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• Ghosts in the Machines?

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  The author cites law enforcement as a primary area where global information security can be enhanced. He calls for "the harmonization of national laws against computer attack, multinational cooperation in tracing attacks across national lines, international treaties on extradition of attackers, and a readiness to impose sanctions on those who protect attackers." He believes a willingness to share information on research and development, on attack indications and warnings, and on attack incidents and responses "can also improve the efficacy of each nation's protective measures." Computer attacks, if sufficiently systematic, may be war by other means -- hence "information warfare," as an overarching concept. But information warfare understood broadly -- attacking an adversary's information and decision processes -- is as old as warfare itself. Such tactics encompass psychological operations, attacks on an enemy's command apparatus, espionage and counter-espionage, and operations against adversary infrastructures and surveillance systems. During the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) there were incidents of propaganda operations, snipers targeting opposing generals and observers in hot-air balloons, marauders tearing up telegraph lines, cavalry pickets and counter-cavalry demonstrations -- all information warfare. World War II saw the advent of electronic warfare in the form of radar, electronic deception, radio-frequency jamming, codemaking, and computer-aided codebreaking. Two indicators may reveal a great deal about the true risk from systems attack. One is how people react to the year 2000 computer problem. Assume a large share of the world's information systems crash at midnight on December 31, 1999. Will panic and paralysis result, or will people quickly find ways of working around the problem or doing without information for awhile? If lawsuits erupt, what precedents will be established to assign responsibility to people for harm done if their systems fail? The other harbinger is of more recent origin. Were one to imagine the most plausible perpetrator of serious information warfare terrorism, it would be someone with nothing that can be held at risk (i.e., not a country), several hundred million dollars in hidden cash, an appreciation of technology, an international network of nefarious friends, and a vicious score (real or imagined) to settle with the United States or some other nation. Sound familiar? If it does, what happens in the next year may reveal whether powerful individuals or groups might try to bring a country to its knees through information warfare -- or whether they direct their efforts elsewhere.

  United States. Department of State

  Libicki, Martin C.

  1998-11
• Next Enemy

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  "The Cold War offered military planners considerable strategic clarity the threat was known, and the problem was generating a force structure of sufficient size and sophistication to counter it. Today's military threats are varied and, for the most part, well below the level that even a shrinking U.S. force can handle comfortably. Threats ten to twenty years out, however, must be taken seriously because of the long time required to complete a major systems acquisition; to develop, test, and institutionalize new doctrine; and to accomplish the organizational innovations necessary to use both effectively. Future threats may be divided into four categories: peers, bullies, terrorism, and chaos. The threat environment twenty years hence is unlikely to be of one type. Nevertheless, framing the choices facing planners shows what the U.S. armed forces might look like if one or another type of threat were to become the predominant focus of the Defense Department."

  National Defense University. Institute for National Strategic Studies

  Libicki, Martin C.

  1995-07
• Future of Information Security

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  As computers become smarter, more sophisticated, and more flexible, they will become more like us. That is, they will acquire the reliable information security provisions that all of us carry around as our basic make-up. Yet, as they become more like us, they will begin to ingest information at the semantic level from outside sources as we do (as in fact, you are doing now), and will thus be heir to more subtle but no less problematic forms of information warfare. It is important to note that forecasts about information security are inevitably forecasts about information systems themselves. Several key factors influence the current level of information security. As people move away from closed proprietary systems, they will expose themselves to more security risk, especially in the process control sectors (e.g., SCADA systems). For this reason, but perhaps only for this reason, one may see a decline in the average level of information security over the next few years. It is extremely difficult to know what the threat to information systems actually is, and thus all the harder to know in what direction it is going. In terms of actual day-to-day threat, information warfare has remained distinctly unimpressive. Most computer crimes are internal affairs, and most external computer crimes arise, not from systematic attack, but by small groups, or, more likely, random malevolence and even curiosity run amok.

  National Defense University. Institute for National Strategic Studies

  Libicki, Martin C.
• What is Information Warfare?

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  This essay indicates several fundamental flaws with IW, while arguing the following points: Information warfare, as a separate technique of waging war, does not exist. There are, instead, several distinct forms of information warfare, each laying claim to the larger concept. Seven forms of information warfare; conflicts that involve the protection, manipulation, degradation, and denial of information, can be distinguished: command-and-control warfare (which strikes against the enemy's head and neck); intelligence-based warfare (which consists of the design, protection, and denial of systems that seek sufficient knowledge to dominate the battle space); electronic warfare (radio- electronic or cryptographic techniques); psychological warfare (in which information is used to change the minds of friends, neutrals, and foes); "hacker" warfare (in which computer systems are attacked); economic information warfare (blocking information or channeling it to pursue economic dominance), and; cyber warfare (a grab bag of futuristic scenarios). All these forms are weakly related. The concept of information warfare has as much analytic coherence as the concept, for instance, of an information worker. Although information systems are becoming important, it does not follow that attacks on information systems are therefore more worthwhile. On the contrary, as monolithic computer, communications, and media architectures give way to distributed systems, the returns from many forms of information warfare diminish. Information is not in and of itself a medium of warfare, except in certain narrow aspects (such as electronic jamming). Information superiority may make sense, but information supremacy (where one side can keep the other from entering the battlefield) makes little more sense than logistics supremacy.

  National Defense University. Institute for National Strategic Studies

  Libicki, Martin C.

