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Abstract
This article explores the effect of connectivity on strategic affairs. It argues that the effect on war's character is potentially, although not yet shown in practice, considerably large. Its effect upon the distribution of power among states in the international system is small, contrary to the claims of ‘cyberwar’ alarmists. All told, however, its effect upon strategic affairs is complex. On the one hand, it represents a significant advance in the ‘complexification’ of state strategies, understood in the sense of the production of intended effects. On the other hand, strategists today – still predominantly concerned with the conflicts and confrontations of states and organised military power – are generally missing the power which non-traditional strategic actors, better adapted to the network flows of the information age, are beginning to deploy. These new forms of organization and coercion will challenge the status quo.
Notes
1 The Economist, 1 July 2010, <www.economist.com/node/16481504>.
2For a brief discussion of the issues see David Betz, ‘Keeping the Enemy Out of Your Hard-Drive’, Parliamentary Brief (29 Oct. 2010), <www.parliamentarybrief.com/2010/10/keeping-the-enemy-out-of-your-hard-drive>.
3Richard Clarke, Cyber War (New York: HarperCollins 2010).
4Audrey Kurth Cronin has looked at Al-Qaeda's strategy in Ending Terrorism (Abingdon, UK: Routledge for the IISS 2008) and ‘Cyber-Mobilization: The New Levee en Masse’, Parameters (Summer 2006), 77–87.
5For a discussion of the proliferation of hyphenated war types, see M.L.R. Smith, ‘Guerrillas in the Mist’, Review of International Studies 29/1 (2003), 19–38. Mary Kaldor's New and Old Wars (Cambridge: Polity Press 1999), Martin Van Creveld's The Transformation of War (New York: The Free Press 1991), and Robert Kaplan's The Coming Anarchy (New York: Vintage Books 2000) are the standout works of the anti-Clausewitzean canon. Rupert Smith's The Utility of Force (London: Allen Lane 2005) in which he introduced the idea of ‘war amongst the people’ has a certain revisionist flavour also. For more discussion see the introduction in Hew Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers (eds), The Changing Character of Warfare (Oxford: OUP 2011), esp. pp.3–6.
6James Adams describes it as ‘outdated’ and ‘ever more irrelevant’ in The Next World War (New York: Simon & Schuster 1998), 93.
7Britain's new national security strategy is a good example, describing the country as more physically secure than it has ever been while subject to terrible digital threat as a result of its connectedness. See HM Government, A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The National Security Strategy (London: The Stationery Office 2010), 3.
8In the sense of Walter B. Gallie, ‘Essentially Contested Concepts’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, new series, Vol.56 (1956), 167–98.
9Hew Strachan, ‘The Changing Character of War’, Europaeum Lecture delivered at the Graduate Institute of International Relations, Geneva (9 Nov. 2006), 2.
10Martin C. Libicki, Conquest in Cyberspace, National Security and Information Warfare (New York: Cambridge UP 2007), 236–40. He also describes a fourth (pragmatic) layer but omits it from later work, e.g. Martin C. Libicki, Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation 2009), 12–13.
11Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus (London: Allen Lane 2010).
12David Betz and Tim Stevens, Cyberspace and the State: Toward a Strategy for Cyber-Power (Abingdon and New York: Routledge 2011), chap. 4.
13For more on this thought, see Alan Beyerchen, ‘Clausewitz, Non-Linearity, and the Unpredictability of War’, International Security 17/3 (Winter 1992/93), 59–90.
14See Barry Buzan and Eric Herring, The Arms Dynamic in World Politics (London: Lynne Rienner 1998), esp. chap. 2.
15British Broadcasting Corporation, The Virtual Revolution, Episode 2 ‘The Enemy of the State?’, aired on BBC2 (6 Feb. 2010), <www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n4j0r>.
16J.F.C. Fuller, The Reformation of War (London: Hutchinson 1923), 150.
17Quoted in Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 1987), 26.
