What Age Need To Register Military
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We live in an age that is driven by information. Technological breakthroughs . . . are changing the face of state of war and how nosotros ready for state of war.
—William Perry, Secretary of Defense
Information Warfare and the Changing Face of War
Information warfare (IW) represents a rapidly evolving and, as still, imprecisely defined field of growing interest for defense planners and policymakers. The source of both the interest and the imprecision in this field is the so-chosen information revolution—led past the ongoing rapid evolution of cyberspace, microcomputers, and associated information technologies. The U.South. defense establishment, like U.S. social club as a whole, is moving rapidly to accept advantage of the new opportunities presented by these changes. At the same time, current and potential U.S. adversaries (and allies) are besides looking to exploit the evolving global data infrastructure and associated technologies for military purposes.
The terminate upshot and implications of these ongoing changes for international and other forms of disharmonize are highly uncertain, befitting a subject that is this new and dynamic. Will IW be a new but subordinate facet of warfare in which the Us and its allies readily overcome their ain potential cyberspace vulnerabilities and gain and sustain whatever tactical and strategic military machine advantages that might be available in this arena? Or will the changes in disharmonize wrought past the ongoing information revolution be so rapid and profound that the net result is a new and grave threat to traditional armed forces operations and U.S. lodge that fundamentally changes the hereafter grapheme of warfare?
In response to this situation and these uncertainties, in January 1995 the Secretarial assistant of Defence force formed the IW Executive Board to facilitate "the development and accomplishment of national information warfare goals." In support of this effort, RAND was asked to provide and exercise an analytic framework for identifying key IW bug, exploring their consequences and highlighting starting points for IW-related policy evolution—looking to assistance develop a sustainable national consensus on an overall U.S. IW strategy.
To attain this purpose, RAND conducted an exercise-based framing and analysis of what we came to call the "strategic information warfare" problem. Involving senior members of the national security customs as well as representatives from national security-related telecommunications and information systems industries, the exercises led participants through a challenging hypothetical IW crisis involving a major regional political-military contingency. The exercise methodology, known by the label "The Day Afterwards . . . ," had been previously used for a diversity of nuclear proliferation, counterproliferation, and related intelligence studies. The specific scenario called for the exercise involved a turn-of-the-century conflict between Islamic republic of iran and the United States and its allies, focused on a threat to Saudi Arabia.
The exercise was conducted half dozen times in evolving versions over the form of five months from January to June 1995. Each iteration immune for refinement of bones strategic IW concepts and provided further insights virtually their national security implications. This process provided an opportunity to assess and clarify the perspectives of senior participants from authorities and industry regarding such matters as the plausibility of strategic IW scenarios such equally the one presented, possible evolutions in related threats and vulnerabilities, and the phrasing of central associated strategy and policy issues. Information technology also provided an opportunity to identify emerging schools of thought and, in some cases, a rough consensus on next steps on a number of important strategic IW issues.
In addition, the process yielded a badly needed multidimensional framework for sharpening most-term executive branch focus on the development of strategic IW policy, strategy, and goals—in detail regarding the implications of prospective major regional contingencies on defensive IW strategies, doctrines, vulnerabilities, and capabilities. It also provided a highly useful forum for beginning to coordinate with industry on the future management of IW-related national security telecommunications strategy.
As can be inferred from the to a higher place comments, the methodology employed in this study appears to offering particular advantages for addressing many of the conceptual difficulties inherent in this topic. The subject matter is very new and, in some dimensions, technically complex, especially for individuals typically found in policymaking positions. The challenge of finding techniques for efficiently accelerating the procedure of basic education on the topic and its implications for national security policy and strategy cannot exist underestimated.
This report presents the results of this study. Specifically, the purpose of this report is to
- describe and frame the concept of strategic information warfare
- depict and talk over the key features and related issues that characterize strategic IW
- explore the consequences of these features and issues for U.S. national security every bit illuminated by the exercises
- suggest analytical and policy directions for addressing elements of these strategic IW features and bug.
Strategic Information Warfare
The U.s. has substantial data-based resources, including complex management systems and infrastructures involving the command of electrical ability, coin flow, air traffic, oil and gas, and other information-dependent items. U.Southward. allies and potential coalition partners are similarly increasingly dependent on various information infrastructures. Conceptually, if and when potential adversaries endeavor to harm these systems using IW techniques, information warfare inevitably takes on a strategic attribute.
