Phil Taylor's papers
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The I-Bomb: an early documentary about Information Warfare in which Prof Taylor appeared. [IMAGE] The I-Bomb _________________________________________________________________ Producer's Letter: Back in 1970, Alvin and Heidi Toffler wrote Future Shock, an influential and as it turned out correct vision of the impact information-age technology was having on the world. Twenty-five years later they turned their attention to the effect the same changes are having on war, in a book called War and Anti-War (see Further Reading). This book led us to make The I-Bomb, but even if it is as influential as Future Shock, this time I hope the Tofflers' vision is less accurate. The scenario they depict is one of more and more lethal weapons in more and more hands, the increasing power of propaganda to intensify ethnic and religious rivalry, and the use of information as a weapon and target in economic warfare. This against a background of social and national disintegration and a growing divide between rich and poor. The other scenario they outline, though, is less bleak. It is that technological advance will bring riches, non-lethal weapons and the knowledge that will liberate people from totalitarian government. This vision of the future is just as plausible as the first, for these possibilities are also inherent in the microchip. As with most scenarios, the future no doubt will consist of something between the two, with everything else thrown in. Perhaps the only thing that does emerge clearly as we move into the information age is that nothing is clear. This is why in The I-Bomb we present a collection of thinkers, the most interesting we could find in their field, and leave the audience to make up their own minds as to what the future of war will consist of. Kate O'Sullivan Producer ALVIN TOFFLER We're living through the greatest upheaval, the greatest social, technological and economic upheaval, since the industrial revolution. HEIDI TOFFLER We are already beginning to see the decline of the nation-state and ironically, at the same time, the rise of nationalism. ALVIN TOFFLER You see giant corporations, some of the biggest in the world, having been turned into dinosaurs. HEIDI TOFFLER Today we have family forms in infinite varieties. ALVIN TOFFLER The way we work, the way we create wealth . . . HEIDI TOFFLER We're seeing much more individuality and much more freedom for the individual. ALVIN TOFFLER The technology is changing rapidly; social institutions are changing rapidly; values are changing rapidly; and, not inconsequentially, the entire concept of military action is also changing. WINN SCHWARTAU (Author, Information War) Modern society is wired. NARRATOR (ZAM BARING) Wired - and therefore vulnerable to a new kind of war. WINN SCHWARTAU With over a hundred million computers tying our communications, finance, transportation and power system together, we face a potential electronic Pearl Harbour. NARRATOR A threat that challenges all the traditional notions of warfare. WINN SCHWARTAU If the information warrior comes at our computers, our networks and our communication systems, the modern military has very little recourse. NARRATOR War is changing. (Archive: 'smart' bomb hitting target) This is one image of its future. In 1991 the world thrilled to the range, speed and accuracy of war in the Gulf. It was a war that the United States' armed forces were trained and equipped to fight, but unlike some of the enemies they may face, they had the technology to beat Saddam Hussein. COLONEL JOHN A. WARDEN III (Gulf War air planner) The most important technology that we had in the Gulf War was almost certainly precision projectiles. COLONEL ALAN D. CAMPEN (Editor, The First Information War) Cruise missiles . . . COLONEL WARDEN GBU27, a 2,000 lb bomb . . . COLONEL CAMPEN They had laser technology, stealth technology. COLONEL WARDEN The 117 stealth fighter was able to penetrate some of the most extensive, even heaviest air defences in the world. NARRATOR But the planes and the bombs are not what made the Gulf War different. Alvin and Heidi Toffler have been writing about the future for the past 30 years. Now they have turned their attention to war. They believe 'Desert Storm' was different because it provided the first glimpse of how the basic currency of war may be changing. ALVIN TOFFLER The Gulf War will never be repeated. It is not a model of wars of the future, but it is an extremely important war in the history of warfare, because it represented both the past of warfare and the future of warfare. For example, when I say the past: Saddam Hussein took his troops, lined them up on the border - masses and masses of troops, masses and masses of tanks. This is the way wars have been fought ever since the industrial age dawned. And indeed the US and the coalition responded. They used traditional, industrial-style mass destruction. They tried to destroy everything in sight. What you saw in Baghdad was the beginnings of the warfare of the future. US ARMY INFORMATION FILM 'INFORMATION WARFARE; Persian Gulf, 1991: the first outbreak of 'third-wave' warfare, information-age warfare. COLONEL CAMPEN It was the first information war. Not that information hasn't always been a key element of war, it has been - the Battle of Britain being one example of the use of radar information to position a virtually destroyed Royal Air Force. But the use of information was serendipitous. If it was there and if it was correct, it was used. Information war uses information in a very fundamental