cans, is the method the uS government should use for their type of communication.Commercial businesses as well as individuals should be separate. 3 individual networks. 3 individual places to go on terminals.
Example: a boxing ring with 20 contestants will always appear as a free for all, but 10 arenas, each with 2 contestants will not.
Conclusion: Sit back and watch the uS loose! As 1 contestant out of 20 will surely fail with the 19 surrounding the 1 ... resulting pleasure, peace, and happiness for the 19. L.O.L.
I have worked in several countries in IT, specifically IT security. The author clearly sees things only from one perspective. Other nations IT capabilities especially within small to medium companies is very limited with IT staff's that have very limited experience. This is not to say all countries but many. The problem of IT security is not just a U.S. problem but globally IT security is a mess. Think about this: in Austria a very small European the television is state run and you pay a tax. That state run company was just hacked a few weeks ago and every Austrian that has a TV is a customer so they all lost personal data to hackers. Birthday, bank information if they paid with a bank or credit card. Full name and address and etc...... Yes the U.S. has a problem but so does every country out there. Personally I am concerned about all security.
well seeing how bad the rail system is that may fail on it's own.
I'm not sure the US is in any position to criticize the rail system of any other nation. :)
Nothing to see here
Wrong tense.
Imagine if you could only decide if you trusted a soldier or not, a binary decision, for each and every soldier in the military, at their time of enlistment.
If you trusted him, he had full access to every weapon and resource at our countries command, until he decided to leave.
If not, he wouldn't have access to anything.
Would it be possible to have a classification system in such a regime, when one spy could give away everything to the highest bidder?
Would it be possible to have an effective command and control system, when rank means nothing because there are no privileges that go with it?
Would it be possible to even have a country, if one loose cannon could launch Armageddon?
No, of course not... security decisions have to be much more fine grained than that... you don't trust any soldier absolutely, it would be insane to do so.
Even the tightest background checks in the world wouldn't help, because it only takes one mistake to lose everything.
Yet we have no problem with giving that soldier (or any user, for that matter) a computer and that same choice... either trust the program he's about to run, or don't accomplish anything.
Until we remove this false choice, we can never have secure computing.
A lot of people wave this article away as rubbish and nonsense and such. Is that wisdom or arrogance and pride ?
It has happened before; look at Georgia.
"Cyberwar" doesn't have to mean an all out attack against as many targets as possible. Just take out a few key targets to hinder communication, then work your way around it to provide falsified information which might cause a panic and you're well on your way.
Denying the issue as rubbish without giving it a second of thought does not make the threat go away.
Better put: before 9/11 many people also waved the idea away about terrorists ever directly striking the US. It was "too far away", and we know what happened next.
Dream on!
What an absolutely terrible article. It's a mash of Junginan philosophy, BS physics and useless supposition. cyberspace isn't like the real work because of the Pauli exclusion principle? Clearly the author understands neither of these topics.
It's started, and you haven't noticed. If someone can put a nigh undetectable virus on specialized industrial controllers, you're going to get lots of damage and very real danger to personnel. Imagine how much of a hit it would be for, say, automobile manufacturers with rogue equipment.
sound like a shill cover up the deaths in the crash and try to spin it. The US has a good rail freight system. China's high speed rail system is made of a cheap copy of japan ones with out the safety systems.
Back in the early 90's I was talking to a psychologist explaining the "web". She reacted as if I was interacting with machine. It took me a minute to figure out what she was saying. The web is not a machine or a system of machines it is people. Just like there are moronic bullies who mug people and vandalize peoples things and steal from people in school or on the street there are scumbags on the web who do the same things. People just behave like people.
Lets jump into something way out. Lets assume that the underlying connectivity between everything is electromagnetic in nature.as is the communication system we call the web. Lets pretend that peoples thoughts, feelings, etc, exist as electromagnetic waves constantly being radiated from their source. We know that Brain Machine Interfaces can pick up electromagnetic waves outside of the human body right now. Pretend people are capable of being physically influenced by electromagnetic waves, for example cancer from high power or cell phone usage.
It then becomes possible that people can actually be both receivers and transmitters of electromagnetic energy. Possibly what happens is that people naturally ignore the massive amount of information being transmitted around kind of like background noise. Possibly we act like inter-connected nodes on a giant network of energy, similar to what Asians and Jung spoke about.
