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Thread: Beijing’s Doctrine on the Conduct of “Irregular Forms of Warfare”

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    Default Beijing’s Doctrine on the Conduct of “Irregular Forms of Warfare”

    Testimony to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 29 Mar 07:

    Asymmetric Military Aspirations and Capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army of the People’s Republic of China
    ...Chinese aspirations to acquire capabilities which focus on US civil and military vulnerabilities are illustrated by the PLA’s investment in integrated network electronic warfare and space/counter-space capabilities.

    The PLA has a large infrastructure that is focused on exploiting and attacking computer networks that will diminish the need to attack many targets by kinetic means or will magnify the effectiveness of kinetic attacks. China’s concept involves a fusion of computer network attack and exploitation with electronic warfare. Computer network attacks are a good illustration of asymmetric capabilities China has been developing to leverage its investment in traditional military capabilities....
    China’s Military Modernization and its Impact on the United States and the Asia-Pacific
    ...China does not want to confront the United States or be perceived as a threat, peer competitor, or rival of the United States. China needs the United States to continue its economic growth to meet the needs of its population. To counteract both real and imagined dangers of itself, China refutes threat claims and builds coalitions within the developing world to support it. I expect this behavior to continue and only to be effectively countered by local reactions to China’s policies. The answer lies not in a more aggressive US foreign policy, but in allowing China’s aggressiveness to alienate those countries it hopes to court....
    Beijing, Unrestricted Warfare, and Threat Potentials
    ...Based on the current state of sophistication, skill sets, and culture of the People’s Liberation Army, the “what if” scenarios posed by the Commission concerning actual methods of attack against the US are not likely to be conducted via Beijing’s own military. Beijing’s military never had a monopoly on Unrestricted Warfare and, in fact, may never get really good at it....

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    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    Default General: China taking on U.S. in cyber arms race

    http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/interne...eut/index.html

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- China is seeking to unseat the United States as the dominant power in cyberspace, a U.S. Air Force general leading a new push in this area said Wednesday.

    "They're the only nation that has been quite that blatant about saying, 'We're looking to do that,"' 8th Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Robert Elder told reporters.

    Elder is to head a new three-star cyber command being set up at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, already home to about 25,000 military personnel involved in everything from electronic warfare to network defense.

    The command's focus is to control the cyber domain, critical to everything from communications to surveillance to infrastructure security.

    "We have peer competitors right now in terms of doing computer network attack ... and I believe we're going to be able to ratchet up our capability," Elder said. "We're going to go way ahead."

    The Defense Department said in its annual report on China's military power last month that China regarded computer network operations -- attacks, defense and exploitation -- as critical to achieving "electromagnetic dominance" early in a conflict.

    China's People's Liberation Army has established information warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks, the Pentagon said.

    China also was investing in electronic countermeasures and defenses against electronic attack, including infrared decoys, angle reflectors and false-target generators, it said.

    The Chinese Foreign Ministry rejected the U.S. report as "brutal interference" in China's internal affairs and insisted Beijing's military preparations were purely defensive.

    Elder described the bulk of current alleged Chinese cyber-operations as industrial espionage aimed at stealing trade secrets to save years of high-tech development.

    He attributed the espionage to a mix of criminals, hackers and "nation-state" forces. Virtually all potential U.S. foes also were scanning U.S. networks for trade and defense secrets, he added.

    "Everyone but North Korea," he said. "We've concluded that there must be only one laptop in all of North Korea -- and that guy's not allowed to scan overseas networks," Elder said.

    In October, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff defined cyberspace as "characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to store, modify, and exchange data via networked systems and associated physical infrastructures."

    The definition is broad enough to cover far more than merely defending or attacking computer networks. Other concerns include remotely detonated roadside bombs in Iraq, interference with Global Positioning Satellites and satellite communications, Internet financial transactions by adversaries, and radar and navigational jamming.

    Unfortunately most people equate war to dropping bombs or other delivered by aerial threats. If it doesn't go boom and splatter collateral damage around the countryside it can't be considered combat or war.

