Slashdot Mirror
China Plots Cyberspace War Strategy
gaijin|dog writes "According to this article in the Washington Times, China has said that Internet warfare should be equated to combat operations for air, land and sea forces. Communications, transportation, finance, electrical power networks and other critical services in the US are listed as likely targets. Kinda scary considering the resources China could use against us." My personal opinion: this article is a dizzy mix of fact and scare-mongering. But you ought to read it for yourself and make up your own mind how valid it is.
The UN/Geneva conventions have set out rules for things like biological warfare, and nuclear weapons. Why don't we get off our duffs and do something about cyber warfare? The US has admitted to using cyber warefare as a means to an end during the Yugaslavia conflict. I'm sure China will also do so if it feels threatened.
The problem is that some people might not notice that, yes, there is a problem with it. It's not "clean" warfare -- what if your mission critical computer that is 'net connected goes down? This same system could be responsible for life support for hospital patients, or perhaps tracking the course of some satalites (the Shuttle doesn't stand up to well to colissions).
Can we really take the risk of letting people distrupt, either directly or indirectly, the infrastructure that a lot of people rely on? Something that could lead to deaths?
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The real point of this article is that China is trying to make itself powerful in any way it can. America is currently very vulnerable to electronic attack. So vulnerable that if an attack were mounted, we might not know how to react.
When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, we knew immediately what to do. It meant war. If China were to take down one of the Pentagon's networks for a few days, what would we do about it? The confusion it would generate is far more scary than even a clearly defined first strike. When people are confused, they make mistakes. Between China and the US, the mistakes could get big.
But enough talk about apocalypse... For now it is mostly just blustering. I think the best thing that could come out of this is that the US and other contries might develop electronic warfare departments of their own. If it hasn't happened already, I hope the US has plans in place detailing what we will do if we are attacked over the Net. I know we already have some sort of an electronic warfare division, but I'm sure the bulk of it is classified.
Do you think we'll see an official US govt. response to this newly publicised threat?
"Modern high-tech warfare cannot win without the Net"
The above is a quote from the article and is, IMO, complete rubbish. I am not saying that internet warfare would not be an effective means of disrupting the functioning of a large, technlogised country. But to state that a war could not be won without using the Net is garbage.
One squadron of B2 stealth bombers could completely obliterate most small countries before their populace new they were there. How the hell does this kind of aggresive, decisive action involve the internet?
Another example is the air war fought against Iraq in 1990. That operation could be repeated again, with even greater success, tomorrow. In exactly the same fashion. Hell, the bombing raids could probably use the same flight patterns. Denial of service would be far easier to achieve using a physical attack. Why not just airburst a small nuke over Wall Street? EMP is far more effective, more direct, then DoS attacks over the internet.
By all means, hack government and community systems to cause confusion, unrest and inconvenience. But the effective use of electronic warfare has virtually nothing to do with the Internet.
Cya,
Gomez
[not to be confused woth the US Chess Federation]. The Air Force started as an extention of the Army in the early 20th century. Later it becais the USAAF (US Army Air Force). Then finally the Air Force separated into it's own division. And now following the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force might this be the beginnings of a the 5th branch of the Milirary? The Cyber Force? Of course, we'll need the Cyber Reserves. And ad campaigns. "Join the cyber reserves. It's just 2 weeks of hacking a year, and one weekend a month, and in return, you can go to college prepaid!" We'll need Cyber Force boot camp too. "OK, you script kiddie maggots! Your first training task will be to try and crash the secured fileservers in that building over there! You will each be provided with a laptop and a modem. You will use your training and the skills you were provided with to bring down the enemy. If you lose your laptop, or crash your hard drive, you will not be able to return home!" etc. We'll have cyber force drafts, draft dodgers, anti-cyber force protestors. It'll be great. Congress will allocate billions for the Cyber Force. Electronic weapons development, EMP cannons the likes of which have never been seen. Virus development. And the geeks will profit big time. I'll be first in line.
The Washington Times is not known as a particularly reliable newspaper. It's owned and operated by the Unification Church -- better known as the Moonies -- and runs to the extreme right wing quite a bit of the time.
If something is reported in the Washington Times and not picked up by the Post or the New York Times, you can bet that it's the Moonies getting it wrong yet again.
One of the signs that a story has been "placed" by a PR firm is when the story gives extensive attention to a single source--who coincidentally has just published a book on the subject. That seems to be the case here--William Triplett is identified as the author of a new book, Red Dragon Rising .
One of the threats that Triplett explicitly raises is that the Chinese might be able to use Internet warfare to raise havoc in petroleum refineries--causing fires, spills, etc. He emphasizes that oil refineries are generally located close together, as though this represents some kind of danger.
That reminded me of something--I've already read this book, only it was a novel. Back in 1986 Tom Clancy and Larry Bond wrote a thriller entitled Red Storm Rising (Clancy, Red Storm Rising, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1986). The story begins with an attack by Muslim terrorists on a massive petroleum refinery in central Russia. One of the terrorists uses computer commands to wreak havoc--causing spills, igniting fires, and causing mass destruction. The fires destroy a major portion of the Soviet Union's petroleum industry, because all the refineries are located so close together.
