A Vision Too Abstract

Glad to see you keeping true to your “Skeptic” moniker, Curtis! :-)

I don’t believe that Tom is dissing the notion of 5GW, he’s simply observing that it’s better than the alternative - especially compared to the Prague Spring half a century ago. As a colleague of Tom’s in Enterra Solutions, we are committed to providing organizations (be they corporations or laboratories or nation-states) with the resiliency to overcome such attacks.

Are our collective information grids vulnerable? You betcha. And could such attacks on that infrastructure yield results? It sure can (as evidenced by Hansabank’s two-day shut down of online services a couple weeks ago).

But I also submit that info war attacks have more mechanisms for deflection and defense. A “resilient architecture” (to use an Enterra buzzphrase) is one that has defense in depth, with an effective plan for continuity of operations as well as rigorous risk management and clear focus on the value mechanisms of that organization.

The more malicious concern should not be in the nature of the effects (or their lack thereof); it should be in the anonymity of the attackers. Tom’s point is very apt for a state-v-state conflict; of greater concern to all of us should be the “super-empowered individual” who can evoke even greater damage.

sf/ shane

Perhaps better to say as less kinetic.

History has seen a great downshifting of violence, with every new G equating to about a 20 times decrease in kill-count.

I’d rather live in a higher G world than a lower G world.

Shane,

“I don’t believe that Tom is dissing the notion of 5GW”

I agree; I doubt he had 5GW much in mind when he posted that…

“he’s simply observing that it’s better than the alternative - especially compared to the Prague Spring half a century ago.”

I’m not sure I like his argument. It’s a little too backward-looking, or attempting to justify the future in terms of the past. Okay, so I agree with him and Dan — sticks and stones will break my bones — but coloring what has occurred between Russia and Estonia in terms of roseate beauty seems irresponsible.

I mean, it’s even irresponsible to his own vision. The failure to see the strength of dispersed and indirect kinetics — i.e., calling it “non-kinetic” — shames his vision of an interconnecting, globalizing world organized by clear rule-sets. The multifarious activities, though themselves perhaps individually low-K, nonetheless may have high-K outcomes. I suppose that even the “Global Warming” issue might make a good case-in-point: So many people doing the low-K filling up their S.U.V.’s or switching on a light switch…

“But I also submit that info war attacks have more mechanisms for deflection and defense.”

That’s because they are so far rather limited to pre-defined networks and paths. One may defend those nodes and mechanisms. We are only on the cusp.

“The more malicious concern should not be in the nature of the effects (or their lack thereof); it should be in the anonymity of the attackers.”

I somewhat agree. (I won’t argue semantics from a skeptical p.o.v.!)

But my primary thought, when writing the short one-sentence entry, was the OODA. The actual nature of info-war is not in the info or how it is transmitted — i.e., the concrete nature of it — but in what people do with that info, those messages. For instance, the article Tom linked included mention of a horde of helpers going to Estonia to help them solve their problems; and although coding is pretty low-K in itself, the net effect of taking all these people away from their other activities might be rather large. (In a way, all this seems a little 2GW, in that those individuals must address the point that is attacked and may not be pursuing the things which would pre-empt the attackers. Or other things completely unrelated to info-war.)

More thoughts on the Blorum: “The Myth of ‘Non-Kinetic’ Effect.”

“I’d rather live in a higher G world than a lower G world.”

Me too.