Cyber-collateral

Despite its political agenda and the usual US xenophobia, the article America's Secret Arsenal cited on RISKS-List set me thinking strategically about cyberwar. While I don't consider myself part of the 'cyberscare industrial complex', a few issues stand out for me, as an interested and concerned onlooker.

Lightning-fast escalation

When (not if) a serious offensive military cyberattack is mounted against a capable and well-prepared adversary, things look likely to escalate dramatically in the first few minutes, seconds or milliseconds, far too fast for political decision-making or even fast-track incident responses involving conventional decisions and actions by humans. Automated responses are more likely, implying a raft of associated risks, like for example the distinctly disturbing likelihood that such responses are already primed and ready to go, right here, right now. It's hard not to envisage all manner of nightmare scenarios mushrooming from that point, with automated offensive and defensive weapons slogging it out like some hellish computer game on autoplay, turbo. In a sense, we already see this effect in miniature when our computers automatically patch themselves (usually preventing but occasionally causing incidents), r when intrusion prevention systems react instinctively to identified network attacks (again, usually effectively but sometimes counterproductively) ...

Detection and analysis

... which hints at another significant issue: incidents must be identified as such to trigger active responses, although passive responses and baseline controls will presumably be in operation regardless. Delaying detection and frustrating analysis, then, is presumably a strategic objective for attackers ...

Nature of attack and response

... which would place a huge premium on widespread, stealthy infiltration of networks and systems/devices as a prelude to cybergeddon. 

Scale of impacts

Collateral damage and friendly fire

Subversion

Red-teaming

Exercises, simulations, rehearsals, tests, reviews and audits are, presumably, all part of the process of developing and refining cyber capabilities.

Capabilities and resources

Bat phones

What is the modern-day equivalent of the bat phone, the priority direct line between heads of state and other VIPS, given the near certainty that communications will be attacked hard in the very first assault? Let's hope the authorities have given due consideration to the need for truly secure (as in confidential, assured/trustworthy, and highly available i.e. robust, reliable and resilient) means of communication capable of operating even under intense cyberattack conditions, as well as thinking through the consequences of "No signal" or "Satellite out of range".

Oh and by the way, if war is largely automated, there had better be data as well as voice capabilities, with the appropriate security and messaging protocols in place as well as the strings and baked bean cans, plus of course the routine comms between and among all levels of the military establishment, all the way down to/up from those front-line robots and UAVs.

Rules of engagement

What is happening to define the rules of the game and prepare to step in when cybercombatants almost inevitably overstep the line of acceptable warfare? If not the UN, who is or should be playing the role of referee? The more I think about this, the more I see the need for CCD, the cyber-equivalent of CND. Right now is a good time to launch a global Campaign for Cyber Disarmament, before things get totally out of hand.