Information Operations
Newsletter
Compiled by: Mr. Jeff Harley
US Army Strategic Command
G39, Information Operations Division
The articles and information appearing herein are intended for educational and non-commercial purposes to promote discussion of research in
the public interest. The views, opinions, and/or findings and recommendations contained in this summary are those of the original authors and
should not be construed as an official position, policy, or decision of the United States Government, U.S. Department of the Army, or U.S.
Army Strategic Command.
Table of Contents
ARSTRAT IO Newsletter on OSS.net
Page 1
Table of Contents
Vol. 9, no. 07 (30 January – 10 March 2009)
1.
NATO’s Cyber Defence Warriors
2.
CAC-CDID Completes Transition to Objective Model
3.
Electronic Warfare Proponent: Changes by Adversaries, Advances in Technology Drive EW's
Operational Importance
4.
Army Creates Electronic Warfare Career Field
5.
Tinker Airmen Deploy With Bomb-Jamming Radio Device
6.
Wireless Electricity Is Here (Seriously)
7.
German Federal Armed Forces Develop Secret Cyberwar Troop
8.
Der CyberKrieg
9.
National Defense in Cyberspace
10. U.S. Spy Agency May Get More Cybersecurity Duties
11. New Cyber-Threats -- Part 1
12. Northrop Grumman Begins Study of Electronic Warfare System of the Future
13. Tactical Success, Strategic Defeat
14. Tactical Success, Strategic Defeat (Updated)
15. Taking the “D’oh!” Out of Operational Security
16. Colonies of 'Cybots' May Defend Government Networks
17. America's Wired Warrior
18. Behind The Estonia Cyberattacks
19. Do Journalists Make Good Public Affairs Officers?
20. Army Developing Teams for Electronic Warfare
21. Public Diplomacy in the Digital Age, Part 2
ARSTRAT IO Newsletter on OSS.net
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NATO’s Cyber Defence Warriors
By Frank Gardner, BBC News, 3 February 2009
Nato officials have told the BBC their computers are under constant attack from organisations and
individuals bent on trying to hack into their secrets.
The attacks keep coming despite the establishment of a co-ordinated cyber defence policy with a
quick-reaction cyber team on permanent standby.
The cyber defence policy was set up after a wave of cyber attacks on Nato member Estonia in
2007, and more recent attacks on Georgia - so what are they defending against and how do they
do it?
Tower of Babel
Nato's operational headquarters in Mons is a low, drab three-storey building - part of a sprawling
complex set in rolling farmland south of Brussels.
The blue and white flag of the 26-nation alliance flutters in the cold breeze alongside the spangled
banner of the EU.
Inside the canteen it is like a Tower of Babel with almost every language of Europe competing to be
heard above the clatter of trays and dishes.
Our escort, a German army officer in immaculate uniform, leads us down a corridor to a hushed
room where 20 or so military analysts sit hunched over computers; their desert boots and
camouflage fatigues strangely out of place for a windowless room in Belgium.
This, explains Chris Evis, is the Incident Management Section, which he heads.
"We face the full gamut of threats. It varies from your kiddie who's just trying to gain street cred
amongst his friends to say he's just defaced a Nato system to more focused targeted attacks
against Nato information".
Cyber attacks are not new - websites were being hacked into and brought down during the Kosovo
war 10 years ago.
But when Estonia came under sustained cyber attack from Russian sympathisers in 2007, the
alliance realised it needed a proper cyber defence policy and fast.
Suleyman Anil, a Turkish IT expert from the Nato Security Office is the man driving much of that
policy.
"Estonia was the first time, in a large scale, [that we saw] possible involvement of state agencies;
that the cyber attack can bring down a complete national service, banking, media... the other
particular trait everyone is struggling to deal with... is lots of cyber espionage going on".
Mr Anil reveals that there has been more than one incidence of Nato officials being socially profiled,
and then subjected to "targeted trojans".
He explains how their unseen adversaries gather as much information as possible about the
individual then send them an email purporting to come from a friend or a relative.
Trojan horse
If they open the attachment then a sophisticated "worm" or "trojan" can, in theory, take over their
computer, scan its files, send them on, delete them, or perhaps most damagingly, alter them
without the user knowing.
This sort of activity goes on every day in the commercial world but for a military organisation like
Nato there are obvious risks.
Chris Evis is at pains to point out that any material classified as "secret" is transmitted only
internally, by secure intranet, rather than using the world wide web.
But what happens, I ask, when someone mistakenly sends secret material over the internet?
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The answer, it seems, is sitting in the corner of the room.
An Italian sergeant, who looks young enough to still be at school, is painstakingly scanning emails
that have been automatically quarantined because they contain buzzwords like "Nato secret".
A glance over his shoulder reveals emails to and from Sarajevo, Baghdad and Kabul, evidence of
Nato's newly expanded horizons.
They look innocuous enough and most of the time, explains the sergeant, it is a false alarm but
sometimes even quite senior officers have transgressed and they get a serious talking to about
online security.
Serious threats
When it comes to cyber espionage, Nato officials refuse to say who they think is behind the
attacks, in fact our escorts can hardly wait to steer us off the subject.
Even if they were certain that they were originating, say, in China or Russia, it would be very hard
for them to prove, so tortuous is the trail in cyberspace.
Instead, Chris Evis is happy to talk about how the threat is being tackled, explaining that they have
a number of analysts who are constantly reviewing information, looking for the more serious
threats.
"We have [about] 100 sensors at the moment deployed at something close to 30 different sites
across the Nato countries... one of these sensors could be on the east coast of the United States,
one could be in London, one could be in Iraq and a number of them could be in Afghanistan. All
that information is simultaneously feeding back to us at the centre here."
So is cyber warfare the future of warfare?
Chris Evis says he believes it will be a factor within any future conflict.
"I think the gravest cyber threat to Nato is somebody altering the data without our knowing about
it and [our] finding out too late in the action," he says.
"So when it's quiet it's probably too quiet, because there's always activity out there."
Table of Contents
CAC-CDID Completes Transition to Objective Model
By Christopher L. Kessel, Capability Development Integration Directorate, Leavenworth Lamp, 5 February 2009
A little less than one year after the Combined Arms Center commanding general approved its
formation, the Combined Arms Center - Capability Development Integration Directorate completed
the final steps on Feb. 1 to transition to the objective CDID model. This last organizational
adjustment will bring to a close eleven months of hard work and patience as CAC-CDID has not
only accomplished its mission tasks, but also managed the dissolution and establishment of several
major CAC organizations.
Late February of last year the CAC commander approved the formation of the CAC-CDID as a
major subordinate organization. CDID's establishment was part of the broader CAC restructuring
effort that created organizations such as the CAC-Knowledge, CAC-Training and CAC-Leadership
Development and Education.
In the area of capability development, the problem was far from novel: how do you balance an
increasing reliance on combined arms capability development with decreasing or minimal
resources? The solution, as indicated above, was to adopt the Training and Doctrine Command
approved CDID model. This new model reduces redundant efforts by providing a central location for
capability development.
Previously, there were several different CAC organizations that developed capabilities - including
the Force Management Directorate, Battle Command Integration Directorate, U.S. Army Computer
Network Operations Electronic Warfare Proponent and U.S. Army Information Operations Proponent
- but their efforts were disjointed. A centralized location for capability development ensures CAC's
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development efforts are synchronized across the combined arms spectrum and the doctrine,
organization, training, materiel, leader development, personnel and facilities domains. And while
these organizations have been dissolved, their missions continue within the CAC-CDID construct.
It is within this new construct that CAC-CDID manages the development and integration of CAC
proponent responsibilities in the areas of information, battle command, computer network
operations and electronic warfare, to name a few. These CAC proponent responsibilities are now
efficiently developed within CDID's Concept, Requirement, Experimentation and Warfighter
Interface, commonly known by the acronym TRADOC Capabilities Manager, or TCM, model.
Recently what these efforts have translated into is a way ahead for an Electronic Warfare Career
Field, the publication of Field Manual 3-36, Electronic Warfare in Operations, Feb. 26; FM 3-13,
Information, later this year; and exercises involving Security Force Assistance. These efforts are of
no small significance. FM 3-13, Information, addresses the paradigmatic shift of FM 3-0,
Operations, that information "is as important as lethal action in determining the outcome of
operations." Additionally, the SFA exercises involve more than a hundred participants from various
commands throughout the United States, as well as multinational partners from Canada, United
Kingdom and Australia.
CAC-CDID is looking ahead to its responsibilities under the new structure. Thomas Jordan, who has
directed the organization from its planning to execution phases, is confident about the future and
the benefits of the TRADOC CDID model.
"The TRADOC CDID model has been adopted by other Centers of Excellence and has shown
promise," Jordan said. "Without a doubt, this will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of CAC's,
and thereby TRADOC and the Army's, combined arms development efforts."
To find out more information about CAC-CDID, visit CAC's Web site at
http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/.
Table of Contents
Electronic Warfare Proponent: Changes by Adversaries, Advances in
Technology Drive EW's Operational Importance
By George Marsec, Leavenworth Lamp, 5 February 2009
Electronic warfare has been around since there have been electronics. Hollywood movies have
painted society's historical view of EW with the good guys intercepting the bad guys' radio signals
and each side trying to jam each other's radar systems. Today's EW reality is far more
technologically complex and constantly evolving.
The job of providing doctrinal structure to the U.S. Army for all things EW rests on the shoulders of
the U.S. Army Computer Network Operations and Electronic Warfare Proponent at Fort
Leavenworth.
EW is "our (the U.S. Army) ability to use the electromagnetic spectrum and also to affect our
enemies' ability to use the electromagnetic spectrum by either attacking their ability or denying
their ability through the electromagnetic spectrum," said Lt. Col. John Bircher, USACEWP deputy
director for Futures,
A key component of the USACEWP's doctrinal guidance is Field Manual 3-36, Electronic Warfare in
Operations, due for release in late February.
USACEWP Director Col. Wayne Parks said FM 3-36 is the Army's first keystone EW document of its
kind. Previous EW doctrine was localized to divisions and "corps and above" or was technically
oriented. The new doctrine is the first effort to build an overarching concept of EW operations that
is nested in overall operational Army doctrine as described in FM 3-0, Operations.
The USACEWP was born in 2006 after several years of changes and advances on the EW front.
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"From 2003-2005 we started to see our adversaries using the spectrum against us in ways we
never predicted," Bircher said. "Radio controlled IEDs, cellular communications, the Internet ... all
using the electromagnetic spectrum in ways we weren't prepared to deal with.
"In 2006, the Department of the Army authorized the formation of the EW Proponent," Bircher
said, "taking the responsibility of electronic warfare for ground forces out of the Information
Operations arena."
In 2007 DA authorized the merging of the Computer Network Operations function with the EW and
formed what is now the USACEWP. The joining of the two disciplines grew from the Army's
increasing need to understand, operate in and manipulate cyberspace.
"In the operational environment, the lines between CNO and EW are blurred," Bircher said. "We can
use EW to disable our enemies' cellular phone device or we can use CNO to deny the device's
access to its network."
