Virtual War

[Rob Thornton]

One of our FSNCOs who has been re-rolled as one of our analysts expressed shock that I did not know you could buy virtual anything. He tells me he has a friend who sold his Everquest character (a fantasy RPG) online for 5K $US. He told me he'd actually bought credits for his Star Wars Galaxies character through E-Bay. The Routine? They arrange a meeting place online within the game so one character can X-fer the credits to another - somewhere public that was easy to find. The characters on screen look like they are just standing there - the discussion takes place through IM. There is no "Star Wars Galaxy" organization which might prevent or interfere with such a transaction - very slick. Our other FSNCO/Analyst said that the last time he was here, his boss actually got an everquest account so he could leave messages for them - they'd do a virtual dead drop. Snce you could have anything be your message button (you could have it be a virtual light switch in a virtual room that is i a virtual building, on a virtual block, etc. you can hide the message avatar look like anything, then include a password that acutally allows you to access its hidden funtion.

So - 40 year old Rob is behind the power curve 0- but my 20 something FSNCOs and the 19-25 year old terrorists and criminals are not - this is common knowledge for them, and a world they are very comfortable in.

Whith sums as extravagent as those paid for the Everquest character, what looks ordinary and what doesn't? What else gets bought and sold under the guise of skills, virtual monies and players?

What type of orders pass from bad guy to bad guy? We better get smart on this real quick. We better start training our Intel guys to think along these lines instead of beating them down with conventional Soviet doctrine. Maybe what we need are some SOF like virtual warriors that go in and conduct operations with virtual characters to get the virtual information and conduct virtual DA on virtual targets - my kid who beats my ass in HALO would love that. They'll need to hack in to servers (call it an insertion) and look for stuff that don't look right. I'm not even joking - I think the bad guys are way out infront of us.

China is pushing a good deal of their budget into cyber warfare. We need to consider why - much like our FOB mentality, our response to combatting cyber terror (and supporting activities) is by and large defensive - better Anti-Virus, better firewalls. I think a good part of the enemy wants to keep us that way. This allows them to go out and conduct the rest of their buisness while we stay walled up - we have placed ourselves in our own box - contained and isolated would be the tactical terms - who knows that could have been the intent all along - Sun Tzu writ in 1s and 0s! It reminds me of what the insurgents do here to keep us out of the neighborhoods - hit the MSRs and we will sink more combat power into defending them so the AIF can have freedom of movement in the neighborhoods!