Why The US Will Lose a Cyber War 244
An anonymous reader writes "There's not another nation in the world that can wage kinetic warfare as effectively as the United States, and that's probably at the heart of the reason why the United States will lose a war fought in cyberspace, leading cyber security analyst Jeffrey Carr writes."
We *CAN* win, if we treat our soldiers well! (Score:5, Funny)
I've written about cyber warfare before and made some insightful points.
The bottom line is this: We *CAN* win at cyber war but what we must do is ensure our warriors are comfortable and well nourished as they enter the battlefield. When a warrior is scheduled to go online, make sure they get a well balanced meal the night before. Lower carbohydrates and plenty of protein, preferably from vegan sources. For breakfast a high protein meal is a must, perhaps with some fair trade coffee lightened with a hint of organic soy milk. Some vitamin B complex and Omega 6 fatty acids will also help the brain stay alert during his mission.
That's the nourishment side. Now to comfort.
Low level, indirect lighting. High contrast, high refresh monitors at a distance that helps reduce the amount of EMR the soldier absorbs. Comfortable Pro Shiatsu massage chairs to keep the blood from pooling up in the back and torso.
On of the most important things is the soldiers' nervous system care. If they are to be sitting at a computer all day long, they *must* have proper care both before and after their missions. I'd recommend an on-staff Chiropractor to break out the micro-subluxations that will inevitably form during the hours sitting in a chair. Even a good massage chair will let some develop, but they won't be serious if attended to within reasonable time. The last thing we want is a great cyber warrior crippled by subluxation (or worse, given cancer or heart disease by one) Chiropractic is by far the cheapest method of this. That's why we are petitioning the Veterans' Association to bring us on board in their long term care facilities. We can extend their lives and make the duration better quality.
Take care,
Bob
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That one was actually kind of funny.
that was definitely insightful (Score:2)
thank you, for posting this. i feel like my life has changed after reading it. so beautiful, so simple, so sincere.
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Of course, you and I know the truth. All these polio-free children running around today are the beneficiaries of chiropractic. Likewise, all the smallpox-free children, Diphthe
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What do you think this is? The Air Force?
- Dan.
Re:We *CAN* win, if we treat our soldiers well! (Score:5, Funny)
The military have used EMF proof glass in their LCD monitors at the Pentagon and Chaney Mountain for years. Your research is based on old information and technology.
Today the Cyber Soldier is housed in a gel immersion tank to simulate a weightless environment and has an array of no fewer that 4 projectors creating a 180 degree display. These projectors use 4 DLP chips designed for military use to eliminate any possible EMF or side band splatter making our Cyber Army nearly immune to any attack. Couple this with the light yellow tinted Revision Cybertactics Protective eyeware it eliminates strain and increases coordination by at least 27.685% over traditional outdated tactics like you talk about. The wavlet generator in the gel does sub-dermal massage to increase their comfort and the air permeable gel allows a constant air flow to keep them at a perfectly comfortable temperature.
Also The Government has been testing on the ground troops the effectiveness of special energy drinks designed for this task Codename RIP-IT with some light Civilian testing as well to make sure the psychotropic side effects are controllable This creates a perfect nourshment system that gives them high carb energy drinks for morning after their high protien slurry feeding. Although some of them prefer the bar form instead of the slurry. All of this makes each soldier able to fight on the Cyber Warfront for at least 9 hours at a time. More dedicated soldiers accept the colostomy bag and urine tube to stay in the fight for days at a time. WE are working on better solutions for waste evacuation that are more comfortable for the soldier, NASA claims to have a solid waste sucker that only causes pinching discomfort for about 6 seconds while it extracts the waste.
This has created a unstoppable force with one exception. the test unit of 12 team members were highly effective until their DSL connection at the pentagon was DDOS attacked. The Government is asking for Congressional funding to get more DSL lines installed but the current Tea-Party members are claiming that it is an un-needed expense.
It just works like that (Score:3)
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China has their own problems. For one they are tied to the U.S. financially. They are in the hopes that we will repay all that debt.