"Do we use CNO or EW to deny our adversary, and does it matter to the tactical commander?"
Bircher continued, "and in our conceptual research we found that it didn't matter. What's important
is controlling the data, the bandwidth and the electromagnetic spectrum."
Staying on the leading edge of cyber communications technology is a daunting task, for not only
the USACEWP but for communications professionals across both military and civilian organizations.
To keep up with the latest, the proponent has reached out to form partnerships with other leading
communications entities.
Parks said the USACEWP took a big step toward cementing these partnerships when they hosted an
information and cyberspace symposium in September.
"The symposium was successful in leveraging the expertise and perspectives from subject matter
experts across the joint, interagency, and intergovernmental communities as well as academia and
industry," he said.
Some key participants in the symposium included representatives from Big-12 universities and
major telecommunications firms. Parks said the relationships formed with these partners give the
USACEWP the luxury of "articulating our concepts and bouncing them off of our partners, and viceversa. The relationships work both ways."
USACEWP will continue to lead the Army's CNO and EW doctrine and development, but soon will
have a new look and a new name.
According to a Combined Arms Center - Capability Development Integration Directorate release,
"The USACEWP will transition to the TRADOC Capabilities Manager Computer Network Operations
Electronic Warfare on Feb. 1 due to CAC-CDID's internal refinement. This refinement will distribute
CNO and EW expertise, previously restricted to just the USACEWP, throughout the entire CAC-CDID
organization, thus making the overall development process more efficient."
Table of Contents
Army Creates Electronic Warfare Career Field
By Jamie Findlater, Army News Service, 6 February 2009
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Feb. 6, 2009) -- The Army has announced approval for the
establishment of a new Electronic Warfare 29-series career field for officers, warrant officers and
enlisted personnel.
The new career field will eventually give the Army the largest electronic warfare manpower force of
all the services. Nearly 1,600 EW personnel, serving at every level of command, will be added to
the Army over the next three years. The Army is also considering adding an additional 2,300
personnel to the career field in the near future as personnel become available, officials said.
The Army's EW personnel will be experts not only in fighting the threat of improvised explosive
devices, but will also provide commanders and their staffs guidance on how the electromagnetic
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spectrum can impact operations, officials said, and how friendly EW can be used to gain an
advantage in support of tactical and operational objectives across the full spectrum of operations.
"The new administration has already declared they will be emphasizing technical investments
across the federal government, but in particular, electronic warfare capabilities and other
technological innovations," said Col. Laurie G. Buckhout, the Army's chief of electronic warfare.
"The Army is leaning forward now to address the very complex challenge of controlling the
electromagnetic environment in land warfare. The creation of a large cadre of full-time EW
specialists is a critical step in the right direction."
Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, Army vice chief of staff, and former commanding general of Multi-National
Corps-Iraq, recognized this vital need for greater EW capability in 2006 when he placed Navy
electronic warfare officers with ground combat units in Iraq to manage the complicated
electromagnetic spectrum.
"We learned the hard way in 2006 how to leverage EW skill sets from the joint community to
counter the emerging remote-controlled IED threats," Chiarelli said.
America's enemies are now using the electromagnetic spectrum against it and its Soldiers. By
creating an electronic warfare career field, the Army is better capable of mitigating that threat,
Chiarelli said.
"One of the enduring features of any future battlefield will be determined (by) resourceful enemies
attempting to undermine our will by leveraging the electronic spectrum," Chiarelli said. "Building an
EW structure within the Army will greatly enhance our ability to proactively counter these threats.
A commitment to EW allows us to tightly integrate non-kinetic and kinetic capabilities across the
Army and as part of joint operations."
Approval for the career field was based on an extensive study conducted by the Combined Arms
Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The study concluded that the Army EW expertise is not only
necessary for counterinsurgency efforts like OIF and OEF, but against the full range of potential
adversaries and should therefore be institutionalized as an enduring core competency.
To develop EW experts, Fort Sill, Okla., is now conducting a series of pilot EW Courses. Warrant
officer and enlisted pilot courses are expected to begin in spring 2009. The third officer functional
area pilot course is scheduled to begin June 29.
The career management field identifiers will be Functional Area 29 for officers, Military
Occupational Specialty 290A for warrant officers, and Military Occupational Specialty 29E for
enlisted personnel.
Table of Contents
Tinker Airmen Deploy With Bomb-Jamming Radio Device
By 1st Lt. Kinder Blacke, 552nd ACW Public Affairs, Tinker Take Off, 6 February 2009
Radio Controlled Improvised Explosive Devices are a common threat to lives in deployed locations,
yet the casualties due to these RCIED’s are becoming fewer as Airmen from Tinker step up to help.
Several members from the 552nd Air Control Wing have voluntarily deployed to some of the most
dangerous areas of the world to operate and maintain the Counter Radio-Controlled Improvised
Explosive Device Electronic Warfare systems.
The CREW system, which consists of a control box, a receiver/transmitter box, and various
antennas, is mounted onto a Humvee, or other military vehicle.
It jams transmitted signals from everyday items like car-door remotes, garage-door openers, or
cell phones, all things that can be rigged to trigger an explosive device.
Preventing a signal from reaching its receiver inhibits the detonator from being triggered on an
explosive device, said Senior Master Sgt. Richard Hunter, 960th Airborne Air Control Squadron, who
deployed to Iraq for six months as the first Air Force Senior Non-Commissioned Officer to be
certified as an Army Battalion Electronic Warfare Officer.
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To put it simply “the CREW system is designed to cut off communication between the remote
control and the receiver used to detonate IED’s placed by insurgents to blow up our convoys that
are patrolling or travelling throughout the area. It basically provides an electronic shield around the
convoy to protect it from any radio controlled IEDs,” said Maj. Joemar Rodrigo, instructor electronic
combat officer, 552nd Training Squadron.
Because of their background and training in electronic warfare with the E-3 Sentry Airborne
Warning and Control System, several Airmen from the 552nd ACW eagerly volunteered when the
opportunity arose for Air Force members to deploy with an Army battalion as their Electronic
Warfare Officer.
As EWOs for Army battalions, the Airmen were tasked with operating and maintaining the CREW
system, as well as conducting training, mission planning and providing threat analysis for combat
patrols, and advising leadership, said Capt. Chris Hess, 963rd Airborne Air Control Squadron, who
deployed to Afghanistan for eight months in support of the counter-RCIED mission.
In order to fulfill the roll as EWO, most Airmen attend the Tactical Electronic Warfare Operations
Course at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., for three weeks, then attend Ground Combat Training in Fort
Jackson, S.C., for two weeks, and finally the Counter RCIED Electronic Warfare Course in Camp
Victory, Baghdad, Iraq for two weeks, said Master Sgt. Steve Sutton, 965th Airborne Air Control
Squadron, who served as an EWO for seven months. Despite the extensive training, operating the
CREW system is not without daily challenges.
“I had almost 500 systems under my control at one time and it was my responsibility to ensure
that they were all operational,” said Major Rodrigo.
“Desert heat and sands are the biggest challenge,” he said. “Although it is designed for use in that
type of environment, it can and will overheat, especially in the summer. And it is still a computer
with moving parts, therefore you have to be careful that sand does not build up and get inside the
system itself.”
Captain Hess added that “CREW is still in a testing and evaluation process and thus EWOs must
constantly conduct threat analysis and expediently provide corrective measures for new issues that
arise within the system.”
Sergeant Hunter said it was also difficult to keep the CREW systems updated with the latest
software in order to combat the enemies’ ever-changing tactics, and doing so with rockets and
mortar rounds hitting the base on a daily basis is an extra challenge.
Yet, having a Soldier come up and thank him for helping to keep him or her safe made it all worth
it to Sergeant Hunter.
“It gave me a tremendous sense of job satisfaction,” he said. “I also have a much better
appreciation for what the Soldiers and Marines do,” he added, a sentiment shared by his fellow
CREW system EWO’s.
Major Rodrigo is happy to report that “the CREW system has been attributed to the significant
decline of casualties due to RCIEDs.”
“Because of this equipment, people are still alive,” said Sergeant Sutton. “During the time I was in
country, my units combined for over 15,000 combat missions and travelled over 60,000 miles of
Iraq with zero loss of life or limb due to IEDs.”
Likewise, in the six months that Capt. Robert Desautels, 963rd Airborne Air Control Squadron, was
in Iraq, neither of the battalions he worked with had a loss of life. “I was able to see everyday how
what I did impacted the war effort,” he said.
“Electronic warfare, or jamming, does indeed ‘work’ and is not magic,” said Captain Hess.
Researchers are continually striving to make the system more “soldier-friendly,” said Captain Hess,
and a new and improved device is in the testing and evaluation phase.
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It was unanimous that the Airmen who have filled a CREW tasking found it to be fulfilling and
enjoyable despite the austere conditions. Sergeant Sutton sums it up saying, “it was the most
rewarding experience of my Air Force career.”
Table of Contents
Wireless Electricity Is Here (Seriously)
By Paul Hochman, Fast Company
I'm standing next to a Croatian-born American genius in a half-empty office in Watertown, Mass.,
and I'm about to be fried to a crisp. Or I'm about to witness the greatest advance in electrical
science in a hundred years. Maybe both.
Either way, all I can think of is my electrician, Billy Sullivan. Sullivan has 11 tattoos and a voice
marinated in Jack Daniels. During my recent home renovation, he roared at me when I got too
close to his open electrical panel: "I'm the Juice Man!" he shouted. "Stay the hell away from my
juice!"
He was right. Only gods mess with electrons. Only a fool would shoot them into the air. And yet,
I'm in a conference room with a scientist who is going to let 120 volts fly out of the wall, on
purpose.
"Don't worry," says the MIT assistant professor and a 2008 MacArthur genius-grant winner, Marin
Soljacic (pronounced SOLE-ya-cheech), who designed the box he's about to turn on. "You will be
OK."
We both shift our gaze to an unplugged Toshiba television set sitting 5 feet away on a folding table.
He's got to be kidding: There is no power cord attached to it. It's off. Dark. Silent. "You ready?" he
asks.
If Soljacic is correct -- if his free-range electrons can power up this untethered TV from across a
room -- he will have performed a feat of physics so subtle and so profound it could change the
world. It could also make him a billionaire. I hold my breath and cover my crotch. Soljacic flips the
switch.
Soljacic isn't the first man to try to power distant electronic devices by sending electrons through
the air. He isn't even the first man from the Balkans to try. Most agree that Serbian inventor Nikola
Tesla, who went on to father many of the inventions that define the modern electronic era, was the
first to let electrons off their leash, in 1890.
Tesla based his wireless electricity idea on a concept known as electromagnetic induction, which
was discovered by Michael Faraday in 1831 and holds that electric current flowing through one wire
can induce current to flow in another wire, nearby. To illustrate that principle, Tesla built two huge
"World Power" towers that would broadcast current into the American air, to be received remotely
by electrical devices around the globe.
