RE: [iwar] Dr Raj Mehta - National Security in Network Era

From: Rob Rosenberger (junkmail@barnowl.com)
Date: 2002-11-28 15:35:09

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From: "Rob Rosenberger" <junkmail@barnowl.com>
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Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 17:35:09 -0600
Subject: RE: [iwar] Dr Raj Mehta - National Security in Network Era
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He asked for constructive criticism.  All right...

First let's recognize the fact Mehta "editorialized" rather than "detailed"
his concerns about information warfare.  One would expect a Ph.D. to offer a
hell of a lot more to an audience of constructive critics.  For example, how
can one accept on faith the author's "hypothetical scenarios that are
technically quite feasible"?  Mehta presents no real-world anecdotes in his
editorial to support this alleged feasibility.  At most he uses sweeping
generalizations of crime (a problem we've dealt with since Eve plucked fruit
from the forbidden tree).

To put it succinctly: Mehta focuses on a single arbitrary "cause"
(information warfare) and he ignores the amazing commonness of the "effects"
it would produce.  To put it in detail:

Mehta asserts a criminal element could "quite feasibly" bring railways,
telecom, airways, and power grids to a halt -- at which point "modern India
will come to a stand-still, and law and order problems could result across
the country."  And yet modern India (like modern America) regularly suffers
regional outages of these infrastructures.  A large portion of the U.S.
state of Tennessee recently lost its power grid for three days during a
severe winter event, and yet the state maintained law & order without coming
close to a declaration of martial law.  The U.S. power industry actually
conspired to deprive the state of California of electricity and they went so
far as to cause rolling blackouts.  Like Tennessee, California never
considered the notion of martial law.  Hurricanes destroy whole sections of
he U.S. eastern seaboard nearly every year; they can easily contaminate
150,000 square kilometers of vital water supplies with dead carcasses and
sewage overflows.  And yet the eastern seaboard seldom declares martial law.
Regional U.S. airways & railways routinely fall victim to severe weather;
one would expect India's airways & railways to suffer the same earthly fate.
And yet life goes on.

Furthermore, India's airways & railways deal with regional paramilitary
flareups (e.g. along the Pakistani border) not usually seen in the U.S.
Should we infer Kashmir's unrest stems partly from the unreliability of its
mass transportation?

Mehta asserts the banking & financial industrial complex could "quite
feasibly" suffer enormous losses if "unfriendly elements" cook the books
without the industry's knowledge.  So?  We've seen fantastic examples of
this all throughout the ages.  Nations have long used counterfeiting as a
way to destabilize their enemies and/or pay for covert operations.  (Both
sides counterfeited in the U.S. civil war, for example.)  Florence, Italy
nearly collapsed from financial ruin in the late 15th century after the
death of its most prominent politician revealed he raped the city-state's
coffers.  In the late 20th century, the implosion of the "LTCM" hedge fund
_literally_ set the entire global financial world on the brink of collapse
due to the nitroglycerine power & instability of the Black-Scholes model.
Again, Mehta focuses on a single arbitrary "cause" (database manipulation)
and he ignores the amazing commonness of the "effects" it would produce.

We can skip a critique of information warfare in revenue collection.  I view
it as merely a nation-state's role within the overall banking & financial
industrial complex.

Mehta asserts a band of terrorists could "quite feasibly" manipulate an
immigration database to gain entry to India (or any other computer-dependent
nation).  "The terrorists would be allotted visas and would enter India
without any agency being able to detect such an invasion.  Can you imagine
what havoc this could cause?" he asks rhetorically.  And yet, once again,
history revels with instances of sponsored actors who enter *and* exit an
enemy's borders with impunity.  CIA, KGB, Moussad, et al. create "confetti
packs" (movie ticket stubs, bank transaction jackets, wallet photos with
handwriting in a local dialect, etc.) so an agent will look like a typical
citizen if the police empty his pockets.  Terrorist groups -- or to use the
old term: "agents provocateur" -- teach the very same "tradecraft" to their
own "sleepers."  It takes only motivation & resources to "quite feasibly"
manipulate any given immigration system no matter how primitive or
state-of-the-art it may be.

...I could go on, of course.  Let me reiterate: Mehta focuses on a single
arbitrary "cause" and he ignores the amazing commonness of the "effects" it
would produce.  No offense, but I rank his editorial at that of an
undergraduate.  I should note Cohen routinely offers enough details on
information warfare to form his conclusions.  Mehta should follow his lead.

Rob the constructive critic

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