The Strategist

Cyber saboteurs emerge from the shadows

OK, so I've been rather sceptical about North Korea's cyber warfare capabilities. It's a tad hard to square news of elite cyber saboteurs with this crappy DPRK government website. But maybe I was wrong.

Over the weekend, North Korean-linked hackers carried out distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against US and South Korean government and commercial websites.The websites targeted included those of the US Secret Service and the White House, the New York Stock Exchange, and South Korea's Defense Ministry and National Assembly.

Tim Stevens, who blogs at ubiwar, was quoted as saying that "this type of 'denial of service' attack was designed to disrupt rather than penetrate a system to obtain data". Opinion varies about the scale and sophistication of the attacks. The Guardian described it as "a paralysing barrage of electronic cyber attacks", but this article claimed that the attacks were relatively unsophisticated and small-scale, involving 50,000 to 65,000 computers.

Another thing I've been sceptical about is the effectiveness of DDOS attacks. What's the big deal if a couple of websites are down for a day or two, right? But according to the Technology Liberation Front...

"The only real cost of an attack such as this one is writing an effective bit of malware that can spread itself around, compromise tens of thousands of machines, and allow an attacker to call on this army of unwilling silicon conscripts whenever it wishes.  When viewed from the hundred-billion-dollar heights of nation-state budgets, this cost is essentially zero....

DDOS attacks are a cheap (hijacking is free), relatively hard to trace, and very effective way for a state or non-state actor to inflict meaningful economic losses on others."

Banks and companies carry out a lot of business via their websites. Increasingly, government departments are delivering core services through their web portals, like getting people to apply online for welfare benefits and grants. Even temporary disruptions can inflict big costs on businesses, departments and customers alike. This is a pretty good return on investment for hackers.

The "guiding hand" of Beijing?

It's interesting to speculate about how the Chinese have organized their information operations for the Urumqi unrest. Is the CCP hierarchy coordinating the response - the command and control approach? President Hu Jintao's sudden return from the G8 summit in Italy suggests that this is the case.

On the other hand, you wouldn't expect that Party officials and police commanders on the ground would have to wait for orders from Beijing before stamping out unrest. Why should the information response be any different?

The speed of the response suggests premeditation. It also hints at a flexible and decentralized approach, with the central bureaucracy playing a "guiding hand" role. This could involve setting the general operational framework well in advance, and when trouble erupts letting semi-autonomous and networked groups respond quickly and flexibly without needing to be told what to do, e.g., in the Urumqi situation, by shutting down internet access, blocking Twitter, "managing" foreign journalists, and censoring domestic coverage of the unrest.

Like I said, this is speculative. But the "guiding hand" idea is something that I'll return to in the context of how governments could defend against cyberwar attacks.

Urumqi unrest - Beijing controls reporting and Twitter

From Urumqi, Xinjiang, Peter Foster observes how effectively Chinese authorities controlled international reporting of the unrest:

"Beijing has moved swiftly not only to calm the streets but also to control the reporting environment, corralling the large international media presence in a single hotel.

They’ve done this not by force, but by the simple expediency of limiting internet access to a single location (a hotel off the People’s Square), and like animals on the plain who graduate to the last waterhole in times of drought, the world’s journalists have had little choice but to congregate here."

Also interesting is how the authorities quickly cut internet access for Urumqi residents and blocked Twitter in China.

You might think that Beijing learned lessons from Teheran's failure to effectively counter Iranian protestors' use of social media tools to organize unrest and spread the word. But the swiftness of Beijing's move suggests that the authorities prepared well in advance for such situations.

Caught my eye...

Here are some articles that caught my eye over the last week:

• Wealthy countries, worried about food security, scramble for arable land in Africa, South America and Russia. This land grab, and likely indigenous resistance to it, are trends worth watching.

• Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder reports from the Swat Valley on the Pakistan army's "mopping up" operations against the Taliban (vids here and here). Note the General's immaculately pressed fatigues and his walking cane - talk about a throwback to the Raj.

• In Pyongyang, the Paektusan Czech-Korean Friendship Association and the Czech Group for the Study and Materialization of the Juche Idea bitterly denounced the US imperialists and their south Korean puppet stooges for their hostile war moves.

Organizing for cyberwar - "we might be a vapour"

How can governments organize to fight cyberwar?

The UK government's cyber-security strategy* assumes that a centralized and top-down approach (business as usual, in other words) is the way to go. Two new bureaucracies, the Office of Cyber Security and the Cyber Security Operations Centre, will be set up to focus and coordinate the cyberspace activities of a plethora of other government agencies (which includes GCHQ, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, and MI5).

