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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 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
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....
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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.