Cyberspace has that odd dependency that we call real-life. Drop the connection and the servers and cyberspace disappears... Question becomes who is willing to do that.
Cyber warfare is not the next battle ground. At best it is the next street fight. Yeah China or some country may break into some company or government computer, but hell we have 16 year old doing that as well. We
Re:It just works like that (Score:5, Interesting)
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We can produce rare earths domestically. In a pinch pollution standards could be waived or adjusted so this can be done economically.
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Heh... China's reason for being "sole source" on those is more because they're cheaper than anyone else. The second largest known deposit, nearly as big as China's is in the US- and the people that own the mine have gotten permits to start back up. Nice try, but no cigar.
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I'm afraid the empire has simply switched horses. Some decades of (fake) communism and the mirage of the west have had some effect. Who sells his kidney for an ipad, after all?
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Just look at their new aircraft carrier, for example.
The aircraft carrier is a threat long-term, once they have another carrier and adequate ships around it to make a carrier group, but for now is largely symbolic.
The anti-ship ballistic missiles are a much bigger threat right now, since they are not a member of the accords we've signed with Russia limiting their development (so China gains superiority on that tech) and such missiles are potentially very effective weapons against other carriers.
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Not even the US will get away with dropping nukes in the current political, ecological and economical climate.
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Even in a war against a major power, there will be hesitation to use nuclear weapons. Nobody will want to use them unless they are sure they can be decisive with little or no threat of retaliation. That being said, any country *might* use them if, for example, it will take out a carrier group launching attacks on their capital or another large enough target.
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Unless you are a religious nutjob killing in the name of your "god".
People like you always forget the loonies when you talk about hesitation to use a WMD. If these crazies had it they would use it.
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When you're talking about taking out an 'entire carrier group', you're talking about another world war, in which case political, ecological and economical concerns will be entirely different than anything you've ever seen in your lifetime, unless you happen to have witnessed WWII.
There are only a few countries who have this sorts of ships and they aren't little. China JUST GOT a SINGLE carrier, with no escorts. Its not like we're talking about taking out The Isle of Man's Atlantic battle fleet ... which i
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China JUST GOT a SINGLE carrier, with no escorts. Its not like we're talking about taking out The Isle of Man's Atlantic battle fleet ... which is a dingy with a couple outboard motors on it.
China has four carriers. Three were purchased from Russia. At least one of those is a very modern design (1980s), very comparable to what Briton deploys (likely a generation beyond). One of the three is expected to be begin trials next year. China is also building two other carrier based on their own designs. By the end of the decade, expect China to have at least four fully equipped and highly capable carriers in the water.
Your depiction of them as dingys is also extremely misleading and disingenuous. Its
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You mean the same new aircraft carrier that has far inferior planes on it and doesn't stand a chance against even sub-standard submarines?
You're talking way outside your depth here. Their planes are very comparable to super hornets. This is a fairly "Hollywood" video [youtube.com], but the plane should not be discounted. In a conflict, very likely THE deciding factor would be pilot training, experience, and tactics; ignoring the super hornet likely retains a slight edge. Even still, their short range A2A missiles have twice the range ours do and are known to be as effective or moreso.
As for the sub comment, one of our subs would have to get close enough, w
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I depends on if you consider military tactics and strategy to be a technology. But even still, "always fallen", is extremely reaching.
No, it's because the U.S. has the most to lose (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with defending the U.S. in a cyber attack is that there are so many targets and its economy has become so utterly and completely dependent on the internet and its computer systems. They're a very easy target because there are so MANY targets to hit there. Now, contrast that with a place like North Korea, which has almost no internet infrastructure and whose ragged economy probably wouldn't take a hit if every computer in the country exploded tomorrow. That's asymetric warfare taken to the nth degree. North Korea in that situation basically CAN'T loose a cyber war against the U.S. The worst that could happen is that the U.S. would stop their attack. And with enough attacks, one is bound to connect. And even one successful attack on an important sector or piece of infrastructure could produce chaos in the U.S.'s very large and powerful house of cards.