way. NARRATOR This concept was central to the strategy created by Colonel Warden for the air war in the Gulf. COLONEL WARDEN The most important part of the battle plan, the first part of it, was designed heavily to take away the Iraqis' complete set of information. COLONEL CAMPEN Information was a target. COLONEL WARDEN We didn't want Saddam Hussein to be able to see what was happening, so we hit the strategic air defence system, the radars. COLONEL CAMPEN Without information, weapons will not achieve the accuracy they have. The forces will not be in the right place. COLONEL WARDEN We didn't want Saddam Hussein to be able to talk, to give people instructions as to what to do, so we took away the telephone system from him. We didn't want Saddam Hussein to be able to gather with his staff, so we took away the primary command centres that Saddam Hussein and his generals and his political cronies were inclined to use. COLONEL CAMPEN It was the first war with a notion that an enemy could be brought to his knees by denial of information. It was actually tested and proven on the battlefield. CNN ARCHIVE: PETER ARNETT . . . and I think, John, that air-burst took out the telecommunications - you may hear the bombs now. ALVIN TOFFLER What is happening now is the emergence of a new, third-wave war form that has its own special characteristics and is highly dependent upon the application of knowledge. It embodies the concept of 'deep' battle - that the battle is not waged where the soldiers are, necessarily, or where the front lines are; the battle may be waged a thousand miles behind that. NARRATOR And it was this strategy of deep battle that made the Gulf War different from any that preceded it. COLONEL WARDEN The technology of precision, of stealth, of rapid information movement enabled us to do something that had never been done before: to wage an entirely different kind of a war for the first time in history. Literally in a matter of hours we were able to impose shock on the entire Iraqi system. We were able to do it from the inside to the outside, as opposed to the old-style Clausewitzian attrition approach of coming from the outside to the inside. We were able to fight all of the key battles of the war almost within the first 24 hours, and after that first 24 hours, even after the first hour, there was almost nothing that Iraq could do from a military standpoint to get itself out of the impossible problem in which we had put it. ALVIN TOFFLER Let's go back a bit to 1956 when Khrushchev said: 'We will bury the West.' What he was really saying was that the military industrial complex of the Soviet Union would win out over the military industrial complex of the West - and note that it's industrial. What Khrushchev didn't understand was that 1956 was the first year in the United States that white-collar and service employees outnumbered blue-collar workers. HEIDI TOFFLER We had the introduction of the birth-control pill; we had the introduction of mass television; it was the year of the spread of jet aviation. The industrial complex, military or not, was at its end point. ALVIN TOFFLER The industrial revolution gave rise to mass societies. This was not a question of East or West. Wherever you had the industrialisation process, you created societies based on mass production, assembly-line production. They were brute-force machines for the purpose of manufacturing millions of identical objects. Parts were interchangeable - lives became interchangeable. NARRATOR This was true in the military, too. Chief of Staff of the United States Army, General Sullivan: GENERAL SULLIVAN The assembly line is probably the perfect metaphor. You had men, you had warriors, that you would mobilise, put into units, equip, and it was all a linear process. ALVIN TOFFLER You had mass media, the newspaper, you had television, you had mass education, you had mass entertainment, mass recreation; and as far as warfare was concerned, you had, for the first time in history, mass destruction. GENERAL SULLIVAN Both the First and Second World Wars were characterised by industrial-age warfare: lots of munitions, lots of men just pulverised, no manoeuvre, no movement, just industrial warfare, grinding each other into the ground. ALVIN TOFFLER The third wave brings with it a fundamental change in the structure of our societies - we move from the mass, industrial society that arose during the last 200 or 300 years to a new kind of society in which more and more things are 'demassified'. In the factory, instead of long production runs of the same product, we see more and more customised production. In distribution we see more and more speciality stores and boutiques. In communications, instead of two or three networks, or one or two giant networks, we see more and more different channels. The same thing is true in the military - more and more different functions within the military, more and more diversity up and down the line. GENERAL SULLIVAN What we're talking now is simultaneity. (Archive: Panama City, 20 December 1989) In my view the first war of the 21st century was operation 'Just Cause'. What you saw there was the United States of America seizing 26 to 28 objectives from midnight until daylight. We simultaneously shot the enemy down with parachutists from the air, with Special Operations forces, marine forces on the ground, naval forces off the ocean, all leveraged by the microprocessor. HEIDI TOFFLER The chief characteristics of the third wave or information age are destandardisation, . . . GENERAL SULLIVAN Now what we're faced with - purify water, distribute water