The thing that does not change if we as people interact in physical confrontation or a cyber-space confrontation or a Jungian interconnection is that people are people. The weapons change and people really don't. Scumbags still pick on people for no other reason than they can.
I imagine that after losing the cyber war, we would go over and break the victors' computers. nobody can really win a cyberwar.
A war that can be stopped with a single side cutter or a butter knife is not a war. The whole cyber war idea is just juvenile sci-fi.
Indeed, I've always thought a real "cyber war" would only ever be a preface to a real invasion. After all, it's (relatively speaking) too easy to recover from a cyber attack, and long term the opposition have little to gain from it (you'll learn from it, secure things better and move on). The only way cyber warfare would be effective is a mass attack to try and cripple communications and essential infrastructure followed by a real attack to press home a real advantage, be that destruction of physical property or some kind of land grab. Short of that, any engagement is just going to be tit for tat - but I guess "cyber bickering" doesn't sell so well.
sound like a shill cover up the deaths in the crash and try to spin it. The US has a good rail freight system. China's high speed rail system is made of a cheap copy of japan ones with out the safety systems.
That sounds like just about every other product the Chinese make these days, so yeah, most likely it is.
Nothing to see here
He's some dumbass marketing professor. He lost a LOT of credibility when he mentioned "web 2.0" and even more with "web 3.0". Those are made up marketing terms in the first place. And the web has barely any real security impact for military systems, anyway. (Like you said about NORAD)
the last cyber war i sided with you against the chinese , what do we get your lobbying and crap for lawfull access and copyright laws worse then your own nation.
BIG MIDDLE FINGER FROM CANADA.
1. The internet is really complicated and involves quantum something-or-other.
2. Asian philosophy is all about mysticism, non-materialism and shit.
3. Therefore, Asians are superior at cyber-warfare, qed.
"Be afraid so cyber security analyst Jeffrey Carr is needed and should get paid a lot of money to calm your fears". At least that is what I got from TFA.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
"1" presumes you'll find out about the attack before it's all said and done. Unfortunately, much of our capabilities are after-the-fact detections of attacks. A bit late to respond when they've hacked the SCADA and blew out a substation or a generator for a given power utility.
"2" depends on just how much damage they do to us as to whether we CAN respond with anything. Yes, we can respond with nukes...that's a poor response. And moreover, you're going to have a delayed response for any other kinetic type attack. They may be prepared for the response- even nukes.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
So, based on your logic, this piece of news must be fake.
Those that benefit from suckling at the tits of the bloated pig called the military industrial complex have now found a new and fatter pig from which to suckle. Cyber War is a bunch of BS propaganda to feed to the mindless politicians who only care about lining their pockets with greenbacks. Another way to waste American taxpayer money and prevent it from being used for something that would actually help society, such as Universal Health Care.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Commensurate with Web 3.0, history will look back and see this as (at least the start of) the third world war. With recent "conflicts" like Stuxnet, we are seeing the following countries and regions either offensively or defensively engaged or involved in cyber-warfare right now: China, U.S.A., Israel, Iran, India, Pakistan, Germany, Great Britain, Taiwan, Ireland, France, Eastern Europe, Korea, Finland, and no doubt others. With countries around the world very actively involved, potentially millions of innocent lives at stake, the cost of equipment and supplies, defense departments geared-up, and the recruitment of "warriors" in preparation for even more, it certainly sounds like war to me.
/.'s Psychic-in-Residence: Psychic to the Geeks
from the perspective of a military strategist the united states department of defence has grown so large and cumbersome it now resembles more corporation than military defense agency.
we have charged it to not only defend america but spread democracy. its been tasked with everything from police force to outer-space exploration and medical research, import/export safety and copyright law.
the department of defense that is everything, is nothing. It has been used as a blanket concept to provide funding to projects and services that politicians understand are requisite to the well functioning nation,
yet cannot be approached from the perspective of a general government program because we have from the cold-war on demonized communism and socialism to the point that even breathing a whisper of it is treason.
our education system past the age of 18 is a trainwreck without the department of defence. our foreign policy cannot be sustained without it, and our domestic resource allocation is a pipedream unless the department of defence works brutally to ensure a steady supply of cheap oil.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Cyber capabilities are not as easy to flaunt as new jets, missiles, aircraft carriers, submarines, guns, bombs, UAVs, etc.
