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INFORMATION CONFRONTATION

We began researching insecurity eminating from home-made weapons and the solutions
applicable to Information warfare early on.  As we learned about threats from hackers,
phreakers, crackers, et al.   We located individuals, American and foreign, who are
collecting and searching to amass information about war fighting and weapon systems. 

We reported what appeared to be terrorist activities to the Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Defense Intelligence Agency.  Imagine if small numbers of self sufficient, elite, highly mobile forces (terrorist gangs, clubs or militia and/or perhaps individual disgruntled employees) could defeat and compel the surrender of
entrenched bureaucratic forces (Federal and State Agencies, the Military, or Multinational Corporations), without combat or physical injury on either side.  Snoopers (an integration of Hackers, Crackers, Phreakers, Intruders and Spies) are positioned to do this.  They have the potential to devastate both enemies and friends through destruction of communications, system vitality and logistics.  These attacking forces win because they are well prepared, move unchallenged by traditional security forces to manipulate back and trap doors to leave or enter any organization's weapon system and computers.

Snoopers concentrate their effort in unexpected places (repeated failures of ESS-7 switches during clandestine experimentation were hidden from the general public by AT&T).  Sponsored Snoopers have superior command, control, and information systems that initially decentralize any system security than reintegrate components as needed to achieve tactical initiatives.  Snoopers share when bureaucrats do not.   Catch one and several more are in place to continue the attack.

Knowledge sharing allows attackers to multiply like cockroaches.  Snoopers give away secrets to confuse those seeking to annihilate them.  They give their peers unparalleled intelligence overviews that produce dangerous results.   Bureaucracy forsakes antisocial innovators because they function outside expected norms of behavior.  Were they dedicated foes, we would risk immediate national disaster and defeat.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of naive hackers contribute unknowingly to the capitulation of American security. 

War is no longer fundamentally a function of who puts the most money, personnel, and technology on the battlefield.  Winning involves which opponent has the best means of finding information about a battleground or industry.  What distinguishes victors from losers is their grasp of information - not only from the mundane standpoint of knowing how to find opponent data repositories while keeping defenders confused, but, also concerning doctrine and organization of data. 

Bureaucracy is complicated and slow to respond.  Most bureaucrats react without thought, following outdated plans.  An analogy might be any board game where you see the entire board, but your opponent sees only his own pieces.  You win even if your opponent starts with quadruple your number of powerful pieces.  Politicians and bureaucrats contribute to national insecurity by imposing their ignorance on professional information protectors.
Poorly conceived laws confuse rather than coordinate response to intruder attacks.

Absent the threat that Terrorism poses, we find taxpayer pressures are forcing the United States to make do with less research.  Corporations and Military downsize innovation to buttress immediate return on investment.  The type of positive capability being developed by free thinkers mandates the United States of America protect itself and its interests and withstand the capacity of potential adversaries who use local computers and connectivity.  Comprehending the technologies and computer sophistication of potential aggressors is key to local defense.  In the 1980's Snoopers linked dozens, if not hundreds, of main frame processors to solve and integrate complex operations research techniques.  The good guys were hailed in "Scientific American" magazine as game players.  The bad guys were and are ignored as they continue to do their dastardly deeds.

Business and Military structures, battle order, and strategies continually undergo penetrating changes responding to technological innovation.  Innovation enables defenders to avoid depleting resources or eroding capacity.  Oversight Agencies vainly pursue a form of ideological "absolute" warfare.  Plans conceived are not user friendly.  Planners confuse complexity and technology.  Application of technology need not be complex yet security experts make it so.

New Software-based technologies are rapidly evolving.  More and better hacker innovations are coming on-line.  The most enticing includes Software triggered non-ionizing radiation affecting people, communications-based computer manipulation and  pilfering, electronic signal stealth, electronic intrusions, virtual organizations, artificial intelligence agents for data-gathering, software generated RF interference, network satellite communications sniffers, data warehouse intrusions, etc.  The foregoing improve command, control, communications for the aggressor.  Computers and intelligence (C4I) functions, futuristic designs for space-based RF weapons and control Software for automated and robotic warfare are conceived by many unrecognized entrepreneurs outside government. These accomplishments are ignored by large government contractors.  In addition, innovators are developing virtual reality systems for attack and battle simulation and game-based training.
 