In comparison, what has North Korea got to lose? Their few power plants are running on 50's tech. Most of the country lives in abject poverty with no electricity (much less internet access). They're like Battlestar Galactica, a ship with such old technology that a computer virus doesn't even phase them. How the hell is the U.S. going to fight a cyber war against them and NOT lose?
Now, that's an extreme example. China, Russia, Iran, et. al. are a little more dependent on their network/computer infrastructure than North Korea. But NO ONE (outside of the first world, certainly) is as dependent on their IT infrastructure as the U.S. That's a real vulnerability that's almost impossible to plug.
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They're like Battlestar Galactica, a ship with such old technology that a computer virus doesn't even phase them.
Err... Battlestar Galactica survived and eventually won the war against Cylons. And the technology was not so old, they just switched the network off.
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They didn't win, they hid from them and hid all their take from them so they just couldn't be found.
The Cylons weren't wiped out, just no longer essentially immortal. They can still produce new Cylons in the same old mechanical way they used to before the original 5 met them.
In BSG, humans clearly lost the war, even 150k years later, humans had not advanced to the point of being a threat to the Cylons (yet) again, and still only populated one planet with a joke for space travel compared to the old colonies
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So Floppies and USB sticks became a highly valuable commodity.
Sneakernet FTW!
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By Your Command...
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Thanks for the spoiler douche... I haven't seen the show yet, just put it in my Netflix queue a month or so ago, and now at least one episode is already ruined!!
grumble grumble grumble
More spoilers: Lucifer kidnaps Boxey and tries to force Adama to surrender the fleet, but Daggit helps him escape while Starbuck and Apollo fly in to rescue him.
Look, the show was over 30 years ago. If you haven't seen it by now, it's not our problem.
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Most people stupidly seem to assume that North Korea is techn
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Most people stupidly seem to assume that North Korea is technologically somewhere in the beginning of 1900. They are not.
No, but 60s or 70s is probably a pretty accurate description of their technology level for most of the population in North Korea. They may have some people that can use a network, but the general population is lucky to have electricity, even living on the outskirts of the capital and some of the capitals 'skyscrapers' are electricity optional. So its not the 1900s ... but its pretty fucking close from a practical perspective.
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If you compare U.S. power generation to North Korea's, it's more telling. NK has about 1/13th the population of the United States. The U.S. generates about 4000 TwH of electricity each year. If you adjust for population, NK would have to generate about 308 TwH a year to be comparable to the U.S. In actuality, they generate about 17 TwH. So they generate about 1/18th the electricity per person as in the U.S. Not a lot of room there for modern living.
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Power is unreliable and blackouts happen several times a day.
Sadly, you just described portions of the US too. Even worse, this will become ever more common over the next decade. If left unchecked, and utility companies are not required to maintain and repair the equipment they've already been paid *twice* to do so, within two decades the US will have a second world power infrastructure. The peak reliability for the US power grid was in the 1970s. Its been at a steady decline ever since even though our utility rates (and lump sum government payments via taxes) have l
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Why was a factually accurate, polite, non-adversarial post troll moderated?
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And it's a country of 24 million sharing 1024 IP addresses
Public, connectable ip's. You seem to assumpt that their own network isn't larger than that and that they don't know how to NAT things. I'm sure they could use more if the US-controlled ICANN would give them more addresses.
And what's the point about failed communist dictatorship? I didn't say it's heaven on earth or that they're technologically light-years front of us. Just that North Korea isn't so technologically behind as people, especially US people, seem to think. And I've been there personally, as I
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Then you had better go update the Wikipedia article on the subject [wikipedia.org]. Obviously the editors at Wikipedia don't appreciate glorious reforms that Glorious Leader has made of late. Typical western imperialists!
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Cyber attack is already a routine reality; it's not some kind of looming futuristic threat. And yet the troops aren't being deployed and the bombs not being dropped, because no one knows how to do that and where to bomb.
