Justifying Cyber-intelligence?

The surge in threats aided by or carried out through cyberspace has placed significant pressure on the intelligence community to adapt or leave itself open to attack. Indeed, many in both political and intelligence circles argue for access to ever greater amounts of cyber information in order to catch potential threats before they become real. By collecting all our digital information, the intelligence community argues that it is not only able to detail what people have done or are currently doing but also predict what their next move might be. However, the ethical implications are unclear and the backlash following Edward Snowden’s revelations have shown that such activities are not without controversy. This leaves the debate stuck between the important, ethical role that intelligence can play and the potential for its unrestrained use to cause undue harm. This paper will resolve this by giving greater detail to cyber-intelligence practices, highlighting the different levels of harm that the various intelligence operations can cause. The essence of this paper is not that cyber-intelligence should be banned outright, but that it can be justified given the necessary circumstances. Therefore, the paper will develop a specialised set of Just Cyber-Intelligence Principles, built on the just war tradition, to outline if and when such activities are justified.     

The Changing Nature of Legitimate Authority in the Just War Tradition

ABSTRACT

The legitimate authority principle has become reduced to the issue of state authority. In its current formulation, the state has the sole authority to wage war, and because non-state actors, by their very definition, cannot satisfy this principle, their use of force is inherently unethical. This does not reflect the reality that non-state actors are increasingly engaging in the use of force, sometimes legitimately. As a result, the legitimate authority principle can and should look beyond the state. This article navigates a terrain in which non-state actors engage in the use of force, and in which revisionist just war thinking proposes that the concept of legitimate authority is irrelevant to thinking about the ethics of war. It proposes a principled approach to the inclusion of some non-state actors under the rubric of legitimate authority. This approach draws upon the historical development of the legitimate authority principle and incorporates the factors important to early writers on the subject.     

Jacques Maritain: Christian Theorist of Non-Violence and Just War

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) is widely recognized as one of the foremost Catholic philosophers of modern times. He wrote groundbreaking works in all branches of philosophy. For a period of about 10 years, beginning in 1933, he discussed matters relating to war and ethics. Writing initially about Gandhi, whose strategy of non-violence he sought to incorporate within a Christian conception of political action, Maritain proceeded to comment more specifically on the religious aspects of armed force in “On Holy War,” an essay about the civil war then ongoing in Spain (1936–1939). After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Maritain penned a series of essays that sought to explain why the Anglo–French declarations of war were warranted on Christian just war principles. While the secondary literature on Maritain’s thought is extensive, thus far there has been little systematic exploration of his writings on war. In what follows I seek to remedy this lacuna, by examining how he conceptualized just war in the three phases outlined above.     

Legitimate Authority as a Jus Ad Bellum Condition: Defense of a Procedural Requirement in Just War Theory

ABSTRACT

Today, it is widely held that while authorization may be helpful in assuring that the other jus ad bellum criteria are met, legitimate authority is not itself a condition for just recourse to war. Or, if it is necessary, it is said to be a trivial requirement, as mobilization for war requires some political authorization. Those who would retain the legitimacy requirement have differing views about who the proper authority is. I argue that, reasonably understood, legitimate authorization is necessary for jus ad bellum. Considerations of agency and consent in force combine with the social contract to commit us to deferring to recognized authorities. These obligations are strengthened by the epistemic reliability and pragmatic value conferred by governing institutions and procedures limiting recourse to war. These same rationales imply that the U.N. Security Council should regulate the international use of force. I qualify that if higher authorities fail to act, other subsidiary authorities may then authorize force. However, the move to each subsequent level of authorization must be justified. Understood in this way, the requirement that wars not be fought without legitimate authorization is a non-trivial, necessary procedural jus ad bellum condition.     

The cyber conceptual framework for developing military doctrine

Militaries rely on secure communications. Despite the permeation of cyber-systems throughout the operational environment, there is little readily available doctrine on cyber-warfare. Doctrine that does exist has not been coherently integrated. This paper introduces a Cyber Conceptual Framework, consisting of five questions pertinent to the future use of cyberspace. The authors enunciate a definition of cyberspace, expand on existing military doctrine to reject the conceptualisation of cyberspace as a domain, define cyber-conflict, define cyber-attack and describe the four components and five levels of a cyber-attack. This work develops a common framework from available doctrine and a lexicon for future discussion.     

新型机动电源保障平台研究

为满足陆军装备对电源保障的特殊要求,提出了一种由发动机-发电机组、电功率变换器、蓄电池、交流电机驱动系统组成的新型机动电源保障平台,对平台中主要子系统进行了设计和开发,完成了一吨级4×4混合动力新型机动电源保障平台的研制。试验结果表明：研究成果不仅实现了保障平台机动能力强、功能多等要求,而且具有良好的操控性。     

Putin – the masked nemesis of the strategy of ambiguity

Recent events demonstrate the complex and adaptive approach employed by Russia to reassert influence in Europe. The changing face of Russia’s strategy commenced in 2007 when it launched a crippling cyber-attack against Estonia. This was followed by a large Russian conventional attack against Georgia in 2008, occupying two large areas of the nation. 2014 witnessed the Russian annexation of Crimea where in just a week, Russia seized control of Crimea “without firing a shot.” The annexation of Crimea was rapidly followed by a Russian inspired and led subversive war in eastern Ukraine. The common thread among these diverse Russian operations is its use of ambiguity to confound and confuse decision makers in the West.     

