Cyber War is Inevitable (Unless We Build Security In)

The information systems controlling our critical infrastructure are vulnerable to cyber attack. Cyber war is therefore inevitable unless we improve our cyber defenses. The only way to do this is by building security into systems at the design stage.     

African nations as proxies in covert cyber operations

The growth of the African Internet, and services related to the Internet, has been rapid over the last decade. Following this market expansion, a variety of service providers have started to provide access. A fast-growing market puts pressure on the providers to deliver services first and only then seek to secure the networks. Over time, industrialised nations have become more able to detect and trace cyber attacks against their networks. These tracking features are constantly developing and the precision in determining the origin of an attack is increasing. A state-sponsored cyber attacker, such as intelligence agencies and electronic warfare units, will seek to avoid detection, especially when the attacks are politically sensitive intelligence-gathering and intrusion forays into foreign states' networks. One way for the attacker to create a path that links the attacks and the originating country is by actions through a proxy. The less technologically mature developing nations offer an opportunity for cyber aggression due to their lower level of security under the quick expansion of the Internet-based market. Developing countries could be used as proxies, without their knowledge and consent, through the unauthorised usage of these countries' information systems in an attempt to attack a third country by a state-sponsored offensive cyber operation. If the purpose of the cyber attack is to destabilise a targeted society and the attack succeeds, the used proxies are likely to face consequences in their relations with foreign countries, even if the proxy was unaware of the covert activity.     

Precision cyber weapon systems: An important component of a responsible national security strategy?

Given the advances made in conventional weapon capabilities, precision should by now be the accepted and expected norm in cyberspace as well. In this article I argue that developing precision cyber weapon systems, to be used during a lawful conflict, can be an important part of a responsible national security strategy to reduce the amount of violence and physical destruction in conflicts. I first describe a precision cyber weapon system in a military context. I then present three compelling rationales for the development of precision cyber weapon systems based on ethical, operational, and financial considerations. To support the position, I address several arguments that have been levied against their development. Thereafter I present several recommendations for a way ahead.     

Disrupt and restraint: The evolution of cyber conflict and the implications for collective security

In the last decade, cyber conflict has become a main feature of international politics and a growing concern for strategic stability and collective security. Unfortunately, cyber conflict suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity about its impact on collective security and a lack of consensus among international actors on how to interpret it. This article proposes to understand cyber conflict as an evolving process driven by two factors: the way in which digital space is configured and the way in which tactical, organizational, strategic, and doctrinal characteristics related to cyber have been included in the field of national and international security. Both tend to encourage offensive behavior but also demonstrate features pointing to restraint.     

阈下听觉技术研究及其应用

从网络空间侦察能力、指挥控制能力、精确攻击能力、防御能力和评估能力等五个方面,对网络空间支援力量的核心支援能力进行了系统论述,提出建设军队网络支援力量、应对网络空间安全威胁的新思考和新观点。研究认为,当前我军在网络空间的安全意识、核心技术、均衡发展等方面面临严峻困难。为实现网络强国的奋斗目标,需要加强国家网络安全的顶层设计,增强网络技术自主创新能力,强化军民融合式建设和系统常态的攻防训练等。     

Decision support model for effects estimation and proportionality assessment for targeting in cyber operations

Cyber operations are relatively a new phenomenon of the last two decades.During that period,they have increased in number,complexity,and agility,while their design and development have been processes well kept under secrecy.As a consequence,limited data(sets)regarding these incidents are available.Although various academic and practitioner public communities addressed some of the key points and dilemmas that surround cyber operations(such as attack,target identification and selection,and collateral damage),still methodologies and models are needed in order to plan,execute,and assess them in a responsibly and legally compliant way.Based on these facts,it is the aim of this article to propose a model that i))estimates and classifies the effects of cyber operations,and ii)assesses proportionality in order to support targeting decisions in cyber operations.In order to do that,a multi-layered fuzzy model was designed and implemented by analysing real and virtual realistic cyber operations combined with interviews and focus groups with technical-military experts.The proposed model was evaluated on two cyber operations use cases in a focus group with four technical-military experts.Both the design and the results of the evaluation are revealed in this article.     