Few believed it could work. And to be fair to the doubters, it didn't, exactly. When Tesla first
switched on his 200-foot-tall, 1 million-volt Colorado Springs tower, 130-foot-long bolts of
electricity shot out of it, sparks leaped up at the toes of passers-by, and the grass around the lab
glowed blue. It was too much, too soon.
But strap on your rubber boots; Tesla's dream has come true. After more than 100 years of dashed
hopes, several companies are coming to market with technologies that can safely transmit power
through the air -- a breakthrough that portends the literal and figurative untethering of our
electronic age. Until this development, after all, the phrase "mobile electronics" has been a lie: How
portable is your laptop if it has to feed every four hours, like an embryo, through a cord? How
mobile is your phone if it shuts down after too long away from a plug? And how flexible is your
business if your production area can't shift because you can't move the ceiling lights?
The world is about to be cured of its attachment disorder.
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Wireless juice: A primer
TECH 1: Inductive Coupling
Availability: April
>> THE FIRST WIRELESS POWERING SYSTEM to market is an inductive device, much like the one
Tesla saw in his dreams, but a lot smaller. It looks like a mouse pad and can send power through
the air, over a distance of up to a few inches. A powered coil inside that pad creates a magnetic
field, which as Faraday predicted, induces current to flow through a small secondary coil that's built
into any portable device, such as a flashlight, a phone or a BlackBerry. The electrical current that
then flows in that secondary coil charges the device's onboard rechargeable battery. (That iPhone
in your pocket has yet to be outfitted with this tiny coil, but, as we'll see, a number of companies
are about to introduce products that are.)
The practical benefit of this approach is huge. You can drop any number of devices on the charging
pad, and they will recharge -- wirelessly. No more tangle of power cables or jumble of charging
stations. What's more, because you are invisible to the magnetic fields created by the system, no
electricity will flow into you if you stray between device and pad. Nor are there any exposed "hot"
metal connections. And the pads are smart: Their built-in coils are driven by integrated circuits,
which know if the device sitting on them is authorized to receive power, or if it needs power at all.
So you won't charge your car keys. Or overcharge your flashlight.
The dominant player in this technology for the moment seems to be Michigan-based Fulton
Innovation, which unveiled its first set of wirelessly charged consumer products at the 2009
International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas early this year. Come April, Fulton's new
pad-based eCoupled system will be available to police, fire-and-rescue and contractor fleets -- an
initial market of as many as 700,000 vehicles annually. The system is being integrated into a truck
console designed and produced by Leggett & Platt, a $4.3 billion commercial shelving giant; it
allows users to charge anything from a compatible rechargeable flashlight to a PDA. The tools and
other devices now in the pipeline at companies such as Bosch, Energizer and others will look just
like their conventional ancestors. Companies such as Philips Electronics, Olympus and Logitech will
create a standard for products, from flashlights to drills to cell phones to TV remotes, by the end of
this year.
TECH 2: Radio-frequency Harvesting
Availability: April
>> THE INDUCTION SYSTEMS are only the beginning. Some of the most visually arresting
examples of wireless electricity are based on what's known as radio frequency, or RF. While less
efficient, they work across distances of up to 85 feet. In these systems, electricity is transformed
into radio waves, which are transmitted across a room, then received by so-called power
harvesters and translated back into low-voltage direct current. Imagine smoke detectors or clocks
that never need their batteries replaced. Sound trivial? Consider: Last November, to save on labor
costs, General Motors canceled the regularly scheduled battery replacement in the 562 wall clocks
at its Milford Proving Ground headquarters. This technology is already being used by the
Department of Defense. This year, it will be available to consumers in the form of a few small
appliances and wireless sensors; down the road, it will appear in wireless boxes into which you can
toss any and all of your electronics for recharging.
TECH 3: Magnetically Coupled Resonance
Availability: 12-18 months
>> INVENTED BY MIT'S SOLJACIC (who has dubbed it WiTricity), the technique can power an
entire room, assuming the room is filled with enabled devices. Though WiTricity uses two coils -one powered, one not, just like eCoupled's system -- it differs radically in the following way:
Soljacic's coils don't have to be close to each other to transfer energy. Instead, they depend on socalled magnetic resonance. Like acoustical resonance, which allows an opera singer to break a
glass across the room by vibrating it with the correct frequency of her voice's sound waves,
Page 10
magnetic resonance can launch an energetic response in something far away. In this case, the
response is the flow of electricity out of the receiving coil and into the device to which it's
connected. The only caveat is that receiving coil must be properly "tuned" to match the powered
coil, in the way that plucking a D string on any tuned piano will set all the D strings to vibrating,
but leave all other notes still and silent. (This explains why Soljacic considers the machinery that
create these frequencies, and the shape of the coils, top secret.)
Importantly, then, WiTricity doesn't depend on line of sight. A powered coil in your basement could
power the rest of the house, wirelessly. Will the cat be OK? "Biological organisms are invisible to,
and unaffected by, a magnetic field," Soljacic says. While I am mulling that statement, he tells me
the company will not yet reveal the name of its partners because those partnerships haven't been
formalized, but they include major consumer electronics brands and some U.S. defense customers.
As has been the tradition since Tesla and Thomas Edison angrily parted ways in 1885, the
enormous consumer demand for wireless electricity is begetting intense competition. Last
November, a consortium of manufacturers coalesced around Fulton's eCoupled system. But Fulton
and WiTricity aren't the only companies fighting to bring wireless electricity to market. WiPower, in
Altamonte Springs, Fla., has also created an induction system and says it, too, is close to
announcing partnerships. And Pittsburgh-based Powercast, an RF system, sells wireless Christmas
ornaments and is testing industrial sensors for release this summer.
Just as Tesla derided his doubters as "nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease," some
name-calling is inevitable in this increasingly heated battle. WiPower, for example, insists that the
eCoupled technology approach has several problems. "Their system is very sensitive to alignment,
and I've heard there's a heating issue," says CEO Ryan Tseng. "Our system is more elegant, much
less expensive, and easier for manufacturers to integrate." Meanwhile, Powercast calls Dave
Baarman, Fulton Innovation's director of advanced technologies, "irresponsible" for wondering
aloud whether RF power solutions could be dangerous around pacemakers and powered
wheelchairs. "It's competitive drivel," says Steve Day, Powercast's VP of marketing and strategic
planning. "Baarman has been saying this for a couple of years, because what we do will eventually
replace what he does."
But as I stand, covering myself, in that featureless suburban conference room, such bickering fades
to background noise. Because with Tesla's 100-foot-long lightning bolts and blue grass vivid in my
mind, I have a big question: Will Soljacic, the MacArthur Foundation fellow, be able to turn on that
Toshiba TV from across the room? Or will I be bathed in a magnetic field so intense my molecules
all align to face true north?
After he flips the switch, the little television, 5 feet away, springs to life. Wirelessly. The DVD player
inside spins up to a low whine. Colors flicker on the moving screen. And Soljacic's eyes dance with
the reflected light of the image
Table of Contents
German Federal Armed Forces Develop Secret Cyberwar Troop
Translated from Spiegel Online, 7 Feb 2009 (original version)
Substantial attacks on chancellorship and Ministries up-frightened the Federal Government: With a
German Federal Armed Forces special unit it wants to meet the electronic emergency now after
Spiegel sources. The hackers in uniform are to also learn to explore and destroy stranger nets.
Berlin - the German Federal Armed Forces would forearm yourself with so far a not well-known unit
for future Internet conflicts.
After information MIRRORS [Spiegel] work those at present 76 coworkers of the “department of
information and computer network operations” in the structure strictly bulkheaded in the Tomburg
barracks in Rhine brook close Bonn and should up to the coming year be fully operational.
Page 11
The hackers in uniform, who stand under the command of Brigadier General Friedrich Wilhelm
Kriesel belongs and organizational to the command strategic clearing-up, train for an electronic
emergency, as there was it last with the Cyber attacks on Estonia and Georgien.
The soldiers are particularly recruited from the specialist areas for computer science at the German
Federal Armed Forces universities. They concern themselves also with the newest methods to
penetrate in stranger of networks to explore it to manipulate or destroy – digital attacks on strange
server and nets including.
Parallel the Federal Government invests far away unnoticed into the improvement of own ITsecurity. After solid attack waves with harming programs on Federal Ministries and the Office of the
Federal Chancellor in the spring and summers 2007, which attributed investigators to servers in the
Chinese province Lanzhou, is to be revalued Bonn Federal Office for security in the information
technology (BSI) to a Cyber Verteidigungsagentur for the authorities.
Already in the middle of January adopted the Federal Cabinet a bill for the “stabilization of the
information security of the federation”. According to it the BSI more money receives, personnel and
clearly extended powers. So it is the data streams of the authorities in the future automated to
supervise and for them concrete IT-Sicherheitsvorgaben make. So far Bonn security experts only
the recommendations may express.
At the beginning of March is to advise the Bundestag over the law. The “special express needyness”
results from the “necessary security of government communication”, is called it in the reason.
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Der CyberKrieg
By Stuart Fox, Popular Science, 11 February 2009
Just outside the small town of Rheinbach, the German army has begun preparations for a new kind
of war. Following on the heels of attacks against the Internet infrastructure of Estonia, Georgia and
Kyrgyzstan, as well as a large scale hacking attack by China against a number of European
countries, the German army, or Bundeswehr, has established its first unit dedicated solely to cyber
war. According to a new article in Der Speigel, the unit is still considered secret, and will work on
both defensive and offensive operations.
But a technologically advanced nation developing a unit for cyber war is not itself unique. Rather,
the fact that even Germany plans on developing these capabilities signals that the age of cyber war
has finally arrived.
“Other than Britian and France, European countries have not been very out front about their warmaking capabilities,” said Martin Libicki, author of Conquest in Cyberspace and a senior policy
research at the Rand Corporation. “Since Germany is very careful about these things, the fact that
they actually announced that they're doing it may mean it’s not as everyday as it seems.”
Instead, the creation of the secret unit signals that Germany will join the larger shift by many
militaries towards acknowledging the importance of cyber war. According to Scott Borg, Director
and Chief Economist of the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a non-profit founded by the US
government that now independently consults with the government and businesses, about a dozen
countries have developed cyber war capabilities.
With the Russian cyber attack that took out Estonia’s banking, government ministries and Internet
for several days in 2007, the wired world joined the land, sea and air as a standard battlefield in
modern war. After the 2007 Estonia incident, Russians launched cyber attacks against Georgia
during their 2008 war, and then took down the Internet of Kyrgyzstan on January 18th of this year.
Since 2007, cyber attacks have been used in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, between Indian and
Pakistan, and between China and Taiwan and Japan.
Der Speigel said that the Bundeswehr unit, lead by Brigadier General Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel,
consists of 79 computer scientists recruited from the Bundeswehr’s universities and training
centers.
Page 12
And while the unit won’t become fully operational until next year, Germany has a long history of
cyber war. According to James Lewis, Director and Senior Fellow, Technology and Public Policy
Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the first case of cyber war in history
occurred when the KGB hired German hackers to break into the US Department of Defense (DoD)
computer system.