OUT OF THE LOOP aggressor advances create a view of the military technology revolution (MTR) for hobbyist (and terrorist?) to use against bureaucracy.  Snoopers have copied and enhance most advanced ideas in each iteration.  Government and Industry ignore the Snooper yet he is often a trusted insider frustrated in his job.  The young kid, inexperienced in business, is more resourceful than the Old Boy and his network of contacts.

The future of aggression, specifically American ability to anticipate and neutralize it, is shaped by how leaders accept and exploit technological advances.  Technology permeates security but attempts to govern it.  It is not advanced technologies, per se, but the integration of technologies using a method such as the SIID that is important.  Technological change governing aggression in the twenty first century must be preoccupied with the information revolution.  Gaming is bringing a major shift to the nature of engagements and war fighting.  One needs only read of the exotic efforts at LANL, LLNL, Phillips Lab, Army Foreign Science and Technology Center, SPAWAR, and Navy Dalghren's "J" section to view unbridled, often unfocused, change created to subsidize large Federal Contractors and to keep our economy and their profits growing.

Information accessibility shows advances in computerized information and communications technologies and innovations in organization and management theory resulting from these new technologies.  Transformations in how information is collected, stored, processed, expressed, and presented, and in how we modify operations to optimize increased information availability breed change rapidly.  Warehoused information is a strategic
resource that is as valuable and influential in the value-added era as capital and labor were in the industrial age.  Snoopers transform more technology, more quickly, using DOD re-engineering techniques than do major Federal Contractors and commercial copyists.
 
France is fast becoming a leader in the modal logic of intrusion and data diddling.  India, Japan and Israel sell purloined software technologies to those able to pay the price.  Cooperation and statecraft are second to creating a revenue stream.  We have no friends, only economic competitors.

Advanced information and communications systems improve the efficiency of all activities.  New technology causes a transforming effect.  It throws into disorder old ways of thinking and operating.  Traditional Managers are frightened by this rapid change.  Aggressor advances provide capabilities to do things differently.  They suggest how things may be better if done differently.  Network sniffers created and used 1990 are the model "T"s of
wireless/RF sniffing after 2000.  Often ignored egos kill corporate and national security.  National innovative capacity is stunted by traditional means of managing.

The value of new technology has an efficiency effect not thought to be of consequence to the social system.  Smaller businesses install electronic networks for productivity and cost savings.  Executives set up electronic mail and other network applications to realize cost savings.  If we look beyond at behavioral and organizational changes, we see that social adjustments occur.  People enhance the application of technology to fit their needs.  New technologies are changing how people achieve. 

INTERNET determines what and who leaders know and/or care about.  The full range of rewards, and the dilemmas, will come from technologies affecting how people think and work communally--the social system.  Snoopers/Aggressors exchange and share technology to a degree unprecedented in government agencies or the Business Community.  They clone and recreate dozens of themselves.  Snooper BLOGS and BBS share information and extend the envelope of acceptable uses of technology.  Corporations bribe skilled intruders to hide intrusion into corporate information repositories. They pay "protection" money to preserve privacy and refuse to admit security failings.

Information availability and connectivity improvements disrupt and erode hierarchies around which institutions were originally designed.  Access to information diffuses and redistributes power to benefit smaller participants.  Knowledge crosses borders, and redraws the boundaries of  responsibilities.  Unfocused experimentation expands horizons opening closed systems.

Traditional Institutions remain central to the character of society.  Responsive, capable institutions are adapting their form and workings to the information age.  Surviving institutions evolve into new, flexible, intra-network integrated organizations.  Success depends on being able to interlace hierarchical and network principles.  The internal INTRANET is a corporate growing pain yet to be mastered.

Changes that trouble institutions, such as the erosion of classic organization structures, favor the rise of multi-organizational networks.  The information revolution strengthens the importance of people networks and communications.  Look at the popularity of USENET, BLOGS, and Chat-nets.   Cyberspace form is a restatement of institutional form.  While we traditionally build institutions (large ones, in particular) around hierarchies and aim them  to act on their own, multi-organizational networks (Intranets) consist of organizational segments or parts of institutions that we link together to act jointly as appropriate to need and goals.   The age of the ether committee is upon us.