  1995-08
• Defending Cyberspace and Other Metaphors

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  Information warfare, as any casual observer of the Pentagon can attest, remains a hot-button topic in the military community. Broader claims for it have been toned down, and few now argue that all aspects of warfare are now revealed as information warfare, but an ideology of information warfare has nevertheless wended its way into the heart of defense planning. The Air Force's Cornerstones of Information Warfare, for example, has approached the status of doctrine. The spring 1996 establishment of the 609th Squadron (at Shaw Air Force Base) dedicated to information warfare offers further evidence of the seriousness with which that ideology is maintained. In 1996 the National Defense University (NDU) ended its two-year experiment of offering a forty-four-week program on Information Warfare and Strategy after forty-eight students were graduated, but what has replaced it is a broader thrust in teaching the all four hundred students the rudiments of information warfare (and offering related electives). In 1995-96 large portions of the Defense budget were designated information operations (although only a small portion represents information warfare).

  National Defense University. Institute for National Strategic Studies

  Libicki, Martin C.

  1997-02
• Mesh and the Net: Speculations on Armed Conflict in a Time of Free Silicon

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  "As long as the power of information technology doubles every two to three years, it will continue to have a disproportionate effect on the evolution of national security. The first reaction of any organization to such crisis-using the classic Chinese definition meaning threat and opportunity-is to absorb new technologies into old ways. Computers cannot help most firms very much until they reengineer their work processes to accord with the silicon logic. Conflict both conventional and unconventional will perforce follow the same path-accommodating change first by incorporation, and next by reinvention. No change so large can breathe without metaphors, in this case: Mesh, Net, and Silicon. Mesh-the term applied to military applications-points to the holes; as information technology places a finer mesh atop the battlefield, more objects are caught in it. Net-the term applied to civilian applications-points to the substance of the system; the connectivity of people and their machines suggests new patterns of social relationships and new venues for conflict. Silicon, that which is to become free, stands for both semiconductor chips (for computation) and optical fibers (for communications)."

  National Defense University. Institute for National Strategic Studies

  Libicki, Martin C.

  1995-08
• Information & Nuclear RMAs Compared

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  "In many respects the current information-based Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) echoes the earlier nuclear-based RMA. Both put conventional force structures at risk from more modern warfighting methods. Yet the Nuclear RMA did not make conventional forces obsolete. In the end, the nuclear RMA was unusable in a military context; thus conventional superiority reemerged as important. By contrast, the Information RMA--with its ability to support precision warfare--is eminently usable. Moreover, the entry fee for getting into the game is very low; innovations in warfighting may emerge from anywhere. Both RMAs were initially considered adjuncts to war. But the nuclear RMA transformed global politics (by reinforcing the bipolar stalemate). Might the Information RMA do so? A capability, for instance, to make the world transparent for one's own or other forces could alter the nature of presence, force projection, or coalition formation."

  National Defense University. Institute for National Strategic Studies

  Libicki, Martin C.

  1996-07
• Cyberwar as a Confidence Game

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  From the article: "Is cyberwar the twenty-first-century version of nuclear war? Readers of the 'Economist', whose 3--9 July 2010 cover portrayed a digitized nuclear explosion in the midst of a city, could be forgiven for thinking so. The takeaway was obvious: cyber weapons are now the latest class of strategic weapons, they can do enormous damage to societies, and the first recourse against this threat should be some sort of arms control. Otherwise, the bad old days of strategic confrontation would be back, but this time with scores of countries and no small number of nonstate actors, transnational criminal organizations, and a few overindulged high school students having the requisite capability to build weaponry that can bring life as we know it to a prompt halt. Such a scenario could happen, but to see cyber weapons as primarily strategic in the same way as nuclear weapons is quite misleading. A more plausible strategic rationale for the United States' developing cyber weapons is to make 'other' states think twice about going down the road toward network-centric warfare as the United States is doing, thereby extending its lead in this area. Cyber weapons do so by making other states--already lacking confidence in their ability to handle high technology--doubt that their systems will work correctly when called on, particularly if used against the United States or its friends. This logic is explained in three parts, starting with a brief description of cyber attacks and their effects. Next, the case is made against assuming that cyberwar can be used for its strategic impact, followed by the case for thinking that the 'threat' of cyberwar might possibly shape the investment decisions of other states to the advantage of the United States."

  Air University (U.S.). Press

  Libicki, Martin C.

  2011
• Specter of Non-Obvious Warfare

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  "Innovations, both technological and organizational, over the last few decades have created a potential for non-obvious warfare, in which the identity of the warring side and even the very fact of warfare are completely ambiguous. The Stuxnet computer worm is only the most recent widely publicized example. This worm is believed to have infiltrated Iran's Natanz centrifuge facility, causing equipment to destroy itself over a period of weeks and leading to the premature retirement of 10 percent of Iran's uranium enrichment capability. Within several months of the worm's public disclosure (September 2010), Western intelligence sources announced that the earliest date Iran could build a bomb had been pushed back several years. Until the worm was discovered and dissected, the Iranians were uncertain why their equipment wore out so fast. Indeed, when confronted publicly with the possibility, they first denied that any such attack had happened, only to reverse themselves obliquely two months later. Although non-obvious warfare can be epitomized by cyber warfare, states can attack one another in many ways without the victim being certain exactly who did it or even what was done. Some, like electronic warfare (against nonmilitary targets) and space warfare, have yet to materialize in any strategically significant way. Others, such as naval/ land mining or sabotage, have long historical antecedents. What they share is ambiguity."

  Air University (U.S.). Press

  Libicki, Martin C.

  2012