This coun
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This countermeasure definitely isn't viable, because the main mode of cyber attack is insurgency. The first step of cyber attack is to have your adversary attack itself. The US isn't going to cut off access to itself. Indeed, persuading the US to do that, could in fact be the very goal of the attacker, so your suggested defense is in fact surrender.
You've got to distinguish between pulling the plug on the external internet (i.e., international links) which would be annoying but not fatal, especially if temporary, and pulling the plug on internal internet (i.e., what you seem to be thinking of). Losing connectivity with China for a few days would hardly be the end of the world, would it? Moreover, you don't have to kill all the links; pushing things so that congestion chokes the rest will do just fine and once the attack rate is reduced, it's quite pos
Sargent! What the hell is wrong with that missile (Score:3)
I would envision a typical response to be either cutting off the Internet connections from an attacking country (by physically destroying the cables with air strikes), or pinpointing the location of the attackers and turning them into red mist.
Well, since the attackers would be a BotNet of compromised XP PCs located all over the US mainland, I don't think that would be effective. But I could certainly see some bonehead launching cruse missiles, then wondering why they appear to be circling back to base.
China infrastructure is on the cheap with safety n (Score:2)
China infrastructure is on the cheap with safety not that good all over the place. Look at the China high speed rail crash and after that they where very quick to bury the train cars.
Maybe they can hack a us nuke plan and likely at most trigger any number of auto shut downs / safety's but there own plans are likely lacking the same auto shut downs.
we already had a cyber attack. remember Enron? (Score:4, Informative)
they shut down the power grids, by twiddling some bits in a computer, and laughing about grannies who would be without power.
of course they got away with it, because they were well connected politically and ideologically to the 'free market uber alles' people.
you could also argue the financial crisis of 2008 was a cyber attack on the part of the bankers, hedge fund managers, ratings agencies, insurance companies, and government regulators who all colluded to create massive fraud of the Synthetic CDO "industry", which wiped out vast mountains of money ... all using little numbers in computers, swishing things to the Cayman Islands and so forth.
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A cyber war is a war that No one will win as well...
A normal war while can have some that there isn't a declared winner or looser. But there are also wars where there is a Winner and a Looser. A cyber war will go on and on. Sure US will get hit the hardest and fastest, then they will just rebuild from the backups and make better security and retaliate and back and forth...
There are no real people dying directly, so the war will just keep going and going. Until all sided are dried up. Or until one side ha
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We need MORE cyber attacks to coerce immunity. Ideally, they would be destructive.
People will not implement security unless and until they are inconvenienced more by the attack than by security measures.
We need malware and attacks that break shit.
There is a reason humans can eat all sorts of vile stuff and survive in primitive conditions (like South Carolina). It's because we built immunity through natural selection.
yes. that would kill at least 1% of their (Score:2)
population.
now about the other 990 million...
they might be rather upset.
well seeing how bad the rail system is that fail (Score:2)
well seeing how bad the rail system is that may fail on it's own.
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well seeing how bad the rail system is that may fail on it's own.
I'm not sure the US is in any position to criticize the rail system of any other nation. :)
sound like a shill cover up the deaths in the cras (Score:2)
sound like a shill cover up the deaths in the crash and try to spin it. The US has a good rail freight system. China's high speed rail system is made of a cheap copy of japan ones with out the safety systems.
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Japan is a first world country. Can't really comment on the others, but I doubt they have as much to lose as the U.S.
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Yeah, you going to unplug all the countries with the botnets around the world that they set up to conduct the attack too (including in the U.S. itself)?
sigh (Score:5, Funny)
no such thing as a cyber war. If i were to guess, it would be koreans who win a cyber war because they're pros are starcraft. The US might be able to win at halo though, so it would be some sort of give and take.
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no such thing as a cyber war...