in Goma, Zaire for instance - is not war as we know it . . . HEIDI TOFFLER . . . demassification, . . . GENERAL SULLIVAN Up to about 500,000 people have been released from this organisation . . . HEIDI TOFFLER . . . desynchronisation. GENERAL SULLIVAN The United States Army has soldiers in 70 countries a day. ALVIN TOFFLER And as we move towards the third wave, and societies become more internally complex, more and more information is needed to handle routine events. Information is the central resource of the third-wave economy. It is the oil of the future. You can't manage a society any longer in the way you did before - whether you're running a company, running a government or running an army. You now have far more complex problems, you need more information, and that can't be done on the back of an envelope. WINN SCHWARTAU At the other end of a telephone you have access to the largest computer system in the world. There are switches all over the United States, all over Europe, all over Eastern Europe, Russia, southern Asia that connect over one billion people to each other, allowing them to speak to each other. At the other end of the computer today I can access over 35 million people, over three million different computer systems, in 167 different countries. It's like having the combined information wealth of the planet at the end of your computer, at your fingertips. GENERAL HARTZOG One of our big challenges today is to prepare the army for the 21st century. What has changed in the last five or six years that makes that different is the information explosion. NARRATOR And this explosion means that the US military are not just attacking enemy information systems, they're revolutionising their own. General Sullivan, General Salomon and General Hartzog are leading the charge. Their war cry: digitise the battlefield. GENERAL HARTZOG I was involved in the 1989 operation in Panama, and the command centres were noisy places where a lot of people ran around and there were little sticky things that were put on acetate maps. Well, I was just involved last year in the assistance to Haiti. The commands were issued over video links, there were a number of sources that you could ask for information and get it in near real time, by video or audio. It was instructive to me that all this change had occurred in the last five years. COLONEL CAMPEN The information age has altered the whole nature of time and space and distance. Weapons can be launched from any place on the globe, in the air or on the sea. The information will flow over electronic means. The commander can sense the battlefield regardless of where he's located. GENERAL HARTZOG The way that we are doing this is through a digitisation process. 'INFORMATION WARFARE' . . . harnessing the power of the microprocessor to put battlefield information in the computer, and digitally pass it between battlefield systems. GENERAL HARTZOG The turf, the ground, the environment is all put into a digital reality and simulated within an electronic box. INFORMATION WARFARE Information: it makes you more efficient, more effective, able to do more with less. NARRATOR Harnessing this power, the army's Materiel Command, led by General Salomon, is concentrating its efforts on: GENERAL SALOMON Upgrading our existing weapon systems to make sure that we get this information technology embedded in all of our weapon systems - so you can hear the Bradley, that can talk to the Abrahams, that can talk to the Apache, that can talk to the Paladin. So we have this horizontal technology integration to get this common view of the battlefield. NARRATOR There is some doubt though about the military's approach to digitisation. Former math prodigy, Martin Libicki: MARTIN C. LIBICKI (Senior Fellow, National Defense University) Digitising the battlefield might be necessary for the way that we might want to fight future wars, but if we're still thinking of fighting wars around very visible platforms, such as tanks, in fact we may be putting our money in the wrong direction. Perhaps we should be thinking about not necessarily how we make the tanks smarter, but how we use information warfare to conduct operations without having to use the tank at all. NARRATOR In the age of deep battle the same question might be asked about the soldier. GENERAL SULLIVAN I see absolutely no way that information-age technology can replace the soldier. GENERAL HARTZOG War is a dirty, personal thing, and the soldier is at the centre of that. GENERAL HARTZOG The soldier has to be able to link into and perform in an environment in which information moves rapidly. So the soldier is getting all of the same attention that every other part of the battlefield is getting. SPECIALIST JACKSON (US Army) My weapon is the modular weapon system. This system has been designed to allow me to mount various types of weapons and sights according to our mission. I'm currently equipped with the M203 grenade launcher, a daylight camera and a thermal weapons sight. GENERAL SALOMON Give the soldier a small television camera, and then that information that the soldier gathers can be transmitted back to his operation centre. SPECIALIST JACKSON These sights, along with the helmet-mounted display, will allow me to engage targets on the battlefield, day or night, in any weather conditions, without using the current cheek-to-stock aiming method. 