This approach strikes me as a bureaucratic, lumbering and unimaginative approach to an emerging form of warfare. It's like being in France in 1940 and trying to stop fast-moving German tanks with foot-slogging infantry.

My sense is that cyber organization has to be loose, decentralized, flat, fast and adaptive. (If you've spent time in public service you'll know that this is precisely not how government operates.) One approach could be networks of small and ad hoc groups of experts, loosely tethered to government but operating autonomously within a general framework, which come together for particular aims and dissolve or reconstitute once the aims have been achieved. Different groups and networks might be assigned to different aspects of cyberwar, but there would be a high degree of collaboration between them.

In Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T E Lawrence provides the essence of an ethos for this approach. "Armies were like plants," he wrote, "immobile, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head". His Arab guerrillas were different, and something new: "We might be a vapour, blowing where we listed".

* Earlier post on the UK strategy here.

Trend watch: China's move a big strategic play

More on China's move into renewable energy, especially wind. I've said it before - this is a big strategic play...

"If China matches growing technological prowess with its cheap production costs and a massive internal market, it could become a global power in the production and use of green technology.

This would this enable China to gain a crucial hold in key industries of the future. It would help clean up a heavily polluted environment. And it would lessen a dangerous strategic vulnerability: China's dependence on foreign oil which must be imported along sea lanes controlled by the US Navy and other competitors, like India and Japan."

Meanwhile Western governments mainline on Middle East crude and Russian gas, oblivious to the huge costs, the environmental and economic risks, and the strategic vulnerabilities. 

Weirdness after death - the enduring legacy of Michael Jackson

It's been a strange week. I've never followed Michael Jackson or his music but I found myself whistling and humming Michael Jackson songs - "Bill Jean is not my lover, she's just a girl who claims that I am the one..."

Grrrr...

Jackson's death has generated some seriously bizarre reactions. I'm not just talking about the vapid outpourings from "fans" and the vacuous saturation media coverage. There's this from Germaine Greer...

"Ever since Dionysos danced ahead of his horde of bloody-footed maenads across the rocky highlands of prehistoric Greece, dance and song have been the province of boys. Like Orpheus, Jackson was destroyed by his fans, whose adulation and adoration prevented his living in any kind of normal society. The creativity ebbed away day by day. He became a parody of himself. It is time now to forget all that and salute the miraculous boy who will triumph over death as Dionysos did, becoming immortal through his art."

WTF? Jackson destroyed himself, wittingly or unwittingly.To blame millions of young fans for his death is pretty low. What's even uglier is the spectacle of the vampires and ghouls materializing to feed on Jackson's estate, life and image. But amongst all the greed, you have to chuckle at this suggestion from Rudy Clay, mayor of Gary, Indiana.

Gary is a crumbling Rust Belt city near Chicago. Jackson was born there in 1958. Clay wants to transform the shabby former Jackson family house into the new Graceland. He hopes that Gary's fortunes will revive as millions of devotees flock to King of Pop's birthplace and spend loads of money on memorabilia.

This has to be one of the weirdest ideas for urban regeneration. But it could work, especially if they turned Gary's derelict Methodist church into a shrine for the cult of Jackson. And hey, if the idea takes off perhaps other moribund cities will also seek their own dead kings of pop?

Photo: Laura-Elizabeth on Flickr.

"We lead from the front..."

Chris Keeble, on the deaths of Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, CO of 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, and Trooper Joshua Hammond, in Helmand, Afghanistan:

“We lead from the front. The death of a commanding officer is no less and no more of a tragedy than the death of a private soldier.”

Keeble was second-in-command of 2 Para during the Falklands War in 1982. He took immediate control of the battalion when its CO, Lt Col "H" Jones VC was killed attacking an Argentinian machine gun at Goose Green.

Cops for hire: the rise of private police

If you're looking for a solid long-term investment, buying shares in private security companies might be the way to go. As this ISN Security Watch article (h/t AE) suggests, private police forces are on the rise in the US:

"Policing some of the most dangerous US cities has quickly become the newest line of business for many of these [private security] companies which have already replaced police officers in cities from Portland to Baltimore....

Cities are turning to the private sector for a variety of reasons. Some local and state governments are under pressure from budget deficits and are often convinced that privatized industries are more cost-effective than state agencies and bureaucracies. Other cities have an already overstretched force that cannot respond to increases in crime, so private contractors are seen as a quick fix and an easy force multiplier."

