The Discerning Texan

For thousands of years, besieging armies sought to cut the water supplies to walled cities to break down their resistance. No matter how brave, a warrior could not fight without water, and the women and children he defended could not live long without it. The 21st-century-warfare version of depriving a city of water will be to deny entire states the ability to process, protect, and communicate information.

The astonishing thing about last spring's alleged Russian cyberattack wasn't the crippling effect it had on Estonian's government and the lives of its citizens but the lack of serious reaction elsewhere. The European Union raised but one scolding finger, NATO sent a few experts to the Baltic nation, and the US protested mildly and briefly — then President Bush welcomed Putin to the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. In fact, as the world witnessed the trial run of a new mode of warfare, pundits at The New York Times and other publications dismissed the digital assault on the tiny nation as much ado about nothing. Those what-me-worry voices miss three critical points:

First, Estonia's advanced state as an e-society makes it appear uniquely vulnerable, but a full-scale cyber attack on the US could be far more devastating. Beyond the at-risk civilian sector, our armed forces rely on digitized information and communications to fuel their high tech hardware. If petroleum was the indispensable asset that decided campaigns in World War II, today the key is a military's ability to collect, compute, communicate, and shoot. If the computers don't work, the bombs don't strike their targets.

Insiders acknowledge that the Department of Defense is worried about the vulnerability of its networks and weapons systems, and defensive security is being tightened. At the same time, officials are developing offensive methods, though these black programs are classified. Still, the Pentagon doesn't seem to fully grasp the dangerous potential of this new domain of warfare. If you follow defense- budget dollars, funding still goes overwhelmingly to cold war era legacy systems meant to defeat Soviet tank armies, not Russian e-brigades.

Second, in an all-out conflict, digital attacks would not occur in a vacuum. A basic military law is that all weapons are most effective when used in incisive combinations with others. In a major war, Beijing would also attempt to physically destroy the satellites our forces rely on to communicate, find the enemy, and guide precision weapons. Whether attacking military targets or civilian systems, the Chinese would combine virtual destruction with actual destruction.

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Labels: Cyberwar, Technology, Terrorism

Labels: Cyberwar, Divestiture of Jihadist-relateed business, Homegrown Jihad, Islamic Fascism

An interesting proposal similar to what I've advocated for years now. If the cyber-jihadis want to put their best geeks against our best geeks: bring it on, biyotches.

Only, it wouldn't be like an Army of our Davids vs an Army of their Davids. No, it would be more like an Army of Davids on our side vs a brigade of incompetent fools who should have been paying attention in hacking 101, but instead were too busy doing advanced research on whether or not it is harem or halal to wipe with the right hand.

Contentions:

But while there are some private groups (such as the SITE Institute) that monitor jihadist activity on the Internet, I haven’t heard of any that actually attack jihadist web sites. Maybe it’s already being done on a small scale, but much more could be done to target the thousands of Islamist web sites. Hackers, take it away . . .

Since the idea seems to be also hitting military circles, perhaps my idea of cyber-privateering might actually go somewhere in the future.

Labels: Counterterrorism, Cyberwar, The Internet

Labels: Al Qaeda, Cyberwar, Taliban, War strategy