    I guess SEALS, and other black OP's types sneaking and peeking at the enemy aren't engaged in war efforts either. In an effort to geekify computers and marginalize the threats of cyber warfare most people are missing that real cyber warfare is about espionage, intelligence gathering, and probing enemy weaknesses.

    Cyber warfare is NOT about defacing political opponents websites or stealing credit card numbers. In joking about North Korea the General misses the point that they DON'T HAVE TO BE IN NORTH KOREA to engage you. The enemy can be anywhere or appear to be everywhere. Argh.
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    Council Member Rob Thornton's Avatar
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    Unfortunately most people equate war to dropping bombs or other delivered by aerial threats. If it doesn't go boom and splatter collateral damage around the countryside it can't be considered combat or war.
    You know, it makes you wonder how things are connected though. There was another article in the E-bird about support to terrorist in the form of overt Chinese Arms sales. It did not say if this was a state sponsored sale or if it was private sales - I think it makes a diff because Chinese legal restrictions and enforcement of those restrictions may not be robust enough to prevent it.

    The reason I bring it up is because you might be able to make a good private business in the types of support/warfare Sam described. This goes to our discussion on the Robb thread about inividuals - what about an individual who can employ masses of individuals (geographcally seperated) through the Internet to perform hacking, spammng, denial of service, monitoring, etc. It kind of makes that individual like an arms dealer and a hired gun. It could be a very lucrative business, and one where the state might have little influence (or wish to curb it). Oo consider that while a state may train this skill, the user may be looking to do some free lance collaboration for extra $$$ - look t how many green suiters leve the service for PMCs.

    I'm not sure a service ( or even a govt) can counter much in that regard unless it has the means and will to do so. They might be able to protect cyber infrastrucutre which sort of seems more defense oriented, while leaving the cyber-mercenaries to continue offensive actions. Hard to respond to that without maybe crossing some political boundaries.

    It may not be killing someone, but collection of information that is analyzed and turned into Intel as a service and then rapidly sent in digits to the person paying for those services can certainly make a difference in how bullets and bombs are employed effectively.

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    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    Rob,

    Take it to a real world hypothetical situation. Let's say I'm Toyota and I want to produce the number one most sold truck in North America. As Toyota I investigate Ford's supply chain and see that two or three components will stop their just in time inventory supplied mass production assembly line at the Ford truck plant for maybe two weeks. Total cost to buy up the rubber stoppers and doo dads for two weeks stoppage and create a sourcing shortage a whopping $10K. We use computers to allow a view into the inner workings of the Ford plant. We then modify or adapt the production capacity expectations at the rubber stoppers and doo dads plant moving some zero's around inside their very open customer relationship management system. Total skill level is approaching accounting not computer expertise. It's the way of thinking that is important and the evaluation of systemic and harmonic impacts to the environment. That two week stoppage has a huge harmonic motion though the market place. Two weeks stoppage turns into four months shortage.

    Oh well, from my experience nobody is listening anyways.
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    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    Rob,

    Take it to a real world hypothetical situation. Let's say I'm Toyota and I want to produce the number one most sold truck in North America. As Toyota I investigate Ford's supply chain and see that two or three components will stop their just in time inventory supplied mass production assembly line at the Ford truck plant for maybe two weeks. Total cost to buy up the rubber stoppers and doo dads for two weeks stoppage and create a sourcing shortage a whopping $10K. We use computers to allow a view into the inner workings of the Ford plant. We then modify or adapt the production capacity expectations at the rubber stoppers and doo dads plant moving some zero's around inside their very open customer relationship management system. Total skill level is approaching accounting not computer expertise. It's the way of thinking that is important and the evaluation of systemic and harmonic impacts to the environment. That two week stoppage has a huge harmonic motion though the market place. Two weeks stoppage turns into four months shortage.

    Oh well, from my experience nobody is listening anyways.

    The industries aren't as national as you seem to believe.

    Lots of parts in cars are imported, even in Japanese cars. If for example Toyota would start such a campaign, it would not only backfire in customer opinion but also by 'accidental' supply stops that are critical to Toyota's own production in U.S. and European factories.

