AmericasGreatestThreatInfowar

America�s Greatest Threat: Information Warfare (page 1)

While President Bush focused people on the military in terms of a few issues during his campaign, he has left the most important policy necessity un-addressed. President Bush has brought the focus to pay and benefits of those in the military, retention of skilled people, the need for a missile defense system, a shift in policy from the decades old �two war� strategy, and the need for dominance in space. Unfortunately, with all of that, he and the Pentagon have failed to address the most important and most dire need for American security: Information warfare defense.

What is information warfare? Information warfare is probably easier to understand illustrated than explained.

�The U.S. military�s vulnerability to cyber-attack became clear in June 1997, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff launched an exercise code-named Eligible Receiver to test the nation�s computer defenses. Their scenario imagined a military crisis on the Korean Peninsula that forced Washington to rapidly bolster South Korean forces with troops and aircraft. Thirty-five men and woman from the National Security Agency (NSA) were split into four teams, three in the United States and one on a ship in the Pacific, to simulate hackers hired by North Korea to subvert the American operation. These hackers received no advance intelligence about U.S. information networks and could use only publicly available equipment and information. Even though they were not allowed to break U.S. law, they could use any computer hacking programs they could find freely available on the Internet. (Some 30,000 Web sites post hacker codes, which can be downloaded to break passwords, crash systems, and steal data.)

Over the course of the next two weeks, the teams used the commercial computers and hacking programs they downloaded from the Internet to simultaneously break into the power grids of nine American cities and crack their 911 emergency systems. This exercise proved that genuine hackers with malicious intent could, with a couple of keystrokes, have turned off these cities� power and prevented the local emergency services from responding to the crisis.

Having ensured civilian chaos and distracted Washington, the NSA agents then attacked 41,000 of the Pentagon�s 100,000 computer networks and got in to 36. Only two of the attacks were detected and reported. The agents were thus able to roam freely across the networks, sowing destruction and distrust wherever they went. The could, for example, have sent truck headlights to an F-16 fighter squadron requesting missiles or rerouted aircraft fuel to a port rather than an air base. The hackers also managed to infect the human command-and-control system with a paralyzing level of mistrust. Orders that appeared to come from a commanding general were fake, as were bogus news reports on the crisis and instructions from the civilian command authorities. As a result, nobody in the chain of command, from the president on down, could believe anything. This group of hackers using publicly available resources was able to prevent the United States from waging war effectively.� (James Adams, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2001** STRONGLY RECOMMENDED READING)

Since this test, a second test code-named Zenith Star was done in 1999 with similar results. That does not even count the 1998 hacking operation code-named Moonlight Maze, where hundreds of computer networks of highly sensitive materials was hacked and technology and information was stolen. To date, the hackers in Moonlight Maze have not been found.

America�s military and private sector are heavily reliant upon computer technology. The Gulf War demonstrated just how reliant our military is on computers. Everything from the computer programs for aircraft, information on where forces are, orders from superiors, and even control of our nuclear missiles are based on computers and our ability to control those computers. In the civilian sector, companies, power grids, water supplies, economic markets, distribution networks are all computer reliant. With so much of our economy and military reliant upon computers, information warfare could cripple the United States. It would make a missile defense shield virtually useless, and fighting a war nearly impossible.

To date, about 30 countries in the world possess information warfare technology. They include France, Israel, Brazil, India, Russia, China, and even �rogue nations� like Iran and Iraq. The Gulf War sent a message to the world that the American military was the best conventional force in the world. It also sent a message that a large part of why the American military is so strong is because of its information capabilities. However, a large part of what makes America�s military so strong, also is its Achilles heel.

When the world saw the might of the conventional forces of the United States in Iraq, and have full knowledge of America�s overwhelming nuclear forces, other countries realized that they could not match those forces head on. They learned from the Soviet Union that it would be impossible financially to buy or build enough weapons to catch up to the United States. Especially considering the United States spends more on its military than the next 12 nations spend on their military combined. Therefore, they have made a shift to other priorities where they can gain an asymmetric advantage over the United States. In other words, they have shifted to information warfare because it is well known that the United States has no defense for information warfare. To date, the United States has not made information warfare defense a priority, in spite of the recognition of the crippling impact it may have

The United States military leaders have come to see China as the next major threat to U.S. interests. Because of this, American intelligence has been monitoring China�s defense capabilities and strategies. One thing that caught their attention was the debate among Chinese leaders and military officers over how to gain an advantage over the United States. Two PLA colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui gave some insight into Chinese strategy against the U.S. in a book, Unrestricted Warfare:.

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