E-war, or the forthcoming warfare in cyber space

Computer warfare first emerged from classified circles in the mid-1990s, when US officials warned that terrorists and hostile countries mi...

Computer warfare first emerged from classified circles in the mid-1990s, when US officials warned that terrorists and hostile countries might someday attack American computers and communications systems. Their concerns were genuine, but these alerts about an “electronic Pearl Harbor” did not give the full picture. In fact, US defence experts have been as intrigued by the prospect of attacking an opponent’s computer networks as they have been worried that someone might attack their own. Officials recently began to talk openly about such offensives because several developments made the opportunities obvious and irresistible.

First, armies everywhere now depend on computers more than ever. Dependence implies vulnerability, and to military thinkers, vulnerability implies opportunity. Those who remember the War Room and the Big Board from Dr Strangelove are familiar with the computer networks used in command-and-control systems, but that is just one, highly visible military application of computing technology. Computers have worked their way into every aspect of the world’s armed forces. Modern military organisations need massive data-management systems for logistics, computers to process intelligence and plan operations, and paperless, computer-based systems to design and manufacturer weapons. All these computers and the networks that connect them are potential targets.

Second, civilian society depends more on computer networks, too, and these networks are even more vulnerable than military systems. A strike on the computers that support a country’s civilian infrastructure could, at least temporarily, leave its people shivering in the dark. Such a salvo could also cripple a country’s military forces, which usually depend heavily on commercial transportation and communications systems.

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Third, modern telecommunications are linking computer systems throughout the world. In principle, any data-processing device linked to a communications network (and often even those that are not) is vulnerable to attack.

Futurists often joke that someday even household appliances will be connected to the Internet. When that happens, your Cuisinart will be a potential target for computer network attack.

Meanwhile, weapons for computer warfare like most other information technologies today keep getting better. During Operation Desert Storm, US forces reportedly dumped bogus data into Iraq’s air-defence computers by having troops tap into land-based phone lines. In Kosovo, the same job was done from aircraft, and the Pentagon reportedly has plans for satellites that could launch such strikes. Today military forces use lasers and microwaves to stun or dazzle their adversaries’ electronic equipment.

Tomorrow they might modulate these energy waves to insert actual data into computer networks from afar. And as all these weapons improve, military thinkers are also developing better strategies and tactics to deceive, confound, and confuse their opponents…

Excerpted from `Foreign Affairs’, issue of May/June

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