New Infowarfare Panel

[Timothy C. May]

At 6:14 PM 7/18/96, David Sternlight wrote:
>At 8:30 PM -0700 7/17/96, Timothy C. May wrote:
>
>>Winn Schwartau is running conferences, is talking about the imminent danger
>>of the nation's computer networks being knocked out (paraphrasing his
>>latest "Wired" item: "imagine your ATM network being knocked out and people
>>being unable to gain access to their money").
>>
>>Schwartau is predicting/advocating a "fifth branch" of the military to deal
>>with the this threat. A cyberforce, as it were.
>>
>>Color me skeptical, but I see this all as a lot of hype and fear-mongering.
>>Folks in the Pentagon, FBI, and NSA probably see it as a way to get more
>>funding, Folks in the consulting business probably see it as a way to crank
>>up the seminar prices and increase the number and frequency of "Information
>>Warfare" workshops and seminars.
>
>Haven't there been some worked examples of information warfare that make
>this fear and the need to deal with it legitimate?

I'm certainly not saying "information warfare" is impossible--for example,
I did some work in the late 70s for DARPA on knocking out satellites with
particle beam weapons. Specifically, I rebutted MIT Professor Kosta Tsipas'
claim that directed energy weapons in orbit would require tens (or more) of
Space Shuttle trips _per shot_. I showed the DARPA people how it could be
done with 5 orders of magnitude less energy, and speculated that
"ticklings" of satellites could be done with commercially available ion
implanters--they got real concerned and I was not invited to the classified
sessions where they discussed this threat model, as I lacked a clearance.

However, the current wave of publicity about "information warfare" seems to
focus on _possible_ scenarios, with Hollywoodesque overtones. (And I just
learned that "infowar consultant" Schwartau is indeed "working on a movie."
Not to ascribe impure motives to him--who's to say what's impure?--but it
still sounds like hype to me.)

>As I recall my background reading in the public press, wasn't the etiology
>that we figured out how to do some pretty nasty things (the Gulf war was
>one presenting occasion) to enemies' info infrastructures to threaten their
>entire social system. Then, as I understand it, someone smart said
>something like "If we can do this to them, then someone can do this to us."
>and we were off to the races.

Sure, we dropped conductive fibers on their power lines, we blew their
dishes out with Special Ops sniper fire, and we did a lot of other such
things.

Could this destroy the nation's "infrastructure"? Hey, there have been
scenarios for disrupting Wall Street, for all sorts of things. Bombs in
power plants, knocking over high tension lines, etc. Some things never
change. But destroying or even seriously damagaing the U.S. infrastructure
would be _very_ hard to do.

Sure, the government should think about such things. Utilities companies
routinely plan for efforts to disrupt service. (I live a mile or two from
where "Earth Action Now!" knocked over a power line about the time
treehugger activist Judi Bari was partly blown up while apparently
transporting a homemade bomb down here to Santa Cruz.)

>It's the military and counterintel community's job to think like this and
>act to protect us. I don't think imputing selfish motives is dispositive.

I noted that there is a recent wave of hype: books, conferences, calls for
action, even movie deals (:-}). Given that there is no real evidence that
these mysterious "HERF guns" have ever been used, nor is there evidence
that they would do much beyond knocking out the PCs in the office they were
aimed at, this is why I said "color me skeptical."

By the way, I was interviewed for the BBC programme "The I-Bomb," had
discussions a while back with someone working on HERF guns, and have been
in touch with Schwartau on this latest round (he contacted me). I'm still
skeptical. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay at got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."