While I wouldn't want to see them policing my community, I'm not going to get too precious about private security companies. In many places, not just the US, private police forces are here to stay and have their uses.

And if you live in places like Johannesburg or Lagos, where the local cops are corrupt, incompetent and never around when needed, then private security companies may be your only protection. If you can afford them, of course. And if they aren't already on the payroll of the local crime lord.

And you thought Maoism was dead...

New post here at Global Dashboard - "like evangelical Christianity, Maoism is going to have a big future in violent and poor places in the 21st century". Prompted by this post at India's Forgotten War.

Imagining the 21st century - "gangland" cities (2)

In the 21st century most of us will live in cities, of one sort or another. Here are some ideas about the possible evolution of cityscapes.

Those who live in the 21st century's city-states, whether in Asia, Europe or the Americas, will be the lucky ones. In the Third World, sprawling, polluted and anarchic slum megacities will continue to grow. No amount of "development aid", "economic growth" or utopian dreaming is going to change that trajectory.

In the west, former industrial cities of the 19th and 20th centuries will be gradually abandoned. Some will shrink into smaller and more viable hubs, abandoning the suburbs to nature, and if they're lucky becoming absorbed in the hinterland of a prosperous city-state. Others will become "ganglands", controlled and fought over by cash-strapped local authorities and cashed-up crime cartels. In the worst cases, think Roman Britain after the legions pulled out in 410AD and the barbarians moved in.

There could be transitional phases lasting decades in which westerners fight insurgencies not in far-flung places like Afghanistan, but much closer to home, in decaying cities, marches between city-states and ganglands, and frontier zones like the American/Mexican border and the Balkans. Gangland cities will provide criminals with secure bases for making, storing and trafficking drugs, guns and other illegal materials. Global terrorists and criminals will find sanctuary there.

Some gangland cities might be highly organized and prosperous, ruled by powerful cartel lords, and networked with gangs in other cities. Others will be a violent, poverty-stricken and fragmented mess where power flows and ebbs between a succession of petty tyrants. For city-states and national governments, the ganglands will constitute their greatest security threat.

Many cities will be stuck somewhere between city-states and ganglands. Generally prosperous cities, like London or Vancouver, will have poor slums and violent no-go areas. Generally poor and violent cities - Johannesburg is a contemporary example - may have wealthy and heavily fortified enclaves, protected by private mercenary companies.

For decaying cities, "Roman Britain" scenarios are not inevitable. As I've written before, in some places municipal authorities and national governments, working with local communities, may retain or regain control from gangs by using counterinsurgency practices and urban regeneration programmes.

>> Imagining the 21st century series

Imagining the 21st century - Rise of the city-states (1)

In the 21st century most of us will live in cities of one sort or another. Here are some ideas about the possible evolution of cityscapes over the course of the century.

Historically subordinated to feudal interests and nation-states, many cities, large and small, will regain some degree of autonomy. Large educated populations and high technology will give some cities critical mass, enabling them to become self-sufficient in revenue, food, water, energy, and waste management.

These cities will consist of vibrant urban cores, and hinterlands which were once sprawling suburbs but have been depopulated and converted to the intensive production of food, timber, energy and water. The "inner wasteland" of the urban core will also be used to grow food and generate power. People will live in the densely populated core or in compact communities in the hinterland. Many residents will be employed producing food, water, energy, or in ecological restoration and waste recycling.

Such cities will become powerful political entities in their own right - city-states which hark back to the ancient Greek polis and the medieval city republic. They will govern themselves, retain tax revenues, levy militias (or pay for mercenary forces), and conduct their own foreign, security, economic, energy and environmental policies.

They may or may not break formally with nation-states: de facto forms of autonomy and symbiotic relationships will be common. A symbiotic relationship might involve a city-state paying the national government to provide for its defence against other nation-states or powerful non-state entities.

City-states may not necessarily be democracies. Oligarchies may thrive at the city-wide governance level, perhaps with communitarian and theocratic forms of governance operating in neighbourhoods, towns and villages. City-states will be linked to each other with high speed computer networks and transport. Some may form loose "communities of cities": separated by distance but networked for security, economic, cultural and sporting activities and the exchange of ideas and innovations. 

>> Imagining the 21st century series

(Photo: Timothy K Hamilton, "Chicago nightfall panorama".)

"Global COIN campaign" a crazy idea

Check out the Armchair Generalist's post on Andrew Bacevich's takedown of Andrew Exum at a recent conference on American security and foreign policy...

"I admit I am a big Bacevich fan, and it's arguments such as his - in less than ten minutes, he outlines everything that is wrong with the past and current [Afghanistan - Pakistan] strategies - that win me over."

