From: iw@all.net
Subject: IW Mailing List history/951130
---------------------------------------------
From: fc@all.net (Dr. Frederick B. Cohen)
Subject: Re: IW Mailing List history/951129
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 22:00:39 -0500 (EST)

A stab at a definition of IW:

	Information := symbolic representations in the most general sense
	Warfare := armed conflict

Information Warfare := Information x Warfare =

	armed conflict involving, effecting, or relating to
	symbolic representations AND symbolic representations
	involving, effecting, or relating to armed conflict.

Other issues of possible interest:

	Armed -> What are the armaments (a.k.a. weapons and supplies)
	with which military conflict is waged? Is anything and
	everything a possible weapon given that the conflict is intense
	enough to justify its use?

	Conflict -> What is the nature of conflict (i.e.  disharmony,
	fighting, opposition) and the resolution of differences in the
	context of an armed force? What are the phases of conflict and
	what are the armaments involved in those phases, and how do we
	go about resolving differences in those phases?  Is the nature
	of war really changing to a socio-economic struggle for a share
	of the global pie, or is it about power and land and God and
	money and life and death, or is it about something else altogether?

	Symbols -> What are the symbols and how do do they interact with
	armaments and what do they have to do with the conflict? How can
	symbols be exploited and what are the risks of altering the use and
	meaning of symbols?

	Representations -> What is the role of representation in this
	issue, and how do representations (a.k.a. perceptions?) interact
	with symbols and armaments and conflicts? What are the emotional
	factors involved with people and the physical and mathematical
	properties associated with information technologies and how do they
	operate in the context of armed conflict?

In my current opinion (which is likely to change after hearing your
responses), in order to understand IW, we must come to fully understand
these issues and be comfortable in dealing with them.  I think we have a
long way to go and I hope that the participants in this list can help
get there. 

-> See: Info-Sec Heaven at URL http://all.net/
Management Analytics - 216-686-0090 - PO Box 1480, Hudson, OH 44236
---------------------------------------------
Moderator's note:

	Today's mailing includes two rather lengthy (for this forum)
articles.  Their length was, in my opinion, justified by their content
so they were included.  Reader comments on this will be appreciated. 

---------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 95 23:15 EST
From: Michael Wilson <0005514706@mcimail.com>
Subject: RE: IW Mailing List history/951129

I'm attaching two articles that I would like to have made available to
your list.  When you read them you will understand how I view IW, something
I have been engaged in--one form or another--for 15 years.  Your members
can distribute as long as they leave my credits, copyright notice, and
attach my contact address (5514706@mcimail.com); please let me know if
you don't receive both articles (I will end the transmission with [end]).
MW
---

The Essence of Warfare: A Return to First Principles

Michael Wilson
The Nemesis Group

Copyright 1995. All rights reserved.

Heraclitus noted that a man cannot walk in the same river twice, for it
was not the same river, and he was not the same man.  Less eloquently,
things change.  It stands to reason that conflict, at once the driving
force for change, the method of change, and the fall-out from change,
would itself change in nature over time.  As things change, and we are
able to observe more of it, certain patterns begin to arise; distance,
in space and time, certainly lends perspective. 

Once Man thought the Earth was the center of the Universe; then Galileo
worked out a theory of motion, and paid the price; Newton comes along,
and given some room for contemplation, generalizes a number of
principles; Einstein catches some flaws and postulates an even more
generalized set of theories.  We all stand on the Shoulders of Giants. 

No surprise, then, that some basic principles behind the Art or Science
of War are becoming more evident as we once again transform our ways of
thinking on the subject. 

Approaches to conflict in the world fall into a four-quadrant grid,
passive-active on one axis, defense-offense on the other.  Passive
defense stems from the assumption that a situation is 'friendly,' while
active defense assumes 'hostile.' American activities tend to fall into
this first category, while those of the Cold War Soviet Union fell into
the later.  Passive defense is a lethal conceit--no wonder that America
has found itself playing catch-up on every conflict it has ever engaged
in.  The inherent danger of active defense is seen in the fall of the
Warsaw Pact and sponsor: total collapse from exhaustion as they actively
tilted every windmill, unable to afford the expense of continual
vigilance bordering on paranoia. 

