by Geoffrey K. Pollock
SLIS Alumni Magazine, Fall 2002

Americans hate to be thought of poorly. We dismiss accusations of racism because we'd like to believe that our overall history on the subject has been undone by the past 50 years. We attempt to claim ignorance as to why "the world" hates us, preferring to position our critics as jealous or psychotic or devoid of human decency. We have been seduced by a romance of our own making: We are chaste while the rest of the world (except our most trusted allies) is twitchy and suspicious.

Regardless, we are at war. In fact, the greatest threat facing us may be our participation on too many fronts. The war on poverty, the war on drugs, and the war on terrorism have made us increasingly vulnerable. As the world's lone remaining superpower, the United States presents itself as a Gulliver surrounded by Lilliputians of various strengths and sizes. The digital revolution has simultaneously delivered the cause of our demise and the means for our defense.

"Information warfare" is a term so pregnant that simply invoking its name in a search engine threatens to entomb the searcher under 1,000 reams of paper. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff define information warfare as " actions taken to achieve information superiority by affecting adversary information, information-based processes, information systems, and computer based networks while defending one's own." Still, this definition doesn't specifically grapple with either the depth or the breadth of all things digital or how these things may provide advantages or vulnerabilities. More to the point, "warfare" implies military involvement on a national level, yet we are increasingly subjected to a blurring of the lines between military, commercial, and rogue activities.

The most dramatic shift of methods and motives involves the change from information's being an asset to being a weapon in and of itself. Before the Gulf War, information was ostensibly gathered in an effort to assist physical armies. Knowing where and when an enemy force would strike was tantamount to victory. As we have become increasingly dependent on ever more sophisticated technologies, the information and the systems that support it have become the new doubled-edged sword of war: both weapons and targets.

Michael Vatis, director of Dartmouth's Institute for Security Technology Studies, outlines our greatest fears in his paper, "Cyber Attacks During the War on Terrorism: A Predictive Analysis." He writes about "the specter of an unanticipated and massive attack on critical infrastructures that disables core functions such as telecommunications, electrical power systems, gas and oil, banking and finance, transportation, water supply systems, government services, and emergency services." It's as if we have to live with the Y2K panic for the rest of our lives. In a sense, we do.

It is doubtful that an ad hoc cadre of hackers, either freelance or organizationally commissioned, could wreak the sort of havoc found in worst-case scenarios. The difference is the distinction between an incursion, hacking into a web site, and a paramilitary effort to render a critical governmental system inoperable, shutting down a state's entire power grid. For governments, a key element in the decision-making process of whether or not an information warfare attack is undertaken is the degree to which post-operative detection can be minimized. For a hostile government—North Korea, for example—to create a massive infrastructural failure in the United States without also insuring the means of concealing their actions would be foolhardy at best.

This is all new territory, where the military rules of engagement that have been developed over the previous hundred years may not directly apply. During the Serbian conflict, Pentagon leaders wrestled with the legal and moral implications of electronically disrupting the computer systems that controlled Serbia's public utilities. Eventually, they decided not launch an information warfare assault, but that decision didn't necessarily create a precedent or a pattern of any kind. The truth is that no one knows what the fallout might be from that sort of endeavor. It is difficult to establish a cost-benefit analysis without being able to estimate an action's direct or ancillary consequences.

Threats to National Security

A distinction also needs to be made between activities of war and criminal enterprises. It is not only the "who" that dictates the threat to national security, cyber or otherwise, but also the "what." As seen with al-Qaeda, war activities and criminal activities are not entirely exclusive of each other. With enough attacks on commerce, even if they are not government—or terrorist—based, the negative impact on a society is the same.

Take the case of four London banks. Gangs of indeterminate make-up held them "hostage" by threatening to detonate "logic bombs" in their respective computer systems. A logic bomb is computer coding scripted to "detonate" (i.e., destroy data) upon the controller's command. Once the extortionists proved their ability to do as they threatened, the banks reputedly forked over roughly $75 million. Both the FBI and Scotland Yard are investigating these types of shakedowns, but it goes without saying that image is extremely important in the financial marketplace. Institutions such as banks are often reluctant to admit losses because of the fear of causing a crisis of confidence in their customers.