The impetus for creating this unit came from a spate of recent cyber attacks against Germany. In
2007, attempts by Chinese hackers to conduct industrial espionage against Germany became so
bad that during a state visit to Germany, German chancellor Angela Merkel publicly asked Chinese
officials to stop. Additionally, Germany has engaged in some spats over gas pipelines with Russia, a
country that has launched cyber attacks every year since 2007.
“Russia has demonstrated the willingness to use cyber space, and I'm sure Germany is concerned
about Russia's use of cyber force as a negotiating tactic,” said O. Sami Saydjari, chairman of the
Professionals for Cyber Defense.
Of course, the creation of this new German unit isn’t the only sign that countries are paying more
attention to the Internet battlefield. Just last month, the DoD published its Quadrennial Roles and
Missions Report. The Report, which the DoD uses to help Congress formulate the military budget
for the coming years, highlighted four areas of particular importance. Three of the areas were the
obvious choices of counter-insurgency, unmanned aerial vehicles and supply. The forth area was
cyber war. Looks like Germany might not be the only country increasing its focus on fighting this
popular new kind of war.
Table of Contents
National Defense in Cyberspace
By John Goetz, Marcel Rosenbach and Alexander Szandar, Spiegel, 11 February 2009
Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, trains its own hackers -- and it's not the only official effort to
defend a nation from denial-of-service attacks. Governments around the world are preparing for
the future of war.
This is what an officially appointed hacker looks like: A man with gray hair and a moustache,
wearing a blue German Air Force uniform. His name is Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel, and he's 60 years
old, a brigadier general and the head of the Bundeswehr's Strategic Reconnaissance Unit.
Kriesel has been deployed to the front lines of a battle that has recently come in for special
attention from the Bundeswehr. The general's task is to prepare for the wars of the future, parts of
which could be waged on the Internet. Kriesel seems to be the right man for the job. With about
6,000 soldiers under his command, his unit already operates like an intelligence service.
Strictly isolated from the publicat the Tomburg barracks in Rheinbach, a picturesque town near
Bonn, 76 members of his staff are busy testing the latest methods of infiltrating, exploring and
manipulating -- or destroying -- computer networks. The unit, known by its harmless-sounding
official name, Department of Information and Computer Network Operations, is preparing for an
electronic emergency, which includes digital attacks on outside servers and networks.
The uniformed hackers from Rheinbach are Germany's answer to a growing threat which has begun
to worry governments, intelligence agencies and military officials around the world. Now that
computers have made their way into practically every aspect of life, their susceptibility to attacks
has risen dramatically. In the United States, experts have been warning for years against an
"electronic Pearl Harbor," a "digital Sept. 11" or a "Cybergeddon."
Estonia was the first NATO member state to fall victim to this form of digital attack. In the spring of
2007, banks, government agencies and political parties in Estonia came under massive electronic
attack. The Baltic republic was essentially offline for a while, making it the scene of the first "cyber
war." Officials there suspect the attack came from neighboring Russia, because Estonia was
embroiled in serious diplomat disputes with Moscow at the time.
Page 13
The use of the term "war" in the Estonian case was controversial from the start, and rightfully so,
since there were no dead or wounded. Nevertheless, the attack shows that assaults on the virtual
world can also have disastrous consequences. The Internet has developed into a virtual battlefield,
which can mirror conflicts in the real world.
Many countries are now preparing for similar threats. The Americans alone plan to invest billions of
dollars in a national cyber-defense program. Western intelligence agencies and military officials are
convinced that their enemies are in the East, just as they were in the Cold War -- in Russia and
China. A report submitted to the US Congress last fall concluded that China is "aggressively"
expanding its cyber-warfare capabilities and may soon possess an "asymmetric advantage."
According to the report, "these advantages would reduce the conventional superiority of the United
States in a conflict situation."
The Germans have also had adverse experiences with China in this field. Just two years ago, the
Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence agency,
informed the government that servers from Lanzhou province in China had attacked several
German ministries and the chancellery with malicious software aimed at tapping sensitive
information.
In mid-January the cabinet approved draft legislation to "strengthen the information security of the
federal government." The draft legislation is now being reviewed by the Bundesrat, the upper
house of the German parliament. So far it's gone largely unnoticed by the public, but the draft will
be submitted to the lower house, or Bundestag, in early March. The "special urgency" of the
legislation stems from the "need to safeguard government communication." The corresponding
government agency, the Federal of Security in Information Technology (BSI) in Bonn, is to be
expanded into something resembling a data watchdog for government agencies.
Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung ordered Bundeswehr officials to develop a cyber force for the
military three years ago. It was the birth of Kriesel's unit.
The 76 German Internet warriors are mainly graduates of the computer science departments at the
Bundeswehr's internal universities. Last Tuesday General Kriesel gave a proud report on his unit's
successes -- including electronic surveillance activities in Afghanistan -- to Inspector General
Wolfgang Schneiderhan and the chiefs of staff of the army, air force and navy. Then he discussed
his top-secret group. Kriesel's cyber unit will be ready to start operations next year, when it will be
asked to demonstrate its capabilities -- in a simulated attack on a real target, known as a
penetration test.
The soldiers use the same methods employed by criminals. The future digital warriors learn how to
load malicious software onto outside computers, unbeknownst to their users, through e-mail,
external media like a CD-ROM disk or simply "while surfing by" on a prepared Internet site.
Infected computers can then download additional malicious programs, such as a letter recorder
that reads every keystroke on the machine, which can record whole e-mail messages, Internet
addresses and passwords. Then program inconspicuously sends the collected entries to a remote
computer.
The training agenda in the unit's offensive division is even more difficult and exotic. The Rheinbach
soldiers no longer fight with tanks, fighter jets and assault rifles. Their weapon is the computer,
and their simulations sound like science fiction or scenarios from a computer game. But Kriesel's
soldiers study two major types of cyber assaults -- "denial of service" or "botnet" attacks -- based
on real-life attacks on Estonia and Georgia.
Science Fiction from the Real World
In Estonia, a political conflict over the relocation of a Soviet memorial spilled over into the Internet
after only a few hours in the spring of 2007. The Estonians had removed a bronze statue during the
night, planning to move it from downtown Tallinn to a more remote military cemetery. A symbol of
occupation for many Estonians, the statue represented the Soviets' victory over Nazi Germany on
behalf of the nation's Russian minority.
Page 14
In less than 24 hours, the first wave of attacks were recorded on Web sites for the Estonian prime
minister, the parliament and various political parties. Hackers placed a false apology for the
decision to relocate the statue on the sites. They also gave the prime minister a Hitler mustache on
one of his Web pages.
Various Russian Internet forums also posted instructions on how individual users could express
virtual displeasure with the Estonian decision. The forums provided descriptions in Russian of how
to flood Estonian Web sites and servers with test signals -- instructions for a classic denial-ofservice attack.
The instructions produced the desired effect, as the volume of data traffic rose dramatically on
Estonian networks. Experts with the Estonia Computer Emergency Response Team detected
orchestrated attacks on individual targets coming from more than one million computers. The
attacks emanated from so-called "botnets," or linked computers that have been infected with
malicious software and can thus be used for criminal purposes, unbeknownst to their owners,
whenever the owners are online.
The consequences were devastating. The Estonian parliament had to shut down its e-mail system
for half a day. Internet providers temporarily cut off their customers' connections, and several
Estonian banks were unreachable online for an extended period of time.
After that, one Estonian network provider counted a total of 128 attacks, including 36 on the
websites of the government and parliament, 35 on the Estonian police and another 35 on the
finance ministry.
For military officials and intelligence agencies around the world, Estonia is considered a precedent
with an unsettling message. According to a Swedish study, the Estonian case conclusively
demonstrates "that an individual attacker or a group can, with relative ease, significantly disrupt
the normal business operations of government agencies and economic activity in another country - and successfully conceal its involvement." In fact, it is still not clear who was behind the Estonian
cyber-attack. Nevertheless, authorities know that the botnets involved had already attacked the
Web site of a Russian opposition party in the past.
The attacks on Georgia last summer followed a similar pattern, although in that case they
accompanied a real invasion by Russian troops. Once again, it was Russian-language Internet
forums that provoked the attack, also providing a list of worthwhile Georgian targets. On
"stopgeorgia.ru," a website set up for this purpose, users could download a malicious program
called "war.bat," tailored for the attack on Georgian networks.
Because of the attacks a site for the Georgian president had to be taken offline for a day, and on
orders from the national bank, Georgia's financial institutions cancelled all electronic banking for 10
days. Hackers also manipulated the contents of Web sites in Georgia. The foreign ministry's home
page, for example, suddenly contained a collage of portraits of Georgian President Mikheil
Saakashvili and Adolf Hitler.
In the Georgian case, many trails also lead to Russia. A NATO report, however, says there is "no
conclusive evidence" of official involvement by the Russian government.
Warfare or Not Warfare?
Analyzing these incidents raises a number of serious questions for the Bundeswehr and German
politicians. Were these situations in fact "cyber wars," that is, the shifting of a conventional war
between two nations onto the Internet? Or were they simply new forms of "asymmetric conflict," in
which countries are attacked by digital guerilla groups?
Should they be treated as a violation of the European Council's Convention on Cyber Crime, which
23 countries have ratified? Or are they a military action that justifies retaliatory attacks? For
instance, if the Bundeswehr has identified a server controlling a botnet, does it have the authority
to destroy it? Will it ultimately need its own botnet of maliciously-programmed computers?
These questions have been the subject of heated debate among military leaders and diplomats
since the Estonia incident. At last year's NATO summit in Bucharest, the heads of state agreed to a
Page 15
joint cyber defense concept and strengthened the security precautions for their own networks, for
which a NATO agency in the Belgian city of Mons is responsible. In addition, the alliance established
a "Center of Excellence on Cyber Defense," in the Estonian capital Tallinn. The new institute has
produced an analysis of the attacks on Georgia, in which it points to "attacks in a gray zone."
According to the report, "the current question of whether cyber attacks should be treated as armed
attacks remains unresolved." It will "take time to achieve international consensus on the legal
issues of cyber defense," the report concludes.
Germany, at any rate, is apparently unwilling to wait that long. The draft legislation prepared by
the interior ministry, now headed to the Bundestag for debate, proposes upgrading the BSI into
something of a civilian cyber defense agency. In the future, it would employ automated technology
to monitor the flows of data at the Federal Chancellery and ministries, so that abnormalities can be
detected and corrective steps taken more quickly. In addition, the small Bonn agency would no
longer simply issue recommendations to reluctant government institutions, but would have the
authority to issue concrete "guidelines," such as to reduce the number of unmonitored points of
access to the Internet.
In a previously unpublished report on the situation of IT security in Germany in 2009, the security
experts warn that both the number and level of sophistication of attacks is rising. They predict not
only a growing threat stemming from botnet attacks, but also from attacks on major systems that
control critical infrastructures, such as those of nuclear power plants or traffic guidance systems.