The information revolution supports small intrusive groups by making it possible for diverse, dispersed people to talk, consult, coordinate, and operate in unison across great distances and international boundaries.  Decisions are based on having more and better information than that available in a structured environment.  The Information highway is neither policed nor secure.  Snoopers find this an advantage.  There is a free lunch.

The foregoing points bear directly on the future of corporate and national security and the future of physically aggressive conflict and strategic warfare.

The information technology  revolution is changing how countries disagree and how their armed forces wage war.  Open source intelligence and computer virus offer good examples.  We need a distinction between what might be call "Global Gaming"--national ideological conflicts waged as games through INTERNET type communication--and
"Software kill" weapons operational at the military/corporate level.  These terms are subjective.  Bureaucrats and PR specialists will devise better terms as everyone becomes involved.  For now, my terms help clarify a useful distinction, and identify the ways that technology is altering the character of aggressive actions short of physical war, and so too, the context and conduct of future war.

Information and communications, at origin, are forms of "information warfare, "defining who knows what, when, where, and why, or how secure a nation or corporation regarding its knowledge of itself and its competitors/adversaries.  During Desert Storm a reasonable UNIX programmer could have disrupted the Iraqi C2 system by modifying the file handlers of Iraq's COSMOS operating system in the National Telephone Company.  Today a novice programmer following instructions posted in "cyberspace" (either Internet, BLOG or BBS) can stop computers, diddle (change) data or steal corporate and military secrets anywhere in the world reached by wire, cellular or satellites.

Snooping is information-related conflict at the highest level between peoples, corporations, or nations.  It began as mathematical games described in Scientific American Magazine.  It means attempting to disrupt, damage, or modify what a competitive population (friend or enemy) knows or thinks it knows about itself and the world around it.  The game may focus on public or national opinion, or a combination of  both. 

Snooping could involve diplomatic measures (stealing French technological secrets and blaming Israel), propaganda and psychological campaigns (disinformation on the net), political and cultural subversion (Terry Kerry is a bitch), deception of or interference with local media (AT&T microwave repeater tower taken by hackers in Columbus, OH), infiltration of computer networks and databases (intrusion into DOD and Large Financial
computer systems at will), and efforts to promote opposing or opposition movements using computer networks (some call it media bias).  Calculating a strategy for snooping means integrating many measures viewed as separate and independent by traditional planners.  The new and innovative catalog we propose is needed to classify these threats.

Snooping represents a new means of conflict that spans the economic, political, social, and military.  In contrast to economic wars that target the production and distribution of goods, and political wars that aim at the leadership and institutions of a government, targeting information and communications that control physical activity distinguishes snooping.  Snooping is primarily nonmilitary, but it could have dimensions that overlap into military
operations.  For example, an economic war may involve trade restrictions, dumping of goods, illicit penetration and subversion of communications and/or logistics in a target country, and the theft of technology, none of which needs involve any military activity.  Yet, an economic war may include an armed blockade or strategic bombing of enemy assets.  The activity then escalates into physical war. 

Snooping that leads to targeting an enemy's military C4I capabilities turns into a Software war.  Tools such as SATAN, "Fuckin Hacker" and Sniffers in the hands of Snoopers, pose a viable current threat that can be expanded by the few to devastate the many.  During Desert Storm we offered Maj. Gus Taylor at SOCOM the ability to manipulate the Iraqi elephony base using AT&T COSMOS. Conversely, the 1991 Fort Sill Virus visited friendly
fire in the form of a software virus on our troops in Kuwait.

Global snooping takes on various forms, depending on national or corporate needs.  It may occurbetween governments of rival nations.  Remember the Russians targeted the US mbassy with a supposed microwave attack in the 1960s. Other actions might involve competitive corporations vying for a market share.  In some respects, the U.S. and Chinese governments are already engaged in snooping.  This is manifested in the activities
copyright and patent thieves in China and/or Trade blocks in the United States.  Similar problems are occurring with Israel, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and India.  Friends?