18The full text of the Baldwin House of Commons speech from 10 Nov. 1932 may be found on the ‘Airminded’ blog, <http://airminded.org/2007/11/10/the-bomber-will-always-get-through/>; Baldwin was echoing the claims of the Italian airpower theorist Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari (New York: Faber 1942).
19Eliot Cohen, ‘The Mystique of US Air Power’, Foreign Affairs 73/1 (Jan./Feb. 1994), 109.
20Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press 2005).
21Harlan Ullman and James Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington DC: National Defense Univ. 1996), xii.
22On the end of history see Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press 1992); on advances in military capability see William Owens, Lifting the Fog of War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP 2000).
23Benjamin Lambeth ‘Airpower, Spacepower and Cyberpower’, Joint Force Quarterly, issue 60, 1st quarter (2011), 51.
24T.X. Hammes illustrates this in The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (London: Zenith Press 2004).
25Thomas Rid and Peter McBurney, ‘Cyber Weapons’, RUSI Journal 157/1 (Feb./March 2012), 6–13.
26William Broad, John Markoff and David Sanfer, ‘Israeli test on worm called crucial in Iran nuclear delay’, New York Times (15 Jan. 2011), <www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html>.
27Ibid.
28Clarke, Cyber War, 67–8.
29For example, see Anna Mulrine, ‘CIA Chief Leon Panetta: The Next Pearl Harbor Could be a Cyberattack’, Christian Science Monitor (9 June 2011), <www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2011/0609/CIA-chief-Leon-Panetta-The-next-Pearl-Harbor-could-be-a-cyberattack>.
30Clarke, Cyber War, 31.
31John Arquila and David Ronfeldt, ‘Cyberwar is Coming’, in J. Arquila and D. Ronfeldt (eds), In Athena's Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 1997).
32One senses this recognition in The White House, International Strategy for Cyberspace: Prosperity, Security, and Openness in a Networked World, May 2011, <www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/international_strategy_for_cyberspace.pdf>.
33See Austin B. Smith and Laurenne Wallman, ‘Terrorists yet to turn to cyberattacks’, UPI.com (11 Oct. 2011), <www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2011/10/11/Terrorists-yet-to-turn-to-cyberattacks/UPI-50111318362866/?spt=hs&or=tn>.
34Clay Shirky, ‘The Political Power of Social Media’, Foreign Affairs 90/1 (Jan./Feb. 2011).
35Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: How not to Liberate the World (London: Allen Lane 2011).
36Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford: OUP 2009), 302.
37Gen. Sir David Richards, ‘Future Conflict and its Prevention: People and the Information Age’, International Institute for Strategic Studies (18 Jan. 2010), <www.iiss.org/recent-key-addresses/general-sir-david-richards-address>.
38See, for example, Micah Sifry, Wikileaks and the Age of Transparency (New York: OR Books 2011).
39See Stephen Pinker, ‘The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature’, Royal Society of the Arts lecture (London: 14 Feb. 2011), <www.thersa.org/events/video/archive/steven-pinker>.
40For an example see Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life In Stalin's Russia (London: Penguin 2007), in particular pp. 122–6, dealing with Pavlik Morozov, the 13–year-old boy who informed on his father who was subsequently arrested and killed and the killing thereafter of Pavlik by his remaining family.
41George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four (1949), republished in The Complete Novels of George Orwell (London: Penguin 2009), 1004.
42See ‘Libya's Gaddafi: “My people love me”’, BBC News (28 Feb. 2011), <www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12603086>.
43Brian Boyd, ‘Robin Hood of Hacking’, Irish Times (6 June 2010), <www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/0626/1224273343835.html>; for a brilliant discussion of the context of the data theft by Bradley Manning see Bruce Sterling interview on ‘Blast Shack’ about Wikileaks (22 Dec. 2010), <www.webstock.org.nz/blog/2010/the-blast-shack/>.