'INFORMATION WARFARE' Our 21st-century land warriors move in to clear out bypassed pockets of resistance. SPECIALIST JACKSON In my pack I'm carrying the soldier's computer. This computer will have an integrated global positioning system, which will allow the soldier to know his position on the battlefield at all times. The computer will also have several preformatted reports, which will allow the soldier to send his reports in a more reliable and efficient manner. GENERAL SALOMON Information assists in the prosecution of the war. SPECIALIST JACKSON The computer will be connected to a radio, which will allow me to receive both digital and voice-message traffic. GENERAL SALOMON It is not an end to itself, but it is a supporting technology that improves all aspects of war fighting. SPECIALIST JACKSON With my present combat ensemble I am the land warrior. NARRATOR But just as the army is changing, so are the threats - new threats that may challenge the relevance of the military itself. ALVIN TOFFLER The shift to third-wave information warfare is not just a question of plugging a computer into an existing weapon system, for example, or giving everybody a computer. What it is, ultimately, is a battle for control of the information flows of the world. In the Gulf War you saw classic examples of the use of propaganda and perception management, by both sides. In Washington, there was this stunning example of a traditional form of propaganda: the atrocity story. There you had a young woman appear before television cameras and talk about babies being ripped out of incubators in Kuwait, and this horror story, of course, struck everybody's heart. It later turned out that she was related to the Kuwaiti embassy and that she was really apparently following a script prepared by a public-relations agency, and that this was not necessarily true. On the other hand, at the very same time, there was Saddam holding hostages and patting the children on the head in front of the television camera to convey an avuncular image of himself, what a nice guy he is, to the rest of the world. In the era of information warfare, all of that is going to become far more important and be managed with far more sophistication. NARRATOR At Leeds University Dr Phil Taylor has studied how the military manage the media, and why they think it's so important. DR PHIL TAYLOR (Institute of Communication Studies) Most of the senior American personnel in operation Desert Storm were Vietnam veterans. They were deeply influenced by that experience, including the media experience that they had. They believed that they had lost the war in Vietnam almost because of television, not through any of their own failures, which has been used as a justification for imposing restrictions on media coverage of battles ever since, right the way up to operation Desert Storm. PETE WILLIAMS (Former Pentagon spokesman) In all the discussions about the policy for accommodating reporters in the Persian Gulf, I never heard anybody say that we had to be worried about losing the war on television. PHIL TAYLOR They arranged journalists into pools which were attached to the troops in the field. The journalists in the pools, of course, were dependent upon the military not just for their safety, but for access to the story. The second element was back in Riyadh and Dhahran, where the vast majority of journalists were holed up in hotels. They were called'hotel warriors' because their ability to report the war was limited to the official briefings that were held by the Americans and the British, the Saudis and the French. NARRATOR Former CNN correspondent, 'wild man' Chuck de Caro, thinks this reliance on the military compromised the journalism. CHUCK DE CARO (President, Aerobureau Corporation) The media, by entering into the pool system with the governments, wound up as so many obsequious yuppies looking for hand-outs and calling the reading of those hand-outs 'news'. It wasn't news; wasn't even bad journalism. It was PR. NARRATOR Testing this view, Phil Taylor recorded the global television output during Desert Storm. PHIL TAYLOR This was not a war which was a bloody, brutal war - according to the television images. This was a smart, clean war. It was precisely that image of the war that the American military wanted to project, which was why it allowed crews to film Patriot missiles intercepting the indiscriminate Scuds. I think that the media image helped to sustain public support for the war. We were treated to a war as infotainment. PETE WILLIAMS I think most military people are sophisticated enough to understand that you can't really tell the American people what to think about an operation, and our experience, once it got started, was that the biggest concern of Americans was that nothing would be done to jeopardise American lives. PHIL TAYLOR The real war was not really the Scud/Patriot duel, or the 'smart' missiles. They were military side-shows, but they were central to the media war. The real war was being fought between soldiers, in a brutal way, far away from the prying gaze of television. NARRATOR But just as the armed forces are becoming more sophisticated in their management of the news, so are the media in how they gather it. Since leaving CNN, Chuck de Caro has been developing the latest in journalistic technology. CHUCK DE CARO This is Aerobureau 1. Aerobureau integrates all the things necessary to do journalism - everything - into an aircraft that can land on 3,000 feet of gravel. That means the Aerobureau crew can travel 4,250 miles unrefuelled, land in a dirt strip, open up the door, push out a helicopter, remotely piloted vehicles, and all kinds of other things necessary to operate for one week, and then begin doing news as any full-scale news bureau would in any city in the world, except we can do it in the middle of a jungle or a desert or on a glacier in Canada if we need to. The advance of these technologies means that the ability of a government or governments to control access is being rapidly eroded. As a result, the media becomes a prime player in international dynamics. ALVIN TOFFLER We go into Somalia, we see a dead soldier dragged through the streets on the screens of America. HEIDI TOFFLER And the world. ALVIN TOFFLER The next day, practically, Congress says: out of Somalia. And meanwhile in Haiti, Cédras is watching all of that, and he comes to the conclusion that the Americans have no resolve, that they can be easily . . . HEIDI TOFFLER Cédras has his goons on the dock, and says, 'You're going to have to kill us in order to . . .