Information Operations
Newsletter
Compiled by: Mr. Jeff Harley
US Army Strategic Command
G39, Information Operations Branch
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 Table
decision of
of the
United States Government, U.S. Department of the Army, or U.S.
Contents
Army Strategic Command.
ARSTRAT IO Page on Intelink-U
Table of Contents
Vol. 8, no. 04 (3 – 30 November 2007)
1.
National Guard Monitors Web Sites, Blogs
2.
New Facility Focus On Electromagnetic Vulnerability
3.
Langevin to Study Cyber Threats
4.
What Infowar Might Mean To You (blog)
5.
Cebrowski Institute, Family Celebrate Contributions of “Father of Network Centric Warfare”
6.
Russian Liberals Accuse Government of Cyber Attack
7.
Bangladesh Launches Internet Sabotage Probe
8.
Chinese People's Liberation Army Modernisation Trends
9.
China Conducts Electromagnetic Exercise
10. Turkey To Use Sociopsychological Action Plan To Counter Terrorism
11. Partnership Key to Cleaning Up Za'ab Triangle
12. Cyber Symposium Off To Elevated Start
13. How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social — Not
Electronic
14. Report: China Targeting All 'Enemy Space Vehicles' Including GPS Satellites
15. A Force of Cyberwarriors Protects Pentagon Data
16. U.S. "Under Widespread Attack In Cyberspace"
17. Electrical Supe Charged With Damaging California Canal System
18. In Iraq, Psyops Team Plays on Iran Fears, Soccer Love
19. Nov. 19 Airpower Summary: EC-130J Supports OIF, OEF
20. 120 countries building cyber-war capacity
ARSTRAT IO Page on Intelink-U
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National Guard Monitors Web Sites, Blogs
By James W. Crawley Media General News Service, Nov 02, 2007
WASHINGTON -Seven days a week, National Guardsmen search the Internet for military secrets -everything from nuclear weapons to intel on terrorists.
The 10-person team, known as the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell, isn't hacking al-Qaida
computers or snooping around foreign military databases.
Instead, they are scouring U.S. military and government Web sites, soldiers' blogs, MySpace and
other pages. It's all in the name of national security.
"We're not willy-nilly cruising the Internet," said Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, who's in charge of the
unit.
At an undisclosed Northern Virginia location, the Guardsmen from Virginia electronically scan from
100,000 to 2 million Web pages each month looking for secrets posted on public Web sites
maintained by the Defense Department, defense contractors and individual soldiers.
After a computer finds a specific word and phrase, like "top secret." a Guardsman checks out the
Web site. About 10,000 pages a month are reviewed. Of those, a hundred or more may violate
Pentagon policy.
The Virginians are on active duty for a year, spending five days a week scanning the Web. On
weekends, other Guardsmen pull duty during their monthly drill periods.
They have found military base diagrams, close-ups of bomb-damaged Humvees, patrol schedules
and other information that violate OPSEC -- operational security, said Chief Warrant Officer Kevin
Jackameit of King George, Va.
"We're looking for information that the enemy would like to use against us," he said.
He estimated that 80 percent of the secret information that adversaries get about the U.S. military
is over the public Internet.
While one piece of information may not be damaging by itself, when combined with other
information, it could reveal a weakness to an adversary, said Sgt. 1st Class Christian Smith of
Woodbridge, Va.
When sensitive or secret information is found, Warnock's men tell soldiers to remove the
information. So far, no one has been court-martialed for violating Web site regulations.
Because word of the risk assessment cell has spread through the Army, many bases and units ask
the Guardsmen to review information on their Web sites before it is posted. The cell also gets calls
and e-mails from soldiers reporting questionable Web sites or blogs.
In the past, military Web sites have contained sensitive, if not secret, information.
In the late 1990s, one military Web site posted the aerial refueling schedule for West Coast and
Hawaii jet fighters, including dates, times and locations. Another gave details of which Marine
Corps computers, including their Internet addresses, would be off-line during the Y2K scare. The
floor plan of a top Pentagon general's residence was posted on the Web.
Since 2001, the military has tightened Web site rules.
The Pentagon is worried soldiers' blogs, videos posted to YouTube and personal pages on social
networking sites like MySpace could reveal secrets about units deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
YouTube, MySpace and other popular Web sites were put off-limits to military computers earlier this
year. New regulations require soldiers to register blogs with their units.
The Guardsmen started checking personal blogs last year.
That sparked a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The
San Francisco-based foundation has challenged federal government use of technology to monitor
personal activities.
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"There's a need for public understanding about what the government is doing," said foundation
senior counsel David Sobel.
In Army documents, turned over to EFF to settle the lawsuit, relatively few blogs were cited for
violating operational security rules.
Between January 2006 and January 2007, the unit found 26 security violations on soldiers' blogs.
During the same period, 3,899 violations were found on official Army Web pages.
The records show, Sobel said, that bloggers are not a big problem.
"They officially disclose all kinds of things (on Web sites)," Sobel said. "But, they're coming down
on the enlisted people."
While Army officials would not comment on the EFF lawsuit, the risk assessment cell's Jackameit
said most soldiers understand the blogging rules, so there are few problems.
While monitoring the Web is important, the Guardsmen also try to educate military Webmasters
about what can or cannot be posted on the Internet.
The Army needs to emphasize training and awareness about the need for operational security on
the Web, said Warnock, who lives in Northern Virginia.
"You could put a million people on (screening Web sites) and never get it done," he said.
Despite all the regulations, warnings, orders and admonitions, Warnock said one thing is absolute
about the Internet -- "If something is out on the Web, it's out there and we'll never get it back."
