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Thread: Is Cyber a new warfare? Debate (catch all)

  1. #121
    Council Member LawVol's Avatar
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    While the generational structure may be a good teaching tool for demonstrating the changing nature of the tactics of war, it can be misleading in the sense that some may view the introduction of new tactics as a wholesale change. Sure, war evolves to take advantage of new technologies but it is timeless in its objectives. The goal remains the acheivement of some political goal. While I'm certainly not as well read in Clausewitz and Sun Tzu as I'd like to be, both of these guys spoke of this. Like WFO says, its nothing new.

    Maybe my understanding is wrong (someone show me the light here, please), but war has always been about influencing the political will to fight. It was simply done in different manners by different folks. Some argued that the best way to break political will was to target military forces, others saw the populations as the appropriate target, while still others thought targeting the war making machine was the way to go. The goal remained the same-convince political leadership that continued fighting wasn't worth it.

    As for changing tactics, I would agree that cyber warfare is an appropriate term since it encompasses the use of cyber to achieve military objectives. I, among others, view law in the same light. Lawfare has been defined as the use of law to acheive military objectives. This cite by WTO in another thread is an excellent example. Although it is being pursued by a third party, the desired result is the acheivement of a military objective for Hamas as it will chill potential Israeli responses. While the use of law to acheive military objectives may or may not be new (I would argue that it is not new as the Hague Conventions actually served to acheive military objectives), it doesn't change war into something new. Rather it provides an additional means for waging war. Its the same with cyber tactics.
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  2. #122
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by GC13 View Post
    Maybe it's a good thing you didn't link to that blog post... I dug it up and started reading but had to switch to skimming because it's so depressing!

    Is there any reasonable prayer of things being fixed before we're violently shown the error of our complete and total lack of cyber security? For such a severe problem that's in the news every six months or so, you'd think there'd be a lot more clamoring about fixing the problem.

    We can do anything except for what we are unwilling to do. Lot of people say we should fix it, but nobody in leadership has made the decision to ALLOW it to be fixed let alone pay for it.
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  3. #123
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    How much would it cost to get to work on it? So many billions are thrown at problems that aren't nearly so vital, and where the money is not being well spent. $10 billion can't be chump change when this problem is concerned, but it is when the government is kicking the budget around.
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    Default not too much

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  5. #125
    Council Member BILL's Avatar
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    Default cyber battalion.

    Good to be back guys, greetings.

    The first civilian cyber battalion.
    Worth a read.
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    Start with "over watch " post.

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  6. #126
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    Default Cyberwarfare Called Fifth Domain of Battle by Pentagon

    http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/cyb...pentagon-0531/

    "Our military must be as capable in this new domain as it is in more traditional domains,” said Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn III, referring to military theory that divides warfare into the domains of land, sea, air and space.
    Killing people and breaking things in cyberspace is not possible. Living, breathing humans do not exist in cyberspace, nor do tangible things. Technologies for terminating humans in meatspace and breaking their stuff involving cyberspace as a transport medium for various payloads is going on now.

    Technologies for influencing potential adversaries not to act in ways that might get their meatspace existence ended also transit cyberspace.

  7. #127
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cannoneer No. 4 View Post
    http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/cyb...pentagon-0531/



    Killing people and breaking things in cyberspace is not possible. Living, breathing humans do not exist in cyberspace, nor do tangible things. Technologies for terminating humans in meatspace and breaking their stuff involving cyberspace as a transport medium for various payloads is going on now.

    Technologies for influencing potential adversaries not to act in ways that might get their meatspace existence ended also transit cyberspace.
    This is a technological fallacy that most people don't understand until they've been exposed to a few others. Examine the common phrase "guns don't kill people, people kill people". Though concretely incorrect (the person is a secondary actor to the technology) the same exact linkages can be made for cyber.

    If, as an example I remotely turn off your pacemaker via wireless signals, does the end result not count because it wasn't a bullet? If I use a high bandwidth command and control system to run a predator drone that rains missiles down that isn't cyber, but if I hack back on that predator drone and turn it on it's owners is that cyber?

