[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
INFOWAR: From Cyberwar to INFOWAR
---------------------------------------------------------
ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 98
INFOWAR. information.macht.krieg
Linz, Austria, september 07 - 12
http://www.aec.at/infowar
---------------------------------------------------------
>From Cyberwar to INFOWAR
Computing and Telecommunications for "Real" and "Virtual" Warfare
By Georg Schoefbaenker
The definition of the terms 'war' and 'computer,' the difference between
'real' and 'virtual,' and the meaning of 'communication' seem to be generally
well-known and highly plausible formulations in the language of everyday
life. Nevertheless, this is not the case. A conceptual analysis including a
clarification of the substance of the terms thus employed seems to be
necessary. 'Cyberwar,' 'infowar' and 'netwar' are examples of a novel
nomenclature that seemingly augur a paradigm shift from a general political
and military concept of war, and which were developed during the early 1990s
in the US at the RAND Corporation's strategic proving grounds of the
experimental apocalypse and its simultaneous prevention by means of
countermeasures. These terms 'cyberwar,' 'infowar' and 'netwar' can still not
be found in any dictionary or etymological encyclopedia. These are not only
linguistic neologisms, but contextual and constructivist ones as well. As an
initial approach, these terms can be translated as 'cybernetic war,'
'informational war' and 'warfare within computer networks.'
'Real' 'war' in the 19th and 20th centuries in the northern hemisphere of the
globe was the continuation of power politics on the part of nation-states by
means of armed conflicts between these nation-states in accordance with their
imagined territorial, economic and imperial claims understood in a
Clausewitzian sense. This is the standpoint of 'political realism' in
international relations. At the same time, warlike confrontations were a part
of the process of subjugation and exploitation of the periphery of the world
system, of the 'South' and the 'colonies' both by the
industrialized-capitalist world as well as by the industrialized-communist
one-a chapter of history that, to this day, has still not been completely
documented and fully appraised.
It is said that 'war' between nations of the developed world has become
rather improbable nowadays. Nevertheless, extremely violent and bloody
conflicts which have cost hundreds of thousands of human lives have not
ceased in recent years. We need only think of the instances of genocide in
Africa, or the conflicts in the states which came into being as a result of
the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The casi belli have
been described as 'ethnic conflicts' or 'new tribalism' between 'warlords' or
even as the 'struggle between cultures.' However, these seem to be rather
inadequate intellectual attempts to describe and explain the factors lying at
the root of the matter in these conflicts. In order to attain further
insights, some other additional steps would be necessary. Nevertheless,
murderous conflicts continue to occur, even if the precepts of international
law and the vocabulary sanctioned by the international community of states
have found new terminology to refer to them, and 'war' in the classic sense
may well have become a thing of the past, at least in the 'rich North.'
But the concept of war has still not changed in the logic of military
planning. 'Si vis pax, para bellum' - 'If you desire peace, then prepare for
war.' This motto handed down from Antiquity continues to represent the
viewpoint and the logic of military élites. The intellectual dilemmas
resulting from it are sufficiently well-known: a military build-up and a
perceived threat are followed by an arms race and a mirrored perception of
threat. The changes which new information and communication technologies have
engendered in the conceptualization and the logic of war are equally decisive
and just as significant as those brought about by the development and
introduction of nuclear weapons in the middle of this century.
C4I-standing for 'Command, Control, Communication, Computer and
Intelligence'-is a military abbreviation which succinctly sums up the
consequences of the deployment of conventional weapons on a 'real
battlefield' during wartime. This expression has to do with the 'enhancement
of effectiveness in battle'; what is meant thereby is the high-precision
deployment of 'intelligent munitions' which can independently seek their
targets by means of electronic guidance systems. Although this concept of
'cyberwar' was initially meant as a metaphor, what has emerged since its
inception is an operative concept for missions carried out in a theater of
war. The Gulf War conducted by the Allies against Iraq in 1991 serves as a
case in point. 'Cyberwar' is, at the same time, a collective designation for
the experimental proving ground of the new individual soldiers comprising a
fighting unit linked together by information technology and based upon
communication with one another in real time. These soldiers wear
computer-equipped battle dress and launch weapons which are guided to their
targets by means of long-distance data transmission. 'Cyberwar' is equated
with the advantages of the blitzkrieg, with the possibility of achieving a
'destructive advantage' by means of the long-distance data transmission and
the deployment of computer-guided weapons. "At present, the US. Military has
the international lead in the planning and preparation for cyberwar, both
offensively as well as defensively. ... The US is the only country in the
world which already has an arsenal available which makes cyberwar appear to
be an attractive and feasible option," write RAND authors John Arquilla and
David Ronfeldt.
'Infowar' ultimately goes far beyond the concept of guiding weapons to their
targets. This term is also described as 'strategic information warfare,'
meaning the deployment of all means and possibilities afforded by information
and communication technologies for carrying out campaigns of sabotage and
disinformation. These include the manipulation of banking and financial
systems, telecommunications facilities, public administrative institutions
and, of course, armed forces. If one accepts the hypothesis that modern life
in the 20th century would no longer be possible without the use of computers
and telecommunications equipment, then it is just a small additional step to
assert the 'vulnerability' of these systems to precisely targeted strikes and
to regard this as a threat of the utmost significance. However, this threat,
in the absence of other manifestations of endangerment, seems to have been
partially invented or to have been played up in hysterical fashion. Nowadays,
menacing images have already begun to assume extraterrestrial proportions-the
possibility that an asteroid will collide with Earth in approximately 30
years-in order to thus make it appear to be advisable to go ahead with the
development of the nuclear weapons which would be necessary to eliminate this
threat in outer space-a concept which evokes memories of the 'Star Wars'
Project of the 1980s.
But we have still not yet encompassed the full extent of the implementation
of computers for military purposes. The US is currently conducting the
so-called 'Stockpile Stewardship Program' for which the US Department of
Energy commissioned IBM on February 3, 1998 to develop the world's fastest
supercomputers (100 teraflops). These will be put into operation by the US
nuclear weapons development laboratory, and could possibly be used for the
further development or even the new development of atomic weapons without
having to conduct a full-scale nuclear weapons test which would be forbidden
according to the provisions of the 'Total Test Ban Treaty' now in effect.
There are many such examples of the military roots of technological
developments in the computer field. The ENIAC, one of the first primitive
electronic processors, was developed to perform calculations in conjunction
with the first thermonuclear weapons. The decentralization of the internet
with which we are familiar today is based upon the requirements of the US
military-they wished to have available decentralized communication facilities
that would even be 'capable of surviving' a nuclear strike against US
territory. Which brings us back to our original point of departure-with
respect to the development of computers capable of high-performance
processing, as well as the milestones in the emergence of the internet, we
must certainly concur with Brecht's remark that war is the father of all
things.
So ultimately, it is not at all amazing that cyberspace-that spatial domain
of the modern information society that is completely unknown to many members
of the political and military élites of this world-is generally perceived as
a threat from which military attacks upon the information infrastructure
might be expected. Whether this has more to do with science, with fiction, or
with good public relations will be a key issue to be taken up at this year's
Ars Electronica Festival.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are subscribed to the English language version of INFOWAR
To (un)subscribe the English language version send mail to
infowar-en-request@aec.at (message text 'subscribe'/'unsubscribe')
To (un)subscribe the German language version of send mail to
infowar-dt-request@aec.at (message text 'subscribe'/'unsubscribe')
Send contributions to infowar@aec.at
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFOWAR] [subscribe]