Modern historiography specialists have long argued that an
essential segment in the study of human evolution is inextricably tied
to the basic understanding that societies generally emerge, progress and
fall cyclically. Such frequency in social evolution is not just a
consequence of endogenous factors, it also results from the impact of
the external environment, be it close - neighboring constituencies vying
for the same resources - or far - as part of a larger geographical
area.
History teaches us another fundamental truth, predominantly
unveiled in social sciences: humans are inherently prone to believing in
the danger of the unknown, the fear that uncertainty - when present in
life - brings an intolerable level of complexity in handling daily
activities. Economists, in tandem with the larger group of social
scientists, ascribe the word "risk" to this angst.
Risk lies in
everyday life. From birth to death and in between the terrestrial
episode called life, humans experience a sophisticated relationship with
risk and utilize it as a powerful catalyst to furthering their
interests. We fear the unknown not just in temporal terms - e.g.: what
will tomorrow be? - but also in more practical, present-day terms, that
is, what will happen today?
In assessing the rectitude of our
daily decisions, the analysis of the environment we live in becomes of
critical importance. There emerges then the need to know, understand and
act on a variety of variables that make up our ecosystemic reality.
Neighbors are a major part of that reality.
The indubitable
observation that humans are 'sociable animals' implies a life in
community, which in turns posits the sharing of interests, destinies and
geography. We share our lives with neighbors, other humans whom we
don't fundamentally know and whom we believe are different from us.
Neighbors, in continental philosophy, are the 'constitutive other' as
opposed to 'same'. Neighbors are different, and because of that, they
must be hazardous to our very existence, hence "hell is other people"
(Jean-Paul Sartre).
Consequently, our desire to know the 'other'
and what they're undertaking forces us to constantly be in a question
mode: ergo, we resort to spying. Espionage is ingrained in basic human
instincts from cradle to grave. First, we ape our relatives, then our
acquaintances and later our neighbors. In that quest for knowledge,
humans recklessly spy on each other in a bid for power. Once they
determine with a reasonable degree of comfort the neighbor's strengths,
the overwhelming tendency is to match it, surpass it, annihilate it,
keep it at a politically acceptable level, or use a combination of all
these options if the socio-historical continuum of events demands it.
Doubtless,
the need to control the military and economic standing of neighbors is
the quintessential, albeit hidden, dogma of modern geopolitics.
Doctrinal differences may abound, but a studious analysis of
contemporary events demonstrates clearly that wars and other
man-engineered crises have historically proven to be good ways to
rebalance powers among neighbors, or more precisely, within geographical
zones. Crises, facts have shown, drive innovation and quality of life.
Espionage
is not a recent discipline within political science. It has been a
staple of human history for the past 2,000 years and even before.
Throughout history, nations have risen or fallen based on their ability
to collect data from rivals and use that body of knowledge to gain a
competitive edge. History also suggests that societies that show a
disinclination for 'outer research' of their environment, and
consequently, a significantly lower number of exogenous interactions -
be it cordial or belligerent - with others have been weakened over time.
The high frequency of wars between nations in the 'Old Continent'
explains the relative superiority that Europe had over, say, Amerindians
and Africans for the past few centuries, first in slavery and then
colonization.
Espionage is rooted in modern life
After two
atrocious global wars, countless medium-size conflicts and a dogmatic
cold-war between capitalism and communism, political and military
leaders seem to have finally gauged the idiocy of lethal conflicts with
planetary implications. The notion of 'détente', that is, the easing of
strained relations in the political phraseology, gives nations the
imaginary assurance that they may all coexist pacifically and a major
conflict is preventable once greater cooperation between societies
subdues the inherent quest for power that causes hostilities.
Acquiescing
that there exists a permanent détente within the current geopolitical
landscape is an optical illusion because it goes counter the very human
urge to monitor the neighbor in order to know him or dominate him, if
not annihilate him. This can be very easily illustrated in instances
where spies are caught in so-called 'friendly' territories. Take the
example of Israel's Mossad agents being arrested in the United States.
The
nuts and bolts of modern state espionage lie in a sophisticated and
complex apparatus that all nations, and peculiarly global superpowers,
have invented to carry out data-collecting and monitoring activities in
peace time. Embassies, with their massive bureaucracies, specialized
technocrats and their diplomatic inviolability, are preeminent on that
list. They are essential in monitoring the host country's social
dynamics and report to their respective governments. Simply put, an
embassy is, de jure, a stranger turned neighbor.