I used to believe that, but not any longer. And if you still struggle to believe in this, then I challenge YOU to go without any form of electronic communication for one week. Let's see how you, as an individual, fares without email, internet, or even a cell phone. You'll likely find yourself at "war" with yourself after a few days.
Going to school? Good luck enrolling in classes or communicating with teachers.
Looking for a job? Gonna be kind of hard to do that today on foot, sans any type of electronic
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ohh so inform me how a foreign country is going to shut down all communication. I would love to hear that. Last i checked, there's phone and radio as backup to loss of the internet. Backbone routers go down every day, rerouting occurs and their fixed. What you're suggesting is that everyone in the US gets DDOSed all at once? I somehow doubt you realize how the internet works. How there are all private networks that interconnect at multiple different places, that if a private network goes down it doesn'
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Heh...
Phone: Driven by the same infrastructure that the Internet is on. It's got vulnerable attack surfaces with the SCADA systems that power the HVAC that keeps the switches cooled. It's got vulnerable attack surfaces with the security stuff around it. If you think it's all air-gapped from the Internet, you'd be mistaken. Phone'll be as toast as the rest.
Radio: Talk about degradation of things. Sure, you can communicate with radio. Problem is, all the SCADA systems, phone systems, etc. that would get
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I'm not saying that somebody can't do damage to us via internet connectivity, but I think you've watching Live Free or Die Hard a few too many times or something.
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Your personal ability to surf the web and register for classes is probably not the primary target of a cyberwar opponent. Taking down an ISP or two and preventing home internet services for a week would be a show that might get mentioned on the evening news, but would not really damage our economy. The GP posted some poor examples, and you fell for his trolling.
Real cyberwar would likely be attacks taking place on targets anywhere in our infrastructure. Perhaps the attackers could disrupt the cellular ne
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I'll bet if you asked the majority of your friends, they would give up a car before they would give up a cell phone or internet access
Most of my friends don't work at home so no, you are way, way off. Also, I personally know people that get along just fine without either a cell phone or constant Internet access.
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Going to school? Good luck enrolling in classes or communicating with teachers.
I happened to do just that the other day with a friend who was registering their child ... you walk into the office, fill out a couple forms, sign them, give over proof of prior education and go home.
Looking for a job? Gonna be kind of hard to do that today on foot, sans any type of electronic communication. Do you even have a hard copy of your resume? Wait, don't tell me, let me guess, it's online.
I've yet to get a job that I applied for online. Everyone I've had has been because I physically went to the location to apply. Thats what people who actually WANT a job too, online submissions are the lowest on the totum pole. When I'm looking for a job, I have several copies of my resume in my car as well
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Are you sure?
If one was to fight a cyber war, it would make sense to target the financial system and the stock market, to cause panic and confusion and hit the enemy where it hurts the most: in the wallet...
Ring a bell?
We have never been at war with Oceania.
Is it me or is the article a load of bollocks (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it me or is the article a load of bollocks? "The Chinese will win because the I Ching teaches them synchronicity"! Haven't soldiers consistently exhibited synchronicity? The "gut feeling" that a valley is unsafe. The WWI idea that the "third light" was unlucky, so they extinguished the match after lighting two - years before someone figured out that the time to light three cigarettes was just long enough for a sniper to notice, aim, and fire!
Also, It will take a lot to convince me that synchronicity is of primary importance in a cyber-war. We are not talking about pursuing agents through second life, we are talking about finding weaknesses in web-connected devices that control infrastructure, and viruses that will make the centrifuges in a uranium processing plant wear out. I think the author is talking complete bollocks.
Re:Is it me or is the article a load of bollocks (Score:5, Insightful)
mod this up. the "article" is a complete hog-wash. if anything, author just wanted to show-off a shiny new word he found, and do it in a way that attracts attention
It also ignores an important part of "cyber war" (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be the "war" part. These silly little hacking games that go on all the time, even if they have a government behind them, are not cyber war. They don't cause any real amount of trouble, don't advance any strategic objective. They are a nuisance more or less. Real "cyber war" would be like any other war in that the objective would be to hurt an enemy.