The other grid half is the realm of the active and passive use of force. 
Active offense, primarily the unnecessary bifurcation into attrition and
manoeuvre warfare, is an area of excellence for the United States. 
Passive offense is an area that eludes the military establishment,
although, as I will explain, this isn't necessary with a deeper
understanding of what conflict is about. 

Life is the struggle for the free energy in a system; even the most
basic organisms are primarily 'concerned' with metabolism and
reproduction.  As a political economy progresses and evolves,
interesting things happen, as you would expect in any system where
complexity can be measured by the combinatorial interactions of the
aggregate sub-systems.  Political economies, social structures if you
will, can be defined by the depth of what can be called 'dependency
infrastructure,' or the 'value add' chain. 

The most basic political economy is that of the Agrarian society, The
Age of Bread.  Such social structures have a very short 'material' value
chain (phases in a process where the receiver of the process experiences
a net gain in value or performance because of the prior process), and a
short 'informational' value chain.  For example, the material value
chain of hunter-gatherers is minimal, just the raw labour involved in
the acts of hunting and gathering, and the informational value chain is
foodstuff identification and processing knowledge.  Slightly more
complex is a feudal society, where already the material-based labour
component was being advanced by the informational--blacksmithing and
tack to create plows, knowledge of planting seasons, milling grain for
bread, animal husbandry.  This period is still preoccupied in the
struggle for the basics of life--food, shelter, warmth, procreation
(Maslow's Hierarchy); resource, labour, and capital are King (usually
quite literally, trapped in a zero-sum game, hierarchical political
economy). 

The next phase of development is the Industrial Age, The Age of Mass
Production.  This phase has long value chains in material resource
(systems to build systems to build systems...; tools to build tools to
build tools...), and a steadily growing value chain in informationals. 
Additionally, considerable effort is dedicated to the social contract,
another example of spontaneous order, which allows the complexities of a
political economy to function.  The human species, not content to let
such systems be self-regulating, has wasted enormous resource in the
attempt to govern (in a cybernetic sense) the process, not realizing
that where there is free competition, there is no dependency, something
most groups claim to desire. 

The current phase of development is what has been termed the Information
Age, the Age of Patents.  Material value chains are beginning to die
back, while the informational value chain is increasing; this reflects
the situation that embodied thoughts can have value (and in fact are
replacing the resource-labour-capital triad), while still being
dependent upon the infrastructure.  Western civilizations, the most
advanced of this phase, are fumbling with the new informational value
chain that progresses data into information into knowledge into wisdom;
most effort actually goes into simple shuttling of raw data and a little
information from here to there.  The social contract is more confused
than ever; specialization has been forced by the complexities of getting
to this phase, yet most of the critical basis for interaction is being
undermined.  It is still increasingly an age of positive-sum games,
heterarchies, etc. 

Interestingly, extrapolation of this trend leads to a further or
complete decay in the material value chain, possibly because of advances
in space exploration or nanotechnology.  We'll have to wait to get
there-then to see which it is. 

Now to return to conflict.  In the Agrarian Phase, direct control of the
means of production through possession was necessary; from this phase we
have centuries of examples of 'conventional' warfare, attrition style. 
As advances were made into the Industrial Age, devastation of the
dependency infrastructure was no longer a viable option--what was broken
couldn't work for the winner's benefit.  This led to progress in
manoeuvre warfare, where control became important, rather than
devastation.  Other than a decidedly significant side-trip because of
atomic and then nuclear weapons, this remains the guiding principle of
modern warfare.  In fact, it demonstrates (incidentally satisfying the
correspondence principle) a more fundamental nature of 'warfare'
oriented around the dependency infrastructure (DI):

-- Conventional warfare seeks victory by overwhelming or through forcing
a failure of the opposition's DI. 

-- Manoeuvre warfare seeks victory by taking control of key elements of
the opposition's DI, essentially imparting control. 

