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View Full Version : Question 5: Cyber space (oh you know I had to ask at least one of these)



selil
08-14-2009, 03:12 AM
As models of conflict in cyber space are bandied about how does TRADOC see educating warriors for a domain that has equal parts electrical engineer and mathematician? How does TRADOC see the soldier interacting as a component of cyber forces into the future?

Relative to this discussion the intelligence community sees cyber as exploitation through human assets, exploitation through the supply chain, but always exploitation. Advocates of the air-power analogy have begun a meme of cyber deterrence based on nuclear war. A weak metaphor heaped upon when you think the reverse would mean every person would own their own bomb. Other thinkers have created models of conflict based on castle walls (misguided in my opinion). The Marine Corps and Army have in the FM3-24 a more likely representative document of persistent low intensity conflict that models the constant noise of computer abuse closely.

How will this new domain be formalized into a conflict or battle space?

The Air Force paid for several skills assessments of cyber warriors and found that they did not exist in the civilian or military department of defense structure. How will this be changed?

Cyber space is a hierarchical eating mind numbing elusive domain more like a multi dimensional puzzle palace than a terrain for armor. How will concepts rooted in three dimensional space be changed to handle n-dimension space?

In the end information is the payload and weapons of cyber space. There are however ways of weaponizing and creating kinetic results from cyber weapons. How will that kind of war be proselytized in the future?

Cyber war is combat by intention. You can intend to do a lot of things but simple exploitation is only one of the many deeper capabilities. That being said intention will not always follow through with results. How will doctrine and training adapt to this type of result?

marct
08-14-2009, 03:23 AM
Hi Sam,

Obviously, I'm not speaking for TRADOC at all ;), but I think that it's important that we disambigulate the term "cyber". Just off the top of my head, I think it might prove useful to differentiate between:


cyber as in cyborg - human - machine systems such as FCS;
cyber as in cyberspace; which is an electronic terrain;
cyber as in conflict in the real world operating through electronic/data connections (hacking, cracking, etc.);
standard intel practices such as encryption / decryption;
etc.

That's a sort of off the top of my head (at 11:30pm) version, I'm sure there's a lot more :D.

selil
08-14-2009, 04:13 AM
Actually I think cyber as defined by Norbert Wiener to mean command and control is sticky enough. Each entity looks at aspects of the information flow and takes what they need. By the time you get to Gibson cognition and cyber space constructs you are stll skirting c2. Even a cybernetic organism is nothing more than a command and control biologic to machine interface.

marct
08-14-2009, 01:45 PM
Good point, Selil, and that jibes with my recollection of Wiener. However, I think that some of Batesons' latter work in the area (e.g. Angels Fear (http://www.amazon.com/Angels-Fear-Epistemology-Advances-Complexity/dp/1572735945/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250257269&sr=8-1)), gives a good idea of how Wiener's original model should be expanded along biological analog lines (Wiener was way too mechanistic IMO). In some ways, Gibson's version of "cyber" takes this line and runs with it....

Part of teh reason why I consider disambigulation so important is that it lets us get to the underlying analogs more easily and, from there, to the underlying perceptual topology.

davidbfpo
08-14-2009, 02:45 PM
Part of the reason why I consider disambigulation so important is that it lets us get to the underlying analogs more easily and, from there, to the underlying perceptual topology.

Marc,

That eludes me, what do you mean?

davidbfpo

marct
08-14-2009, 02:58 PM
That eludes me, what do you mean?

Sorry, David....

Disambigulation = pulling a concept apart when the term has (potentially) multiple meanings.

Almost all human concepts are based around analogies with something in the perceptible world (I'd say "real world", but we can't perceive all of it...). Humans, being humans, don't always choose the closest real-world analog for a concept, we tend to choose one that satisfices ("works well enough"). Concepts that draw on the same analog tend to be culturally grouped together into perceptual topologies - think of those as sheaves of related concepts which are related culturally by the use of the same or similar analogs.

So, for cyber in the sense of human machine organism, the perceptual topology includes all sorts of cultural items; Gibson's stuff, the Borg, Frankenstein, the Golem, etc. When "cyber" is used based on a different analog, say to terrain, the topology is quite different.

Touch clearer :wry:?

Cheers,

Marc

Stan
08-14-2009, 03:22 PM
Hi Marc !

Whoa Nellie :eek:


Frankenstein...

Touch clearer :wry:?

Cheers,

Marc

marct
08-14-2009, 03:27 PM
Hey Stan,

Yup :D! It tags back into a fear of the not-human / not-life / not "us" that seems to be a pretty universal human reaction (that's one of the emotional connotations in that particular topological sheaf). Scary, eh?

Cheers,

Marc