Ok well two things to keep in mind about that:
1) In such a case, the US would probably take more drastic measures. It would be easier than you think for them to cut off all Internet in and out of the US. That would work for the moment to keep things secure. They then could set about cutting the cables to the attacking country, via sub, bombs, etc. Once that country was off the net, they re-enable their link back to the world. That a cyber attack can be shut down by turning off routers or cutting cables means its long term effectiveness is rather limited.
2) It is a war which means that it will be responded to as such, namely with physical force. If a nation started destroying US infrastructure by hacking, you think the US government would really sit back and say "Oh well it is cyber, so we have to just use computers in response."? Hell no, they'd start blowing shit up. See how well that cyber war goes when stealth bombers take out your power grid, your telecom centers, and so on.
There would be no "cyber" war, there would be real war.
Also in general it seems the government is reasonably well prepared for such a thing by virtue of having their own private systems for a lot of stuff. The government has its own phone system, its own internets, and so on. They were created for other reasons (the phone system because the PSTN got slammed when Kennedy was killed and the government wanted communications that couldn't get interrupted like that, the internets for security against espionage) but they also have the fairly useful function of limiting the damage someone could do to the government and military with a cyber attack. It isn't like a hacker could go and turn off NORAD or something.
Finally, who the fuck is this guy? A "leading cyber security analyst"? Only according to himself. He is the "CEO" of some shit company who's site doesn't appear to have a functional domain, just an IP, and that is run in Wordpress. The guy is just trying to use scare tactics to sell worthless shit to CEOs. Slashdot shouldn't publish crap like this.
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"1" presumes you'll find out about the attack before it's all said and done. Unfortunately, much of our capabilities are after-the-fact detections of attacks. A bit late to respond when they've hacked the SCADA and blew out a substation or a generator for a given power utility.
"2" depends on just how much damage they do to us as to whether we CAN respond with anything. Yes, we can respond with nukes...that's a poor response. And moreover, you're going to have a delayed response for any other kinetic typ
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And what kind of economic damage does that cause? How difficult would it be for a country to sneak in a few dozen agents and electronic equipment to within US borders? How much damage can they cause if they already have hidden backdoors into multiple infrastructure sites that have been dormant? Cutting off the net from the world for one day would
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Why would WWI soldiers be worried about the 3rd light? They would all be hanging out in their trenches down below the sight line of the enemy, NOT lighting matches and having a smoke in the middle of no mans land.
I stand corrected. Some web research shows that it was the Boer War.
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I fully agree. It's a nonsense article. The evidence he gives of why the US military doesn't get it looks a lot more like evidence that it does ( and takes it seriously).
The point that cyberspace (I shudder to even type that name) is a hodgepodge of technology kludged together well enough to work most of the time, and consequentially extremely fragile, is exactly how it should be viewed. If the military didn't say that, then I'd be afraid.
I'd rather hear more along the lines of the adage: "War is politic
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Is it me or is the article a load of bollocks? "The Chinese will win because the I Ching teaches them synchronicity"!
Agreed. I got to the end and the author just loses it: The "West" will lose because we're the West and the Chinese have a superior way of thinking. There was almost nothing of substance in the article except the very end: "
The decision to call cyberspace a domain was based on organizational necessity. That’s how the Defence Department is set up. It’s how budgets are created and funds distributed. It’s how contracts get assigned. Simply put, it’s how things get done at the Pentagon. This is why the United States will lose a war fought in cyberspace. A strategic doctrine built upon a flawed vision can’t yield a victory against an adversary whose knowledge of the battle space is superior to our own."
If he would've just expanded on that idea instead, it would have been much more informative. Pulling a "the chinese have a mystical way of thinking that we can not replicate!" is just dumb.
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He uses a lot of pretty words to say nothing of substance.
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"Fish *** in it"
- Captain Reggie Thistleton
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I wouldn't know. I stopped R'ing TFA at "In the earliest days of the Internet, otherwise known as Web 1.0"
If the author thinks the Internet started (and ends) with the Web, then I very much doubt he has much insightful to add on the issues of digital systems combat.