-- Guerrilla warfare orients around opportunistic attacks on the
opposition's DI, making the energy cost of conflict too great to
maintain. 

-- Political warfare is control of the members of a political economy
through (establishment and) control of a DI, coupled with media
manipulation, propaganda. 

-- Terrorism is a case of actions taken against the social contract to
attract media attention to a conflict when the media is (perceived to
be) controlled by the opposition. 

A dependency infrastructure is composed of widely varied elements of the
social contract of the political economy--command-control bodies, social
services, education, the workings of an economy, communication systems,
spiritual leaders, anything that supports the value chain of the phase,
directly and collaterally. 

Warfare, then, is about the control of the dependency infrastructure;
some forms of warfare need not require a single shot to be fired,
instead seeking victory through establishing control of the dependency
infrastructure.  This cognitive tool explains many things:

-- Gandhi was successful in large part by his demonstration that the
infrastructure of the raj was actually in the control of the Indian
people (consent of the governed), and they reasserted themselves in this
fashion.  Other strategies of Gandhi bear study, including his
self-creation as a media symbol and deliberate infliction of harm upon
that symbol as a method of war, whether through his being arrested, or
fasting to the point of personal bodily harm. 

-- The problem of Iraq for the West, post-Gulf War, is that the Iraqi
dependency infrastructure was left intact, and in the hands of Saddam
Hussein.  This does not question the validity of the conflict itself,
which has been claimed to be in the 'national interest.' The rule of
thumb to see if something is a national interest? Does it have an effect
on your dependency infrastructure to a dangerous degree.  Any singular
control of significant OPEC resources can be viewed as a weapon in the
making. 

-- Social unrest occurs because of a failure of the dependency
infrastructure for those suspended and dependent inside it; riots are a
symptom of this problem, by people who suffer from a cultural disease we
have no name for. 

-- The odd relationship the U.S.  has with terror; access to the free
media market has become important to support for a cause, while the
blind eye the U.S.  turns on certain issues makes it a target.  Any
group who feels a media bias on an issue, Palestinians versus Zionist
occupation, Ireland versus United Kingdom rule for example, will be
caught trying to have it both ways. 

-- The problems the U.S.  faced in Viet Nam, such as the inability to
control a dependency infrastructure with air strikes, or the total
corruption of the allied infrastructure, driving anyone adversely
effected to the alternative infrastructure supplied by the Viet Cong and
NVA. 

This cognitive tool also suggests a new form of warfare where victory
comes from the establishment of alternative dependency infrastructures
in a political economy, in conjunction with propaganda efforts (which
would be useful in the Former Soviet Union, Central and South America,
or North Africa for example).  Let me also add that it is going to be a
serious failing in areas such as Gaza/West Bank where no infrastructural
development is being undertaken, the greatest threat to peace in the
region. 

Following this chain of reasoning, even new areas of thought on conflict
make sense, such as the special case of information warfare--at one end
of a 'force spectrum' it can be used as a weapon of mass destruction
(WMD) just as nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons which overwhelm
the dependency infrastructure of an opponent, and at the other end it
can be used in guerrilla, terror, or political warfare to selectively
destroy or surreptitiously control the dependency infrastructure.  Seen
on these terms, it makes perfect sense in terms of doctrine; it also
explains why it is an increasing and soon to be critical threat to the
nations of the West. 

Conflict in this 'advanced' world is not getting any easier.  To
understand what is occurring in Bosnia or Somalia, you have to put them
in their context; to understand future conflicts, with guerrillas,
terrorists, propagandists, hackers, cyberpunks, et al, we will have to
search for the basic essence of conflict--because only by understanding
those basic principles will we be able to prevent the world from falling
apart around us, or at least not be caught out by it when it does.

---------------------------------------------
Moderator's Note:

	This dependency issue is a critical component of understanding
risk.  A classical line in info-sec is that (in essence) dependency and
vulnerability and threats combine to create risks.  Info-sec is about
managing the risks (in the area of information protection).  Wilson's
generalization of this to information warfare is also not new, but it is
one of the more lucid accounts I have seen.  It is also worth noting
that the Tofflers' book "War and Anti-War" (Little Brown) discusses some
of these issues in substantial depth, and Cohen's book "Protection and
Security on the Information Superhighway" (Wiley and Sons) provides a
more detailed accounting of dependency, vulnerability, and threats.