Next are
supranational organizations that populate the global political, social
and economic sphere. Their local representations and periodically
published studies may also serve an intelligence purpose. Finally, aid
agencies and so-called 'humanitarian' organizations are critical in
gauging so-called 'underdeveloped' nations' economic ability and
progress in their development. It is no coincidence that major countries
in the developed sphere do not customarily accept 'aid programs' from
their counterparts unless excruciating circumstances dictate that such
refusal would be politically unacceptable.
Strategic studies and
the modern economic literature are replete with topics referring to
Japan's, and to a lesser extent, Asian dragons' ability to use economic
espionage at the end of the Second World War to gain a competitive edge
over erstwhile powers such as the United States and Great Britain. The
necessity to monitor and direct the continent's economic reconstruction,
and the panic of a potential dominance by communist Russia, also led
the United States to implement the Marshall Plan in Europe from 1948
through 1952.
Businesses thrive from spying more than the military
A
noteworthy myth in today's world is that espionage is principally the
province of military strategists and national armies. Evidence from
authoritative business intelligence magazines, leading governmental
studies and a massive body of knowledge from academia have clearly
explained the causal relationship between firm profitability and
espionage. Differently stated, governments tend to always transfer
intelligence data to their domestic industries, whether they are at war
or at peace.
As a result, the military-industrial complex benefits
considerably from intelligence and such prerogatives are then
disseminated into other firms in the economic fabric. As an
illustration, it would be fairly understandable that a firm like Boeing,
which derives a substantial portion of its revenues from government's
contracts and sale of military aircrafts, is more attuned to certain
developments in US intelligence gathering than a financial services
giant like Citibank.
Nevertheless, businesses have also parlayed
their gargantuan economic clout into a very successful data-collection
enterprise. The plethora of tools available to business executives
nowadays is strikingly sophisticated and effective. Even if it is not
exhaustive, a good analysis of such tools must look at their source and
their degree of macro-economic interconnectedness.
On one hand,
external mechanisms allow at the macro-level business enterprises to
gather information from competitors and control how such information can
be utilized to thwart rivals, increase their own market primacy, or do
both. When they share a community of interests vis-à-vis a new market or
are in an oligopolistic situation, companies are routinely willing to
join hands provided, of course, that the risk-payoff ratio of a single
venture is not immensely superior to that of a joint venture. Tacit
collusion, that is, the market situation where two firms agree to play a
certain strategy without explicitly saying so, is a fine illustration
of business intelligence sharing.
In practice, firms engage in
economic espionage via economic sections of embassies, chambers of
commerce, lobbying groups, industry groups, specific studies from
consultants, and monies granted for academic research in particular
fields of interest. Concomitantly, they guard against intelligence
threats by massively supporting intellectual property laws.
On the
other hand, a sophisticated internal approach allows companies to stay
abreast of latest developments within their industry. First and
foremost, they hire to their corporate boards or for senior positions,
experienced former government officials and high-rank military leaders
who had been privy to high-value strategic insights during their public
tenure.
This is immensely beneficial to the hiring side because a
former cabinet member, a congressman or a four-star general, can possess
a breadth and depth of experience and knowledge of past, present and
future topics that is considerably worth more than countless external
consulting reports. Second, economic intelligence departments and
government relations departments also fulfill data gathering roles
through research, lobbying and interacting with industry groups.
Cyber-warfare, the new cold war
As
the planet becomes technologically more intertwined, novel tools and
modus operandi are being made available to governments and private
interests to collect specific intelligence. These tools and procedures
are an intricate combination of old and new procedures which
simultaneously penetrate nations' military, economic and social
constructs to extirpate valuable bits of knowledge.
Defense
experts are calling these emerging asymmetric conflict tools
'cyber-warfare'. Due to the plethoric ramifications they present and the
simultaneous dual tasks they may serve to fulfill (attack and defend)
when engineered in certain ways, I label this group Modern Cyber-warfare
Gear ("MOCYG").
MOCYG, as it stands, involves the offensive use
of various techniques to derail a nation's infrastructure, perturb the
military and financial systems of a country with the aim of crippling
its defense responsiveness and the integrity of economic data, or
accomplish other destructive aims based on the attacker's incentives and
strategy. Security specialists and military researchers have classified
these techniques into 5 major groups: computer forensics, viral
internet tactics, assault on computer networks or software, hacking and
espionage.