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I'm all for Jungian synchronicity and all, but not really seeing the overt connection to cyber warfare.
Me too, and from the quote and snippets I'm reading here, (admittedly after reading them I don't even want to bother reading TFA) I don't quite see how synchronicity plays into this. Jung defined it as essentially "meaningful coincidence", not precognition or clairvoyance.
What a load of tosh (Score:4, Insightful)
Now there's plenty of reasonable ways to talk about US weaknesses in cyber warfare (which IMHO is commonly overstated: what seems like weakness can often be a strength. It may merely be the case that the US is more subtle about its cyber shenanigans), but this article seems to meander into complete incoherence. Jung's synchronicity? I Ching? Seriously? Seems like someone's watched too much Serial Experiments Lain.
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"The information that circulates in CST is every bit as material as a chair, a car, or a quantum particle. Electromagnetic waves are just as material as the earth from which the calculi were made: it is simply that their degrees of materiality are different. In modern physics matter is associated with the complex relationship: substance-energy-information-space-time. The semantic shift from material to immaterial is not merely naive, for it can lead to dangerous fantasies."
Now there's plenty of reasonable ways to talk about US weaknesses in cyber warfare (which IMHO is commonly overstated: what seems like weakness can often be a strength. It may merely be the case that the US is more subtle about its cyber shenanigans), but this article seems to meander into complete incoherence. Jung's synchronicity? I Ching? Seriously?
Guess it's all fixable by attaching special crystals ($599+tax each) to the DOD's computers, and having everyone sitting in a circle, holding hands and chanting "Omm" or whatever woowoo is being pushed this week.
Needs more cowbell, err, quantum.
Enormous Piece of Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of whether or not the U.S. would win a cyberwar (or even if such a thing exists), the article makes no testable or even clear assertions on any such thing. It's all about Carl Jung and "interconnectedness" and mind/body material/immaterial synchronicity and at root:
"The Book of Changes or Yijing. It’s a divinatory oracle that dates back to the Qin dynasty and teaches that the universe is composed of parts that are interconnected. The yarrow stalks used in the Yijing symbolize those parts, while the casting of them symbolizes the mystery of how the universe works (Pauli's quantum indeterminacy). Chinese emperors and generals have used this oracle since approximately 300 BC, and it may still provide a glimmer of insight into the mysterious nature of this new age of cyber-space-time and how cyber battles may be fought and won. Unfortunately for Western nations, synchronicity has its origins in the East. Western nations have a tradition in causality, not synchronicity. And the US Defense Department is deeply grounded in traditional western thinking and practicality..."
Seriously, this article makes the argument that the DOD doesn't understand cyberspace because it spends insufficient time casting stalks and reading from a 2,300-year-old book of divinations. Made my eyes roll so hard it hurt my head. Possibly the biggest piece of bullshit I've ever seen on Slashdot. Yeah, the DOD is just too "practical" (insufficiently magical?), there's your argument.
Re:Enormous Piece of Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
I think his point is that the DoD is thinking about cyberwarfare wrongly. To do this, he invokes a psychoanalyst and psychoanalytic principles and attempts to connect them to the Internet.
He fails. The Internet is not some new form of "cyber-space-time". It is a massive repository of information, connected by wires (mostly) and run by computers according to the rules we have established. Its complexity does not make it something new. It is no more a new field of "space-time" than Conway's Game of Life is. Using psychoanalysis to talk about it is, frankly, somewhat ridiculous and makes me question just how much of a "leading analyst" he is.
Re: (Score:2)
And quantum physics. Don't forget quantum physics, and the deep connection between quantum physics and psychoanalysis. Well the connection is readily apparent if you ingest the same substances that the author does but he is not sharing.
We are now threatened with a script kiddie gap (Score:2)
"We are now threatened with a script kiddie gap that leaves us in a position of potentially grave danger."