---------------------------------------------
---
Hardwar, Softwar, Wetwar: Operational Objectives of Information Warfare

Michael Wilson
The Nemesis Group

Copyright 1995.  All rights reserved.

Society, a political economy, is about a mechanism I will refer to as
the 'value chain.' A value chain is an aggregate infrastructure of
processes, best explained by example. 

One instance of a value chain comes from Mankind's early days--metal. 
Based on what ores are readily available in an area, Man has built a
variety of implements, starting with rough-hewn rock or wood, moving via
the process of discovery and learning to more complex substances--iron,
bronze, steel.  Years and centuries pass, and the materials, knowledge,
and processes that started turning out plowshares now turn out
automobiles, airplanes, bridges, skyscrapers.  Each step in the process,
each advance made, adds just a little more value to the output of the
previous step, building vastly more complex systems from the
interactions of numerous smaller ones. 

Politics is about the ownership and control of the value chain.  Western
democracies, founded on such contracts as the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution, are based on principles that every
individual owns themselves and the fruits of their labour, that they are
each entitled to an equal opportunity to be responsible for themselves. 
Western governments are the tools, the value chain the citizens created
to gain an economy of scale--to do those things collectively that are
best done so.  Among such things is the provision of a common defense,
in short, war. 

War is a challenge to or from the value chain.  Just as the discovery of
steel heralded a new wave of conquests against those less developed, war
is the competition of value chains.  Whether fought with Toledo steel
swords, or composite-armour tanks, conventional and unconventional
warfare are about attacks on various stages of the material value chain,
by methods best suited to the attack on each link.  This is 'hardwar' --
an obsessive emphasis on the real control of real things, in methods,
means, and end objectives. 

This approach loses sight of the fact that the material value chain is
not the only value chain, and I would venture to say, not the most
important one.  Value chains stretch back to the beginnings of
civilization, by definition in fact.  Behaviour is purposeful, directed,
and a driving force is needed, a motivation.  Maslow worked out a
hierarchy of needs that do much to explain the beginnings and evolution
of political economies. 

Maslow's Hierarchy of Need looks like this:
-- Physiological needs--survival, food, drink, health;
-- Safety needs, physical and emotional needs--clothing, shelter, protection;
-- Affection needs--family, belonging;
-- Esteem needs--self-respect, achievement, appreciation;
-- Self-fulfillment--realization and utilization of one's potential.

Man's Agrarian phase of development, and that shadowy period before,
were focused on an almost purely material value chain, because just
staying alive, reproduction and metabolism, took all of an individual's
time and energy.  Even here, however, the roots of another value chain
are visible, something I will refer to as the informational value chain,
a misnomer as I will point out shortly, but a necessary one for
convenience of expression and understanding. 

The process of survival was driving the beginnings of discovery,
creating language so that such discoveries could be passed on, and
education so that they could be made aggregate.  Man was learning many
things--how to build shelters, when to plant crops, how to mine ores and
smelt metals, what plants are edible, the making of weapons, and the
strategies and tactics of using them.  Necessity is a Mother. 

A mixed material-informational value chain existed in the Industrial
period, as man had learned how to take his simple tools to make more
complex tools, using them to add more and more 'value,' levels of
complexity.  This complexity forced specialization, and herein lay the
foundations of the modern dedicated informational value chain. 
Obviously, this bifurcation of material and informational value chains
is unnatural--in many ways, from our distant perspective, the advances
made along the material value chain are purely the result of advances
from the informational value chain. 

While the process of the material value chain is dependent on the
materials it relates to, the informational value chain has a much more
(and at the same time, less) clear mechanism, which looks like this:
              Data --> Information --> Knowledge --> Wisdom,
where the arrows represent 'transforms or evolves into.' These stages
merit some explanation. 