Currency Warfare and Just War: The Ethics of Targeting Currencies in War

ABSTRACT

Is Currency Warfare defined as, the use of monetary or military force directed against an enemy’s monetary power as part of a military campaign, a just way to fight a war? This article explores the ethics of waging currency warfare against the Just War Tradition’s principles of jus in bello (just conduct in war) and its criteria of discrimination and proportionality. The central argument is that currency warfare is inherently indiscriminate but may be proportionate when policy makers consider the nature of the threat confronted and the targeted currency's level of internationalization, that is, to what degree it is used in foreign transactions or used as a foreign currency reserve. I evaluate this argument against historical cases during the Second World War (1939–1945), the Gulf War (1990–1991), subsequent operations against Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s, and the ongoing campaign against ISIS.     

Right Intention and the Ends of War

The jus ad bellum criterion of right intention (CRI) is a central guiding principle of just war theory. It asserts that a country’s resort to war is just only if that country resorts to war for the right reasons. However, there is significant confusion, and little consensus, about how to specify the CRI. We seek to clear up this confusion by evaluating several distinct ways of understanding the criterion. On one understanding, a state’s resort to war is just only if it plans to adhere to the principles of just war while achieving its just cause. We argue that the first understanding makes the CRI superfluous, because it can be subsumed under the probability of success criterion. On a second understanding, a resort to war is just only if a state’s motives, which explain its resort to war, are of the right kind. We argue that this second understanding of the CRI makes it a significant further obstacle to justifying war. However, this second understanding faces a possible infinite regress problem, which, left unresolved, leaves us without a plausible interpretation of the CRI. This constitutes a significant and novel reason for leaving the CRI out of the international law of armed conflict (LOAC).     

A Rejoinder to Peter M. Sales

This analytical article asks the question: to what degree did the media contribute to the Rwandan genocide and what might have been done about it? In examining the historical development of mass media in Rwanda, this paper argues that while hate media clearly contributed to the dynamics that led to genocide, its role should not be overstated. While it is commonly believed that hate media was a major cause of the genocide, instead it was a part of a larger social process. The use of violent discourse was at least as important as, for example, the availability of weapons in carrying out the genocide. Put another way, violent discourse was necessary but not sufficient by itself to cause the genocide of 1994. In arguing this thesis, Rwandan history is examined to demonstrate the processes of communication in the formation of destructive attitudes and behaviour. Next, analysis of the methods and content of propaganda campaigns is discussed. Finally, an overview of the requirements and organizations for third parties to conduct international communication interventions is presented in the last section.     

Was World War Two a Completely Just War?

ABSTRACT

According to Brian Orend’s binary political model, minimally just states possess a robust set of moral rights, while other states essentially exist in a moral vacuum in which they possess no moral rights. I argue that a more plausible comparative model would allow for a state to acquire (or lose) discrete moral rights as it improves (or damages) its moral record. This would generate a more accurate portrayal of both domestic policy within states and military conflict between states; including, in particular, the role of the Allied forces during World War Two.     

Case Study Commentary and Analysis: The Moral Sword of Damocles

Case summary, by James Cook (Case Study Editor):

In the final issue of the 2015 volume of the Journal of Military Ethics, we published a case study entitled “Coining an Ethical Dilemma: The Impunity of Afghanistan’s Indigenous Security Forces”, written by Paul Lushenko. The study detailed two extra-judicial killings (EJKs) by Afghan National Police (ANP) personnel in an area stabilized and overseen by a US-led Combined Task Force (CTF). To deter further EJKs following the first incident, the CTF’s commander reported the incidents up his chain of command and used the limited tools at his disposal to influence local indigenous officials directly. Apparently, the ANP unit took no notice. In his commentary on the case study, Paul Robinson considered moral compromise in war more generally. Coalition troops in Afghanistan, for instance, have encountered not just EJKs but also sexual abuse of minors, killing of non-combatants, kidnapping, torture, and widespread corruption. What should the soldier on the ground do if indigenous personnel violate Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) with impunity? Refusing to serve will not right or prevent moral wrongs, while staying on to fight the good but futile fight will mire the soldier in moral compromise. “?… [S]oldiers faced with this dilemma have no good options. The systemic failings surrounding them mean that it is probable that nothing they do will help”. In a concluding note, I suggested that while an individual soldier may indeed have no good options, as Paul Robinson suggests, that soldier’s military and nation at large are obliged to do what they can. At least, they must keep to the moral high ground so as not to give indigenous security forces an excuse to misbehave, and determine the nature of crimes such as EJKs: are they outlaw acts or in fact endorsed by the indigenous culture and perhaps even government? Below Colonel Dave Barnes, himself a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, analyzes Paul Lushenko’s case study at “?…?the local, tactical level: If a commander is in this situation – where her unit witnesses an EJK or other war crime – what should she do?”     