- So that's what stopped the invasion. ALVIN TOFFLER And indeed Clinton, in what I regard as one of the stupidest moves, sends a warship off the coast of Haiti and withdraws it because these hundred guys were on the dock - all tracing back to the use of television. ARCHIVE MONTAGE (John Holliman, CNN, Baghdad:) Wow, holy cow! . . . (President Bush:) This will not be another Vietnam . . . (President Clinton:) Tonight I can tell you that they will go . . . (Martin Fletcher, BBC, Tel Aviv, wearing gas mask:) We don't know if there's a chemical warhead there or not . . . ALVIN TOFFLER The interesting thing is the media are, in fact, becoming almost as powerful as governments in some issues, in some respects, and yet nobody ever elected the media. Who elected you and your camera? CHUCK DE CARO The power of global television has already changed the nature of war. In the last century, and to this day, in our military schools we're taught the Clausewitzian definition of war, that is the extension of politics that uses violence to constrain the enemy to accomplish our will. But now, with global television, reaching all those various bodies politic around the world, it is possible to fight a different kind of war. It's called 'soft' war. Soft war is the hostile use of global television to shape another nation's will by changing its view of reality. NARRATOR At least one part of the US Army is taking this alternative definition of war to heart. At Fort Bragg in North Carolina the Fourth Division of Psychological Operations have always recognised the power of information. Colonel Geoffrey B. Jones is the commanding officer. COLONEL JEFFREY B. JONES Psychological Operations ['Psyop'] is basically the use of information to effect attitudinal and behavioural change in a foreign audience. SERGEANT CALLAIS One of the products we developed and disseminated before we got to Haiti was this leaflet. On the back it says: 'The road to prosperity begins with democracy,' and on the front we have a sign with little stick figures walking up towards the sun and along the road - it begins with 'democracy', the next word is 'education', then 'opportunity', 'propriety', and it ends with 'happiness'. COLONEL JONES In the Gulf Psyop was loudspeaker teams with all of the coalition forces. SERGEANT DAVIS The speakers are located on top of the HUMV. There's a microphone, for live broadcast, and a Walkman for pre-recorded messages. The range on this is about two and a half kilometres. They were used in Saudi Arabia during operation Desert Storm to broadcast surrender appeals. COLONEL JONES We also dropped, floated leaflets up in plastic water-bottles on the coast. SERGEANT RON WELSH During Desert Shield, Desert Storm, I was a Psyop liaison to the theatre army headquarters. One of the ideas I came up with was putting Psyop leaflets in little water-bottles like this and they were dropped off the coast of Kuwait. The Iraqis did get them. The intent of the leaflets was to mislead the Iraqi forces to believe that invasion was coming from the coast, and it worked rather effectively. NARRATOR With the arrival of the information age, Colonel Jones's good old-fashioned propaganda can also be used to wage soft war. COLONEL JONES 'Commando Solo' is an Air Force EC130. It provides a broadcast platform for radio and TV: they can broadcast AM, FM, short-wave and colour TV worldwide. They've participated in virtually every operation in Just Cause, in the Gulf, and most recently in Haiti. SERGEANT PARLER I was one of the combat production specialists at Port au Prince, Haiti, and my primary mission in Haiti was to go into the Haitian community and document all accessible aspects of Haitian life. I would then take these products and produce radio spot announcements, programmes and audio products for video and loud-speaker. The content of these messages was designed to do three things: calm the Haitians, prepare them for the return of their president, and reassure them that the Americans will stay to help them, and I believe they were very effective. COLONEL JONES For sure, Psyop is most often thought of in terms of combat, and I think Sun Tsu, the Chinese visionary in 500 BC, captured it best when he said: 'To win a hundred victories in a hundred battlefields is not the acme of skill, but to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.' NARRATOR And it was just this skill that was used in the 1980s to subdue the biggest enemy of all. ARCHIVE: PRESIDENT REAGAN . . . I'll bet on American technology any day. JANET MORRIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) Even in the Cold War era, psychological operations have been phenomenally effective. The announcement of Star Wars faced the Soviets with a new spending cycle they knew they couldn't endure. The very announcement brought them back to the bargaining table, without a single