Re: Quick Review: Cyberwar as a Confidence Game by Martin C. Libicki

[dan () geer org]

 | I'm not sure I agree. Technically, sure, you can hack into things and
 | take them out. However, comparing hacking to a cruise missile is a
 | stretch. I can patch my systems today and your cyber-attack tomorrow is
 | foiled. Or maybe I switch from Mac to Windows. A Tomahawk cruise missile
 | is just as effective against a Russian radar system or a French one.
 | 
 | Don't get me wrong - hacking, backdoors, denial of service, altering
 | messages, decrypting sensitive messages .etc all have their place. I
 | just think the categories are cyber intelligence, terrorism, espionage,
 | sabotage or crime but not "warfare".

It would seem to me that it is a matter of timing.  Yes, you can
fix your systems or change to a Mac, but if I've given you 74.3
seconds to do so, "Good luck, Charlie!"

That seems the crux of much that is different between meatspace
and digistan: time.  A bank robbery in meatspace is over in
5min; 300msec in digistan.  In meatspace, the bigger the army
coming for you, the longer it takes to get there; at the speed
of light, no point on the Earth's surface is >.064sec away and
the army is likely already in your cities anyhow.  In meatspace
we jam radios, dump chaff, and burn smudgepots for the duration;
in digistan, the kill packet your hardware is primed to receive
but has never before seen requires no logistical follow-through.
Et cetera.

But if I was strategizing weaponry, it would not be to trash your
digital assets but to violate the integrity of your data enough
that you would no longer trust it.  "Fog of war" is now a
deliverable.

--dan

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