Other games are occurring between governments and groups (CIA and Hamas).  Governments may wage activities against illicit groups and organizations involved in terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, or drug smuggling.  Or, advocacy groups and movements may game against the policies of specific governments, involving, environmental, human-rights, or religious issues.  Snoopers claim to be oriented to Patriotic Terrorism (PT) in Objection to National Policy. (We published an essay about this topic in DEFENCE Magazine)  Participants may or may not be associated with nations.  Sometimes high-tech bleeding hearts organize into vast transnational networks and coalitions, i.e., the Unification Church, Greenpeace, Swiss Crackers, etc.

Another kind of Global snooping occurs between rival corporations, with governments maneuvering on the sidelines to prevent secondary damage to national interests and perhaps to support one nation or another.  The politically correct call this competitive intelligence and/or jockeying for position.  This is the most speculative kind of snooping.  Elements for effort appear on the INTERNET, especially among advocacy movements around the world.  Some movements are increasingly organizing into cross-border networks and coalitions, identifying more with the development of global civil society than with national goals.  Some are using advanced information and communications technologies, stolen from Federal research, to strengthen their activities.  This is the next
great frontier for ideological conflict. Global snooping is a prime characteristic of its method.

Most snooping about is nonviolent, but in the worst cases one could integrate a game into low-intensity conflict scenarios.  That may be why DOD and Homeland Security have research ongoing.  In the future, armies will not  wage physical war.  Independent groups (An Army of One) whom we now call electronic terrorists, guerrillas, bandits and thieves will wage war.  Acknowledged war between states will diminish, and physical intervention will become obsolete as the major form of global policing.  These developments will transform the nation-state.  Truly a technocratic mouse might roar.  Nations and organizations with little or no automation could hold a temporary advantage against retaliation.  The absence of data networks and C4I in Iran and Syria actually benefits their
aggression.

Some snooping will involve military issues.  Possible issue areas include identifying nuclear proliferation and transfers, drug smuggling, and antiterrorism because of the threats posed to international order and American national security interests.  Social trends (e.g., redefinition of information security ideas, new roles of advocacy groups, obscuring traditional boundaries between what is military and what is nonmilitary, between what is
public and what is private, and between what pertains to government and what pertains to the people) cause interest by military and intelligence services in snooper-related activities.

Global snooping is not conventionally defined.  Government and Industry will develop snooping as an instrument for trying, early-on, to prevent conflict.  Deterrence in a chaotic world may become as much a function of one's cyberspace posture as emergence of one's physical presence.

The proposed catalog of software manipulation techniques refers to conducting, or preparing to conduct, aggressive operations using information to affect destruction.  It means disrupting and destroying information and communications systems.  Software manipulation includes the  knowledge on which an adversary relies.  It means trying to know everything about an adversary while keeping the adversary from knowing anything about you.  It means manipulating the "balance of information and knowledge" in your favor, particularly if the preponderance of available resources are not.  It means using cognitive power and technology as a substitute for capital and labor.  It means frightening assemblies and governments into working against their stated National Interests.

This form of aggression involves diverse technologies, notably for C4I, for intelligence collection, processing, and distribution, for tactical communications, positioning, and for anti-fratricide, or for "smart" destructive systems.  It involves electronically blinding, jamming, deceiving, overloading, and intruding into an adversary's information and
communications operations.  Imagine the effect of uncontrolled virus in highly automated manufacturing industries.  Software manipulation goes beyond a set of measures based on a single technology or a mixture of electronic technologies.  It should not be confused with past meanings of computerized, automated, robotic, or electronic warfare cited by traditional strategic planners.  In early research we created "Virus as a weapon" software
to destroy the machines necessary to C3I.  The USAF/ESD called our soft code a national resource but feared to use it.  Once implemented it could not be controlled.

Software manipulation has broad implications for  institutions and doctrine.  Philosophical literature on the information revolution emphasizes organizational innovations, that cause different parts of an institution to function within interconnected networks rather than as separate hierarchies.  Software manipulation implies institutional redesign of American business and military in both intra- and inter-service areas.  Moving to networked structures will require decentralization of command and control.  Traditionalist professionals who do
not believe evolving technology can provide greater command presence for operations resist.  They do not trust their peers.  NB: Decentralization is only part of the picture.  Evolving technology will also provide a central overview understanding to strengthen management of complexity.  Many apologists for organizational redesign laud
decentralization.  Decentralization alone is not the key issue. The pairing of decentralization with inter-connectivity creates virtual centralization.  This is why we created Segment Indexed Integrated Database (SIID).  We used this creation to sell technology lost in massive government created databases back to willing Government and Corporate entities. Our model is an exponential leap from USAF Integrated Computer Assisted Manufacturing Program.   The government created a potential it has never understood.

