Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • August 2, 2013 5:05 AM

The debate started out as a disagrement about semantics, then moved to idiology, and as such it compleatly missed the point.

Warfare has many semantic meanings and is one of those imprecisly defind words which fall into the catagory of starting with much arm waving and end with the “you know it when you see it” definition.

However it can be seen in the light of conflicts over resources or ideology. That is two or more entities disagree over ownership or belifes to the point hostilities arise.

Whilst as a discription it may cover all forms of warfare it also covers all forms of crime and business as well depending on your definitions of hostilities and entities. That is a simple definition of hostilities is one where the activities of one entity does harm to another entity where the harm can be real or percived, tangible or intangible and is frequently defined differently by each opposing or observing entity.

History has taught us over many thousands of years that hostilities over beliefs are in effect unresolvable except by the beliefs becoming sufficiently diminished that hostilities cease. Whilst it has also taught us is that hostilities over resources are more harmfull both directly and indirectly. This is due in part to a secondary effect, which is due to the utilisation or control of those resources harm can be inflicted by the controling entity over the non controling entity. Thus the control of resources can be used as it’s own form of warfare in the form of attritian, where the resource controlling entity starves the other entity such that it ceases to florish and withers and dies or seaks the resource from some other place.

But none of this distinquishes “War” from “crime” from “business”, what does is commonly accepted rules in the form of treaties, laws and agreements. Rules only exist because of agrement amongst entities that the majority of entities agree with, usually perceived on the basis of limiting potential harm for their own good.

Currently we have no rules on cyber activities that have more than limited regional agreement, thus deciding what is war / crime / business in cyber space is difficult. Thus we currently tend to apply non cyber space rules to cyber space and whilst some fit moderatly well many don’t.

The rules that do tend to fit unsuprisingly are those that are designed to deal with intangible ideas such as intelectual property, and crimes that revolve around the posession of information in tangible or intangible form.

For instance credit card theft does not involve having direct access to the physical card, just the information encoded onto the card. The transfer of money for the theft is based on information and it is only the realisation of this information into physical goods that involves anything other than the transfere and storage of information.

Likewise when looked at most business transactions and activities actually involve the transfer and manipulation of information.

Thus we transfer our perceptions of crime and business into cyberspace with little difficulty, usually whithout realising that we have actually seperated the intangible and tangible parts of the crime and business activities.

Most people however do not see information in war, they see the tangible effects only when they consider harms.

However like other human activities war consists of both intangible information and tangible bombs and bullets, the former usually being used to aim the latter.

Inteligence analysts and senior military personnel know this and thus can consider fighting with information as a normal activity of war. Most non western military personel don’t see information this way, infact western culture sees it in terms of espionage and treason at state level and do not see it at lower levels of the battle field. The same is not true for many non western cultures.

Thus in part the debate was about “culture” and the resulting mind set and the debating parties were in effect not arguing over the same issue.

And this highlights the real problem of the distinction between war and crime/bussiness. War tends to be resolved by “force of arms” involving “kinnetic weapons” and the subsiquent significant collateral damage. Crime/business tends to be resolved by money and courts and whilst their is often collateral damage it tends to be limited and not involve highly visable destruction of life and infrastructure.

But is that strictly true? We know that economic harm does without doubt cause death and destruction, the difference is it manifests it’s self over time “after” not “during” the conflict.

Which kind of leaves us with the “territory” asspect, conventional warfare has untill recent times been about controling geographical areas with “boots on the ground”. Nearly all of our societal rules are about territory in the form of Nation States and their borders and juresdictions. As has been frequently pointed out in the past the internet knows no borders, however we know this to not be true because it is tangible hardware that transports the intangible information and that tangible hardware is physically located somewher in somebodies juresdiction as are the users of the information.

The real problem is thus not the lack of physicality of the information, but that our rules are based on the historical notion that moving across borders is difficult. Communications systems are usually set up not for border control but convenience and efficiency of the perceived users. In effect it is convenience that knows no borders and almost invariably over time convenience wins over all restrictions political or otherwise.

Increasingly nation states are becoming less relevant as time moves on it is conveniance of trade that brings down barriers and borders, and why we have increasingly growing “free trade” zones.

Thus whilst traditionaly wars are seen as being fought between nations we will see them move to the realms of international business and crime.

Thus wars of the future will be fought less and less by armies and more and more by police and lawyers as information becomes an increasingly large part of human activites.

Will we see the end of “conventional warfare” no as ultimatly we are physical beings dependent on air, water, food and other physical resources for our very existance. But the nature of war will likewise change with more information giving finer control and more accurate aiming of kinnetic weapons lessening their collateral damage. However what we will see is increasing economic damage, which will have much the same effect as conventional warfare but over more protracted times.

The City of Detroit can be seen as a consiquence of economic warfare as can many other places where there has been significant economic down turn. A look through the newspapers etc describe many of these now deprived areas as looking like “war zones” with poor nutrition and life expectation leading to deaths that are 30-50years premature to more affluant areas. Thus different effects having similar causes…