Just because we don't show them off constantly doesn't mean we don't have them. We don't constantly use our capability to create havoc since (despite what you heard on TV and the Internet) we are the good guys.
1) In such a case, the US would probably take more drastic measures. It would be easier than you think for them to cut off all Internet in and out of the US.
And what kind of economic damage does that cause? How difficult would it be for a country to sneak in a few dozen agents and electronic equipment to within US borders? How much damage can they cause if they already have hidden backdoors into multiple infrastructure sites that have been dormant? Cutting off the net from the world for one day would cost millions of dollars. Cutting of the net internally would cost billions. A few cars full of guys out wardriving could remain undetected a long time. The choice is between leaving networks off and costing millions/billions of dollars a day, and turning it back on and having a sleeper agent damage something. Your entire premise is based on geography, which really doesn't apply.
2) It is a war which means that it will be responded to as such, namely with physical force.
Hey look, a bunch of attacks came from China, we better bomb China? Except oh maybe those were re-routed from Iran, or Russia, and set the Chinese up. How can you be certain the country you are about to bomb is running the attacks and isn't a victim themselves? Do you really think the nation initiating the attacks wouldn't do everything in their power to remain undetected and blame somebody else?
It isn't like a hacker could go and turn off NORAD or something.
This isn't a conventional war though, why would they care about NORAD? Shutting down the power grid for 1 day in 1 metropolis would cost billions of dollars to the economy. How many hits like that can this economy take? How much uncertainty about cyber attacks will the market bear before foreign investors seek safer places and send the economy into a complete tailspin? Look at the fall of the USSR for instance. It had nothing to do with losing in battle, and everything to do with money.
A competent cyber-warrior would be more like the CIA or KGB, i.e. perform your objective and don't get caught.
Imagine a country needs money. They could manipulate the markets in a way that regular corporations would like to, but can't.
A large country could have it's industry build large amounts of generators, crash another country's power grid, then sell the panicked population the generators that they just luckily happen to have on hand.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
In such a case, the US would probably take more drastic measures. It would be easier than you think for them to cut off all Internet in and out of the US. That would work for the moment to keep things secure. They then could set about cutting the cables to the attacking country, via sub, bombs, etc. Once that country was off the net, they re-enable their link back to the world. That a cyber attack can be shut down by turning off routers or cutting cables means its long term effectiveness is rather limited.
Uh..., no. It's been tried, recently, in countries with far fewer connection points than the U.S. has. While "pulling the plug" has measurable value as a defense measure, at least in the short term, it's nowhere near "completely effective" and is absolutely impractical as a long-term approach.
So a train derailed, and people were evacuated as a precaution, but the hazmat cars were empty and it was no big deal. If you consider that tantamount to a catastrophic, easily preventable collision killing 35 people and wounding 191, then I think your standards are pretty high. Derailments happen, but in the U.S. we have safety equipment and procedures rigorously enforced to prevent casualties. Only on the notoriously underfunded Washington, D.C., metro system can I recall an accident caused by equipment failure and not operator error--and this only happened because commuter rail systems are not regulated by the federal government like intercity rail.
I don't know who this Jeffrey fellow is, but if he speaks in the same manner in which he writes, a conversation with him would end in oneself being speckled in phlegm.
For those who didn't read TFA, and in this particular case have a leg up on people who have, it can be summarized:
The west will lose a cyber war, because our metaphysical philosophy isn't a good as 'The East'.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
We should firstly dump retarded distracting war analogy. Cyberwar isn't war. A correct name would be electronic espionage.
We had a chat about this topic over at mefi, which can be summarized as :
Nukes dissuade conventional warfare. Conventional warfare almost never dissuades espionage. If anything, nukes encourage espionage. And the internet encourages espionage too.
In other words, the articles original thought that focus on conventional weapons would inhibit our ability to conduct counter espionage activities sounds plausible, i.e. we should probably cut defense spending overall but increase the NSA budget.
I've recently been the recipient of a nasty piece of malware which took over my Linux server through a hole I didn't know was there. I no longer have the problem or the large amount of traffic because I went through using tcpdump, netstat, and iptables to effectively ward off the offensive. A little judicious, patient analysis can go a long way.
"... you think the US government would really sit back and say 'Oh well it is cyber, so we have to just use computers in response.'? Hell no, they'd start blowing shit up."
