Strategic Arts and Sciences Alliance
The Brand Name of the Media Revolution
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Idiosyntactix Strategic Arts and Sciences Alliance The Brand Name of the Media Revolution |
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DCOM - Chapter 3
DEFENDING CYBERSPACE AND OTHER METAPHORS MARTIN LIBICKI
Indistinguishable From Magic
Sections
Bosnia, Strategic Defense, and the NII Assessing Information Warfare Capabilities Practical Considerations Information warfare strategies tend to split into those dealing with attacks on or by the use of electronic devices (as in intelligence-based warfare, electronic warfare, or hacker warfare) and those dealing with psychological warfare -- bytes and memes,[62] as it were. The intersection of the two is rather small[63] yet both strategies are often lumped into the same discipline, information warfare.
These strategies, however, can also be related as follows: because ascertaining the potential of computer warfare is difficult, its psychological impact may be disproportionate to its tangible impact. The power of computers in general, and of information warfare in particular, is not well understood by the public or most military or national leaders. For this reason computer-based information warfare can play a huge role in psychological warfare; conversely, powerful techniques may lack psychological impact.
The truly skilled can exploit this dissonance between the perception and the reality of computer-based information warfare to make themselves seem more fearsome then they are and thereby expand their deterrence capabilities -- that is, until their bluff is called. Others may invent an enemy whose information warfare tricks are so insidious they deter themselves.
Bosnia, Strategic Defense, and the NII
Three vignettes illuminate the penumbra of believability surrounding the core of potential.
Vignette 1, Bosnia: In 1995, in Dayton, Ohio, during the negotiations for peace in Bosnia, the United States and Serbia differed over the width of the corridor linking Moslem-controlled Gorazde (at that point, surrounded by Serbian forces) and Moslem- controlled parts of Sarajevo. The United States wanted a width of five miles, while the Serbians insisted on two miles[64]. To prove their point, U.S. negotiators put their Serbian counterparts in front of a computer using PowerScene software that simulated pilots flying through a three-dimensional image of an area. The image made plain that from surrounding hills Serbian forces could dominate a narrow valley corridor. The Serbians acceded. The software was kept running so the Serbians could see exactly what the U.S. side saw. As the software "flew" over Bosnia, the Serbian vice-chancellor realized that U.S. forces could virtually see areas where he had grown up, visited relatives, attended school or played hookey. Deliberately or not, the U.S. negotiators demonstrated that, in Mafia-speak made famous by American films, "We know where you live." Serbian observers were visibly shaken, and this demonstration may help explain why, fears to the contrary, in 1995-96, the first year they were in Bosnia, NATO peacekeeping forces were generally unmolested.
Vignette 2, Strategic Defense: In the early 1980s, many in the United States justified the construction of the B-1 bomber by citing the Soviet Union's vulnerability to air attack. So fearful were they of air invasion that they would inevitably spend more on air defense than the United States would spend on the B-1; they would be pushed that much closer to insolvency. The effect of President Reagan's announcement, on 23 March 1983, that a strategic defense was not only possible but also imperative, on the leadership of the Soviet Union was supposedly more impressive. Richard Perle, among others, argued that Soviet Union abandoned its Cold War stance when it perceived that its strategic rocket forces would be rendered obsolete. But, would the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) really have worked? Some thought not. The United States had made progress on component technologies faster than the Soviet Union, but critics argued that getting the SDI to work required systems integration, which meant writing, testing, and deploying tens of millions of lines of software code. Many Western computer scientists, especially David Parnas,[65] thought no one could know whether such complex software contained flaws undetected until tested in battle. Yet, the Soviets supposedly behaved as if the system would work.
Those vignettes indicate that information warfare capabilities, broadly defined, can cast a spell over potential opponents, but the spell can work also on its proponents.
Vignette 3: As noted in Essay One, by 1996 concern for the NII's integrity, trustworthiness, and availability was high. The NII is inadequately protected, but debate centers on whether even conscientiously protected systems are safe. Although every known hole should have its plug, naysayers maintain that given the complexity of modern systems software no one could know that all holes have been found. Between the ways security can be outwitted - - from imitating authorized users, to overloading buffers and delivering errant bits to a program, to sending viruses that open doors from the inside -- and the almost constant invention of new methods of attack, the difficulty of ascertaining that any sufficiently complex system is safe is daunting. If no system is perfectly secure, then any sizeable effort to break in may succeed -- that is, the complexity of the systems means a determined enemy will get in.[66] Self-deterrence comes from ineradicable systemic ignorance.
Information technology also reduces any nation's ability to understand the capabilities of another nation's weapons systems, even conventional ones. Actual testing of weapons allows humans or sensors to see them in practice and to gauge how well they work. With increasing sensitivity to field hazards and decreasing costs of information technology, weapons are now often tested through simulation, leaving few opportunities for those not directly involved to measure performance or gauge effectiveness. In strategic terms, a nation can suddenly become a force of surprising, even decisive, capability. According to Eliot Cohen:
As platforms become less important and the quality of munitions, and above all, the ability to handle information becomes more so, analysts will find it ever more difficult to assess the military balance of opposing sides. If Admiral Owens (former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) is right, the revolution in military affairs may bring a kind of tactical clarity to the battlefield, but at the price of strategic obscurity.[67]
Assessing Information Warfare Capabilities
If the capabilities of specific instruments of war are harder to measure, the outcomes of potential conflict itself are harder to forecast. One may not know, for instance, which side in an evenly matched battle will win, but it is rare that one force defeats another more than three times its size. Even if the result of a nuclear confrontation is unpredictable, the effects of a nuclear blast can be calculated with fair confidence. With information warfare, highly asymmetric results are possible.[68]
Information warfare opens a gap between what one appears able to do and what indeed one can do. If appearance deters, actuality may be irrelevant. The counterargument -- that deterrence depends on accurate mutual assessment leading to predictions of outcomes which would cause all but the clear winner to desist -- is poorly supported by history. World War I broke out even though most major combatants had a good sense of the size and characteristics of the forces that opposed them. Insofar as each side understood each other's war plan each recognized:
The Plan's limits were fixed by the railways [necessary to carry troops and supplies to the front lines]þ. Since each side could estimate the carrying power of the other's railways, strategy became a fairly exact guessing game.[69]
The Germans estimated that their own attacking forces had a decisive but not overwhelming edge against the French and gambled that it was enough to insure victory. During the Cold War, exact estimates of opposing strength were probably irrelevant. The Soviets and the United States both judged the possibility of nuclear exchange catastrophic and were deterred.