The idiosyncratic power of cyber-crime lies in its
'stateless' nature, its capacity to be inexpensively controlled and
deployed, and the vast damage it can exert. Given the judicial vacuum
created by cyber-warfare techniques, nations are rushing to build up
legislative safeguards to prosecute offenders even though criminologists
argue such undertakings are largely inefficient at the moment.
A
memorable cyber-criminal event occurred in Estonia in 2007 when more
than 1 million computers, allegedly from Russian-based servers, were
used to simultaneously cripple state, business and media websites in a
modus operandi analogous to the "shock and awe" military tactic. That
attack ended up costing Tallinn's authorities tens of millions of US
dollars.
China, a cyber-giant in progress
Upward
socioeconomic trends in the People's Republic of China are well known to
international masses and covered profusely in western news media. So
are Chinese authorities' singular understanding of democracy and human
rights as well their overt wish to play a bigger geopolitical role in
world affairs. However, the quiet revolution China is experiencing lies
within the astronomical investment country authorities are making in top
notch universities so as to catapult China into the top league of
technological giants, along with the United States and Japan. Given the
size of such educational outlays, Chinese authorities must believe that a
major competitive edge can be gained in the technology field and such
advantage can be converted or transferred into other sectors of their
mushrooming economy.
Top western sinologists and other think tanks
are closely monitoring these academic developments because they
understand the basic notion that future geopolitical dynamics will
inextricably be tied to how successful Chinese will be at leveraging
technology to boost their future 'global penetration'.
The smart
tactic is that, while future chief engineers are being trained at
world-class institutions such as University of Science and Technology at
Hefei, Harbin Institute of Technology, Beijing University and Tsinghua
University, China is concurrently putting a veil of secrecy around its
information systems and cyber-infrastructure. The country may be
notorious today for its copyright infringement cases or intellectual
property violations, but it is inconspicuously gearing up for tomorrow's
technological primacy that its expansionist aspirations may dictate.
China
also investigates currently available ways and means to unearth
state-of-the art synergy tools that can be leveraged between its major
government departments and state agencies as it prepares to enter the
'knowledge economy'. Authorities view this coordination effort as an
indispensable step forward because it adds another layer of
centralization to a government structure that is built around the canon
of 'consolidated power'.
More specifically, country leadership has
summoned top minds in technology and auxiliary fields to
synergistically engineer the future cyber-infrastructure that will
solidly mark China's imprint in the digital landscape. This task is
colossal, and the vastness of it effects precludes obviously an
analytical granularity. Several hundreds of thousands of Chinese
computer engineers, regrouped under ad hoc commissions, think tanks and
strategy centers are the backbone of this emerging 'digital army'.
They
work under the aegis of brilliant specialists whose unquestioned
patriotism and in-depth expertise are unparalleled at such high
seniority levels; this group includes Liang Guanglie, Wan Gang and Li
Yizhong. The first is the current minister of defense, who works in
conjunction with the People's Liberation Army and the Central Military
Commission to manage the largest military force in the world (ca. 3
million) and oversee its strategic evolvement.
The second is the
head of the Ministry of Science Technology and is mechanical engineer
and auto expert. The third is the Minister of Industry and Information
Technology, a cabinet position pivotal for the country's information
systems development.
Anemic US IT investments
Equipped with
this super cyber-security gear, China seems to be winning, or is in a
significant position within, the ongoing global cyber-war. In a sense,
the country is not an 'emerging' superpower as western analysts and
social science specialists would like to call it. It is already a
superpower in the fullest sense of the concept.
The term 'emerging
superpower' is presently preferred in academic and business literature
as well as in media parlance because it is more politically palatable to
the elite and other classes of citizens in traditionally influential
economies (G8) who fear the psychological and social implications of
welcoming new colossi in the select club of the powerful.
Security
experts and top military minds in the United States are truly concerned
that the Chinese massive IT investment dwarfs America's and do not
hesitate to point to the geopolitical implications of such a chasm. They
note that the countless cyber-attacks from China and Russia are just a
start of the new cyber 'Cold War' of the 21st century.