Software manipulation requires developing new principles about the kinds of resources needed, where and how to deploy them, and what with and how to manipulate a competitor or enemy.  How and where to position what kinds of computers and related sensors, networks, databases, etc., will become as important as the question about deployment of intercontinental missiles, tactical missiles and bombers, and their support functions.  Software manipulation has implications for integrating the political and psychological with military strategies for warfare.  A new, very complex, branch of strategic thinking is emerging outside government controls.  Using the speed and simulation abilities of a computer, we will probably conduct wars without a man-in-the-loop.  We created, under
contract to SDI,  Watchdog/Paranoia, a system to manage SDI networks without the weak link, people.  The SDI feared any technique they could not manage or manipulate.  Implementation did not occur beyond a testing phase.

Software manipulation raises issues of  organization and doctrine, plus strategy, tactics, and systems design. It is applicable in low- and high-intensityconflicts, in conventional and non-conventional environments, and for defensive or offensive purposes.

As an innovation, SIID logic will be to the twenty-first century what SDI was to the twentieth century.  Failure of civilian and military agencies to share their experiences makes the software manipulation idea too speculative for precise definition.  At a minimum, it represents a new way of obtaining and controlling information.   Software manipulation is the ability to use, yet to be conceived, C4I to find, read, surprise, and deceive an enemy
before he does the same to you.  Information-related factors are more important than ever, due to evolving technologies, but it does not suggest a break with tradition.  Indeed, it resembles 1980's Vint Hill Farms idea of an "information war" that is "intertwined with, and superimposed on, other military operations."  The Software manipulation idea is broader than those of the US Army Vint Hill Farms, Navy SPAWAR and Seal Beach or USAF ESD.  We focus on unanticipated countermeasures to degrade an enemy's weapons while protecting our own.  Using software manipulation mechanisms makes it is possible to target an enemy's weapons to make him help you to achieve your tactical goals.

SIID manipulation signifies a transformation in the nature of aggression.  The foregoing is at odds with a view that uses buzzwords to claim that the key operators on an automated battlefield are future "brilliant" weapons, robots, and autonomous computers to fight wars.  Men will be subordinate to the machine, and combat will be unusually fast and laden with stand-off attacks.  This view misunderstands of the consequences of information availability.  SIID software manipulation is about structures as much as technology.  

The catalog will describe new man-machine interfaces that amplify human capabilities.  It does not separate man and machine.  In some situations, we may wage our wars fast and from afar, but in many other situations, it is man-driven.  New combinations of far and close and fast and slow will be the norm, not one extreme or the other.  In Desert Storm collapsing the Iraqi C2 was possible.  We never carried out the attack as those in power chose not to believe in non-contact conflict.

The aggressor-based information technology (IT) revolution alters the playing field, at both the strategic and tactical levels.  IT is increasing the breadth and depth of game play and ever-improving the accuracy and destructiveness of conventional systems for aggression.  The snooper has heightened the importance of C4 to the point where dominance in this aspect alone may yield consistent war-winning advantages to able practitioners.  Currently most practitioners are outside-the-system Snoopers.  The proposed catalog is a much broader idea than attacking an enemy's C4I systems while improving and defending one's own.  In the Jeffersonian sense, it is the effort to turn knowledge into physical power. 

Thorough software manipulation designs and applications require advanced technology.  Yet, manipulation is not solely reliant upon advanced technology.  Software manipulation requires free thinkers.  The continued development of advanced information and communications technologies is crucial for U.S. economic, geopolitical and military capabilities.  An aggressor info-warrior in China, Korea, Iran or Syria using available connectivity can easily traverse the world and do damage on the continental United States.  Failure of managers to accept alternate attack methods is key to the success of software manipulation.  Organizational and psychological dimensions become as important as the technical to bypass the limited security controls now in place.  In most circumstances,
aggressors can wage manipulation, with the mechanisms found and enhanced by using low level Internet accessible technology.