美军网络电磁行动定义及分析

近几年美军针对网络电磁空间不断出台新的政策和联合条令,但是相关规定在网络空间作战、电子战、频谱管理行动的定义上有交叠,为了进一步提高作战能力,防止冲突的发生,美军提出网络电磁行动的概念对三者进行整合,针对美军提出的网络电磁行动进行了介绍和分析并提出了对我国的一些启示。     

网络舆论战的理论探析

网络舆论战是一种新型作战样式。加强网络舆论战研究,既是信息化战争的时代要求,又是实现强军目标的客观需要,对于丰富具有我军特色的现代舆论战理论体系,推动我军政治工作的创新发展,具有十分重要意义。文章通过论述网络舆论战的地位作用和主要特点,对开展网络舆论战的基本战法进行了探讨。     

‘Cumulative Deterrence’ as a New Paradigm for Cyber Deterrence

This article suggests that there is a paradigm crisis in the sub-field of cyber deterrence. Cyber deterrence is evolving slowly and unpromisingly as a strategic tool in both theory and practice, mostly due to the ill-fitting theoretical framework and underlining assumptions it borrows from the absolute-nuclear-deterrence context. Therefore, this article suggests replacing the accepted yet inadequate paradigm of absolute deterrence with a better-fitting restrictive-cumulative-deterrence paradigm that draws on the Israeli approach to deterrence, introducing it into the cyber domain. The article further criticizes the current discourse in the field, including some ‘common knowledge’ (mis)understandings of cyberspace and the ways it affects the possibility of deterrence.     

防空体系反制网电攻击的UML与Petri网模型

网电攻击装备的出现,给传统防空体系带来全面严峻的新威胁。通过分析"舒特"系统,得到网电攻击3种典型作战样式:物理摧毁、电子攻击和网络攻击,分别从物理层次、能量层次和网络层次探索了防空体系反制网电攻击策略。为描述防空体系反制网电攻击的对策、作战结构、作战步骤等问题,分别建立了统一建模语言(UML)和Petri网模型,从理论上初步探索了防空体系反制网电攻击的对策,具有一定的理论与现实意义。     

Law Enforcement Intelligence: A Call for New Strategies and Tactics in Countering Criminal Insurgency

This paper underscores the theory that efficacious law enforcement intelligence addresses current problems of criminal insurgency including acts of terrorism, asymmetric warfare and low intensity conflict, and suggests possible solutions. By introducing the notion of crime as insurgency, a new paradigm may be developed that could assist practitioners and academics alike in analyzing, solving and managing crime. By shifting the perspective for both military and civilian forces from their traditionally reactive stance, to a proactive posture, and merging national security with homeland defense on the most perplexing issues and threats facing US security, this work may provide a base upon which new and actionable policies can be designed. Public administrators must take seriously the lessons from past failures. The single most important supposition being, sound policy is reliant upon good intelligence.     

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.     

Proportional use of force in asymmetric military operation

This paper studies a strategic conflict between a state and a non-state military organization. The non-state military organization decides whether to attack or not to attack the state, while the state decides on its counter-measure. If the state uses a high level of violence against the non-state organization, it may be accused by the international community of ‘non-proportional’ use of force, and both sides of the conflict take this possibility into account. The model predicts that it may be rational for the non-state organization to attack the state, even if as a reaction the state will militarily destroy this organization, due to a positive probability the state will be punished by the international community for non-proportional use of violence.     

Modelling international conflict under conditions of state level economic and political uncertainty

Formal models of international conflict have tended to concentrate on change across the security dimension, assuming that the state level economic and political dimensions are constant. However, the conclusion of the Cold War suggests that over the long run these dimensions are not constant; indeed, the development of economic power, state level limits on defence expenditures, structural impediments to economic change, and several other ‘constants’ clearly do have an endogenous role in international conflict. This paper suggests one strategy for their inclusion as a causal factor in conflict modelling.     