It is a
fact that many foreign-engineered digital attacks have targeted many
industrialized countries' military systems, power grids, and financial
infrastructure in the past few years. Yet governments and military
forces at present have limited capacity to detect or infiltrate the
attacker, counter the attack, and prevent future assaults.
US
defense officials and business leaders understand the looming threat but
believe its intensity and gravity constitute a hyperbole. However,
authoritative statistics from the Government Accountability Office, US
Congress reports, and academic studies indicate evidently that the world
leader has not shown hitherto the political willpower to tackle the
digital gap in its cyber-security infrastructure.
Truth be told,
politicians in Washington, Pentagon strategists, and the intelligence
community at large have long known of and understood the nature of the
menace. Notwithstanding, a series of geopolitical events forced them to
transfer certain topics into budgetary oblivion at the credit of more
pressing, more 'visible' national security threats that are effortlessly
noticed by constituents (e.g.: terrorist attacks).
A few factors
explain Washington's inability, or budgetary lethargy, in addressing the
cyber-warfare threat. First is the geostrategic complacency derived
from the fall of communist Soviet Union and the ensuing inertia that
global unipolarism usually creates.
Second, America's military
apparatus is currently 'distracted' by two ongoing wars and engaged in a
host of relatively minor security missions around the world. Adding to
those involvements, there is the corollary 'war on terror' that has
mobilized since 2001 colossal resources to thwart further domestic
attacks.
'Domestic' in this sense refers to an incredibly enormous
geographical area because it encompasses US conventional soil and the
related territories, American overseas diplomatic missions, its military
bases, transnational organizations where the US holds significant
strategic interests (e.g.: NATO headquarters and military stations), and
the countless aid, religious, and humanitarian outposts around the
world.
Third, the diversity and criticality of issues at hand
force the US government and congressional leaders to prioritize their
budgetary efforts. The current economic despondency bodes ill for any
serious endeavor in tackling underinvestment issues in information
technology because the country is pecuniarily limited and cannot afford
to continuously print money (risk of inflation and currency devaluation)
or borrow from... China.
US budding cyber-security grid is solid
Despite
the socio-economic gloom, the Obama administration has shown in the
past 6 months a strong level of commitment in assuring the integrity of
the nation's information assets. He appointed late December Howard
Schmidt, a renowned computer security specialist and former Microsoft
security executive, as White House cyber-security czar. Other
high-profile nominations have followed in the army ranks and other key
departments and government agencies such as Homeland Security, Treasury,
the FBI and the CIA.
The efforts appear to be coordinated and
effectively reaching their desired goals, from the Pentagon's launching
of a giant "cyber-command" unit to the CIA's and FBI's massive 'hiring
spree' of computer engineers and cyber-security specialists.
International cooperation with other allies is also part of the
undertaking; US intelligence agencies are thus partnering with foreign
counterparts such as Britain' MI5 and MI6, Israel's Mossad, Germany's
Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service, BND) and
Militärischer Abschirmdienst (Military Counterintelligence Agency, MAD)
to address emerging threats.
Private interests are equally gearing
up. Businesses are investing massively in IT infrastructure and
upgrading computer networks, and working jointly with government
agencies. They are also granting rising subsidies to think tanks and
academia to help in this effort.
The combination of efforts has to
be successful because an absence of effectiveness in cyber-warfare
measures can be 'lethal' to US global supremacy. Judging by the great
havoc cyber attacks had catapulted onto Estonia in 2007, hyperbola ought
not to be barred in this topic.
Based on the latest estimations,
US nominal GDP is nearly 3 times that of China ($14.5 trillion vs. $4.5
trillion), but the latter's healthier growth rate is helping bridge that
gap gradually. Thus, many forecasters - and the proverbial
'conventional wisdom' - assume that it will take Beijing many decades to
attain America's economic clout and level.
That said, in the
hypothetical scenario that a cyber-warfare erupts between both
countries, a stronger China may only need to considerably crush US
economic productivity and therefore its GDP to claim victory and
financially surpass its rival. Absent effective security systems, China,
or any other foe, may only need to assault vital arteries of the US
military-industrial complex: power grids, financial transaction systems,
Federal Reserve System, US Armed Forces' computer systems and networks,
Congress' and White House's IT infrastructures, etc. It's easy to
imagine the massive damage electricity failure can do to a country's
transportation, financial, and military systems.
by Marquis Codjia
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