The need to deter others leads nations to want to appear strong, regardless of their capabilities. The royal court of Byzantium repeatedly paraded troops around its capital in full sight of diplomats of other nations, the troops changing uniforms after each cycle and then going out again in order to appear more numerous, better armed, and more powerful than they actually were. Soviet military parades in Red Square were similarly intended to reassure and intimidate without revealing actual quality or amounts of equipment.[70]
Understanding the enemy's information warfare capabilities is almost a contradiction in terms -- to understand a capability is to take a large step toward being able to nullify it. To know the holes in one's system through which an enemy will attempt passage is to know what needs to be plugged. To know how well an opponent can hide from one's sensors suggests what features of one's sensors are easiest to spoof or evade -- and thus what needs most work. If an opponent knew how well one could counter it, that could be only because it sensed how one could do so, which creates a basis for counter-countermeasures, and so on.
To make matters worse, any measure of a nation's capability for information warfare may be meaningless unless measured against a specific opponent. One nation may be able to disrupt another's information infrastructure if that infrastructure is centralized and protected by firewalls, but not if it is dispersed and protected by redundancy. Another nation may be stymied by firewalls but operate more easily against networks. Some nations may hide their forces by stealthy technology; others may use cover, concealment, and deception. The United States, having pioneered stealth, may understand its flaws but flail helplessly before operational deception; another nation may be frustrated by stealth but know how to counter deception. Information warfare capabilities do not exist in isolation.
As a practical matter, how much of its ability to conduct information warfare should the United States show -- in particular, its ability to see distant lands and take down the infrastructures there?
The deterrence value of information warfare echoes long-standing debates over submarines and battleships. Submarine advocates argue that this weapon is more cost-effective for critical missions. Battleship advocates counter that navies have traditionally been built to demonstrate presence. A grey hulking monster offshore was more likely to strike fear into those onshore than would a submarine lurking silent and deep. Here warfighting capability and deterrent effect could differ.
Is information warfare a battleship or submarine? If a submarine, then substituting invisible force for a visibly fearsome one lacks persuasiveness, regardless of what it may ultimately contribute to warfighting. Information dominance may need to be made visible. If, as in Arthur Clarke's frequently cited Third Law, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," then the esoteric nature of information warfare may induce fear out of proportion to reality. Voodoo is proof of the power of magic to paralyze the human will. Information warfare may thus be the battleship.
As a corollary, the likelihood that a successful act of information warfare will shock and awe the victim is likely to depend on who they blame. If taking down an enemy's infrastructure endows the perpetrator with proof of enormous powers then such attacks may have great psychological effects. A commander who blames the incompetence of his own systems administrators for letting it happen is more likely to feel frustrated rather than terrified.
As the Bosnia vignette suggests, the United States's ability to see everything on the battlefield may prompt others to give its military a wide berth. To feed that fear, the United States government may be tempted to show others just enough of what it can see to illustrate the point: monitoring a small area in great detail over time or demonstrating a repeated ability to catch violators and criminals in the act. Perhaps selectivity may not prove convincing to an opponent that knows that pictures of laser- guided bombs going down airshafts result from culling pictures of many misses. Intelligence capabilities are highly classified, because they reveal a nation's sources and methods. By exclusion, knowing such methods would suggest what a nation cannot see. At very least, therefore, the United States must imply it can see more than it lets on.
But the United States may not completely control its own smoke and mirrors because its foes will want to test its magic. The nuclear magic held, in part because no one wanted to test the capability of anyone's strategic systems. Yet, information warfare is usable in a way nuclear warfare is not -- if the United States claims capabilities and does not use them, could not opponents (and interested bystanders) conclude that these capabilities have been exaggerated? On the one hand, the United States might abjure taking down another nation's information infrastructure, because that might cause unjustifiable damage to civilians without a compensating military rationale. On the other hand, how long could the United States claim information dominance if systems existed that it could not take down or forces it could not find? If an opponent can demonstrate its ability to continue military communications, preserve its information systems (primitive though these might be), or hide successfully, what of American magic?
This argument assumes a U.S. interest in making other international actors think it is more powerful than it is. With the United States so far ahead of every other nation in warmaking capability, it may wish to seem less scary. It may share knowledge about its strategic intentions to assure others of its interest in promoting a more transparent world or accede to a global information regime in which the United States and others yield information hitherto considered state secrets. If strategic as well as tactical transparency are important, can or should the United States lead in putting all (or most) of its information warfare cards on the table, in an attempt to establish global rules for information in warfare?
Addressing the deterrent value of information warfare capabilities has only begun, but even the little that has emerged suggests that information warfare is not simply conventional warfare with bytes and memes replacing bullets and bombs. The magnitude of the gap between reality and magic is especially strong even if it is not clear which of the two is more powerful. Information about information warfare is itself a component of information warfare. If and when information warfare comes into its own, its effects on the calculus of capability and deterrence have to be rethought, not simply ported from familiar but misleading terrain.
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