Strategic Information Warfare and Mail service–Cold State of war Strategy
Our exercise scenario highlighted from the start a fundamental aspect of strategic information warfare: In that location is no "front end line." Strategic targets in the U.s. may be just every bit vulnerable to assault every bit in-theater command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) targets. As a result, the attention of exercise participants rapidly broadened beyond a single traditional regional theater of operations to 4 distinct divide theaters of operation as portrayed in Figure S.ane: the battleground per se; allied "Zones of Interior" (in our scenario, the sovereign territory of Saudi arabia); the intercontinental zone of advice and deployment; and the U.S. Zone of Interior.
Figure South.1. The Changing Face of War: Four Strategic IW Theaters of Operation
The postal service–cold war "over there" focus of the regional component of U.South. national armed services strategy is therefore rendered incomplete for this kind of scenario and is of failing relevance to the likely future international strategic surround. When responding to information warfare attacks of this character, war machine strategy can no longer beget to focus on conducting and supporting operations just in the region of concern. An in-depth examination of the implications of IW for the U.South. and centrolineal infrastructures that depend on the unimpeded management of data is likewise required.
The Bones Features of Strategic Information Warfare
The exercises highlighted seven defining features of strategic information warfare:
- Low entry cost: Unlike traditional weapon technologies, development of information-based techniques does not require sizable financial resources or state sponsorship. Data systems expertise and access to important networks may be the simply prerequisites.
- Blurred traditional boundaries: Traditional distinctions—public versus private interests, warlike versus criminal beliefs—and geographic boundaries, such as those betwixt nations as historically defined, are complicated past the growing interaction within the information infrastructure.
- Expanded role for perception management: New data-based techniques may substantially increment the power of deception and of image-manipulation activities, dramatically complicating authorities efforts to build political back up for security-related initiatives.
- A new strategic intelligence challenge: Poorly understood strategic IW vulnerabilities and targets diminish the effectiveness of classical intelligence collection and analysis methods. A new field of analysis focused on strategic IW may take to be developed.
- Formidable tactical warning and assault cess problems: There is currently no adequate tactical warning arrangement for distinguishing between strategic IW attacks and other kinds of internet activities, including espionage or accidents.
- Difficulty of building and sustaining coalitions: Reliance on coalitions is likely to increment the vulnerabilities of the security postures of all the partners to strategic IW attacks, giving opponents a disproportionate strategic reward.
- Vulnerability of the U.S. homeland: Information-based techniques render geographical distance irrelevant; targets in the continental United states of america are only as vulnerable as in-theater targets. Given the increased reliance of the U.S. economic system and order on a high-functioning networked data infrastructure, a new set of lucrative strategic targets presents itself to potential IW-armed opponents.
Consequences of the Basic Features
Through the course of our exercise-based analysis, we prompted policymakers and other experts from the public and private sectors to explore the character and consequences of these features. The discussion that follows summarizes our synthesis of observations made by the practice participants on the characteristics and implications of these features for the strategic IW problem. Note that there is a "cascading" effect inherent in these observations—each helps to create the enabling conditions for subsequent ones.
Low Entry Toll
Interconnected networks may exist subject area to attack and disruption not just past states but also by nonstate actors, including dispersed groups and even individuals. Potential adversaries could also possess a wide range of capabilities. Thus, the threat to U.South. interests could be multiplied substantially and will continue to change as e'er more complex systems are developed and the requisite expertise is e'er more widely diffused.
Some participants believed that the entry cost to many of the IW attack options posited could exist raised by denying like shooting fish in a barrel access to networks and control systems through the exploitation of new software encryption techniques. Other participants acknowledged that this might mitigate some threats but emphasized that this arroyo would non remove other threats to an internetted organization by a corrupted insider (systems operator) and/or direct physical set on. Information technology would also increase the difficulty in strategic and tactical intelligence vis-a-vis strategic IW attackers.