大学公共英语教师如何应对教学改革——一项基于高职院校英语教学改革的研究

随着“工学结合”理念在高等教育中的深入，新一轮的英语教学改革蓄势待发。高职院校已走在了改革的前沿，新的《高等职业教育英语课程教学要求》已于2009年试行，在教学内容、教学方法等方面对教师有了更高的要求。通过研究高职院校外语教师如何适应新一轮的教学改革，前瞻了本科院校新一轮的公共英语教学改革之路，提出大学公共英语教师主动作为，调整自己，适应教学改革的要求。     

声纳浮标均匀布放问题研究

针对声纳浮标的均匀布放问题,借鉴喷泉最优布放模型对此进行了研究。对声纳浮标的作用距离、平均场强、平均偏离强度进行建模,采用数值算法对正三角形阵的最优布放间隔进行了计算,并对其余两种阵型的计算方法进行了论述。经分析,认为正三角形、正四边形、正六边形是符合要求的三种基本阵型。所求得浮标间距能够满足工程上的要求,能够为反潜机的浮标布放提供决策依据。     

论英语疑问句变化折射的语言生物进化现象

无论是古英语还是现代英语,其构成疑问句时,主语之前必须有填充词。在古英语中,填充词直接由动词v从屈折语素I位经连续提升进入补语连词位来构成疑问句。发展到现代英语,一部分动词虚化变成了情态动词,充当填充词,没有情态动词则出现了用助动词do作为填充词构成疑问句的现象。虽然转换生成语法的句法理论,对于疑问句结构的这种变化作了句法运算方面静态的描述,认为这种变化与转换生成句法构成的经济原则吻合,但本文认为疑问句的这种变化从另一个角度折射出语言的生物进化现象。     

Reconsidering the Legal Equality of Combatants

ABSTRACT

The legal equality of combatants (LEC) is a fixture of international law and just war theory. Both scholars who embrace and those who reject the moral equality of combatants seem committed to the legal equality of combatants. Their reasons usually include pragmatic worries about unjust combatants committing even more harm if they were to be simply prohibited from fighting. In this article I argue that this sweeping commitment to the legal equality of combatants is mistaken and that it is often grounded in a misunderstanding of the way international law governs behavior.     

Rethinking Military Virtue Ethics in an Age of Unmanned Weapons

Although most styles of military ethics are hybrids that draw on multiple ethical theories, they are usually based primarily on the model of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Virtue ethics is well-suited for regulating the conduct of soldiers who have to make quick decisions on the battlefield, but its applicability to military personnel is threatened by the growing use of unmanned weapon systems. These weapons disrupt virtue ethics’ institutional and cultural basis by changing what it means to display virtue and transforming the roles soldiers perform and the nature of the military profession itself. I argue that in light of these challenges to virtue ethics, at least as it is traditionally understood within the armed forces, soldiers operating unmanned weapons require a more heavily rule-based approach to military ethics.     

基于ROR框架的军事信息系统安全管理技术

为支持军事信息系统中网络安全管理层次化、模块化、可扩展性强的特点,本文首先分析了军事信息系统中网络安全管理的业务流程,提出了基于ROR框架开发网络安全管理软件的构想,并对ROR、REST的工作原理做了简单介绍,讨论了构建基于ROR框架的网络安全管理的实现方法和技术。通过实现基于ROR开发的网络安全管理系统,验证了该方法的可行性,并对该系统做了简单介绍。     

How Is a Man to Decide? Unjust Combatants,Duress and McMahan’s Killing in War

Jeff McMahan’s much-discussed work Killing in War is an important part of the revisionist school of just war studies. This paper avoids discussion of McMahan’s use of human rights and examines the practical consequences of his argument about duress on soldiers to fight an unjust war. These arguments are found to be wanting and to be impractical ones that do not fit battlefield realities. The importance of the Law of Armed Conflict and the legal equality of combatants that is part of it is emphasised and accepted as the most practical way of regulating battlefield behaviour and saving lives. It is concluded that attempts to tell soldiers what to do when they may be fighting an unjust war add to their burdens and are misplaced.     

战斗机隐蔽接敌轨迹优化方法

针对空战对抗的隐蔽作战需求,对战斗机隐蔽接敌方法进行研究。基于战斗机雷达反射截面积的动态特性建立雷达探测威胁模型;以空战态势参数为状态建立接敌引导模型;以给定目标发现概率为暴露阈值进行威胁约束;以最小化接敌过程中累积被发现概率为性能指标;将战斗机隐蔽接敌问题建模为隐蔽性约束下的最优控制问题。为保证算法的实时性和有效性,引入滚动时域控制策略进行在线优化,并采用高斯伪谱法进行数值求解。仿真实验表明,通过路径约束和性能指标双重约束,能有效增强战斗机接敌的隐蔽性,算法实时性能满足战斗机控制的需求。