Data becomes information through a process of filtering, an exclusion
process.  In mathematics, this is set theory, where the concepts of
'belonging' and representation open a can of worms.  Think of it as
finding the needle in the haystack by removing anything that isn't a
needle; more generally, the item or items are filtered from the larger
body of data.  Gregory Bateson called information 'any difference that
makes a difference,' and he was quite correct.  There are number of
'Smith' or 'Johnson' entries in the (U.S.A.) phonebook, but they aren't
all necessarily the one you want to talk to. 

The next stage of the informational value chain is information being
transformed into knowledge; we have no 'real' understanding of how this
occurs in our brains, but it has roots in our abilities to perform
analysis, generalization, abstraction, extrapolation, and utilization. 
These are all functions of the decision-making process. 

The final stage is the evolution from knowledge to wisdom, a deeper
comprehension of the concepts, systems, relationships, interactions, and
integration. 

Oddly enough, explanation of the chain points out the problem with
calling it an 'informational value chain,' just as this is not really
the 'Information Age'--society at this stage is actually oriented around
data, shuttling it from one point to another, bumping against the
constraints of throughput, bandwidth, and interactivity.  There is no
large scale function, no part of the political economy providing
value-add in the process.  The reason for this explosive emphasis on
data is obviously the computer, and all the things a computer makes
possible; the reason for there being no true value-add is that while
computers are very good at moving data around, and can even be used in a
limited way to filter data, the rest of the value chain is totally
unaddressed by the advances in technology (forays into artificial
intelligence notwithstanding). 

Returning to the application of this thinking to the topic of warfare,
conventional warfare is concerned primarily with the material value
chain.  Attrition-style warfare seeks direct control of the material
basics--labour, capital, and resource--while manoeuvre-style warfare
focuses on control of the 'key points,' dependencies in the material
value chain.  Unconventional warfare seeks to overload the material
value chain by various methods, whether a nuclear weapon vaporizes large
pieces of it, or guerrilla warfare undermines the chain by an
'ontological judo,' using the dis-economies of scale in the value chain
against the value chain itself. 

For simplicities sake, but following the same line of reasoning, I
define information warfare, or 'softwar' as I think of it to avoid the
misnomer, as conflict based upon and/or directed at the informational
value chain. 

Given the preoccupation of advanced political economies with the
movement of data from point-to-point, it is no surprise that most
thinking about softwar revolves around 'denial of service' (DOS) attacks
shutting computers and networks down.  There are a number of problems
with this--it is very much an artifact of hardwar thinking bleeding over
into softwar, it is unsubtle, inelegant, it betrays a lack of
understanding of the 'first principles' of warfare, it looks more like a
'scorched earth' policy than any high strategy, and most of all, it
misses the forest by looking only at the trees. 

In hardwar, the most catastrophic attack that can be made is directed at
the very bottom of the value chain; this is why there is a perfectly
rational fear of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.  Softwar is
completely reversed--the farther into the value chain any attacks are
made, the more leveraged they are, the less 'force' required, just as
with the differences between attrition- and manoeuvre-style warfare. 
Clearly, a more detailed explanation of the relationship between an
informational value chain and softwar is called for. 

The existence of a deep informational value chain is, in many ways, the
defining characteristic of an advanced civilization.  This very
existence is the first element available in softwar--just as steel won
out over iron, having satellites beats not having them, and electronic
communication beats a horse-borne messenger (figuratively). 

The next stepping-stone to softwar is intelligence, in the espionage
sense of the term; intel is largely a function of the collection of
massive amounts of data, and then filtering that deluge.  As far back as
the dawn of Man, intel was a function of softwar, which comes as no
surprise to anyone, least of all people such as Sun Tzu.  Knowing its
place in the value chain helps to explain many of the dilemmas of the
intelligence community:

-- The escalating need and dependence on electronic collection of data
countered with the information overload disaster;

-- The inability to keep pace with the increasing load of dynamic data;

-- The problem of electronic intelligence (ELINT) missing subtleties of
motive, intent, and other nuance that human intelligence (HUMINT) used
to provide;

-- The inherent flaw of the intelligence process remaining unbiased--the
transformation of data into information automatically calls in to play a
paradigm, interpretation, judgment, prioritization; this bias is
amplified and exaggerated in the process of augmentation. 