Meanwhile, the uniformed hackers at Rheinbach are battling a particularly treacherous adversary:
German criminal law, which has banned the preparation of computer sabotage since 2007. If the
German cyber warriors did in fact launch test attacks on outside networks they would, strictly
speaking, be breaking the law. The penalty for serious computer sabotage is a prison sentence of
up to ten years.
Table of Contents
U.S. Spy Agency May Get More Cybersecurity Duties
By Randall Mikkelsen, Reuters, Feb 25, 2009
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The spy agency that ran the Bush administration's warrantless
eavesdropping program may get more responsibility for securing U.S. computer networks,
President Barack Obama's intelligence chief told Congress on Wednesday.
Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair said the National Security Agency, which is
responsible for codebreaking and electronic spying, should assume a greater role in cybersecurity
because of its technological prowess and current role in detecting attacks.
"There are some wizards out there ... who can do stuff. I think that capability should be harnessed
and built on," Blair said in testimony to the House of Representatives intelligence committee.
Blair acknowledged that many Americans distrust the agency, which operated former President
George W. Bush's secret program of warrantless electronic spying on some Americans' overseas
phone calls.
"The NSA is both intelligence and military, two strikes out in terms of the way some Americans
think about a body that ought to be protecting their privacy and civil liberties," Blair said.
Government concern over computer network vulnerability has risen as computer hackers become
more sophisticated.
"A number of nations, including Russia and China, can disrupt elements of the U.S. information
infrastructure," Blair said. "Cyber-defense is not a one-time fix; it requires a continual investment."
Billions of dollars are at stake. Defense contractors Northrop Grumman Corp, Lockheed Martin and
Boeing Co are working on classified cybersecurity projects for the U.S. government.
Software and telecommunications companies also are likely to play a major role, said Democratic
Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, whose Maryland district includes the NSA.
Page 16
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama ordered a 60-day cybersecurity review and named
Melissa Hathaway, the top cyber official with the intelligence director's office, to a White House post
overseeing the effort.
Some lawmakers have said the Homeland Security Department, which plays a leading role in U.S.
computer security and is in charge of protecting federal civilian networks, is not up to the job.
Blair said he agreed: "The National Security Agency has the greatest repository of cyber talent."
"They're the ones who know best about what's coming back at us, and it is defenses against those
sorts of things that we need to be able to build into wider and wider circles."
Table of Contents
New Cyber-Threats -- Part 1
By James Jay Carafano and Eric Sayers, UPI Outside View Commentators, 10 Feb 2009
WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Cybersecurity, cyber competitiveness and cyber warfare have
weighed heavily on the minds of policymakers as the severity and complexity of malicious
cyberattacks have intensified over the past decade. These attacks, directed against both the public
and private sectors, are the product of a heterogeneous network of state and non-state actors
whose actions are motivated by a host of factors. Helping to ensure that the federal government
achieves a high level of competency on cybersecurity issues is an imperative for the next U.S.
Congress.
Indicative of how important cybersecurity has become, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike
McConnell raised this issue for the first time in February 2008 as part of his testimony on the 2008
Annual Threat Assessment.
When asked if he believed the United States was prepared to deal with cybersecurity threats to the
civilian and military infrastructure, McConnell noted that the country is "not prepared to deal with
it. The military is probably the best protected, the federal government is not well protected, and
the private sector is not well protected. So the question is: How do we take some of the things that
we've developed for the military side, scale them across the federal government? And then the key
question will be: How do we interact with the private sector?"
Properly answering these questions begins with developing cyber-strategic leadership skills in the
U.S. government and private sector.
Even as Washington wrestles with issues concerning organization, authorities, responsibilities and
programs to deal with cyber competition, it must place more emphasis on developing leaders who
are competent to engage in these issues.
This will require a professional development system that can provide a program of education,
assignment and accreditation to develop a corps of experienced, dedicated service professionals
who have an expertise in the breadth of issues related to the cyber environment. This program
must be backed by effective public-private partnerships that produce cutting-edge research,
development and capabilities to operate with freedom, safety and security in the cyber world.
What is at stake is the heartbeat of America. Over the past quarter-century, the cyberspace domain
has rapidly expanded to dominate almost every aspect of human interaction. Americans now
depend on cyberspace more than ever to manage their banking transactions, investments, work
and personal communication, shopping, travel, utilities, news and even social networking.
Table of Contents
Northrop Grumman Begins Study of Electronic Warfare System of
the Future
From GlobeNewswire, Feb. 23, 2009
BETHPAGE, N.Y., Feb. 23, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Northrop Grumman Corporation has been
awarded a study contract by the U.S. Navy to investigate a Next Generation Jammer to replace its
Page 17
aging ALQ-99 airborne electronic attack system. The Navy is seeking to counter the diverse
electronic weapons, communications and enemy air defenses that our warfighters may face in the
future.
The six-month Next Generation Jammer study is valued at approximately $6 million. It is the first
major step toward the development and production of a modular, scalable jamming system for
multiplatform, multiservice use. When developed and in production, the Next Generation Jammer
program could potentially be worth several hundred million dollars.
"Northrop Grumman defined airborne radar jamming with its Intruder aircraft in the early 1960s
and successfully expanded the concept with its Prowlers, Ravens and the latest system for the EA18G Growler. Our new ICAP III system in Navy EA-6B Prowlers is performing a critical troop
protection mission in the electronic battlefield over Iraq every day," said Patricia McMahon, vice
president of the Information Operations and Electronic Attack integrated product team.
"No company can match the combat-proven airborne electronic attack system design and
operational experience of Northrop Grumman," McMahon said. "That experience gives us great
confidence that we can significantly reduce the risk of the Next Generation Jammer development
efforts and maximize the investment the Navy will make in this critical capability."
Today, Northrop Grumman is delivering ICAP (Improved Capability) III systems for incorporation
into Marine Corps EA-6B Prowlers and a derivative of that system for the EA-18G Growlers. The
Growler is now in production and undergoing operational evaluation by the Navy, which plans to
stand up the first two fleet Growler squadrons later this year.
Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose 120,000 employees
provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in aerospace, electronics, information systems,
shipbuilding and technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.
Table of Contents
Tactical Success, Strategic Defeat
Afghan Outrage at U.S. Raid Highlights Challenges Facing New Military Push
By Pamela Constable, Washington Post, March 2, 2009
FORWARD OPERATING BASE ALTIMUR, Afghanistan -- The U.S. soldiers entered the sleeping village
in Logar province in the dead of night on Feb. 20, sure of their target and heavily armed. They
surrounded a mud-walled compound, shouting commands, and then kicked down the gate as cries
of protest erupted within.
Exactly what happened next is disputed, but shots were fired and a man inside fell dead. Four
other men were grabbed and arrested. Then the soldiers departed, leaving the women to calm the
frightened children and the rumors to spread in the dark.
By midmorning, hundreds of angry people were blocking the nearby highway, burning tires and
shouting "Death to America!" By mid-evening, millions of Afghan TV news viewers were convinced
that foreign troops had killed an unarmed man trying to answer his door.
"We are afraid of the Taliban, but we are more afraid of the Americans now," said Abdul Ghaffar, a
truck driver in the raided village. "The foreign forces are killing innocent people. We don't want
them in Afghanistan. If they stay, one day we will stand against them, just like we stood against
the Russians."
Tactically, the U.S.-led night raid in the village of Bagh-i-Soltan was a success. U.S. military officials
said the dead man and an accomplice now in custody were bombmakers linked to recent insurgent
attacks. They said that they had tracked the men for days and that one was holding an assault rifle
when they shot him.
Strategically, however, the incident was a disaster. Its most incriminating version -- colored by
villagers' grief and anger, possibly twisted by Taliban propaganda and magnified by the growing
Page 18
influence of independent Afghan TV -- spread far faster than U.S. authorities could even attempt to
counter.
Worse, it happened in an area where the Obama administration has just launched an expensive
military push, focusing on regions near Kabul, the capital, where Islamist insurgents are trying to
gain influence. Several U.S. bases have been set up in Logar and adjacent Wardak province, and
3,000 troops have arrived since January. Their mandate is to strengthen security, facilitate aid
projects and good government, and swing local opinion against the insurgents.
A Wide Gulf
Logar sits in a historically peaceful valley an hour's drive south of Kabul, surrounded by craggy
mountains. Brown and bleak in winter, it is green and bucolic in summer, with wheat fields,
orchards and honey that beekeepers sell beside the road. It is also a gateway from southeastern
Afghanistan to the capital, straddling one of the few paved highways in the region.
In the past 18 months, Taliban forces have established strongholds in several nearby provinces and
a low-key but intimidating presence in Logar. Officials say most Logaris, though frustrated by poor
government services, have not yet decided where their loyalties lie. Politically, Logar is still up for
grabs.
"This is a fertile area for us to plant the seeds of opportunity, but there are a lot of fence-sitters,
and everyone is vying for the populace," said Lt. Col. Daniel Goldthorpe, who commands the U.S.
Army base at Altimur in Logar, about 30 miles south of Bagh-i-Soltan.
The newly built base is a cluster of heated tents and wood cabins on a rocky plain, surrounded by
dirt-filled barricades and a distant cordon of snowcapped mountains. It houses about 600 troops
from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, whose duties include search raids,
security patrols and goodwill missions in nearby villages.
Goldthorpe acknowledged that the fallout from the raid in Bagh-i-Soltan was a surprising setback
for the U.S. forces' image here. But he attributed the public unrest to superior Taliban propaganda
efforts and strongly denied that any misconduct occurred during the raid.
"We did everything to the letter, but their media was a lot faster than ours," he said. "When a tree
falls in the forest, the first to report the sound gets their version out. This was a huge learning
curve for us and an important exercise in credibility."
But interviews with local residents, Afghan officials and U.S. military officers since the raid suggest
that the problem was more complex than one side putting out a quicker news flash. The incident
occurred amid deepening national hostility to American and NATO forces and growing complaints
about coalition bombings and night raids.
Logar officials, like area residents, seemed inclined to believe the worst. U.S. officials said some
were afraid to publicly side with the Americans, and other local officials said they had not been told
of the raid by their superiors in Kabul, whom U.S. officials said they had briefed.
U.S. officials were also constrained from fully explaining their actions or making amends afterward.
Intelligence sources could not be revealed. Daytime visits to villages required advance security
planning and transport in monster vehicles armored against roadside bombs and rockets,
hampering the troops' ability to make personal contact quickly.
A week after the raid, even though U.S. officials had by then met with village elders and released
all but one detainee, emotions in Bagh-i-Soltan were still running high, and the raided compound
was full of condolence callers. The gulf between the resentful residents and the eager-to-help
soldiers seemed as wide as the brown winter plain.
Divergent Accounts
The first version of the raid, and the one that has stuck in the public mind, came from Mullah Abdul
Mateen, the owner of the raided house. He told reporters the next day that heavily armed
Americans had burst into the sleeping household, shot at his younger brother, herded the women
and children into a room, then handcuffed and taken away several more brothers and a cousin.
