Bitskrieg. John Arquilla

strikes, gatherings, and in the governmental authorities’ counter-efforts to limit networking – all too often ending in violent repression due to failure to disrupt the grassroots networks by other means.

Clearly, we are living in a cool war world whose evolution is propelled by information and communications technologies. It is a highly conflictual world, in that war – particularly cyberwar in its myriad forms – is no longer primarily the province of nations. Networks, even small ones – and even individuals – can now wage one or another form of cyberwar. Dark alliances may even arise between nations and networks – think of Hezbollah’s close ties to Iran, for example, or the various hacker groups so friendly to Russia. The cyberwars waged in this new age of conflict can aim at innocent noncombatants and their homeland infrastructures – as strategic bombing has in earlier wars; attack commerce, much as pirates and other sea raiders have from time immemorial; and spark new modes of insurrection against authority. The fresh challenge of cyberwar is also driving yet another great transformation of so-called “conventional war,” this time not based primarily on advances in weaponry, but more broadly on the notion of “steering” – remember that Greek root, kybernan – the course of a conflict by achieving an edge over the adversary in the gathering and management of timely, relevant information.

      The good news is that cyberwar aims more at disruption than destruction, at achieving aims and goals at less cost, with less bloodshed, even in open warfare. The bad news is that there is a terrible imbalance between offense and defense today, with attackers having the edge, in and beyond cyberspace. How this has happened and how to mitigate this growing threat are issues considered next.

Notes

      1  1 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 89.

      2  2 Martin Libicki, Conquest in Cyberspace (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 2. See also his What Is Information Warfare? (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1995). His “mosaic of forms” phrasing first appeared on p. 3 of the earlier study.

      3  3 See Robert S. Mueller III, Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2019).

      4  4 Clausewitz, On War, p. 84.

      5  5 Cited in David E. Sanger and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Data Breach Tied to China Hit Millions,” The New York Times, June 5, 2015.

      6  6 See Damian Paletta, “OPM Breach Was Enormous, FBI Director Says,” The Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2015.

      7  7 Lily Hay Newman, “Hack Brief: 885 Million Sensitive Financial Records Exposed,” Wired, May 24, 2019.

      8  8 Eric Tucker, “US Researchers Warned of Theft,” Associated Press, October 7, 2019.

      9  9 See Michael McGuire, Into the Web of Profit: Understanding the Growth of the Cybercrime Economy (Cupertino, CA: Bromium, Inc., 2018).

      10 10 “North Korea Targets Cryptocurrency Exchanges, Banks” (New York: United Nations Security Council), August 5, 2019.

      11 11 This theme is explored in Florian Egloff, “Cybersecurity and the Age of Privateering,” in George Perkovich and Ariel E. Levite, eds., Understanding Cyber Conflict: 14 Analogies (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), especially p. 233.

      12 12 George Quester, Offense and Defense in the International System (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977).

      13 13 See Thomas Rid, Cyberwar Will Not Take Place (Oxford University Press, 2013).

      14 14 On cyber aspects of this conflict, see John Markoff, “Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks,” The New York Times, August 12, 2008. See also Ronald Asmus, A Little War That Shook the World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010).

      15 15 Adam Meyers, “Danger Close: Fancy Bear Tracking of Ukrainian Field Artillery Units,” CrowdStrike, December 2016, revised March 2017.

      16 16 On the Ivano-Frankivsk infrastructure attack, and Tom Bossert’s estimate of the cost of the damage done, see Andy Greenberg, “The Untold Story of NotPetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History,” Wired (August 2018).

      17 17 The classic account of this conflict is still Hugh Thomas’s The Spanish Civil War (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1961).

      18 18 For more detail, see Charles Messenger, The Blitzkrieg Story (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), p. 127.

      19 19 Karl-Heinz Frieser and J. T. Greenwood, The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005), p. 10.

      20 20 From William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), pp. 701, 703.

      21 21 This view is thoughtfully exposited in Scott Shane, Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994).

      22 22 Donald Coers, John Steinbeck Goes to War: The Moon Is Down as Propaganda (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006).

      23 23 Cited in Steve Sheinkin, Bomb: The Race to Build – and Steal – the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon (New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2012), p. 163.

      24 24 Cited in David E. Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012), p. 200.

      25 25 Nicole Perlroth, “Cyberattack on Saudi Firm Disquiets U.S.,” The New York Times, October 24, 2012.

      26 26 See Samuel Gibbs, “Triton: Hackers Take Out Safety Systems in Watershed Attack on Energy Plant,” The Guardian, December 15, 2017; and Martin Giles, “Triton is the World’s Most Murderous Malware – and It’s Spreading,” Technology Review, March 5, 2019.

      27 27 Frederik Pohl, The Cool War (New York: Del Rey Books, 1981).

      28 28 Joseph Nye, “Deterrence and Dissuasion in Cyberspace,” International Security, 41, 3 (2017), p. 55.

      29 29 Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1954).

      30 30 See John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “Cyberwar Is Coming!” Comparative Strategy, 12, 2 (April–June, 1993), pp. 141–65. Quotes are from pp. 141, 145. Emphasis added.

      31 31 John Keegan, The Second World War (New York: Viking, 1990), p. 87.

      32 32 Ibid., p. 156.

      33 33 Michael Carver, “Conventional Warfare in the Nuclear Age,” in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 803. On the Six-Day War, see Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War (Oxford University Press, 2002).

      34 34 C. Kenneth Allard, “The Future of Command and Control: Toward a Paradigm of Information Warfare,” in L. Benjamin Ederington and Michael J. Mazarr, eds., Turning Point: The Gulf War and U.S. Military Strategy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), p. 163.

      35 35 See Roger C. Molander, Andrew S. Riddile, and Peter A. Wilson, Strategic Information Warfare: A New Face of War (Santa Monica: RAND, 1996). A comprehensive early study of the Pentagon’s narrower conception of cyberwar, and the choice to focus on it primarily as a mode of strategic attack, can be found in Gregory Rattray, Strategic Warfare in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001).

      36 36 The movie was based on Harry Bates’s short story, “Farewell to the Master,” published in the October 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The story was novelized by Arthur Tofte, The Day the Earth Stood Still (London: Scholastic, Inc., 1976). While the original Klaatu acted carefully and demonstratively, the aliens in the 2008 remake of the film, starring Keanu Reeves, chose to intervene more destructively, in the end denying humanity any use of electricity.

      37 37 Robert A. Pape’s Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996) is a comprehensive study of the limits of strategic aerial bombardment. See also Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic