Ground Zero Issue 12 –November 27, 2001 |
"A crash course in network warfare": understanding the effects of September 11th in a networked world
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This is the eleventh special issue dedicated to the manifold implications of the September 11 events, which has been renamed 'Ground Zero' as of issue six. Be aware that we also publish a regular bulletin, Digital Revolution Alert, that is also available.
Find an archive of Ground Zero at http://master.ven.be/items.cfm?TypeID=6 ; a hypertext synthesis of the topics covered by previous issues can be found here: http://www.watsoninstitute.org/infopeace/911/index.html .
Thanks to John Dermaut (Belgacom) and other correspondents for sending suggestions!
"While Bin Laden may have he finger on the trigger, his grandson might have his finger on the mouse."
(Frank J. Ciluffo, Center for Strategic and International Studies)
http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/justpeace/
War today is heavily 'mediated' by global media, and hence, strategies are being adapted. While still relaying on air power, civilian casualties have to be avoided, and risks have to be transferred to other players. A very interesting analysis, by Martin Shaw.
1. " A transfer of the major share of death from enemy civilians to enemy armed forces, thus reversing the twentieth-century trend towards overwhelmingly civilian casualties, and apparently bringing war back within the limits of the 'just war' tradition. Most of those directly killed in Afghanistan are the Taliban and their allies, rather than civilians.
2. A transfer of the risks of ground combat from Western forces to their local allies, wherever possible. The increasingly interdependence between Western airpower and local armies on the ground (the Northern Alliance) enables the West to transfer of greater share of battle casualties to them.
3. A transfer of risks in bombing from Western air forces to both 'enemy' and 'friendly' civilians on the ground. Repeated small massacres are an understood feature of the new Western way of war. These are 'accidental' in the sense that they are not specifically intended, and efforts are made to avoid them. But they are simultaneously programmed into the risk analysis of war. Civilians are still exposed to far greater risk than the West's own military personnel (so far, hundreds of civilians have probably been killed by US bombing, but only 2 Americans have died, in a crash).
4. The transfer of risk to civilians is deliberate and systematic, since the risks to civilians (from errors in targeting and delivery) are known to be much greater than the risks of Western planes being shot down or crashing accidentally in a war like Afghanistan. It is here that the legacy of degenerate war is clear.
5. The avoidance of direct civilian killing on a scale that could threaten the mediated legitimacy of the war is a key element in risk-transfer militarism. Western governments want no more TV pictures of direct victims than absolutely unavoidable; and they want no threateningly large direct casualty numbers. Mediation and surveillance have become intrinsic to this refined mode of post-total war, but they make it particularly problematic.
6. The corollary of this is that indirect and less visible casualties are more acceptable. Where there are other possible causes of death - Taliban policies, civil war, drought, etc. - responsibility is less easy to pin down and therefore the West finds the risks more acceptable. This undoubtedly compounds the degeneracy of the new mode.
7. Even relatively small massacres may be magnified by the media, so that they may threaten unprecedentedly large consequences for Western power. This was clear in Kosovo, although it has not yet happened in Afghanistan. Thus a fundamental contradiction of the new Western way of war is the unpredictability of intensive mediation in television and other mass media."
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2001/12/RAMONET/
A summary of the new world order three months after September 11th, and what can be expected in this new historical period. By Ignacio Ramonet of Le Monde Diplomatique.
" Le monde a connu, au cours de l'histoire, des villes-Etat (Athènes, Venise), des régions-Etat (à l'époque féodale) et des nations-Etat (au cours des XIXe et XXe siècles), mais, avec la mondialisation, on voit maintenant apparaître le réseau-Etat, voire même l'individu-Etat dont M. Ben Laden est le premier exemple évident. Même si, pour l'instant, ce dernier a encore besoin - comme un bernard-l'hermite a besoin d'une coquille vide - d'un Etat vide (la Somalie hier, l'Afghanistan aujourd'hui) pour l'investir et le mettre tout entier au service de ses ambitions.
La mondialisation favorise cela, comme elle encouragera demain l'apparition d'entreprises-Etat qui, à la manière de M. Ben Laden, investiront un Etat creux, vide, déstructuré, en proie au désordre endémique, pour l'utiliser à leur guise. A cet égard aussi, M. Ben Laden aura été en quelque sorte un terrifiant précurseur."
http://www.oss.net/White.html
Robert Steele is a former intelligence agent who has become an advocate of using open source material, freely available but requiring intelligent analysis. Yet Intelligence Agencies are often unable to see what is happening before their very eyes.
In this collection of very interesting White Papers, Steele, or other experts, analyse intelligence failures related to the crisis as well as discussion of the 'fourth generation warfare' paradigm. In the quote below he compares the U.S. mapping efforts with the much better open source material available.
"The best maps in the world for Afghanistan are instantly and cheaply available from the Russian military through East View Cartographic, an established open source provider of proven reliability. The maps are so extraordinary that they include just under 1,000 caves across Afghanistan, all carefully marked. While by no means comprehensive, these combat charts are superior to anything NIMA might be able to produce within the next year. The best NIMA has to offer right now is 1:100,000 maps not suitable for combined arms operations, and based on 1950's information."
http://www.technologyreview.com/magazine/dec01/tenner.asp
Going counter to the new wave of technology warfare warnings, this columnnist says the attack was decidedly low-tech, using at most 30-year old technologies.
" What can halt future attacks? The events showed the limits of communications monitoring and satellite surveillance. The question remains whether more ambitious programs like the FBI's troubled Carnivore e-mail-sniffing technology or facial recognition software will unearth new data on terrorist activity, or simply compound the familiar problem of information overload and produce an illusion of control. The frequent false alarms from even the simplest home security systems are already a plague for the police.
We obviously need to think more about protection from both newer and older forms of attack. One common feature of both is reliance on personal networks. The terrorist cells' apparent methods of recruiting from the same regions, clans and families, and moving frequently from base to base, make them difficult to infiltrate conventionally—but they also reveal patterns to experienced analysts, making more targeted technical surveillance possible. We don't need another decimal place of accuracy from computational social-science studies but a better intuitive understanding of the terrorists and their civilian neighbours. At the same time, the tacit knowledge possessed by the most effective police officers and detectives deserves more respect. One of our great challenges will be to formalize and teach these elusive skills to security screeners at airports and elsewhere."
Book by the author, Edward Tenner: Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (Vintage Books).
See also the review of technology use by Al Qaida, at http://www.nwfusion.com/research/2001/1126featside4.html
http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/rr.08.01/shipshape.html
Review of proposals by the Rand Corporation experts to organise the Army on a new footing.
See also the articles on the Zero Casualty Networked War research project, at http://www.itrd.gov/iwg/pca/lsn/lsn-workshop-12mar01/2-1.pdf ; http://www.itrd.gov/iwg/pca/lsn/lsn-workshop-12mar01/app3-8.pdf ; http://www.itrd.gov/iwg/pca/lsn/lsn-workshop-12mar01/ ; and the Real War video game, which, inspired by war games used by military trainees, pits the U.S. Army and government against terrorists, at http://interactif.lemonde.fr/article/0,5611,2872--248373-0,FF.html ; http://www.real-war.com/
- Details on American plans for a volunteer " National Emergency Technology Guard"
" The idea behind NetGuard is to create a national volunteer force, drawn initially from the nation's top high-technology concerns, that could mobilize quickly in the case of an emergency. Its role would be to repair downed communications systems, restore computer operations and create new systems to aid support and recovery efforts."
URL = http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/technology/ebusiness/26NECO.html
- The Zapatistas and the internet
Often mentioned as a first example of Netwar, but not often documented in detail, and many stories are in fact mythological. Hence the importance of this Dutch-language university thesis that verifies how exactly the Zapatistas used the internet.
URL = http://www.pscw.uva.nl/sociosite/zapatistas/index.htm ; http://www.pscw.uva.nl/sociosite/zapatistas/5_communicatie.htm
- A review of Empire
One of the first books on the new transnational cooperation state, but that criticises its 'imperial' nature and advocates a counter-Empire, much as the Christians created one after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
URL = http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Empire.html
- A review of psychological operations in Afghanistan
URL = http://slate.msn.com/?id=2058800
- The birth of a global civil society
Special issue of Le Courrier Planetaire, unfortunately only available in print.
URL = http://www.solagral.org/publications/cdp/cdp63/index.htm ; http://www.solagral.org/publications/cdp/cdp63/edito.htm
- Transcipts from Secretary Rumsfeldt's briefings
URL = http://www.defenselink.mil/news/briefings.html
Book: War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals
by David Halberstam. (Scribner, 543 pp.)
(review at http://www.thenewrepublic.com/120301/kagan120301.html )
http://interactif.lemonde.fr/article/0,5611,2871--248904-0,FF.html
This virus, if it nestles in a computer, will collect all passwords, giving the FBI a backdoor entry.
- How ISPs are readying disaster recovery plans in case networks are downed
URL = http://www.nwfusion.com/research/2001/1126featside3.html
- Somalia's only internet company being closed because of its suspected links with Al Qaida
URL = http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1672000/1672220.stm
- The internet is much more generally spread in the Middle East than expected
URL = http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/10/12/arab_internet/index1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/fashion/25DOT.html
This article contrasts the culture and values of the dotcom era, with the current mood.
" To Amitai Etzioni, a sociologist at George Washington University, the country is experiencing an abrupt cultural shift away from the libertarian, individualistic values that were expressed in the celebration of the New Economy and toward more old- fashioned values in the wake of the terrorist attacks, when government is not The Problem and people are not The Market. "There's been a sea change," he said. The surge in charitable giving and blood donations after Sept. 11, he said, underscores "the sense that you're willing to give priority to the common good, to public safety and public health."
""Traditionnellement, la communauté artistique n'est pas très patriote. C'est curieux de voir à quel point elle change. Comment des gens très critiques devant la politique américaine deviennent soudain plus patriotes. C'est une modification de l'identité culturelle de la communauté artistique, qui ressent aujourd'hui quelque chose qu'elle n'a jamais connu."
Book: Thomas Frank. One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy. (book cited in the NYT article)
More info on how the crisis has 'rejuvenated the dance world', at http://www.thenewrepublic.com/120301/homans120301.html ; a serious crisis in the New York art world, http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3246--248958-,00.html
http://www.thenewrepublic.com/120301/foer120301.html
The New Republic criticises the Middle East Studies Association's anti-war positions.
Books on the struggles within Middle Eastern scholarship: 1) Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America. 2) Edward Said, Orientalism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/science/20ADVI.html?
After the Cold War, demand for scientific advice fell, and the Bush administration in particular was seen as indifferent by some in the scientific community, but now after the crisis, ties are being rebuild.
http://www.uia.org/musings/terra.htm
Inspired by the conflation of sounds between the word 'terror' and 'terra', Anthony Judge (of the Union of International Associations), gives a 'geo-ecological' interpretation of the current campaign against terror.
Other musings by Tony Judge: http://www.uia.org/musings/nevil.htm ; http://www.uia.org/uiadocs/missile.htm
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/01/11/21/011121hncsc.xml?1126mneb
" CORPORATE INFORMATION SYSTEMS remain porous against cyber-attacks, and many IS managers do not consider security practices and policies to be a top priority in their organization, according to a survey by Computer Sciences (CSC) this week."
New conceptions of disaster recovery after the crisis: http://www.nwfusion.com/research/2001/1126featside1.html ; http://www.nwfusion.com/research/2001/1126featside6.html ; http://www.nwfusion.com/research/2001/1126featside3.html
Book: James Barnes. A Guide to Business Continuity Planning. John Wiley & Sons, 2001.
(A study of 300 disaster recovery plans, recommended as best book of the year 2001 by NW Fusion magazine.)
· The surveillance wars
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,48664,00.html
Privacy activists are preparing countermeasures to the increased surveillance of public places. The iSee project produces interactive maps with the 'roads of least surveillance', i.e. how to get from A to B without being seen by surveillance cameras. There are projects for several American cities.
See also the article, U.S. assumes global cyberpolice authority' in which The Register explains that the new anti-terrorism law, gives U.S. law enforcement global authority, at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/23036.html
http://www.technologyreview.com/magazine/dec01/stikeman.asp
Developing a photo database of all known terrorists is a bureaucratic and technical nightmare, writes Technology Review.
- HNC has developed 'predictive software' that can detect suspicious behaviour at ticket counters.
URL = http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2001/tc20011121_9289.htm
- Biological agents and bioterrorism preparedness
Prepared by the American Society for Microbiology
URL = http://www.asmusa.org/pcsrc/bioprep.htm
- A profile of Bernard Lewis, one of the most prized islam experts worldwide
URL = http://slate.msn.com//?id=2058632
- Muslims and their democratic aspirations
URL = http://www.thenewrepublic.com/120301/trb120301.html ; http://www.thenewrepublic.com/express/zimmerman112001.html
- Despite initial sympathy with the victims, the U.S. are not always loved.
URL = http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3230--248415-,00.html ; http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3230--248395-,00.html ; http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/560/op2.htm
- The Middle East Media Research Institute
This seems a very good place to go to hear Arab and Middle Eastern voices, as it gives frequent summaries of what the media there is saying.
URL = http://memri.org/main.html ; http://memri.org/ia/index.html
- Resources on the Jihad
Excellent collation of material from a combined Jewish/Christian dialogue site. Also recommended for its transcripts of original Arabic viewpoints.
URL = http://www.chretiens-et-juifs.org/JIHAD/sommaire_Jihad.htm
- Christian Science's Changed World
The Christian Science Monitor remains one of the better newspapers in the U.S., and its special coverage page includes articles outlining Islamic perspectives.
URL = http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/sept11/index.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/11/RV203925.DTL
This book is much different from Daniel Goleman's best seller on Emotional Intelligence. In it, author Martha Nussbaum inquires into the best possible relationship between reason and emotions.
" "In thinking about material need, political structure, the choice of a system of punishments … we should ask what capacities of the personality different institutions support, and to what extent this gives us reason to choose one set over another."
Upheavals of Thought. By Martha Nussbaum. Cambridge University Press.