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    Actually Lastdingo,

    It doesn't really matter what the nationalism of the example nor did I expect it to be taken literally. It only takes a few moments to find that many "foreign" OEM's are built in the United States, and many domestics are made in other countries.

    Of course there is the assumption in your statement that anybody would realize that somebody was behind the stoppage. That at any level of normal analysis anybody would see the work stoppage as anything but an unforseen kink in the supply chain.
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    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    This should be good for a month of China hysteria:

    Chinese military hacked into Pentagon - Financial Times, 3 Sep.

    The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American ­officials.

    The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack.


    Current and former officials have told the Financial Times an internal investigation has revealed that the incursion came from the People’s Liberation Army.

    One senior US official said the Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origins of the attack. Another person familiar with the event said there was a “very high level of confidence...trending towards total certainty” that the PLA was responsible. The defence ministry in Beijing declined to comment on Monday ...

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    Default Hacked or Downloaded ?

    Jeez, and I thought Estonia was gettin' it's butt kicked

    The Pentagon is still investigating how much data was downloaded, but one person with knowledge of the attack said most of the information was probably “unclassified”. He said the event had forced officials to reconsider the kind of information they send over unsecured e-mail systems.

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    Default China spying 'biggest US threat'

    More on the China information warfare campaign. Not kinetic but definitely asymmetric.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7097296.stm

    Chinese espionage poses "the single greatest risk" to the security of US technology, a panel has told Congress.

    China is pursuing new technology "aggressively", it says, legitimately through research and business deals and illegally through industrial espionage.

    China has also "embraced destructive warfare techniques", the report says, enabling it to carry out cyber attacks on other countries' infrastructure.

    A foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing denied any spying activities by China.

    "China and the US have a fundamental common interest in promoting sound and rapid development," said Liu Jianchao, quoted by the Associated Press news agency.

    More at link
    Sam Liles
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    Default This has been a long time coming.

    PRC intelligence, espionage, IO, and the like in many Western countries, the U.S. in particular, reached a critical level at least a decade-and-a-half ago, perhaps even as far back as nearly 20 years ago. This intelligence campaign has, over the 15-20 years since it more or less hit its stride (after a testing of the waters and subsequentl build-up of about the same length of time), reaped rewards that would have made the old KGB and GRU green with envy over much the same time period.

    Critical, not just significant, information, technology, intelligence, etc., has come into PRC possession. Similarly, PRC use of, and infiltration into, the political lobby system has been strikingly effective in influencing some U.S. Government policy-making or execution. The Chinese Government has the U.S. Government reasonably-well "framed" if you will in many respects; the U.S. Government, by contrast, is not unaware of this, but its own internal divisions (successfully and subtly exploited to a certain extent by the PRC) impede its ability to fully grasp the scale of the problem and especially to deal effectively with it.

    The PRC Government does not want to become an enemy of the U.S. Government any more than the U.S. wishes to become an enemy of China. Chinese strategic manoeuvering, of both its own position and that of the U.S., is of course in order for the former to gain a position of relative advantage over the latter; fortunately the PRC does not conceive of its strategic competition with the U.S. as necessarily a relationship of hostility.

    But Chinese strategic miscalculation and American strategic erraticism can lead to serious misunderstandings. PRC intelligence penetration of the U.S. on the scope and scale as it presently exists (so far as we know) does not meet with the same equanimity on the U.S. side (which tends to see such as an attack) as it does on the PRC side (which tends to see the same as just a part of diplomacy - a non-violent jockeying for advantage).
    Last edited by Norfolk; 11-17-2007 at 03:51 AM.

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    I'm not sure a service ( or even a govt) can counter much in that regard unless it has the means and will to do so. They might be able to protect cyber infrastrucutre which sort of seems more defense oriented, while leaving the cyber-mercenaries to continue offensive actions. Hard to respond to that without maybe crossing some political boundaries.

    It may not be killing someone, but collection of information that is analyzed and turned into Intel as a service and then rapidly sent in digits to the person paying for those services can certainly make a difference in how bullets and bombs are employed effectively.
    There's an unofficial sense among some AI researchers I know that the 8th Air Force is developing an electronic "scortched earth" cyber weapon that will flow through a distributed network, burning out each node. Of course, no one will admit it exists.

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    Quote Originally Posted by JeffC View Post
    There's an unofficial sense among some AI researchers I know that the 8th Air Force is developing an electronic "scortched earth" cyber weapon that will flow through a distributed network, burning out each node. Of course, no one will admit it exists.


    A copper tube stuffed with explosives has that effect
    .
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    Quote Originally Posted by JeffC View Post
    There's an unofficial sense among some AI researchers I know that the 8th Air Force is developing an electronic "scortched earth" cyber weapon that will flow through a distributed network, burning out each node. Of course, no one will admit it exists.


    I would say that they are developing a cyber weapon that will allow them to control the Network as opposed to burning it up. This is the part of EBO theory that is not talked about much. The ultimate goal is to control the enemies COG's (systems) instead of blowing them up and then having to pay for it. Its more like an electronic insurgency.
    Last edited by slapout9; 11-17-2007 at 03:09 PM. Reason: add stuff

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    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    Most of the cyber effects based operations are fairly "secret". Though the DOD and the TLA's agencies all have substantial work being done on the subject. A lot of it comes from the opposite end of the spectrum in the enthusiast community. Academia has no interest and anything that could be considered offensive is just that. They sure do like the money though.
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    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    Most of the cyber effects based operations are fairly "secret". Though the DOD and the TLA's agencies all have substantial work being done on the subject. A lot of it comes from the opposite end of the spectrum in the enthusiast community. Academia has no interest and anything that could be considered offensive is just that. They sure do like the money though.
    And it's not really all that practical. If it exists, it's probably one of those things that you want to have but not use. Today, with the ability to hide and control Bots inside networks, why destroy anything? All you need is a laptop and access to the network.

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    Default The Chinese Underground Hacker Economy and its ties to the PLA

    10,000 Methods Combined as One: Chinese Hackers and Unrestricted Warfare:

    I reference the Chinese military text "Unrestricted Warfare", a newly released academic study "Studying Malicious Websites and the Underground
    Economy on the Chinese Web" and a DOD investigative report "Red Storm Rising" to show the relationship between the "Red Hacker" unions and the PLA, and how thousands of these youths are hacking networks pretty much anywhere that they want, all in the name of the People's Republic of China and the all-mighty Yuan.

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    One thing I'm completely clueless about (because 1 - I know nothing of computers and 2 - I'm sure much of it is classified) is the state of DoD computer security. It's become assumed that cyberwar would be a major part of a US/PRC conflict (see Bush and O'Hanlon's book A War Like No Otheror any number of others), but no one except Dick Clarke has said anything about the state of US computer/cybersecurity. Isn't the USAF supposedly in charge of this stuff?

    Matt
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    Quote Originally Posted by MattC86 View Post
    One thing I'm completely clueless about (because 1 - I know nothing of computers and 2 - I'm sure much of it is classified) is the state of DoD computer security. It's become assumed that cyberwar would be a major part of a US/PRC conflict (see Bush and O'Hanlon's book A War Like No Otheror any number of others), but no one except Dick Clarke has said anything about the state of US computer/cybersecurity. Isn't the USAF supposedly in charge of this stuff?

    Matt
    Not as far as I've read. The USAF is in charge of cyberspace as a warfighting domain. DHS has the overall responsibility for the U.S. network infrastructure, but everything you need to know about that fiasco can be gleaned from the following fact. The Chief Information Officer for DHS is a biologist, not a computer scientist.

    Oh, and if the U.S. suffers a catastophic network failure, DHS has admitted that it has no recovery plan. Don't want to leave that detail out, either.

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    Actually I believe the NSA and DHS is charged with the protection of all computer security for the nation. Subtle but important difference.

    The EFS and cyber incident plan for the United States is "interesting" and I belive still FOUO.
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    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    Actually I believe the NSA and DHS is charged with the protection of all computer security for the nation. Subtle but important difference.
    If the NSA's responsibility is that widespread, then somebody needs to step up their game.


    The EFS and cyber incident plan for the United States is "interesting" and I belive still FOUO.
    Have you seen this?

    http://idolator.typepad.com/intelfus...ke-fema-i.html

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