44Carne Ross, ‘Wikileaks Whistle Blows Time on the Old Game’, New Statesman (6 Dec. 2010), <www.newstatesman.com/society/2010/12/wikileaks-governments-cables>.
45For an operator's account of spin politics see Philip Gould, Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party (London: Abacus 1999).
46Mark Duffield, ‘War as a Network Enterprise: The New Security Terrain and its Implications’, Cultural Values 6/1&2 (2002), 158.
47Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press 2008).
48On propaganda of the deed see Neville Bolt and David Betz, Propaganda of the Deed 2008: Understanding the Phenomenon, Whitehall Paper (London: Royal United Services Institute 2008).
49Quoted in Sean Parson, ‘Understanding the Ideology of the Earth Liberation Front’, Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy 4/2(2008), <http://greentheoryandpraxis.org/journal/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/50/47>.
50From the Occupy Wall St webpage <http://occupywallst.org/>.
51Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Basic Books 2002), 160–2.
52Notes from Nowhere (eds), We are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism (London: Verso 2003), 16.
53See, for example, Carne Ross, Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century (London: Simon & Schuster 2011), 21–2.
54Ibid., 22.
55Nelson Mandela (20 April 1964), may be found on The History Place, Great Speeches Collection, <www.historyplace.com/speeches/mandela.htm>.
56Starhawk, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising (Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Catlyst Books 2008), 60; for a different vision of this prospect which imagines such a mercenary force going from strength to strength see the near-future science fiction novel by Adam Roberts, New Model Army (London: Orion 2010).
57Starhawk, Webs of Power, 150.
58See UBS Investment Research, Global Economic Perspectives, ‘Euro break-up: The Consequences’ (6 Sept. 2011), <www.scribd.com/doc/64020390/xrm45126>.
59The concept of force as ‘bargaining power’ is from Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 1966).
60Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Revolution (New York: Dell 1984), 32–3.
61Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Univ. of Chicago Press 2006).
62For an overview, see Quinn Norton, ‘Anonymous 101: Introduction to the Lulz’, Wired (8 Nov. 2011), <www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/anonymous-101/2/>.
63From the Encyclopedia Dramatica entry on Anonymous, <http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Anonymous>.
64See the post by David Betz and accompanying comments by Barratt Brown and others on ‘Anonymous Spokesman Opens Nechayev's Tomb, Becomes Possessed’, Kings of War (14 March 2011), <http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2011/03/anonymous-spokesman-opens-nechaevs-tomb-becomes-possessed/>.
65On ‘hacktivism’, see: Tim Jordan and Paul A. Taylor, Hacktivism and Cyberwars: Rebels with a Cause? (Abingdon, UK: Routledge 2004); also, Otto von Busch and Karl Palmas, Abstract Hacktivism: The Making of Hacker Culture (London and Istanbul: self-published and in collaboration with Openmute.org 2006).
66All quotes in this section and the description of the attack on HB Gary are from Nate Anderson, ‘Anonymous vs HB Gary: The Aftermath’, ars technica (2011), <http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/anonymous-vs-hbgary-the-aftermath.ars>.
67The polycephalous (many headed) and segmented nature of revolutionary movements is not, however, altogether new. The anthropologist Luther Gerlach described them as such in ‘Movements of Revolutionary Change: Some Structural Characteristics’, American Behavioral Scientist 14/6 (July/Aug. 1971), 812–36; ‘Strategic latency’ is a condition which some analysts have used to describe ‘a condition in which that could provide military (or economic) advantage remains untapped.’ See Zachary Davis, ‘Strategic Latency and World Order’, Orbis 55/1 (Winter 2011), 69.
68Matthew Reinbold, ‘Superempowerment, Networked Tribes and the End to Business as We Know It’ Ignite 4, Salt Lake City (4 March 2010), <http://igniteshow.com/videos/super-empowerment-networked-tribes-and-end-world-we-know- it>.
69Quoted in Sherry, Rise of American Air Power, 9.