Blurred Traditional Boundaries
Given the broad array of possible opponents, weapons, and strategies, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between foreign and domestic sources of IW threats and actions. You may not know who's under assault by whom, or who'south in charge of the attack. This greatly complicates the traditional role distinction between domestic law enforcement, on the one paw, and national security and intelligence entities, on the other. Another event of this blurring phenomenon is the disappearance of clear distinctions between different levels of anti-state activity, ranging from crime to warfare. Given this blurring, nation-states opposed to U.South. strategic interests could forgo more traditional types of armed forces or terrorist action and instead exploit individuals or transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) to behave "strategic criminal operations."
Expanded Role for Perception Management
Opportunities for IW agents to manipulate information that is fundamental to public perceptions may increment. For example, political activeness groups and other nongovernment organizations tin utilize the Internet to galvanize political support, equally the Zapitistas in Chiapas, United mexican states, were able to do. Furthermore, the possibility arises that the very "facts" of an event tin can be manipulated via multimedia techniques and widely disseminated. Conversely, there may exist a decreased capability to build and maintain domestic support for controversial political actions. One implication is that future U.S. administrations may include a robust Internet component equally office of whatever public data campaign.
Amongst participants, in that location was no support for whatsoever extraordinary maneuver past the government to "seize control" of the media and the Internet in response to a probable IW attack. Rather, there was an acknowledgment that futurity U.S. administrations might face a daunting job in shaping and sustaining domestic support for whatsoever activity marked past a high degree of ambiguity and uncertainty in the IW realm.
Lack of Strategic Intelligence
For a variety of reasons, traditional intelligence-gathering and analysis methods may be of limited use in coming together the strategic IW intelligence challenge. Drove targets are difficult to place; allocation of intelligence resources is difficult because of the rapidly changing nature of the threat; and vulnerabilities and target sets are not, as nevertheless, well understood. In sum, the United States may accept difficulty identifying potential adversaries, their intentions, and their capabilities. One implication of this is that new organizational relationships are needed inside the intelligence customs and between this community and other entities. A restructuring of roles and missions may also be required.
In our exercises, debate on this trouble centered on the need for some interagency structure to allow for coordinated collection and assay of "strange" and "domestic" sources versus the desire to preserve the boundary between foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement.
Difficulty of Tactical Alarm and Set on Assessment
This characteristic of warfare presents fundamentally new problems in a cyberspace surround. A basic problem is distinguishing between "attacks" and other events, such as accidents, system failures, or hacking by "thrill-seekers." The main outcome of this feature is that the United States may not know when an assault is under mode, who is attacking, or how the assail is being conducted.
As in the debate over what to practice well-nigh the dilemmas posed by the strategic intelligence claiming, practice participants split on this topic between those who were prepared to consider a more radical mixing of domestic law enforcement and strange intelligence institutions and those strongly opposed to whatever commingling.
Difficulty of Building and Sustaining Coalitions
Many U.S. allies and coalition partners will be vulnerable to IW attacks on their core information infrastructures. For example, the dependence on cellular phones in developing countries could well render telephone communications in those nations highly susceptible to disruption. Other sectors in the early stages of exploiting the information revolution (e.yard., energy and financial) may also present vulnerabilities that an adversary might assault to undermine coalition participation. Such attacks might as well serve to sever "weak links" in the execution of coalition plans. Conversely, tentative coalition partners who urgently need military assistance may desire assurances that a U.S. deployment plan to their region is non vulnerable to IW disruption.
There was general agreement among participants that as the Usa develops and refines defensive systems and concepts of operations or techniques in this surface area, it should consider sharing them with cardinal allies, but no specific policies were proffered in the discussions.
Vulnerability of the U.S. Homeland
Data warfare has no front line. Potential battlefields are anywhere networked systems allow access. Current trends suggest that the U.Due south. economy will increasingly rely on complex, interconnected network control systems for such necessities as oil and gas pipelines, electrical grids, etc. The vulnerability of these systems is currently poorly understood. In add-on, the means of deterrence and retaliation are uncertain and may rely on traditional war machine instruments in addition to IW threats. In sum, the U.S. homeland may no longer provide a sanctuary from outside set on.
There was a broad consensus amidst do participants that no dramatic measures such as shutting downward an infrastructure would be effective as a defensive measure (and some skepticism as to whether such activeness would, in fact, be possible during a crisis). At that place appeared, yet, a wide consensus in favor of exploring the concept of a "minimum essential information infrastructure" based on a series of federally sponsored incentives to ensure that the owners and operators had procedures to detect IW-type attacks and reconstitution measures that minimized the impact of any one network disruption—see the discussion below.