The Damoclean sword of offensive cyber: Policy uncertainty and collective insecurity

Cyberspace is a new domain of operation, with its own characteristics. Cyber weapons differ qualitatively from kinetic ones: They generate effects by non-kinetic means through information, technology, and networks. Their properties, opportunities, and constraints are comparable to the qualitative difference between conventional and nuclear weapons. New weapons and their target sets in a new domain raise a series of unresolved policy challenges at the domestic, bilateral, and international levels about deterrence, attribution, and response. They also introduce new risks: uncertainty about unintended consequences, expectations of efficacy, and uncertainty about both the target’s and the international community’s response. Cyber operations offer considerable benefits for states to achieve strategic objectives both covertly and overtly. However, without a strategic framework to contain and possibly deter their use, make state and non-state behavior more predictable in the absence of reciprocal norms, and limit their impact, an environment where states face persistent attacks that nonetheless fall below the threshold of armed conflict presents a policy dilemma that reinforces collective insecurity.     

The Moral Dimension of “Global Zero”

Regrettably, moral arguments are largely absent from the current debate on nuclear disarmament. Indeed, complementing politico-strategic thinking with ethical categories could significantly strengthen the abolitionist call. To fill the gap, this article analyzes the evolution of the nuclear ethics of the Roman Catholic Church and especially its position on nuclear deterrence. If this strategy was granted interim and strictly conditioned moral acceptance during the Cold War, nuclear deterrence is today increasingly considered ineffective, an obstacle to genuine disarmament, and hence morally unjustifiable. In the new security context, the conditions for the Catholic Church's “interim nuclear ethics” have altered, and nuclear disarmament has become a feasible option and an alternative strategy to deterrence.     

Measuring Military Professionalism in Partner Nations: Guidance for Security Assistance Officials

The U.S. spends billions of dollars in its security cooperation program to develop “professional, accountable, and capable security forces” in other nations, part of a grand strategy to improve global stability and counter violent extremism. Despite its great investment in professionalizing foreign militaries, however, the U.S. has no functional definition of military professionalism – a term that until now has been considered too vague and multi-faceted to operationalize. In this article, the author seeks to remedy this oversight, drawing from twenty years of security cooperation fieldwork in Latin America and Africa, as well as a vigorous literature review, to define four important components of military professionalism: (1) formal military education and vocational training, (2) military subordination to elected civilian officials, (3) knowledge and practice of the law of armed conflict and human rights law, and (4) a clearly established program of professional military ethics. This article provides guidelines for U.S. and European officials who work with partner nations to develop more professional military forces and, in particular, for officials managing security assistance programs with developing countries.     

The Republic of Korea and Its Navy: Perceptions of Security and the Utility of Seapower

Abstract

Understanding the development of Republic of Korea (ROK) seapower is central in exploring the evolution and nature of its security consciousness. This article aims to examine how the wider East Asian maritime sphere has influenced ROK perceptions of its own security and how such perceptions have come into conflict with the needs of maintaining its deterrent capabilities within the peninsular context. In doing so it concludes that for the ROK seapower has been an expression of wider engagement and international developing security concerns but that it is curtailed and influenced by the realities of the threat from the North.     

Conflict and third-party intervention

The paper looks at various scenarios of possible concern for intervening third parties when two factions are engaged in a conflict and act strategically against one another. A standard conflict model is used to determine appropriate intervention strategies in order to lower the overall level of conflict. Choosing a suitable strategy in such a setting, the third party must not only take into account the direct impact of its efforts but also the indirect impacts that result from the strategic interaction among the parties involved.     

Prologue to Suez: Anglo-American planning for military intervention in a Middle East war, 1955–1956

This article contributes yet another perspective to the Suez War – the strategic and military planning carried out since the end of the Second World War by the Western Allies for the contingency of a new world conflict against the Soviet bloc. The Middle East was of vital strategic significance. Colonel Nasser's announcement of the Czech arms deal in September 1955 triggered the countdown to a new war in the region. London and Washington urgently drew up contingency plans for intervention, both with economic sanctions and armed force. Joint staff talks were held in Washington from March to August 1956. They were halted just two months before the United Kingdom decided to collude with France and Israel to attack Egypt.