John Nagl's idea of a global counterinsurgency campaign must be a contender for the silliest idea to emerge since the "War on Terror". There are basic unanswered questions, like...

• what would be the aim of a global COIN campaign?

• is that aim realistic and achievable?

• how would the US pay for it?

• what would be the opportunity costs (i.e., the things that could otherwise be usefully done with the money)?

No managers need apply to "Spectre Force"

Here's a post I've written at Global Dashboard, on the Brits and their bureaucratic approach to cyber-war.

Rise of the eco-skyscraper

Who'd have thought that skyscrapers, that symbol of rampant capitalism, would go green? It's like someone ripping out the guts of a Hummer and dropping in a poncy electric motor.

Chicago's Sears Tower is getting a green makeover. It will be retrofitted with solar panels and wind turbines, upgraded wall and window insulation and water systems, advanced lighting, fuel cell boiler plants, and energy efficient elevators.

The owners claim that the retrofit will lead to "unparalleled energy savings and reduced CO2 emissions...reducing the base building electricity use by up to 80 percent".

Meanwhile in Guangzhou, the Pearl River Tower is being hyped as the most energy efficient superskyscraper ever. When finished in 2010, the tower will have wind turbines, sun shields, solar panels, smart lighting and water-cooled ceilings. It's designed to use half the energy of similar sized buildings.

Of the two strategies - retrofitting an existing skyscraper or building a new one - I'd argue that retrofitting is the way to go. If you've got an existing structure, it makes sense to kit it out with the latest green technology.

A new structure may use less energy and emit less CO2 than a retrofit (because it was designed that way at the start). But you have to factor in the vast amount of energy that is used and the CO2 that is emitted in the manufacture and transport of building materials and the construction. And the building will still use extra energy which has to be generated somehow, probably through burning coal.

So while it's cool to see green design and technology coming to the fore, it's a shame that this is being wasted on monstrosities like skyscrapers, rather than making 21st century cities green, liveable and energy efficient.

And yes, call me a cynic, but we have to be mindful of "eco-skyscrapers" as another form of greenwashing, designed to give corporate owners and tenants a veneer of environmental respectability. Like Okhta Tower in St Petersburg, the fancy new head office of Russian gas corporation Gazprom.

"D-Day" book could be a cracker

If Stalingrad and Berlin were anything to go by, Antony Beevor's new military history, D-Day, could be a cracker.

Yesterday I wandered into Unity Books and leafed through the first chapter of D-Day, which focuses on the eve of the Normandy landings and the almost unbearable tension in the Allied high command. Straightaway I could see Beevor's trademark attention to revealing detail. Eisenhower chain-smoking four packets of cigarettes a day as he wrestled with the decision to launch the attack. And the Allies' chief meteorologist sick with worry as he analyzed Atlantic weather patterns - his weather forecasts were a critical factor in the decision to go or delay.

This got me thinking about the difficult decisions that top commanders have to make in war, and the dilemmas they grapple with. For example, if you attack a heavily defended coastline (like Normandy), do you send your best infantry divisions in as the first wave? Or do you hold them as a follow-on force, or in reserve, and send in your average units first?

The former maximizes the chances of gaining a beachhead, but risks your best troops being wiped out and your ability to break-out from the beachhead. The latter risks the first wave being driven back into the sea, with the elite troops bobbing uselessly in boats off the coast.

Night watch - one mile out

Here's a shot for Allen (aka Exkiwiforces), who sent me some great articles on the Sri Lankan navy, the Swedish defence review, China's carrier battle group, and much else besides.

One mile out - a small plane approaches Wellington airport at dusk...

Applying Kilcullen's ideas to urban regeneration

As I mentioned several weeks ago, I've recently read David Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla. Here's a post I wrote at Global Dashboard which adapts one of Kilcullen's counterinsurgency concepts to urban regeneration and countering criminal gangs in rundown western cities.

Gordon Brown and his "uniquely difficult period"

At the Guardian, Katharine Viner interviews British PM Gordon Brown...

Brown is convinced that he is prime minister in a uniquely difficult period. He talks of the "two earthquakes - one economic, unparalleled since the war, one political, the biggest parliamentary scandal for two centuries".

Reading this you might think, "Wow, what a monstrous ego!". But has there ever been a political leader who doesn't believe that he or she rules at a unique historical juncture?

Bill Clinton perhaps?

Obama and Iran's "green revolution"

Jeff believes that US President Barack Obama should be doing more to support Iran's protesters in their hour of need...