Whether, and how, the U.S. might respond to a concerted Internet attack is an interesting question. But I wonder if this guy represents a credible source....
--
This article serves a few functions:
1.
To make sure the average citizen is anti-chinese, or to make sure Americans stay patriotic. The whole nuclear secrets scandal was shown to basically be a scam, this is similar territory, at least in it's purpose.
2.
To maintain legitimacy for our military and to increase support for military funding. Notice how the article mentioned something like 39 million dollars being allocated to "protect computers".
This stuff tends to work on a society that is short on facts and long on tabloid bullshit. Lets face it, there are VERY few people who know anything on this topic, including those in high level government positions. Since most people take the media to be the accepted version of truth, they buy it. Of course people don't trust the media nearly as much as they used to, but this is still true for the most part.
Any country that wants to be a player in the next century *should* be developing this type of technology. Who doubts that the US is way ahead of the Chinese in this technology anyway? The US gets all whipped up anytime some country even hints that they might be increasing their military in some fashion, even though we easily have the most powerful arsenal on the planet.
This is just another piece of extreme right-wing xenophobic rhetoric.
didn't they buy that special cracking program from a Chinese operative?
---
This article sounds like phear mongering to me. Like this...
The cyber-attacks followed the May 7 bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade and were viewed by some U.S. national security officials as possible government-sponsored information-warfare attacks on the United States.
You're an American student who happens to know how to crack computers. In an unrelated (to you) Chinese conflict, they bomb a U.S. embassy and kill a number of American citizens. What do you do that night?
Information warfare is a natural step into the Information Age. Don't be scared, just be cautious. If you want to look for an Information Age Pearl Harbor or equivalent war-starting (building) atrocity think about a really nasty Melissa/Bubbleboy/BO2K coupled with a million dedicated (and crafty) young men working from the comfort of their homes behind the Great Firewall.
Just some initial thoughts on what will be an interesting topic to follow. I'd REALLY like to hear from some Chinese geeks.
+&x
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The main paper is "The People's Daily" (renmin ribao). It may be full of bs sometimes, but it is politically correct news. Usually contains some rant about hegemony or something somewhere.
The next level down are city level papers like "Beijing Daily" and "Chongqing Daily". These are less under central control, and more likely to report things a little more accurately or with less propoganda and moralizing.
The third level are special interest newspapers like "Shipping News" or "The People's Liberation Army Daily" or perhaps old part relics like "Information Reference" (xiaoxi cankao, this is more reliable, but more propaganda-ish) . These are the least reliable (in my opinion). Since they have less prestige and relics of the past, they put out more radical stuff to sell papers...
Also, sometimes the papers a little more distant from the People's Daily are used as test beds for new ideas or to create hype... The "Ming Pao" paper in Hong Kong did this during the summer, with lots of talk about invading Taiwan.
I'm assuming this article is not to make foreigners scared (this newspaper is directed to internal readers) and instead just to move papers. The military is big stuff in China -- much more obvious than in the US. Lots of people read "military news" or like "Military Affairs" (junshi)
the People's Liberation Army Daily site (down? probably in gb-chinese as well)
a Beijing Scene article on the recent war fever in China (Beijing Scene is a popular expat weekly in Beijing)
Also, quite seriously, who in their right mind wouldn't be thinking about this type of stuff in this day and age. I mean... like other
Sometimes I get the feeling that people just like to pick on China -- or feel some sort of psychic need to let it fill the spot left by the USSR's collapse. They've drawn a shitty lot (the Chinese), at try thinking from their perspective every once in a while.
maybe I've been here too long.
willis.
there is no thing
what else could you want?
China is underestimated, but to say that an attack on the internet is going to cripple the US military is simply foolish. You could fry every backbone on the internet, and the US military would keep on ticking. Even our commercial economy would remain relatively unimpeded (at the current time atleast); the internet represents a relatively small portion of our GDP. Our military industrial capacity is still huge--which is what really determines war (baring nukes); However, something along the lines of an EMP (e.g.: wipe out phone networks, switching stations, etc) is an entirely different story, and has the potential to mess us (or anyone) up badly. Even if all US military hardware is shielded, a complete failure in civilian electronics would cripple our ability to move troops, produce machinery, etc--in short it would be an excellent "first strike"...but an internet attack is nothing close to that.
Anyways, despite China's immense military power and their propensity to trample on their citizen's rights, I don't believe they have any interest in going to war with us. Worst Case: Mutually Assured Destriction, the end. Best Case: Conventional arms war (which strikes me as implausible)--the US has an edge in many ways. Namely, our industrial capacity is significantly larger (e.g.: the ability to turn out more tanks, planes, trucks, bombs, artillery, faster). It would be an ugly war no matter what; not in anyone's best interest. China is probably going to be the world's next great super power (besides the US) if things keep on going the way the way they have been. Why would their stable leadership want to do anything so brash?