The military-industrial complex, the thing Eisenhower warned us about—government agencies collaborating with for-profit contractors—adds weapons to the information warfare arsenal, but there are no hard and fast guarantees that particular weapons or the technologies that create them can be completely controlled. It starts to sound like a cross between Dr. Strangelove and 007. In addition to logic bombs, we can chose between HERF guns (High Emission Radio Frequency "guns" that "shoot" disruptive waves at computers) or EMPs (ElectroMagnetic Pulses that are basically magnetic "bombs" designed to corrupt sensitive hardware) to name only two. It has become big business. Exactly how big is big? In short, as big as it gets. As Carl Conetta observes in his "Briefing Memo #24" for the Project on Defense Alternatives:

"Presently the war on terrorism involves 10 federal agencies in addition to the Defense Department. The total federal budget for anti-terrorism activities and homeland protection (exclusive of missile defense) exceeds $70 billion a year. About half of this sum is focused on activities overseas. The Defense Department's share of the total is approximately $30 billion—which underwrites, among other things, significant counter-terrorism operations in 14 countries. Activities by nations other than the United States and by global agencies are equally broad and disparate. The State Department estimates, for instance, that 200 intelligence and law enforcement agencies are presently involved in the anti-terrorist campaign and 150 countries are participating in efforts to disrupt the financial base of the al-Qaeda network."

Privacy and Civil Liberties

The vigorous pursuit of enemies both here and abroad has also raised concerns about the state of privacy and civil liberties. Technological advances may allow us certain capabilities that may or may not be legal, depending on the situation, jurisdiction, and players involved. Massive scanning searches of e-mails alarm some by appearing to approach the notion of "Big Brother." The military and law enforcement respond by offering that such searches are done in the name of national security. The key to many of these efforts is not combat soldiers, but information specialists, people who possess the abilities and training to sift through the "noise" and "chatter" in order to find credible information.

Are we in danger from Big Brother? No, not in the way conspiracy theorists would have us believe. The legal and political ramifications of how information is gathered differ between the foreign and domestic spheres. This is not to say that we have smooth sailing ahead in either sphere. The stakes are high all around. While information can dramatically shift the balance of power at a moment's notice in any given situation, the complexity and instability of the world's geopolitical arena forces us to at least consider information warfare or components thereof.

In his essay "Postmodern Terrorism," Walter Laqueur asks, "Why assassinate a politician or indiscriminately kill people when an attack on the electronic switching will produce far more dramatic and lasting results?" In limited spheres that may be true. Ultimately, war will remain the domain of trained combat soldiers. Information warfare will certainly alter the basis of war, but in the end, it will always require someone to carry a rifle. As attributed to the late General George S. Patton: "The object of war is not to die for your country. The object of war is to make some other dumb son of a bitch die for his." Be it personnel or computer systems, the same holds true and will continue to do so.

Amidst all the muddiness of information warfare, one thing stands out clearly. The talents provided by professionals in information technology and information science will continue not only to be in demand, but to rise in importance. We can't pursue al-Qaeda without people who speak Arabic, and neither can we defend ourselves from electronic attacks without people who understand the technologies and methods of collecting, storing, retrieving, and analyzing information.

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For further information read Blaise Cronin's 2001 Library Review article: "Information warfare: peering inside Pandora's postmodern box." PDF link: www.tukkk.fi/tjt/OPETUS/TJTS11/Kirjallisuusartikkelit/Article%201.pdf

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"The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeros, little bits of data. It's all just electrons. . . . There's a war out there . . . and it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think, it's all about information."
-- The Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences Website, under Information Warfare

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InfowarCon 2003

If you'd like to become an information warrior or learn more firsthand about what it entails, then perhaps a trip to the nation's capital next autumn is in order. InfowarCon^TM 2003 will explore "Techniques and Strategies for Securing Shared Infrastructures."

Representatives of the U.S Secret Service, the Air Force Information Warfare Center, the White House Office of Homeland Defense, and the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, among others, will host track sessions.

For more information: www.infowarcon.com

Posted February 06, 2003