"This opportunity may not come again anytime in the near future. The Mullahs are becoming desperate and the military crackdown is probably coming soon.

I realize the forces at play here and the balancing act Obama is trying to maintain. But he needs to openly lean more forcibly toward those in the streets. Let's not miss this chance."

It seems to me that Obama has deftly handled the Iranian protests. He's responded by bearing witness to the government's crackdown. At the same time he's acknowledged Iran's sovereignty and the fact that only Iranians can work this out for themselves.

Obama's approach has been considered (isn't it refreshing to see a politician who takes time to think matters through, despite the incessant cries for action?), and he hasn't allowed himself to get caught up in the Andrew Sullivan-style "green revolution" hype.

Behind this is a sensible caution and a readiness to see the world as it is rather than as we'd like it to be. The situation in Iran is not as clearcut as western liberals and neocons would have us believe, with their hyperbolic talk of a "green revolution" and "freedom" for Iran.

Yes, many Iranians are angry about the election results and want political reform. But there is also great popular support for President Ahmadinejad and the Islamic revolution. And the government commands the loyalty of the security forces.

For a statesman, the prudent approach is to wait and see, and to eschew words that could inflame the situation. This is the course that Obama seems to be steering.

Night watch 2

Evans Bay marina, on a calm and clear winter night.

In some ways I'd like to hang out on a yacht (moored at a marina near a place that sold good coffee). I like the idea of having to pare back my possessions.

I'd need some room for my single malt whisky. And my laptop and camera. Oh, and my books. These are the possessions I really care about.

OK, so the yacht would have to be quite big...

Redact that! The scandal that keeps on giving

A censored expense claim form for British Member of Parliament Diane Abbott.

In Britain the Parliamentary expenses scandal just gets bigger and bigger. Scotland Yard is launching a criminal investigation into alleged cases of misuse of allowances "by a small number of MPs and peers". And the Commons authorities have released over a million MPs' expense forms dating back to 2004.

Trouble is, the documents are heavily censored (here's one example). The censorship hides details that expose the worst abuses by MPs - such as interest claimed on mortgages that had already been repaid, evasion of capital gains tax on property sales, and bizarre claims for things like cleaning a moat, buying a floating duck island, and treating dry rot at an MP's boyfriend's house.

As well as being underhand, the move is inept. This is because the Daily Telegraph obtained uncensored copies and is publishing them on its website over the coming weeks.

Meanwhile the Guardian has uploaded the censored documents and is using a crowdsourcing app to allow over 14,000 readers to trawl through the documents in search of dodgy claims. Here's a rundown on some of the gems that have been unearthed.

Last night I signed onto the Guardian's site, and reviewed about 50 pages of claims. Nothing sensational. But what impressed me is the sheer lavishness of the system of pay and allowances (e.g., each MP can claim a yearly personal accomodation allowance of £24,222) and how MPs seem to be milking this cash cow for all it's worth.

What to make of this? The British public are angry, columnists are outraged. One Guardian writer has even suggested that politicians in search of a "moral compass" should read John Ruskin's Unto this Last. (Snort. As if!)

But seriously, what did people expect? Politicians are not high-minded individuals who desire solely to serve the public good. They are in politics for power and personal ambition. They have few scruples and are as venal as the rest of us. Combine these factors with a powerful sense of entitlement and taste for luxury and a munificent but weakly regulated system of allowances, and you have a situation that is open to abuse.

Caught my eye - China power and cyber "strikeback"

• China's making massive investments in solar and wind power. As I've mentioned before, this is an important trend to watch, and one where China could steal a technological march on the west.

• Edward Glaeser writes about bulldozing America's shrinking cities, and how "urban decline is a reality in much of older, colder America".

• America and Britain prepare to "strikeback" against Russian, Chinese, and North Korean (???) hackers.

Nothing to admire about LonZa losers

These hipsters, the soi-disant "LonZa crew", seem like utter tossers.

Young(ish) British professionals split their time between London and Ibiza, Spain, flying back and forth on a cheap budget airline. They work as jewellery designers and fashion editors, and give their dogs names like Booboo. They mistake cliches for values. "I needed to get some more sunshine into my life," says one. Another claims that when a close friend was killed in a car accident, "it hit home that life isn’t a dress rehearsal".

The gushing Times reporter seems to think otherwise, but there's nothing admirable about these posers and their empty, indulgent and polluting lifestyles.

Night watch

Miramar roundabout, early evening. Camera on a tripod, with a 30 second exposure. I love the light streams you get at night when photographing moving objects.