Senator John F. Kennedy, American Legion Convention, Miami Beach, FL http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=74096#ixzz1UdOSia3p [ucsb.edu]
The only way to win the cyberwar (Score:2)
Are we talking about .gov or .com? (Score:2)
It is quite understandable how the government would lose in cyber warfare: We all know .gov sites look ugly and are fat and bloated, and clearly their back-ends don't look any better.
But it would seem like USA, Inc., the big corporations that pretty much define USA, are far better at it than other foreign big corporations, such as, say SONY.
Although Amazon's cloud failures are quite discouraging, if North Korea attacked, I doubt Amazon would even notice.
Not to mention China would NEVER attack Amazon, or eve
Mind the gap (Score:3)
This is just another example of either someone who's feeling a little insecure or is trying to exploit the insecurity of others for their own ends.
Both strategies have a long tradition in the USA and all the defence related FUD has been found to be baseless when the truth leaks out (usually against the wishes of the govt/military).
Ultimately there is absolutely no need to fight a cyber war. if the USA was ever attacked, the most effective defence would simply be to pull the plug on all incoming/outgoing IP traffic. Most americans simply wouldn't notice (except when the amount of SPAM decreased, or their favourite porn sites became inaccessible) and for most facilities that are targets for attack, there's no legitimate reason to have them exposed to the internet anyway.
A connecting principle of BS (Score:3)
Whether or not the US is adequately prepared for "cyberwar" is certainly an open question.
However, this article is riddled with neologism ("cyber-space-time" really?) and magical
thinking (e.g. I Ching, synchronicity).
If the Internet really isn't a hardware-software system, what is it? Why not claim it has a soul too
and that we should sing to it?
The real issue is that the Internet infrastructure is public resource controlled by private interests.
That's what makes the DoD's job of defending it difficult. Defense cannot simply issue edicts like
"upgrade all your router firmware right now."
I do not propose we retreat back to a paper-based information system. I propose we go back to clay tablets.
We won't lose the war, we'll lose the first battle (Score:4, Interesting)
And then in typical American reactive manner we'll dump a bunch of money into cybersecurity and thereby create the military-IT complex...
The Cult of the Mysterious Cyberspacetime (Score:2)
Very narrow vision (Score:2)
Will lose? (Score:2)
Blah, Blah, Blah.... what's the root cause?? (Score:2)
Imagine if you could only decide if you trusted a soldier or not, a binary decision, for each and every soldier in the military, at their time of enlistment.
If you trusted him, he had full access to every weapon and resource at our countries command, until he decided to leave.
If not, he wouldn't have access to anything.
Would it be possible to have a classification system in such a regime, when one spy could give away everything to the highest bidder?
Would it be possible to have
maybe, but nobody wins a cyber war (Score:2)
Let me condense: (Score:2)
1. The internet is really complicated and involves quantum something-or-other.
2. Asian philosophy is all about mysticism, non-materialism and shit.
3. Therefore, Asians are superior at cyber-warfare, qed.
cyber security analyst Jeffrey Carr writes (Score:2)
"Be afraid so cyber security analyst Jeffrey Carr is needed and should get paid a lot of money to calm your fears". At least that is what I got from TFA.
100% FUD (Score:2)
We could psychoanalyze the hell out of this... (Score:3)
.We could psychoanalyze the hell out of this, or we could air-gap the stuff that really matters and be done with it.
Re: (Score:3)
If shit really truly hits the fan, you unplug.
What makes you think there aren't sleeping botnets designed to attack in the event of prolonged disconnection from country X?
Re: (Score:3)
what makes you think there are? cuz the boogie man told you?
This is all just scare tactics and fear mongering to get people to spend money on a non existent problem. After all the terrorists have been defeated (lol) we need a new enemy to focus on. Might as well start looking around, spending money on cyber security sounds just as good as spending money on a missle defense shield or star wars program circa 1980s.
Re: (Score:2)
That is fantastic!
I lol'd. Did you lol?