I generally agree with your points. However, here's the weak link that I see: Would they blow the right shit up? Based on recent history (Iraq, etc.), I'm guessing the answer could very well be "absolutely not".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Cyberwar is being fought by self organizing intelliconomic groups that use tunneling protocols to subvert the popular fiction of nation states as collectives. Turn off your BBC.
It is not countries but companies that win cyberwars and not individual corportations but keiretsu that benefit from our insistence on chaos. In the East, even Keiretsu find cooperation to be necessary.
Ultimately, the only hope for mankind is in the recognition that interdependence is mandatory.
Synchronicity just is... cyber or not.
Apple computer will not have you infringe upon our Ieverything trademark by using the the term Iching. Cease this action immediately, or we will sue for even more!!!
I hereby award myself the title of Cyber Security Analyst. Henceforth, I shall make irrelevant pronouncements which include the latest in buzzword technology and cultural references designed to stoke xenophobia. I shall predict everything, and in a few years' time, quote only those predictions which came true.
Regards,
Drunkulus
Chief Cyber Security Analyst
Drunktech LLC
.We could psychoanalyze the hell out of this, or we could air-gap the stuff that really matters and be done with it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
As it can just escalate it to "real" war.
I can give you a number of reasons why it probably wouldn't lose that one. I can also cite several examples. I would argue it is very hard to continue to wage a "Cyber" war after your civilization has been bombed back to the stone age and all your infrastructure consists of a pile of smoking rubble. It is difficult to maintain an internet connection when you don't have any electricity.
We could disconnect critical systems from the internet (and only allow them to write data to blank write-once external media), but then they couldn't surf the web!!!
Do you think cloud computing increases or decreases our defenses against attacks? I can see both lines of arguments:
1) Centralization => fewer targets and greater damage if the attack succeeds
vs
2) Centralization => the fewer targets have better defensive measures as they are administered by - hopefully - wise geeks
Why? Well, let's quote Col. Chester Philips from the film Capt. America:
"We are going to win this war, because WE HAVE THE BEST MEN!"
(Sometimes it takes us a punch in the head to get our act together, but for the past 235++ yrs. or so, we've done pretty well!)
* And, because we are ALL OF THE REST OF YOU, FROM EVERYWHERE... & I don't care what anyone says, but that alone, is a tremendous advantage - diversity of peoples, & their various strengths/attributes, which is, after all, what this nation IS all about...!
APK
P.S.=> Yes - that's right: I have great faith in my fellow countrymen, & also this/my nation (Especially if we finally shake the types "leading us" now, or if they finally come to their senses, that is)
... apk
be a smart move to focus on technologies that can persist in the stone age. For example, if EMP is real, and you can set off a global EMP that would disable all electronics, then wouldn't it be smart to try and develop technology that doesn't rely on elevtricity? I'm curious what kind of unconventional, unorthodox technologies are out there that we don't know about
I agree with pretty much all of what you wrote, though if you have to mention NORAD we have to think of 911 too when it failed miserably.
"and this only happened because commuter rail systems are not regulated by the federal government like intercity rail"
Wait, I've been told by the Republicans that regulation and the federal government are bad. You're saying that is not always true? What kind of un-American socialist are you, trying to save US American lives by regulation? It's people like you who are destroying this country with inconvenient truths. :-)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
... a finite game, but to play an infinite one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games
My suggestion about how the USA can win the infinite game about security:
"A Social Semantic Desktop for Sensemaking and Analysis about Threats And Opportunities"
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2368162&cid=37016386
Just waiting for the financial support I asked for there to show up.... :-)
The main problem is probably that the project is too cheap.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Fun fact: Humans are social animals, and nothing can change this. "Socialism" is an evolutionary result and survival trait. Anybody opposing it wholesale is engaging in some pretty serious self-denial. The whole reason we form governments (as every society in the history of the human race has) is to make better decisions through group cooperation.
I heard an interesting bit the other day about one psychologist's take on "reason" and the human mind. He said that we are biologically programmed not to make rational individual choices, but to make the best arguments. Only by involving multiple people in the argument can we actually make rational decisions. Presumably, the more people involved, the better the decision, which is why democracy is the best form of government. Unfortunately, some people have lost sight of that and think the point of arguing is to win regardless, and not necessarily get the best result for society.