An Elusive Bottom Line on the Threat
Over the course of the exercise serial, careful attending was given to the possible solidifying of a bottom line on the gravity of the cyberspace-based strategic IW threat. Many existing data systems do announced to exist vulnerable to some level of disruption or misuse. At the same time, developments in cyberspace are then dynamic that existing vulnerabilities may well be ameliorated as part of the natural building of immunities to threats that accompany any such rapidly evolving entity. Withal, our dependence on internet and data systems generally is too growing rapidly—raising unsettling questions equally to whether the "allowed system" process can "keep upwardly" and thus prevent serious strategic vulnerabilities from emerging and being exploited.
We looked for, but did not notice, any strong statistical consensus on just where people think nosotros are now on the threat spectrum portrayed in Figure S.2, or where we might be heading. We did notice, nonetheless, that over the course of the exercise, the general perspective on the magnitude of the strategic IW problem near invariably appeared to motion downward along the graph of Figure S.two. This experience mirrored that of the authors—the more time spent on this subject, the more ane saw tough problems defective concrete solutions and, in some cases, lacking even adept ideas about where to start.
Figure S.2. A Broad Spectrum of Perspectives
Conclusions
The features and likely consequences of strategic information warfare point to a bones conclusion: Key national military strategy assumptions are obsolescent and inadequate for against the threat posed past strategic IW. 5 major recommendations emerged from the exercises as starting points for addressing this shortcoming:
1. Leadership: Who Should Be in Accuse in the Government?
Participants widely agreed that an immediate and badly needed first step is the assignment of a focal point for federal government leadership in back up of a coordinated U.S. response to the strategic IW threat. This focal point should exist located in the Executive Function of the President, since only at this level can the necessary interagency coordination of the big number of regime organizations involved in such matters—and the necessary interactions with the Congress—be finer carried out. This office should too have the responsibility for close coordination with industry, since the nation's information infrastructure is being adult almost exclusively past the commercial sector. In one case established, this loftier-level leadership should immediately take responsibility for initiating and managing a comprehensive review of national-level strategic data warfare problems.
2. Take a chance Assessment
The federal government leadership entity cited above should, as a first step, conduct an immediate risk assessment to determine, to the degree possible, the extent of the vulnerability of key elements of electric current U.S. national security and national armed forces strategy to strategic data warfare. Strategic target sets, IW effects, and parallel vulnerability and threat assessments should be among the components of this review. In an environment of dynamic change in both cyberspace threats and vulnerabilities, there is no sound basis for presidential decisionmaking on strategic IW matters without such a risk assessment.
In this context there is always the hope or the belief—we saw both in the exercises—that the kind of aggressive response suggested in this report tin be delayed while cyberspace gets a take a chance to evolve robust defenses on its ain. This is, in fact, a possibility—that the healing and annealing of an immune arrangement that is under constant assault, as cyberspace is and convincingly will continue to be (if only, in Willy Sutton'south words, because that'due south where the coin is), will create the robust national information infrastructure that everyone hopes to employ. But it may not, and we are certainly not there at present.
three. Government'due south Role
The appropriate role for government in responding to the strategic IW threat needs to exist addressed, recognizing that this office—certain to exist part leadership and part partnership with the domestic sector—will unquestionably evolve. In addition to being the performer of certain bones preparedness functions—such as organizing, equipping, grooming, and sustaining military forces—the regime may play a more productive and efficient office as facilitator and maintainer of some information systems and infrastructure, and through policy mechanisms such equally tax breaks to encourage reducing vulnerability and improving recovery and reconstitution adequacy.
An important gene is the traditional change in the authorities's role as ane moves from national defense through public prophylactic toward things that represent the public good. Clearly, the government's perceived role in this area volition have to exist balanced against public perceptions of the loss of ceremonious liberties and the commercial sector's business organisation almost unwarranted limits on its practices and markets.
four. National Security Strategy
Once an initial run a risk assessment has been completed, U.S. national security strategy needs to address preparedness for the threat as identified. Equally portrayed in Effigy S.three, preparedness will cantankerous several traditional boundaries from "war machine" to "civilian," from "foreign" to "domestic," and from "national" to "local."