Softwar attacks on the civilian value chain infrastructure actually look
more like hardwar attacks.  Denial of service (DOS) attacks can range
across the value chain, effecting the contributory infrastructure and
social contract the way terrorism does.  There are common elements,
obvious from the assessment that the current phase of social development
is only that of a data-based society--attacks will be on the electronic
transport layer we think of as communications, and the control
mechanisms we generally rely on as the 'societal glue.' An important
note is that DOS attacks on civilian entities can't go farther up the
value chain because there is no chain there to target.  Military DOS
attacks are focused on many of the same elements of command and control;
this leads to the conclusion that civilian attacks are likely only to be
collateral consequences from military objectives.  The fear that such
attacks will occur is well justified--after all, the techniques used by
guerrillas and terrorists worldwide already map into this new domain. 
Whether they work is another thing altogether--much of the low end of
the military informational value chain is already hardened, a by-product
of the nuclear age.  Satellites have always been assumed to be
'expendable,' and military command-and-control has been a target in
millennia of warfare--capture of a commander in a hierarchical structure
is more effective than trying to grind down troops, and while a
heterarchy would better withstand attacks, no certain blow could be
struck.  This sort of softwar attack is survivable, correctable, and
will cost a great deal in damages, but much like Pearl Harbor in World
War II, it is likely to only infuriate the citizenry of the targeted
political economy. 

More subtle methods of DOS attacks may be effective, however. 
Historically, when analysis and decision-making power were seated in the
same person, these were worthwhile targets; in modern times however,
most politicians are totally orthogonal to the informational value
chain, providing no value add themselves.  The tools in place to provide
such value add are, however, directly susceptible to such attack, and in
many cases aren't even protected. 

Assume for example that an Adversary planned a conflict and wanted to
impair the decision-making abilities of a powerful, advanced ally of
their target.  Are attacks on orbiting satellites that provide data on
their region even possible, let alone cost effective? Unlikely.  A
little leverage brought to bear, however, can answer that problem. 
Imagine this chain of events:

-- A set of video cameras are placed so that they collect data, the
license plates of vehicles going into the 'hostile' intelligence agency;

-- Data is continually collected and processed;

-- The license plates are checked for in a variety of databases to
provide the name and any other data on the owner and likely driver;

-- The driver's credit and personal data is pulled, as well as any other
information that can be checked from the ever-growing number of
databases;

-- Based on the data derived, a structural map of the organization is
developed, founded on such things as salary levels, education level,
specialty, et al;

-- Certain functions are targeted, such as analysis sections or skill
bases, such as knowledge of the Adversary's region or language;

-- Just prior to hostilities, such individuals are targeted for either
subversion or elimination. 

This sort of DOS attack is directly targeted at the deeper levels on the
informational value chain--those with knowledge or wisdom about the
region and Adversary.  It has many benefits besides being cheap, direct,
and leveraged; it leaves the political players 'in the game,' but
without any way to makes sense of the overwhelming levels of data
generated prior to or during a conflict.  Because of the common
mechanism of reliance by the military on politicians to set objectives,
any coherent military response by the targeted country is also
hamstrung.  It takes no great sophistication to carry out exactly this
sort of attack, but the impact, particularly the transformation of the
political structure into one of 'value subtracted,' is considerable. 
Recovery from such an attack is a matter of luck in making all the right
choices in the time period it takes to rebuild the lost functionality,
an unknown period, but far longer than rebooting a computer and
reinstalling software as after a DOS hardwar attack. 