Page 19
"We are not terrorists or al-Qaeda. I am not hiding from anyone. There was no reason for the
Americans to do this," Mateen, 35, said in an interview last week. "The Americans got the wrong
information from an Afghan spy. If they continue killing and arresting innocent people, the anger
against them will increase."
The provincial governor, Atiqullah Ludin, also bitterly criticized the U.S. forces, saying they had
promised to avoid civilian casualties and to conduct all house raids accompanied by Afghan troops.
"Now what can I tell the people of Logar?" Ludin said in apparent anguish last week. "We have to
build their trust or the enemies of Afghanistan will take advantage of it."
A very different description of the raid came from U.S. officers who carried it out. They said they
were accompanied by Afghan military and intelligence officers. One was Army Maj. Todd Polk, a
squad leader based at Altimur.
Polk said there was solid evidence that the dead man, identified as Sher Agha, and a second man
detained in the raid possessed explosives-making materials and had helped organize a recent
bomb attack on a French military facility in Logar. He said both men had been tracked to Mateen's
house and a neighboring compound.
"I was there, and I can tell you for a fact what happened," Polk said in an interview last week. He
said Agha "had an AK-47 in his hand and was trying to get away" when he was shot by U.S. forces.
"If he were innocent, he would have sat there."
Like other U.S. officers here, Polk said that the protests afterward were probably instigated by the
Taliban and that residents would not have objected had they known the facts that led to the raid.
He also expressed frustration over the lack of communication between Afghan security officials in
Kabul and Logar.
At a routine meeting with two local police officials last week, Polk was attempting to discuss
highway safety issues when the officers changed the subject. Polite but uneasy, they asked why the
Americans had broken down Mateen's door, why they had shot someone and why no one had
informed their commander in advance about the raid.
"If you had come and asked us, we could have brought him to you, and there would be no trouble,"
Capt. Mohammed Wahidullah told Polk, speaking through an interpreter. "Instead we had to go out
on the highway the next day, with thousands of people shouting and cursing us. You didn't need to
take all those vehicles and people to raid that house. You just needed to make one call."
Polk told the police he would take the suggestion to his superiors, but it was evident that he
remained skeptical of the policemen's sincerity -- and convinced that the Taliban insurgents, with
their ability to intimidate people and whip up Afghans' emotions against foreign armies, were the
real cause of the backlash.
"I know we did the right thing, but the Taliban kicked our butts on the response," the major said,
shaking his head. "Next time, we just have to be faster putting out the truth."
Table of Contents
Tactical Success, Strategic Defeat (Updated)
From Cjmewett blog, 4 Mar 09
[ed. Note: blog discussing the previous article in this newsletter]
The Washington Post ran a story about Afghanistan under this headline yesterday, relating the
fallout from an American raid in Logar Province one night last month. One man was killed and four
were detained by U.S. forces, and angry locals demonstrated the next day. So long as I’m
criticizing Ricks for this “tactical success, strategic defeat” formulation, I might as well use this
example to elaborate on why it’s so meaningless.
In a post on Abu Muqawama shortly after The Gamble was published, Andrew Exum stated his
objection:
Dear Tom,
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Stop saying the surge worked militarily but failed politically. If it failed politically, it failed militarily.
A better way of expressing what I think you are trying to say is that the surge succeeded tactically
and operationally (and maybe strategically) but failed politically.
This largely sums up my frustrations about the way this is being put, though — as you can see
from last night’s post — I disagree not only with the semantics but also the conclusion. The Post
article repeats the same shaky assertion: that a military operation can be viewed as a success
independently of its second-order effects. This is wrong.
The man killed in the raid in the village of Bagh-i-Soltan was a bomb-maker, American military
sources say, as was at least one of his detained colleagues. So why wouldn’t residents of his village
understand that this targeted violence against one of Afghanistan’s enemies was legitimate?
For what it’s worth, the troops who participated in the 10 February raid were dispatched from the
forward operating base at Altimur, around 30 miles distant from Bagh-i-Soltan. Those members of
the 10th Mountain who are quoted on the subject have largely blamed superior Taliban propaganda
efforts for the success of the enemy’s narrative. But if we read Galula and 24-3 and the rest of the
COIN canon, then we shouldn’t be surprised at the information operations (IO) failure in this
instance. The story reads as a virtual counterfactual to the effective implementation of
counterinsurgency tactics, Duffer’s Drift and Jisr al-Dorea’a rolled into one:
U.S. officials said some were afraid to publicly side with the Americans
…as the populace was not being sufficiently protected to feel secure from recriminations by Taliban
insurgents.
Daytime visits to villages required advance security planning and transport in monster vehicles
armored against roadside bombs and rockets, hampering the troops’ ability to make personal
contact quickly.
…because force protection has — counterproductively — taken precedence over COIN best
practices, the development of relationships with locals, and the abandoning of vehicles which are
frankly almost useless for the Afghan mission. (For more on the inverse relationship between a
force’s mechanization and success in counterinsurgency, see Lyall and Wilson’s “Rage Against the
Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars.”)
The provincial governor, Atiqullah Ludin, also bitterly criticized the U.S. forces, saying they had
promised to avoid civilian casualties and to conduct all house raids accompanied by Afghan troops.
“Now what can I tell the people of Logar?” Ludin said in apparent anguish last week. “We have to
build their trust or the enemies of Afghanistan will take advantage of it.”
…and they’ll continue to take advantage once we’re gone, which is why building partnership
capacity is so important. T.E. Lawrence said something like “it’s better for the Arabs to do
something marginally well than for you to do it excellently for them,” and this theory obtains
outside the Middle East, as well. As John Nagl will tell you, the development of Afghan National
Army and police is our ticket out of that war.
All of which is why it’s so dispiriting to read about an officer like Maj. Todd Polk, who is quoted
extensively in the Post piece. [I should note here that I'm in no position to judge Maj. Polk's actions
under fire or impressions of events in which he played a part, and can only base my analysis on
what is reported here. This man may be an outstanding officer (and I hope he is), but the
journalistic record leaves room for doubt.] Polk was present during the raid and sees things quite
differently from those Afghans who believe they witnessed the indiscriminate (or at least
irresponsible) use of deadly force.
“I was there, and I can tell you for a fact what happened,” Polk said in an interview last week. He
said Agha “had an AK-47 in his hand and was trying to get away” when he was shot by U.S. forces.
“If he were innocent, he would have sat there.”
You’ll have to forgive me (and what I would imagine to be the many Afghans who agree with me) if
the “innocent men don’t run!” explanation simply doesn’t wash. Whether or not this is true, it
doesn’t strike me as terribly good strategic communications to publicize sentiments like that. I
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have little doubt that Maj. Polk is telling the truth, and that the man killed in this raid had it coming
to him. I won’t be terribly surprised, however, if the other residents of Bagh-i-Soltan feel less
convinced.
At a routine meeting with two local police officials last week, Polk was attempting to discuss
highway safety issues when the officers changed the subject. Polite but uneasy, they asked why the
Americans had broken down Mateen’s door, why they had shot someone and why no one had
informed their commander in advance about the raid.
And here we come back to letting the Afghans do something tolerably well… Isn’t one of the
fundamental precepts of counterinsurgency that we have to trade a certain degree of force
protection for progress and increased legitimacy with the population? So wouldn’t it seem like a
worthwhile trade to risk allowing one more bomb-maker to stay on the streets in order to reinforce
trust and build the operational relationship with the local leadership and the Afghan security
institutions?
“I know we did the right thing, but the Taliban kicked our butts on the response,” the major said,
shaking his head.
Surely Maj. Polk knows that kill/capture of the bad guys isn’t always “the right thing.” So maybe
“the response” ought to be considered before we decide on the action.
Table of Contents
Taking the “D’oh!” Out of Operational Security
Story by Spc. Howard Alperin, Multi-National Division Baghdad, 4 March 2009
CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq – Homer Simpson does not seem like the perfect picture for military policy.
But, for a subject as important as operational security, “OPSEC” in military slang, he is the ideal
example - of what not to do. Simpson’s tendency to let the cat out of the bag actually made him a
poster boy for a recent OPSEC education product seen around Multi-National Division - Baghdad’s
headquarters.
“The principles of OPSEC haven’t changed much,” said Capt. Jeff Van Cleave, an information
operations officer for MND-B. “Through all wars, the purpose is to deny vital intelligence to the
enemy.”
“Word of mouth is the easiest way to leak information and for others to take that information and
make it into intelligence. OPSEC is an enduring principle of the combat situation.”
Any form of communication that gives the enemy potential information on Soldiers’ movements or
providing any other information on Soldiers’ lives in and out of a combat zone is in violation of
operational security, said Master Sgt. Mario Dovalina, the OPSEC manager for MND-B.
Giving mission-related details and sensitive information to the enemy is the worst kind of error to
make, said Dovolina, a Dallas native. Having situational awareness is as important as any other
skill a Soldier learns.
“Don’t be that guy. Don’t be the one who gives information to the enemy. People can lose their
lives, or people can get injured,” said Dovolina. “No matter where you are; you could be at the PX
[post exchange] and someone could be listening behind the other aisle, or at the mess hall, there’s
someone who could be at a nearby table listening.”
It’s not just careless talk that Soldiers need to watch. Another part of Dovolina’s mission is to
spread the word what gets trashed.
“Shred and burn any and all documents: secret, unclassified and personal; including sticky notes
and mailing labels. If shredding is not possible, than make sure to burn documents.” said Dovolina.
“This protects the Army and its mission and it protects a person’s identity from identity theft.”
According to a 2007 USA Today article, data thieves and con artists have begun to increasingly
target military personnel. In May 2006, thieves stole computers containing sensitive data for nearly
30 million active and retired service members from four Veterans Affairs offices.
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“It’s very easy to get a person’s last name and “Google” it on the internet. People pick up
information and download pictures from blogs, Myspace and Facebook to get access to personal
information that can lead to identity theft.”
Violating OPSEC has serious consequences. Recently, Soldiers have been fined and received a
reduction of rank for blogging sensitive details and information, said Dovolina.
OPSEC standards accentuate teamwork and are a big part of mission success. Sgt. Eric Weaver, an
MND-B intelligence analyst from Youngstown, Ohio, sees it as an adjustment to the military
lifestyle.
I’ve always been a free speaker, now; I have to be more self-conscious. Work is something I don’t
talk about.”
“We are all Army brothers and sisters, so why would you want to bring harm to your brother or
sister,” emphasized Dovalina. “Everybody needs to do their part and keep each other safe.”
Homer Simpson, the Army’s poster boy for what not to do, got his reputation for having ‘loose lips.’
He brings back memories of the World War II military term, ‘Loose lips sink ships.’ It is a reminder
of how talking out of turn can compromise missions, destroy equipment, or even cause loss of life.
“OPSEC means not slipping with a word or a phrase,” said Weaver. “The costs involved are too
serious. Too much is at stake, especially in theater.”