weapon being built. NARRATOR But it is since the end of the Cold War that bloodless victory has become vital to the US military, if they are fighting completely different types of battle. Policy analysts Christopher and Janet Morris: JANET MORRIS US and other Western governments today face entirely new kinds of missions, operations other than war, humanitarian assistance, actions below the threshold of war as we knew it in the Cold War era. CHRISTOPHER MORRIS We need to arrive at a geopolitically acceptable means of projecting force to contain conflict. JANET MORRIS We require two new abilities: (1) the ability to project a credible deterrent; (2) the ability to operate quickly and effectively with the minimum number of casualties and minimum destruction of property. Psychological operations will play a critical part in these new missions. NARRATOR And just how critical can be seen in the Gulf War, where the Iraqi troops were bombed with 29 million Psyop leaflets. COLONEL JONES Through our campaign we were able to convince some 17,000 Iraqis to defect, over 44 per cent of the Iraqi units in the Kuwaiti theatre of operations to desert, and over 87,000 to surrender. CHRISTOPHER MORRIS Management of an aggressor's perception of you is very important. JANET MORRIS But psychological weapons are only one part of a new arsenal that may well be considered our peace dividend. We will have weapons that make things sticky, weapons that make things slippery, weapons that act as the old Roman nets acted to ensnare a convoy, a tank, a rioting crowd. The arsenal of new tactics and options that these weapons will provide are called 'non-lethal'. NARRATOR Tactics that are a far cry from the days in which destruction was mutually assured. But these options meet with a mixed reception from the army and the air force. COLONEL WARDEN The non-lethal technology should give us the opportunity to achieve large political military objectives without the necessity to shed lots of blood. GENERAL SULLIVAN People think that because we are in a new age war will be bloodless. War will not be bloodless. There is no silver bullet. We're not talking about some magic weapon that has now appeared on the battlefield. COLONEL WARDEN Theoretically we've always understood that going out there and having two armies fighting was merely a means to an end. However, as a result of a lot of history, including Karl von Clausewitz and others, we really began to see this actual clash as being the essence of war. And it isn't, it never has been. Always the essence of war should have been more of a Sun Tsu kind of a thing, where you get the other guy to do what you want him to do. GENERAL SULLIVAN War will mean putting your soldiers on the ground and fighting each other - with weapons which may be leveraged and more effective because of information-age technology, but you've got to get out there and impose your will on the enemy. COLONEL WARDEN If you can get the other guy to do what you want him to do without killing a lot of people, without destroying a lot of things, that certainly has got to be better. A simple example: we figure out a way to destroy the central processing unit, the chip in a computer, as opposed to blowing up the whole computer, because we simply don't care about the majority of the computer. NARRATOR Some would argue that there is no need to destroy anything at all. The targets of the future will not be computers, but the world they give access to. WINN SCHWARTAU One significant way in which the proliferation of technology has changed the world is that war will be fought in the battlefields of cyberspace, that place which connects all of the computers world-wide. JANET MORRIS In an electronically interdependent world a virtual act of war may be taken as seriously as a bomb might have been 50 years ago. If we use electronic technology to zero Gaddafi's bank account, is that an act of war? ALVIN TOFFLER The new battlefield is the battlefield for knowledge. If you have adequate and appropriate knowledge you can also wage conflict outside war, you can wage economic warfare. WINN SCHWARTAU This is it: the wired city, an infinite number of fragile, spider-web-like connections gluing us all together into modern society, yet ready to fall like a house of cards. A bank - how many vulnerabilities does the bank have? Eavesdropping, surveillance, software - bad software. WILLIAM J. MARLOW (Science Applications International Corporation) I'm setting up to attach to the Internet. Now that I'm on the network itself I'm choosing to access a remote network. Once on that network I'm going to install what's called a 'sniffer' programme. That sniffer programme is a piece of software that monitors all the information that gets transferred electronically on that network. That information includes passwords. I'm going to capture a password, and then use it to log on and pretend to be an authorised user. And I'm going to monitor all the information that's going on in the remote computer. WINN SCHWARTAU Not too long ago the military and the intelligence community had exclusive control over the domain of information. With the proliferation of technology and the Internet, they've lost the control that they once had, and today we find that information weapons systems are being developed outside of the control of the military, and virtually anybody with a little bit of technical knowledge has access to those weapons. WILLIAM MARLOW What I'm going to do now is set up to actually do some damage to the other computer system. I'm going to send a electronic mail message; attached to