A true softwar attack is one of covert perversion, best thought of in
terms of a military adage--war is deception.  People make decisions
based on their cognitive environment, their infosphere; control of the
data comprising such an environment allows a certain amount of control
over those in it.  The drawback of course is that the better the
information of the opponent about their infosphere, the closer the
deception must be to the reality provided by the environment.  Very much
a situation of Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO), this sort of attack is
about the use of lies and mis/disinformation to produce very real
results.  It can be very direct, and successful when so--surrendering
when you only think you are surrounded but aren't, inflatable tanks and
airplane skeletons to misdirect thinking regarding the time and place of
an attack, or an impossible-to-implement missile defense system that
leads a believing opponent to spend itself into collapse.  Such attacks
will become more prevalent and subtle when direct control of data
channels is possible; the double-edged sword of the media can be grasped
more directly than was CNN by the West during the Gulf War, and to much
better effect, but care must be taken to avoid the sapping of will that
occurred during the Viet Nam conflict. 

Viet Nam, besides teaching a host of lessons in conventional warfare,
guerrilla warfare, hardwar, and softwar, was also a masterful piece of
the 'high end' of softwar--'wetwar,' the battle for will and mindshare. 

Wetwar, derived from the concept of 'wetware,' the hardware/software of
the human mind, is war conducted entirely through subtle, mainly
non-violent means, to control the deepest end of the informational value
chain--an insidious form of propaganda directed at will, support, and
perception of data.  Viet Nam is a case study of intentional and
unintentional wetwar, with brainwashing, confessions by POWs, media bias
in the data --> information link, GIs televised coming home in body
bags, Hanoi Jane, winning yet losing the Tet offensive, bombing
campaigns that drove neutral civilians to join the alternative and
hostile infrastructure set up and controlled by the wily opponent, et
al.  This form of warfare is the pinnacle of skill, where your opponent
defeats himself, and then writes you a bank draft and says he was sorry. 

Information warfare, whatever its form--hardwar, softwar, or wetwar--is
simple and complex, subtle and obvious, a product of an advanced
civilization yet oddly echoed in ancient Sun Tzu, part of the past and a
still-unrealized future.  It can no more be dismissed than any other
form of war; not to prepare for it is the act of a fool, yet it is
difficult to prepare for.  Focusing on one small area, such as DOS
attacks, leads to errors just as the idea of attrition and air
superiority did in Viet Nam--control of one part of an infrastructure or
value chain is like trying to control a puppet with only one string. 
Understanding information warfare is very much a search for an
understanding of conflict and progress, Aquinas' concept of a return to
the first principles.  You can go so far down the path, only to find
yourself back at the very beginning. 

"In battle there are not more than two methods of attack--the direct and
indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of
maneuvers.  The direct and indirect lead on to each other in turn.  It
is like moving in a circle--you never come to an end.  Who can exhaust
the possibilities of their combination?" -- Sun Tzu

[end]
---------------------------------------------
Moderator's Note:

Sun Tzu - "The Art of War" - available from many publishers over the
years in different translations - my copy is from Barnes and Noble
Press.

Author's addendum:
Sun Tzu--
The net has the 1910 Lionel Giles translation of the warfare classic _The Art of
War_ stored at a variety of locations; any good web search utility will uncover 
a variety of links.  The online version is, however, a difficult read; I have 
five different printed editions, all different in layout and translation, and 
there are many more versions than that (including an incredible micro-printed 
one, for easy reference while hiding in a trench I suspect).  Far be it for me 
to comment on the classic, but I am compelled to note that I have found Sun Tzu 
a ready volume to quote; whether this is from his mastery of his subject across 
the centuries, or my personal desire to read into his work that which I wish to 
see, remains to be decided.
---

Maslow--
BEHAVIOUR

Behaviour is purposeful, directed towards some end.  That is, it is
motivated.  The driving force is need.  The direction is towards
perceived reward and away from perceived punishment
HIERARCHY OF NEEDS ( A.H. MASLOW, 1954) {1} 

Primary Needs:

1.  Physiological.  Survival needs.  Examples: Food, drink, health. 

2.  Safety.  Physical and emotional security.  Such as clothing,
shelter, protection against attack (unemployment benefits, redundancy
pay, old age pension). 

3.  Affection needs.  Affection and the need to belong.  Examples:
Family unit, other small groups such as work groups. 

4.  Esteem needs.  For self-respect, for accomplishment, for
achievement.  The achievement must be recognised and appreciated by
someone else. 