Table of Contents
Colonies of 'Cybots' May Defend Government Networks
By Joshua Rhett Miller, FOX news, 5 March 2009
The Cybot Age could soon be upon us. But be not afraid; this isn't Star Trek. We're not talking
droves of evil cyborgs bent on galaxy domination.
If all goes as planned, in just a few years colonies of software robots -- "cybots" -- linked into a
"hive" mind could be defending the largest computer systems in America against network
intruders.
Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory say the program behind the cybots — Ubiquitous
Transient Autonomous Mission Entities (UNTAME) — will be very different from current
cybersecurity systems.
Joe Trien, who leads the team at the lab's Computational Sciences and Engineering Division, said
what will make cybots so useful is that they will be able to form groups, function autonomously and
respond almost immediately.
Trien likened the UNTAME framework to the Borg, a fictitious race of cybernetic organisms in "Star
Trek: The Next Generation" that assimilated other cultures throughout the galaxy.
"The difference between an agent-based system and UNTAME is that the cybots are designed to
function on their own and they can regenerate," he said. "It works with other robots, and what it
does is known by the collective. So when you lose a robot, the collective hasn't lost the information
that robot was able to achieve up until the point it was killed."
And that couldn't come a better time. Cyberattacks on government computer networks spiked 40
percent last year, according to US-CERT, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team.
President Obama is now making computer security a priority and is asking Congress for $355
million to make private and public cyber systems more secure, as part of his Comprehensive
National Cybersecurity Initiative.
Consumers lost nearly $240 million as a result of cybercrime in 2007, an all-time high and an
increase of nearly $40 million from 2006, according to a report released by the National White
Collar Crime Center and the FBI.
Trien warned that a coordinated cyberattack today could cripple critical U.S. infrastructures with
"little investment or expertise" on behalf of a hacker.
Page 23
"You could be a cyber-terrorist sitting anywhere around the world, and you could shut down the
United States' economy if you were able to break into critical networks," he said. "We're very
vulnerable."
Not only could UNTAME help save thousands, even millions of dollars lost to cyber criminals, Trien
points out that it will also also be cost-effective because once the system is set up, it runs itself.
"You basically automate the process and do it real-time instead of having an individual doing it,"
Trien said. "What took you hours may now take you seconds."
But the laboratory-tested prototype is at least two years away from private or municipal use,
depending on resources made available through developers, Trien said.
Lawrence McIntyre, one of the project's developers, said several kinks need to worked out before
the program is used in real-world scenarios, including perfecting UNTAME's artificial intelligence
system, which hasn't been "well developed yet," he said.
"You have to make it easy for people to understand and easy for people to use," McIntyre said. "At
this point, it's a very 'researchy-type' software."
Commissioned in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, the project — which began in the early
1990s — was launched to response to security flaws in government computer systems. UNTAME
has already garnered interest from the Air Force Research Laboratory, which leads the way in
military-related computer security.
"We've had several in-depth discussions," Trien said of ongoing talks with Air Force officials. "The
Air Force has established long-range research objectives and we've discussed the possibility of
assisting them in reaching their goals."
Established in 1943, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is the Department of Energy's
largest multipurpose, nonweapons laboratory.
The 10,000-acre facility, which houses more than 4,000 staffers, initially served as the Manhattan
Project's site to develop nuclear weapons. Following World War II, research efforts at Oak Ridge
shifted to fields like biology, physics, medicine and national security.
"If we don't do something to harden our network security and information, we're vulnerable to
attack,"
Table of Contents
America's Wired Warrior
By Douglas MacMillan, BusinessWeek, 9 March 2009
Major Elden Lacer didn't expect to be sitting in a classroom in Oklahoma this winter. An 18-year
U.S. Army veteran, he has served two tours of duty in Iraq. But Lacer isn't doing standard training.
Instead, he's taking an unusual 11-week training course on electronics, learning such things as
how to turn a garage door opener into a bomb detonator. He's also finding out how insurgents can
turn key fobs into explosives and how tech systems called jammers can be used to disable
electronic weapons. "Whoever can [use this technology] best is going to have a decided
advantage," says Lacer, a former Apache helicopter pilot.
The course is part of a growing push by the U.S. military into high-tech warfare. One leading-edge
strategy is to attack enemies and bolster defenses by disrupting electromagnetic signals in battle.
On Feb. 12, the Army announced it would train 1,600 full-time specialists in the discipline, to
support the thousands of officers like Lacer who have received electronic warfare training in recent
years to complement their normal roles.
While the Defense Dept. has warned of large spending cuts to conventional weapons and vehicle
programs, such as the F-22 fighter aircraft, the Obama Administration is expected to allocate more
funding for equipping soldiers with innovative electronic systems that have proven vital in
nontraditional environments, such as Afghanistan. The government "wants to focus [its budget] on
Page 24
things that will help us win the war against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan and not some conflict 10
years down the pike," says Cai von Rumohr, an analyst at Cowen & Co. in Boston.
The trend presents an opportunity for major defense contractors, such as Boeing, Northrop
Grumman, and Raytheon. But it's also a challenge. They need to figure out how to inject a bit of
Silicon Valley into everything from tanks to machine guns.
The Early Days
The use of sophisticated electronics in warfare dates back to World War II, when radio and radar
systems were used primarily to navigate planes and ships, as well intercept and jam enemy
signals. In the Vietnam War, the U.S. deployed its first electronic warfare officers, who flew aboard
aircraft and helped defend against the new threat of surface-to-air missiles.
In Iraq, electronic weapons proved to be the best defense against improvised explosive devices, or
IEDs. Often used as roadside bombs, these devices have accounted for about 70% of American
combat casualties suffered there. The Pentagon scrambled to order thousands of what it calls
CREW devices (for "counter radio-controlled electronic warfare"), which disrupt the remote
detonators used on many IEDs, and to train frontline soldiers to use them. ITT (ITT), which
acquired EDO in 2007 to become the largest manufacturer of CREW jammers, now commands
some $1.75 billion in government contracts for the devices. "The budgets for counter-IEDs have
grown dramatically as a result of the threat," says John Capeci, ITT's vice-president for business
development.
As a result of the shift to ground-based battles of electronics, the Army has had to train its own
soldiers in the discipline rather than rely on specialists from the Air Force or Marine Corps, as it had
in the past. "We realized we had to do it for ourselves," says Colonel Laurie Buckhout, who became
chief of the Army's new electronic warfare division. She says that since 2007, the service has
trained some 4,000 soldiers in electronics, from low-ranking battalion members all the way up to
four-star generals, who serve as part-time tech experts in their existing units. The 1,600 new
electronic warfare specialists will be spread out so there's at least one in every battalion (which
means roughly 1 for every 300 to 600 soldiers).
Electronic Noise
Unlike previous conflicts, electronic signals are everywhere in Iraq—making it harder for specialists
to root out enemy insurgents. In a typical city block in Baghdad, the electromagnetic spectrum can
be crowded with up to 50 different sources of noise—everything from U.S. radios, friendly-force
radios, GPS systems, and ambulance dispatchers to overhead planes and helicopters. "In the
middle of all that, you might have an insurgent planning an operation to detonate a bomb," says
Buckhout. "So we really need to have much more surgical capabilities that allow us to continue our
use of the spectrum while attacking our enemy."
As weapon and vehicle technology evolves, so will the role of electronics in warfare. "With
electronic warfare, you don't just have the potential of destroying the enemy's systems—you have
the potential for battles of persuasion," says P.W. Singer, a senior fellow at Washington-based think
tank Brookings Institution and author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the
21st Century (Penguin, 2009).
Such a battle of persuasion has powerful implications for the use of robots in war. The U.S. has
already deployed at least 19,000 unmanned ground and aerial vehicles, which are controlled
remotely. Such countries as China and Russia have developed comparable programs. In a war
between robots, electronics engineers will be capable not just of shutting down enemy robots, but
of "making them do things the enemy didn't want them to do," says Singer.
Future Funding
Both electronic warfare and unmanned aerial vehicles were singled out by President Barack Obama
during his campaign, when he referred to such technology as "revolutionary"—a sign that many in
the military community take to mean he plans to push for the swift adoption of more cutting-edge
Page 25
technology. The Administration is expected to submit its budget recommendations to Congress in
April, and the Defense Dept. will draft its Quadrennial Defense Review Report for 2010 by yearend.
"The role of electronic warfare has been proven in protecting people on the ground from IEDs,"
says Representative Joseph Pitts (R-Pa.), a former electronic warfare officer in the Vietnam War
and head of the nonpartisan Electronic Warfare Working Group. "Now we need the leadership and
funding."
Table of Contents
Behind The Estonia Cyberattacks
By Robert Coalson, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 06, 2009
In the spring of 2007, a cyberattack on Estonia blocked websites and paralyzed the country's entire
Internet infrastructure. At the peak of the crisis, bank cards and mobile-phone networks were
temporarily frozen, setting off alarm bells in the tech-dependent country -- and in NATO as well.
The cyberattacks came at a time when Estonia was embroiled in a dispute with Russia over the
removal of a Soviet-era war memorial from the center of Tallinn. Moscow denied any involvement
in the attacks, but Estonian officials were convinced of Russia's involvement in the plot.
A new blog post for Ekho Moskvy makes a startling revelation about the 2007 attacks. The post, by
journalist Nargiz Asadova -- a columnist for RIA Novosti based in Washington, and an Ekho Moskvy
host -- describes a March 3 panel discussion between Russian and American experts on information
warfare in the 21st century.
Asadova, who was moderating the discussion, asked why Russia is routinely blamed for the
cyberattacks in Estonia and Georgia, where government sites were seriously disrupted during the
August war.
She might not have been expecting the answer she got from Sergei Markov, a State Duma Deputy
from the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party: "About the cyberattack on Estonia... don't worry, that
attack was carried out by my assistant. I won't tell you his name, because then he might not be
able to get visas."
Markov, a political analyst who has long been one of Vladimir Putin's glibbest defenders, went on to
explain that this assistant happened to be in "one of the unrecognized republics" during the dispute
with Estonia and had decided on his own that "something bad had to be done to these fascists." So
he went ahead and launched a cyberwar.
"Turns out it was purely a reaction from civil society," Markov reportedly said, adding ominously,
"and, incidentally, such things will happen more and more."
In Russia, Markov's confession is all over the blogosphere, but has yet to be picked up by the
Russian media.
Estonian Defense Ministry officials, meanwhile, have reiterated their certainty that Russia was
behind the cyberattack, but played down Markov's claims, saying the 2007 incident was a highly
coordinated campaign that could not be the work of a single mischievous hacker.
Still, Asadova notes that Markov -- as a member of the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe -- should know that his assistant could face a lot more trouble
than just problems getting a visa to vacation in Cannes. Turns out that taking down government
sites in Estonia is a crime.
Table of Contents
Do Journalists Make Good Public Affairs Officers?