    The error though common can be found in the last statement you made. Information operations are at one layer of a technological stack. Information sits upon a logical layer, and that logical layer sits upon a physical layer. At each layer a significant set of vectors of attack are possible. Each layer can also be peeled back to expose more layers. These layers can also be called surfaces and each surface is a target to attack.
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  8. #128
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    Default Guns don't usually kill people

    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    This is a technological fallacy that most people don't understand until they've been exposed to a few others. Examine the common phrase "guns don't kill people, people kill people". Though concretely incorrect (the person is a secondary actor to the technology) the same exact linkages can be made for cyber.
    Guns, howitzers, mortars, and small arms usually only kill people by accident. It's projectiles launched from these pieces and the damage they inflict upon human bodies that kills. The ballistic trajectory of these projectiles runs through the domain of the air, but that does not make them aircraft.

    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    If, as an example I remotely turn off your pacemaker via wireless signals, does the end result not count because it wasn't a bullet?
    Nope, doesn't count as a kinetic kill, or even as a homocide unless somebody investigates my death and can prove you turned off my pacemaker. I'll still be dead, but my death won't be counted as a cyberwar KIA if you cover your tracks right.

    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    If I use a high bandwidth command and control system to run a predator drone that rains missiles down that isn't cyber, but if I hack back on that predator drone and turn it on it's owners is that cyber?
    Your Predator's C2 is a computer network subject to attack that requires defense. If you successfully attack the Predator's C2 network and cause it to fire upon friendlies, you can call that cyber if you want. Others might call it CNA or even EW

  9. #129
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    Nope, doesn't count as a kinetic kill, or even as a homocide unless somebody investigates my death and can prove you turned off my pacemaker. I'll still be dead, but my death won't be counted as a cyberwar KIA if you cover your tracks right.
    Might as well the Unknown Soldiers don't count either because the cause of death isn't clear...there are many ways, legal and otherwise of killing people in war, declared or otherwise, that are difficult to determine...the fact is that you are still dead and if done well, that creates an effect desired by your (collective) killers...

    From your statements, I'm not sure you have a good grasp of cyberspace yet and your arguments are really just hair-splitting...sorry...

    Oh and BTW, I just cancelled all your bank accounts and all traces of you as you...I couldn't do it in the physical world because they wouldn't let me in the gate but in cyberspace, a piece of jolly...

  10. #130
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    Default So don't care...

    I don't care so much about the semantics of it. I just want to turn off the pacemaker, make your phone catch fire or explode, run down the batteries on your bombs before you go to drop them etc. In short, I only care about what mayhem and damage I can cause, and I don't care about all that semantic stuff.

    I have a very good reason for taking that approach too. It's because you're busy constructing boxes to think inside of, and I don't want to do that. I want to remain focused on creatively doing as ugly things as I possibly can. If you haven't thought of them because you're too busy worrying about semantic boxes, well hey for me that's even better.

  11. #131
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    Cyber is likely to join the long list of technological tools created by the rich and powerful to expand their wealth and power, and then co-opted by the weak and powerless to re-balance the equation a bit.

    Such thinks are inevitable. Understanding that allows one to mitigate how much balancing actually takes place.

    I see the cyber domain as a rich playground for Special Forces to do what SF guys do best. As to whether or not is it our SF or cyber guerrilla's of another ilk that steps up to seize this advantage is yet to be seen.
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  12. #132
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    I argued once for adding electronic warfare as the fourth pillar of combined arms, but I guess declaring 'cyber warfare' a "fifth domain" sounds more sexy.

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    Quote Originally Posted by SJPONeill View Post
    Oh and BTW, I just cancelled all your bank accounts and all traces of you as you...I couldn't do it in the physical world because they wouldn't let me in the gate but in cyberspace, a piece of jolly...
    Smile when you say things like that, pilgrim, lest you be taken seriously.

  14. #134
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    Damn, I was hoping for "Thirty Sixth Chamber of Shaolin."
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    What say you all to the idea that the "new" domain is the information domain and that cyberwarfare is just one aspect of operating in this domain?

    An additional thought about effects of this type of warfare: wreaking havoc on your economic and information systems (to name a just a few potential targets) through cyber certainly qualifies in my book as a violent act designed to bend an opponent to your will. Instead of physically breaking things like tanks, aircraft, or people, which is theoritically still possible through cyber, you are destroying parts of systems that play a critical part in a modern nation's ability to conduct its affairs and look after its interest. My point is that you dont have to punch someone in the nose to perpetrate a violent act against them and that the legitimacy of a domain in which to conduct warfare doesn't depend on whether you can physically break something in it.