5.  Self-fulfilment needs.  To utilise one's potential to the maximum
working with and for one's fellow beings. 

Higher Order Needs

Once primary needs are satisfied they cease to act as drives and are
replaced by needs of a higher order.  So that higher order needs are
predominant when primary needs are satisfied. 

REFERENCES
{1} Motivation and Personality A.H.  Maslow N.Y., Harper and Bros, 1954

Derived from a WWW search (keyword 'Maslow'), source material provided by:
Motivation Summary/Manfred Davidmann/manfred@solbaram.demon.co.uk

---

Bateson-- None of Greg Bateson's work is on the net, except by
reference; a pity, as his work is brilliant.  Better known as the
husband of Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, Bateson enacted pivotal
work in the field of psychology, including discovery/invention of the
concept of the double-bind and a cognitive model of schizophrenia.  His
comment regarding information comes from his book _Steps Toward An
Ecology of Mind_ (1973 NY: Ballentine) which can occasionally be found
in notably complete libraries in a no-doubt ragged paperback edition. 
If you are particularly lucky, you may also turn up an interview he gave
to Stuart Brand (of _Media Lab_ fame) or one of Bateson's other fine
books.  Any warrior engaged in psyops or wetwar should have Bateson
under their belt. 

---------------------------------------------
Date: 30 Nov 1995 14:24:14 MDT
From: "Cavaiani, Charles" 

My concept of IW is the ever increasing need to provide security for
system and network information against such attacks as masquerade,
spoofing, sniffing, an man-in-the-middle attacks. 
---------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 07:48:58 -0500
From: waddellw@csl-emh2.army.mil (AWC, Operations Group)

        My concept of IW...I don't think I've ever attempted to put the
WHOLE enchilada into words.  Lets see...  one of the three pillars of
future warfare (the others being dominating maneuver and precision
strike)...not discrete enough...all aspects of gaining dominance on
current or anticipated opponents by obtaining an advantage in the quest
for information, both his and your own...or how about the ability to
make decisions and create actions at all levels of warfare (strategic,
operational, tactical) before the enemy by the use of offensive and
defensive measures in communication and information.  These as you can
tell are pie in the sky thoughts.  In reality it apears that the Joint
Staff is making IW a catch all for everything that has to do with C4I,
EW, PSYOPS, Space warfare, deception, security, and anything else (like
cyberwar) that they don't know where to catagorize.  It has clearly
become a beheamoth, a multi-headed monster that we are attempting to
slay all at one time, instead of the way we used to do it, by individual
category.  All levels of warfare have different aspects of
IW...strategic contains more of the politico-economic big picture
spectrum, while tactical is concerned with day to day life of the
fighting forces.  Clearly in order to fight an information war all the
participants need to be on the same sheet of music, which currently is
not the case.  I know there are those who are attempting to write the
music,(like NDU and the Air Force Air War College) but there is a whole
lot more work to do.  And this is just for the military side of the
equation.  We haven't even started to work the political spectum yet,
although there is rumbling in that direction. 

---------------------------------------------
Forwarded message:
From: John Young 
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 08:27:19 -0500

11-30-95.  W$Jiver, Page One lead: "New Satellite Imaging Could Soon
Transform The Face of the Earth.  Big Worries About Security."

      Next time you gaze into the heavens, practice your smile.  The
ventures being backed by companies such as Lockheed Martin Corp., the
E-Systems Corp.  and Orbital Sciences Corp.  will offer days-old digital
images of unprecedented clarity.  These corporate systems worry some
scientists and federal policy makers concerned about privacy invasion
and a free-for-all expansion of espionage.  One notes that Lockheed
Martin and E-Systems already have such systems in space.  "They do this
for the intelligence agencies.  The very system that they're putting up
there is a classified system now."

      A Senate staffer says that as budgets are chopped for the NRO and
military satellite operators, the commercial systems will offer
lower-cost images for government needs, preserve jobs and know-how in a
vital area of technology and ensure U.S.  leadership in the imaging
industry.  Nations such as France, Russia, South Africa, India and
Israel are contemplating expanded use of their high-resolution systems. 
---------------------------------------------