From C3CBLOG, 8 March 2009
The Information Operations and Influence Activity (IOIA) Symposium, held this week at UK’s
Defence Academy, threw up several enticing cerebral teasers, not least the tension between two
schools of thought regarding public affairs (or as the Brits say ‘media operations’). On the one
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hand, it is claimed by the old guard that public affairs (PA) merely informs (as can be found in US
doctrine). On the other, the young turks would have it that information is never value-free and
therefore PA will always have an element of influence to it.
As much as CB3 would like to subscribe to the former, the brute force of reality must indicate the
latter to be the case. Even at a most simple level, if one stubbornly keeps to transmitting utterly
‘true’ facts and figures, claiming to only inform - the mere selection of which facts to reveal
introduces a bias, and therefore a degree of sway or influence, even unconsciously.
This raises a further question, one broached at IOIA. If journalists live and die by their adherence
to seeking the truth, informing not influencing and unbiased reporting, can they so easily transfer
themselves into roles which are inherently partisan, promotional and influencing? There is well
documented tension between the arenas of public relations and the media (although they provide
each other with vital life support) - using a market analogy, they are at opposite ends of the
supply-demand equation.
Many journalists make the jump to PR, some very successfully, others less so - it may be their
contact books which are in demand rather than their prowess as flacks. Equally, many journalists
are employed by vitally important reserve military forces (especially in the UK) as public
affairs/media operations officers. Many are consummate operators in both journalism and PA,
proving mental dexterity, but is it time to question the seemingly automatic assumption that a
journalist will be a natural candidate for PA, or wider communication, duties?
This is no way reflects upon the crucial media and PA capability that the reserve forces provide,
supplying resources which often are unavailable from the regular forces.
Table of Contents
Army Developing Teams for Electronic Warfare
By Thom Shanker, New York Times, March 7, 2009
WASHINGTON — Viewed by its sister services as the less brainy branch of the armed forces, the
Army over recent years had neglected to maintain its own ability to fight electronic warfare, relying
instead on the expertise of the Air Force and the Navy. But the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
have introduced deadly new threats and proved how that lack of attention to electronic warfare has
put soldiers directly at risk.
Information-age attacks, like improvised explosive devices detonated by cellphones, radios and
garage door openers, have claimed more lives than any other type. And there are high-tech
benefits that must be managed, including friend-or-foe tracking devices and surveillance drones
that beam video straight to troops in battle.
In response, the Army is developing its own electronic warfare teams. The initial goal is to train
more than 1,600 people from enlisted ranks through the officer corps by 2013, and to double that
in the following years, giving the Army enough of these specialists to rival its sister services and
surpass all of the NATO allies combined.
Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli was the first person to sound an alarm that the Army’s neglect of electronic
warfare was endangering troops. General Chiarelli was serving as the No. 2 commander in Iraq
when he sent a memorandum to Army leadership at the Pentagon in February 2006, warning that
soldiers were unable to operate the new high-tech gear that was being rushed to the war zone to
counter the rising threat of improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.s.
General Chiarelli also warned Army headquarters that the ability of commanders and troops to
communicate was diminishing as allied and American radios and electronic jamming gear fought for
space on the limited broadcast bands, degrading the quality of transmissions all across the
spectrum.
“When I first got over there in 2004 and in 2005, we didn’t have any Army electronic warfare
capabilities,” said General Chiarelli, who is now the Army vice chief of staff. “It became deadly
Page 27
apparent in 2006, with the rise of I.E.D.s. At the same time, we were having big problems with the
jammers and how to deconflict them with all of the other radio and signals traffic.”
The Army reached out to the other services for help. Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chief of naval
operations but since promoted to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, immediately ordered to Iraq
hundreds of sailors who specialized in electronic warfare.
“They saved a lot of lives when they came over,” General Chiarelli said. “They became the most
important person in each formation down to the battalion level. They were sought out by soldiers
who knew they had to learn this kind of warfare.”
In the three years since, hundreds of Air Force personnel have also served as electronic warfare
specialists with ground units in Iraq.
In that time, the Army has produced a doctrine on electronic warfare that will join other new field
manuals, including a better known one on counterinsurgency, that are transforming how the
service prepares for and fights wars.
The Army’s new field manual, “FM 3-36, Electronic Warfare in Operations,” instructs commanders in
how to integrate electronic warfare into all tasks, from planning to carrying out military operations.
It also lays out a program for training personnel and sets the requirements for equipment.
“We simply have to look at ways to attack, and to protect ourselves, all across the frequency
spectrum,” said Col. Laurie Moe Buckhout, chief of the Army’s electronic warfare division.
Managing communications, and protecting those transmissions, is complicated enough in the
civilian world, but the problem is magnified in a combat zone, which is cluttered with sometimes
conflicting radio signals from various American and allied units.
Military risk assessments note that potential adversaries, from nation states to terrorist groups, are
seeking to increase their abilities to attack electronic frequencies. The goal would be to scramble
radio and cellphone traffic, block signals from convoys that allow headquarters to track the
movements of troops and supplies, or jam data from satellites that feed vital navigation systems.
“The enemy’s ability to weaponize the spectrum to detonate an I.E.D. was just the tip of the
iceberg,” Colonel Buckhout said.
Electronic warfare is among the military’s most highly classified efforts, routinely carried out in
conjunction with the nation’s intelligence agencies. It focuses on signals carried by radio and
microwave frequencies, and is usually confined to a tactical battlefield setting.
It is separate from the other growing field of combat, cyber warfare, which deals with defending or
attacking computer networks, with local, national and even international impact.
Table of Contents
Public Diplomacy in the Digital Age, Part 2
By Mark Hannah, PBS.org, March 5, 2009
"How could a mass murderer who publicly praised the terrorists of Sept. 11 be winning the hearts
and minds of anyone? How can a man in a cave outcommunicate the world's leading
communications society?" -- Richard Holbrooke, Former US Ambassador to the UN, Get the
Message Out, The Washington Post, October 2001
We're a nation at war. At war not with another nation, but with a hateful ideology violently
expressed: terrorism. Every militaristic move a terrorist makes is designed to intimidate, frustrate,
agitate....in short, communicate. Physical destruction and loss of life, crass as it sounds, are means
to those ends. In this sense, the war of ideas is no longer a metaphor or a figure of speech -- it's a
literal war in which we now find ourselves. And in a war of ideas, public diplomacy will be an
important tool in our national security toolkit.
If you're just joining us -- and haven't yet had a chance to read Part 1 of this post -- public
diplomacy is the practice of influencing public opinion abroad in order to achieve America's foreign
policy goals. It's primarily the responsibility of the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of
Page 28
Governors. As former Under Secretary of State Jim Glassman explained in the comment section of
my last post, it's all about "understanding, informing, engaging and influencing foreign publics." It's
alternately characterized as a "war" of ideas or a "global marketplace" of ideas.
As the modern technology becomes more commonplace, America's enemies will inevitably develop
increasingly destructive armaments. And with the rapid proliferaiton of Internet technology, some
in the national security community are turning their attention to the possibility of large scale online
attacks -- "cyber-terrorism" -- and how public diplomacy may be one way to prevent them.
Public Diplomacy for National Security
There's long been consensus that public opinion is vital to domestic policymakers. President Lincoln
said, "Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can
succeed." Later, at the dawn of the information age, President Eisenhower would apply this maxim
to foreign policy as he spoke of "the spreading of ideas through every medium of communication"
as a part of "real psychological warfare." Today, we hear echoes of this rhetoric when foreign
policymakers talk of the "global information battle-space."
Matt Armstrong, who authors a prolific blog, Mountain Runner, on the topic of public diplomacy,
urges us to "reestablish public diplomacy as the tool of national security it must be." Citing
Margaret Thatcher's assertion that "media is the oxygen of the terrorist," he writes:
Being able to communicate ideas and counter misinformation and distortion has always been
essential to peace, stability, and national security in general.
Recognizing that many of the most influential international actors -- friend and foe alike (e.g.,
foundations, NGOs and terrorist organizations) -- are not bound by national borders, Armstrong
proposes a Department of Non-State, more similar to the now-extinct U.S. Information Agency
than the current State Department, which would commandeer public diplomacy responsibilities to
deal with non-state entities. Regardless of whether this specific recommendation is feasible, the
suggestion to "think outside the border" seems sensible enough given these 21st century realities.
A report out this week from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee titled, U.S. Public Diplomacy - Time to Get Back in the Game [PDF] shows that some elected officials are taking the dire state of
public diplomacy seriously (despite its casual title):
It is no secret that support for the United States has dropped precipitously throughout the world in
recent years. Many experts believe this is due not only to various U.S. foreign policy developments
but also to the method by which we conduct our Public Diplomacy...This lack of focus was also
partly due to the belief that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had won the "War of Ideas" - a belief that 9/11 quickly shattered.
The "war of ideas" is -- and will continue to be -- an increasingly important front on the War on
Terror. And much of this war of ideas will be played out on through new media such as the Internet.
Cyber-terrorism
Cyber-security and cyber-terrorism are recent constructs and the subject of significant debate.
Back in 2001, before 9/11, "Security Czar" Richard Clarke dismissed the likelihood of "information
warfare" being used by terrorists, but routinely emphasized our vulnerability:
You can take virtually any major sector of our economy -- or, for that matter, the government -and do a vulnerability analysis and discover that it's relatively easy to alter information, disrupt and
confuse the system, and even shut the system down...shutting the system down has consequences
-- the electric power grid crashes, trains stop running, airplanes crash into each other.
While there have been a few examples of politically motivated hackers attacking certain
government websites (a phenomenon known as "hacktivism"), there have as yet been no incidents
of sabotage on the scale that Clarke described. Also relevant, the hacktivism that we have seen so
far has not been perpetrated by known terrorist organizations.
As a result, some critics think the concept is overblown. Indeed, in his book Terror on the Internet,
Gabriel Weimann is limited to investigating "how modern terrorist organizations exploit the Internet
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to raise funds, recruit, and propagandize, as well as to plan and launch attacks and to publicize
their chilling results" since there are no examples of direct terrorist attacks via the web. That is,
terrorists have turned the Internet into a battlefield in the war of ideas, but there's little evidence
that these organizations have, in a physical sense, weaponized the Internet.
In a special report published by the United States Institute of Peace, Weimann notes that fears of
cyber-terrorism have been exaggerated, fueled largely by the fact that "two of the greatest fears of
modern time are combined in the term...The fear of random, violent victimization blends well with
the distrust and outright fear of computer technology."
But, in this case, fear itself isn't the only thing we have to fear. Weimann suggests that our military
victories might actually have the effect of making "terrorists turn increasingly to unconventional
weapons such as cyber-terrorism."
So, if our military victories aren't coupled with public diplomacy victories (i.e. winning over mutual
respect and muting hatred), then our foes will be armed with not just the means, but the
motivation to do America harm. Without effectual public diplomacy gains, the specter of cyberterrorism will grow more vivid as a new digitally savvy generation of would-be terrorists comes of
age. Frank Cilluffo, the director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington
University, commented, "While Bin Laden may have his finger on the trigger, his grandchildren may
have their fingers on the computer mouse."
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