  16. #136
    Council Member Bob's World's Avatar
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    Isn't "information" a line of operations that takes place in many domains?

    Beyond that vast bucket of "Information Operations" that DoD dumped half a dozen things into. I know at SOCOM, for instance, they felt compelled to say they do "IO" even though SOF really only has major equities in a couple of niche aspects of IO. Better if SOCOM narrowed their aperture and said they did "IO (-)"

    I think it is best that we look at cyber as a domain to conduct a range of operations within, not all of which are to "inform."

    For instance, if I were to say, stand up a smart team of guys in a high-tech facility to conduct UW in some foreign country where physical presence is not practical in order to support or enact US foreign policy there; that is not an information operation. Certainly it would use info tools but that does not define the operation or the unit (on a related note to the army re Stryker BDES, WTF on naming your unit after your vehicle?).
    Robert C. Jones
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    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

  17. #137
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    One of the issues is "cyber" it is a domain that reaches from the technology through the physical, onwards through logical, to information, to cognitive and back". When you see quotes like "Cyber, is the first man made domain" well yes it is. But, it is much more than that. Much like any other domain/terrain cyber has layers. To expect them not to exist is to ignore the realities. The military (and government) likes to define and limit a concept to the ideas and conclusions they have already made. Regardless of that the capabilities and abilities of adversaries to operate within a domain are not similarly constrained. Many people fall into the trap of silos or limiting cyber. The information operations (psyops, strategic communications, etc.) want to own it. The TCP/IP monkeys think they own it. The telecom guys think they own it. Pishaww. It is a domain with many layers and is much more than the Internet or even GIG. Cyber is not merely information it is inclusive of emotion and electro magnetic spectrum. It is both the tool and the channel, but not merely limited to that.

    Think of it this way. What is the domain "air". Why everybody has to land sooner or later why aren't all "airmen" soldiers? The limitations of an analogy or metaphor will soon limit the considerations of the strategic and tactical implications of the domain in question. Air existed as a valid domain long before airplanes become warplanes. Cyber in various forms has existed as a valid domain for a long time. Cyber is a domain in which information operations exists, but is more than information operations itself. There are a variety of ways to describe this... (see here for more detailed than you are willing to likely read analysis).
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
    Isn't "information" a line of operations that takes place in many domains?
    That sounds reasonable to me. My question was prompted by some reading that I had to do for school lately that suggested that information was the 5th domain and that cyber was a function within the information domain.

    A related argument is whether IO should be adopted as a warfighting function. I am not sure whether making it an "official" warfighting function has any real value, other than ensuring that it is in the forefront of planner's minds as they seek to synchronize their operations, but if it is on par with the other 6 WFs then it would make sense that it is something that should be a consideration in all domains and not a domain itself.

  19. #139
    Council Member Bob's World's Avatar
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    Getting the message right and designing every operation to best convey the intended message is definitely something we suck at all levels.

    I think "intended message" should be briefed back to the commander following mission analsys, and that he should approve it along with the restated mission. He then should direct his staff to incorporate "conveys intended message" in the COA comparison and anlysis matrix and direct that it be weighted by a factor of 2 or 3.

    By doing this the commander has exercised his duty in defining and prioritizing the message of the operation (be it a convoy, a deliberate attack, or a humanitarian assistance event) and ensured that his planners shaped their COAs to be consistent with and help project that message.

    Currently it is typically something the MISO/PSYOP guy buries in an annex or does off in some corner while the "real operation" is given all the focus. Getting the message right and designing the operation to convey it IS the real operation more often than not in places like Afg or Iraq, or other OEF locations.
    Robert C. Jones
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    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

  20. #140
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    Cyberwarfare is conducted on the same substrates as electronic warfare. And since even most EW applications are digitally managed, why bother the distinction? The only difference is the degree of abstraction in you accept in implementing your attack or defense: cutting a wire or shielding a receiver versus blocking a port and installing an SSH server.
    Last edited by Presley Cannady; 02-23-2011 at 10:17 PM.
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