Cyber War

Richard A. Clarke & Robert K. Knake, “Cyber War: The Next Threat To National Security And What To Do About It”, Harper Collins, 2010, 290 Pages

On October 1, 2009, a general took charge of the new U.S. Cyber Command, a military organization with the mission to use information technology and the Internet as a weapon. Admittedly, we have been involved in this mission for some time, it just now has more structure. Similar commands exist in Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, France, India, Pakistan, etc. All are preparing the cyber battlefield with things called "logic bombs" and "trapdoors," placing virtual explosives in other countries in peacetime. This book documents how as the U.S. prepares for offensive cyberwar, yet the country is continuing policies that make it impossible to defend the nation effectively from cyber attack. Most alarming is that the U.S. has the most targets, both military and civilian. For instance: how entire power grid and financial system are at risk, not to mention airlines, etc.

The situation today is similar to just prior to WWII. At that time, even though the American colonel Billy Mitchell was the first to understand the ability of small aircraft to sink mighty battleships, it was the Japanese Imperial Navy that acted on that understanding and came close to defeating the Americans in the Pacific in World War II. It was Britain that first developed the tank, and a French colonel, Charles de Gaulle, who devised the tactics of rapid attack with massed tanks, supported by air and artillery. Yet it was a recently defeated Germany that perfected the tank in the 1930s and first employed de Gaulle's tactics, which later became known as blitzkrieg. In the present instance, we have created the internet and computer systems, yet we remain the most unprotected major country in the world. North Korea or terrorists could exploit our vulnerability.

Author Richard A. Clarke has served in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan, both Bush’s, and Bill Clinton who appointed him as National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism. He teaches at Harvard.

My Notes:

Pg. 1: read description of Israel’s September 6, 2007 bombing of Syrian nuclear weapons plant which had been a North Korean designed and built project. The eye-opening use of cyber techniques is enlightening. This was so embarrassing to the Syrians and their Russian defense suppliers that there was no acknowledgment from them, at first, that it even happened.

Pg. 10: read how thousands of Iraqi military officers received e-mails on the Iraqi Defense Ministry e-mail system just before the war started. Basically, it is surmised, that the email stated: “We do not want to harm you or your troops. Our goal would be to displace Saddam and his two sons. If you wish to remain unharmed, place your tanks and other armored vehicles in formation and abandon them…” Not surprisingly, many Iraqi officers obeyed the instructions. The U.S. troops found many units had neatly parked their tanks in rows outside their bases, thus allowing U.S. aircraft to neatly blow them up. Some Iraqi army commanders sent their troops on leave in the hours before the war.

Pg. 101: Three things make cyberwar possible: the design of the internet, flaws in software and hardware, and allowing critical machines to be controlled from cyberspace.

Pg. 143: U.S. Cyber Command also has a defensive mission, to defend the Department of Defense. But not the rest of us. Homeland Security is responsible for the non-Dept. of Defense portions of the federal government; the rest of us are on our own. The intense lobbying against any regulation has so far prevailed.

Pg. 145: In cyber offensive capability, the U.S. probably would rank first. But there is more to cyberwar than cyber offense. There is also cyber dependence, the degree to which a nation relies upon cyber-controlled systems. In a two-way cyberwar, that matters. When the author asked for a cyberwar plan to go after Afghanistan in 2001 he found there are sometimes few if any targets for cyber warriors. (The same would happen against North Korea). While the U.S. very likely possesses the most sophisticated offensive cyberwar capabilities, that offensive prowess cannot make up for the weaknesses in our defensive position. It is important to note that China has plans and capability to disconnect the entire nation’s networks from the rest of cyberspace. The U.S. has neither the plans nor the capability to do that because the cyber connections into the U.S. are privately owned and operated.

Pg. 149: Cyber dependence is about the extent to which critical infrastructures (electric power, rails, pipelines, supply chains) are dependent upon networked systems and have no real backup.