Yeah, I agree. I'd like to hear more on what he is getting at there.
Why wait for the definition to get reified in doctrine? It's not like doctrine will end the debate anyway; did FM3-24 put "COIN" as theory and practice to rest? My interest is in out-of-the-box thinking on that thing (some of which is new, some of which is old as dirt) that people call "cyberwar." DoD shouldn't be held up as the ultimate arbiter here, because frankly they may not have it right. It wouldn't be the first time, would it?
I don't disagree with this characterization of asymmetry, but what really interests me is how Aitel characterizes cyberwar as less asymmetric then it is popularly conceived. He is challenging the notion that cyberwar, according to Rand and others, is "more asymmetric than most." Here's the quote from Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar (PDF):
I don't know if I agree with Aitel's view or Libicki's. Are you saying that both Aitel and Libicki have it wrong here? Are you saying something different entirely?Perfectly symmetric warfare does not exist, particularly when the United States is involved. Yet cyberwarfare may be asymmetric than most. The U.S. economy and society are heavily networked; so is its military. The attacker, by contrast, may have no targets of consequence, either because it is not particularly digitized, because its digital assets are not networked to the outside world, or because such assets are not terribly important to its government.
It seems like most people agree with #2 and #3 as being fallacies, but they don't agree with #1.
Bookmarks