Figure Due south.3. A Spectrum of National Security Preparedness
One promising means for instituting this kind of preparedness could involve the concept of a "minimum essential information infrastructure" (MEII), which was introduced equally a possible strategic defensive IW initiative in the practice and is portrayed notionally in Figure S.3. The MEII is conceived equally that minimum mixture of U.S. information systems, procedures, laws, and tax incentives necessary to ensure the nation's connected functioning fifty-fifty in the face of a sophisticated strategic IW set on. One facet of such an MEII might exist a set of rules and regulations sponsored by the federal government to encourage the owners and operators of the various national infrastructures to have measures to reduce their infrastructure's vulnerability and/or to ensure rapid reconstitution in the face of IW-blazon attacks. The analog for this concept is the strategic nuclear Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network (MEECN). Participants in the exercise plant the MEII construct conceptually very bonny even though in that location was some uncertainty equally to how it might be achieved. An cess of the feasibility of an MEII (or like concepts) should exist undertaken at an early engagement.
five. National Military Strategy
The current national military strategy emphasizes maintaining U.S. capability to projection power into theaters of operation in key regions of Europe and Asia. Considering of the four emerging theaters of operation in cyberspace for such contingencies (see Figure Due south.1), strategic IW profoundly reduces the significance of altitude with respect to the deployment and use of weapons. Therefore, battlefield C3I vulnerabilities may become less significant than vulnerabilities in the national infrastructure. Planning assumptions central to current national military strategy are obsolescent. Consideration of these IW features should be accounted for in U.Southward. national military strategy.
Against this hard projection and assessment situation, there is the ever-present risk that the United States could find itself in a crisis in the most term, facing the possibility of, or indications of, a strategic IW attack. When the president asks whether the United States is under IW assault—and, if then, by whom—and whether the U.S. armed services plan and strategy is vulnerable, a foot-shuffling "we don't know" volition not exist an acceptable answer.
Finally, even so, it must be acknowledged that strategic IW is a very new concept that is presenting a wholly new prepare of problems. These problems may well yield to solution—simply not without the intelligent and informed expenditure of energy, leadership, money, and other scarce resources that this study seeks to catalyze.
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Table of Contents
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Chapter One
What is "Strategic Information Warfare?"
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Affiliate Two
Methodology
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Chapter Three
The Changing Confront of State of war
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Affiliate Iv
Defining Features of Strategic Information Warfare
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Chapter 5
Issues of Strategic Information Warfare
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Chapter Vi
Conclusions
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Appendix A
Methodology
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Appendix B
Summary of Group Deliberations for Step Three
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Appendix C
Exercise
"Strategic Information Warfare illuminates a challenging and often obscure method for examining policy options. Whatsoever student of regime or industrial decision making would be well brash to buy this book. Grade: 92%"
- Engineering science and Lodge
"Data warfare remains a nebulous subject, but his monograph offers i of the nigh interesting and revealing ways of thinking about it, at to the lowest degree in an unclassified venue. A short only comprehensive give-and-take of the central issues in information warfare, particularly defence against attacks on the myriad information systems that keep American society running, is followed by an ingenious 'day after' exercise that illustrates and amplifies these problems. In three parts--'the day of' an information set on, 'the 24-hour interval after', and finally 'the day before'—participants tin work their way through the decisionmaking bug of information warfare. The exercise, which has been tested with many authorities and private groups, is a brilliant device for exploring a problem bound to become more salient."
- Foreign Diplomacy
"An excellent overview of the discipline. Highly recommended for a diversity of subject areas, specially political science and computer science."
- Academic Library Book Review
"The great value of such exercises lies in raising the consciousness of decision-makers about bug probable to emerge, simply which take not yet received their devoted attending."
- Comparative Strategy
"This book terrified me... because the authors are right. Strategic information warfare is possible and probable. I applaud that this inquiry was done. I am thrilled that this is an unclassified, easily obtained volume rather than something that remains inside the closed networks of the armed forces-industrial vaults."
- Computing Reviews
The research reported here was accomplished within the Conquering and Technology Policy Heart of RAND'south National Defense Enquiry Establish, a federally funded enquiry and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretarial assistant of Defense, the Joint Staff, and the defense agencies.
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