that mail message is what's called polymorphic code - the slang term is 'software bomb'. WINN SCHWARTAU Everybody has access to computer equipment, whether it's the hacker or the information warrior or just anybody at home, but the true information warrior is also going to want to be able to provide cellular interception, telephone and fax interception, or other types of video and audio surveillance equipment such as is available here. SURVEILLANCE EQUIPMENT SALESMAN This is a wireless miking system which is designed out of state-of-the-art surface-mount technology. It will transmit a signal up to a mile away. This particular device attaches to a phone line and has the ability to record six hours of conversation off of one tape. It comes telephone ready. This is a wireless video transmitting cap. It will wireless remote video back to a viewing post. WILLIAM MARLOW The 'software bomb' - polymorphic code - is a type of code that propagates itself. It attaches itself in the computer system and then starts writing over all the files that are on the disc, all the application files, data files and communications files. WINN SCHWARTAU Information warfare is also about transportation systems. Think about it. On aeroplanes you cannot use your lap-tops or CD players under 10,000 feet. The planes themselves are susceptible. The air traffic control systems use land-based communications, they need to be protected. Information warfare is about national economic protection. WILLIAM MARLOW . . . and here we go. That's it, the bomb is now executed and working. MICHAEL R. HIGGINS (Chief, Counter Measures Division) There's a natural reluctance to admit when your computer system has been broken into. Examples of that might be the banking industry. There's a reluctance for the banking industry to admit that their business functions, funds transfers, might be compromised by some outsider. Not to say that happens, but last year 255 incidents were reported to us from the Department of Defense. We're a microcosm, we're a small portion, we have less than a million computers in the Department of Defense. There are 30 million plus systems within the Internet community. So if we have 255 incidents, there's a lot more activity that we believe is going on out in the global community that just is not being reported. NARRATOR At the Defense Information Systems Agency, Mike Higgins's job is to maintain the security of all the military networks - the encrypted, classified networks, the unclassified and the communications infrastructure that connects them. It is where the Department of Defense defends itself from attacks by information warriors. MICHAEL HIGGINS If you view our network like a building, like the Pentagon for instance the Pentagon, the largest building in the world, has hundreds of windows and doors in it that I have to protect, and I have to make sure that every single one of those doors and every single one of those windows is locked. An intruder only has to find one opening. NARRATOR To protect the virtual Pentagon, Defense Information Systems Agency staff spend their time trying to hack into it through the Internet, to identify the open windows. If there is an intrusion, they give help down a hotline. The defences, though, are constantly being breached. MICHAEL HIGGINS Two of the most widely reported incidents within the Department of Defense over the past year have been, first of all, the 'sniffer' incident - it's commonly referred to as the Internet 'sniffer'. People penetrated over 200 systems - we're talking about payroll systems, we're talking about personnel systems, medical systems, logistic systems and transportation systems. The other incident would be the 16-year-old out of London that penetrated an air force computer system here in the United States. A small group of dedicated individuals, we believe, today, can disrupt national security. This is the cutting edge, and this is exactly where the Department of Defense needs to address the warfare of tomorrow. NARRATOR For other defence commentators it is not so much that the information age is increasing the dangers of war in cyberspace, but that the global traffic of information is increasing the dangers of real war. Carl Builder is an analyst at the Rand Corporation. CARL BUILDER I have a particular concern that the information revolution may spread the availability of nuclear devices or weapons very widely. I have that concern because the materials for nuclear devices are increasingly in commerce, and all that lies between the taking of those materials and making nuclear devices is information. I was so concerned about this when I was responsible for nuclear safeguards that we called in some nuclear bomb makers and they told us hair-raising recipes: If you really want to make a crude nuclear explosive, here is how you could do it, and do it very simply on your kitchen table, with materials that are available in the hardware store. NARRATOR It is not only a matter of DIY nuclear bombs. The weapons of the information age are advertised on global television and can be bought off the shelf. MARTIN LIBICKI Countries around the world have seen what we did with information technologies in the Gulf War, and many of these information technologies are available in the commercial market. Computers are available in the commercial market; 30 countries make unmanned aerial vehicles; access to space imagery is becoming available in the commercial market. The result is that I believe that our platforms, particularly our larger platforms, such as surface ships, will be a lot more visible in the future than they were during the Gulf War. And because we will be a lot more visible the next time around, we will be much more likely to be targets the next time around. GENERAL SULLIVAN I think it's illustrative to point out something which I bought in Mogadishu. It's a camel bell, and this is made out of wood. It's got a couple of wooden clackers in it. So here you are dealing with something which is pre-Bronze-Age. Interestingly enough, the reason that we didn't fly our soldiers out of Mogadishu by air was because we figured that they had some kind of a surface-to-air missile. So here you have someone who is living, really, in a different era, using information-age weapons systems. NARRATOR And just as control of information-age bombs is sliding away from the old centres of power, so is control of information itself. ALVIN TOFFLER It used to be that either the government controlled the media, or some giant corporations controlled the media. Well that's fine. They were the producers of the message and therefore could control what was in the message. But now there is a breakdown, or a blurring of the line of who is the producer and who is the consumer, because the consumers have cameras and copying machines and PCs . . . CARL BUILDER And fax machines, and fax machines in the hands of people are power as we saw in the uprising in China in Tiannamen Square. We saw in Los Angeles where video camera . . . ALVIN TOFFLER . . . just shook up the country, and indeed parts of the world, by showing the police beating unmercifully a black man - who should not have been doing what he was doing at the time, but that's beside the point. It was the use of a citizen . . . the citizen's eye altered government action. NARRATOR The use of the citizen's computer may well have the same effect. TIMOTHY C. MAY (Computer Consultant) I'm a cypher punk . . . CARL BUILDER The old organising principles and controls which we've had in the past for societies will be under massive assault. TIMOTHY MAY . . . I'm connected. Enter my password - I'm into the system; I'm now on the Internet. I'm now going to show how to send a piece of mail through what's called a 'remailer'. This is software which takes incoming messages into a site, rebatches them up, takes off the outer envelope, if you will, and resends them to the next destination. By chaining a series of these remailings a message can be sent from one person to almost any other person on the planet without the identity of the sender being known, and this offers amazing possibilities for free speech, for whistleblowing . . . CARL BUILDER We're likely to see people forming interest groups, common-interest groups, to challenge their institutions, to challenge their own society and to challenge their governments. TIMOTHY MAY This is the message I sent out in that earlier example. Comments: this message did not originate from the above address, it was automatically remailed by an anonymous mail service. Here's the body of the message - 'This is a test message sent to Digital Mixes'. And I have an example of items for sale on Blacknet. This might be how to obtain RU-486, the abortion pill; Banned Books 'R' Us, a bookstore specialising in banned books; and 'the largest collection of surplus military equipment in the world'. CARL BUILDER What is happening is that the information devices are putting power in the hands of the individual rather than in the hands of new élites. TIMOTHY MAY This is a system in which no government can control what people say. People can communicate anonymously, untraceably and securely, and that's civil liberties through complex mathematics. JANET MORRIS Ideology can no longer be enforced through control of information. MICHAEL HIGGINS One hundred and eighty-six per cent growth annually is what the Internet is experiencing. CHUCK DE CARO This is terrific. We've now got more information than we've ever had about anything before. COLONEL WARDEN The potentials are terribly exciting. COLONEL JONES To keep the peace . . . COLONEL CAMPEN Non-lethal weapons. COLONEL JONES . . . resolve the crisis . . . CHRISTOPHER MORRIS Weapons of mass protection. COLONEL JONES . . . to help contain the conflict. ALVIN TOFFLER Realistically, what are the dangers? MARTIN LIBICKI Violence. CARL BUILDER Dissidence and terrorism. CHRISTOPHER MORRIS Mass destruction. HEIDI TOFFLER Battles to control information. WINN SCHWARTAU Fought in the battlefields of cyberspace. CHUCK DE CARO On global television. GENERAL HARTZOG Pushed to the outer limits. GENERAL SALOMON Ten billion dollars. PHIL TAYLOR Propagandists. CHUCK DE CARO Soft war. COLONEL JONES Information. JANET MORRIS Information. GENERAL HARTZOG Information. COLONEL CAMPEN Information. CARL BUILDER Information. WILLIAM MARLOW Information. MARTIN LIBICKI Information. WINN SCHWARTAU Information. ALVIN TOFFLER Information. HEIDI TOFFLER Information. GENERAL SALOMON Information. GENERAL SULLIVAN There is no bloodless war, and in my view, there are no silver bullets. FURTHER READING Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War (Littlebrown 1993) Winn Schwartau, Information Warfare (Thunders Mouth Press 1994) Peter G. Neumann, Computer-Related Risks (ACM Press 1995) Col. Alan D. Campen, The First Information War (AFCEA International Press 1993) Martin Van Creveld, Proliferation and the Future of Conflict (Free Press 1993) Produced by Broadcasting Support Services for BBC Horizon. Edited by Peter Millson This text is also available, as a booklet, from: The I-Bomb PO Box 7 London W3 6XJ (Priced GBP 2 including postage and packing, cheques payable to BSS.) |