Table of Contents
New Facility Focus On Electromagnetic Vulnerability
From Alamogordo Daily News, 11/04/2007
A new research and analysis facility which will provide the Army Research Laboratory and the
installation with state of the art electromagnetic spectrum research capability opened on White
Sands Missile Range Oct. 24 following a ribbon cutting ceremony.
The Electromagnetic Vulnerability Assessment Facility is a multifunction facility that will enable
researchers to conduct a wide range of experiments involving radio and wireless emissions and
communications.
"It's a center to protect our people from threats, from what the enemy has," said Maj. Gen. Fred D.
Robinson Jr., commanding general of the Army Research Lab, Development and Engineering
Command.
A new facility had to be constructed following the loss of the previous EMVAF in a fire in 2001. With
the support of local leadership, including the efforts of New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, White
Sands received the funds to construct a new and improved EMVAF to support the Army's mission to
evaluate Army weapons systems' survivability against the full spectrum of electromagnetic energy
threats.
The major components of the EMVAF are the two double-shielded energy absorbing chambers.
Within these chambers experiments are conducted to determine system vulnerabilities.
Additionally, since the chambers block all radio and wireless signals, new information warfare
techniques with wireless systems can be tested without fear of affecting civilian networks and the
Internet.
"It's a general purpose experimental tool and gives us a lot of freedom in the (radio frequency)
realm," said Dan Williams, an electronics engineer with Army Research Laboratory.
Taking up a large portion of the facility is the larger of the two test chambers. At more than 100
feet long, the chamber can accommodate a wide range of devices and vehicles for analysis.
Equipped with a fume exhaust system, the chamber can even run experiments on armored vehicles
while the vehicle engine is running.
Page 2
A hoist system is built into the chamber's ceiling to accommodate experiments that involve small
aircraft or airborne systems that would be active in flight.
The EMVAF will begin experimentation in the coming months when it starts evaluating new
information systems and other systems for use in the war on terror.
"In addition to (Survivability/Lethality Analysis Directorate's) traditional electronic warfare work, we
expect the EMVAF to be key to our support for, among other things, the (Command and Control,
Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Sensors, and Reconnaissance On-the-move)
experiment, the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program, the wireless mobile ad-hoc
network connection for the Future Combat Systems, and wireless local area networks," said Dr.
Paul Tanenbaum, director of the Survivability/Lethality Analysis Directorate.
The new facility includes a number of safety upgrades and maintenance enhancements that the
previous EMVAF lacked. The new facility is built using fire retardant materials, and is equipped with
a dry pipe sprinkler system that can be activated without a fear of harming anyone in the building.
Even the lighting was designed with safety in mind. Lighting in the large test chamber can be
accessed from an attic, so employees no longer need to interrupt experiments and climb tall
ladders just to replace light bulbs.
"It's a far safer environment and it is a lot more convenient," Williams said.
The new facility's location on White Sands will save time and money since experiments can be run
on the range instead of requiring transport to another facility.
The ribbon cutting ceremony concluded with a demonstration of the Range Control Branch's Army
Air Flare copter. According to Dave Chelgren, operations officer for Army Air, the Flare copter is a
UH-1 Huey helicopter equipped with the Army Research Lab's countermeasure dispensing system.
The system is capable of launching up to 480 flares in support of various test and experimentation
missions.
Table of Contents
Langevin to Study Cyber Threats
By John E. Mulligan, the Providence Journal, November 5, 2007
WASHINGTON — As he wraps up a year as rookie chairman of a little known House subcommittee,
Rep. James R. Langevin is about to take the gavel in a new arena that could attract some attention
in the year to come.
A Washington think tank that specializes in security issues has tapped the Rhode Island Democrat
to help lead a commission that will examine holes in the nation’s defenses against “cyberterrorism”
— computer hacking and other such attacks that, according to Langevin, might one day shut down
power grids, sow chaos in the economy or worse.
It will be “difficult, if not impossible,” to shield every weakness in U.S. computer systems, Langevin
said as creation of the blue-ribbon panel was announced. But he declared it his goal to “pinpoint
the most glaring vulnerabilities” so that the nation can set about “trying to manage, reduce and
eliminate, if possible, the vulnerabilities that are out there.”
The nonpartisan, 31-member group will be called the Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th
Presidency. It will begin meeting next week, with the goal of producing a report and
recommendations before the next president takes office in 2009.
Another leader of the new panel, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, compared its mission to the
prevention of “a digital Pearl Harbor.” Langevin and McCaul will act as cochairmen of the panel,
along with former Adm. Bobby Inman, the onetime chief of the National Security Agency, and Scott
Charney, a Microsoft vice president expert in computer security issues.
While breaches of “cyber security” are not known to have done the nation extensive harm,
Langevin and his colleagues cited a number of computer security breakdowns that add up, in their
view, to a daunting potential for damage.
Page 3
• The Department of Homeland Security endured more than 800 “cyber security incidents” over
a recent two-year period, the worst of which was the alleged failure of a big contractor to deliver
properly on a multimillion-dollar agreement to provide certain protections of DHS computers,
according to Langevin.
• In a simulation of an enemy cyber-attack early this year, researchers hacked into computers at
the Idaho National Laboratory and induced a turbine to work so hard that it was damaged.
In news accounts at the time, officials downplayed the prospect that a sustained series of such
attacks could threaten the nation’s electrical system. But McCaul warned this week, “With the click
of a mouse, our power grids could be destroyed,” potentially crippling the economy.
• The Pentagon acknowledged last spring that it had temporarily shut down a portion of its nonclassified e-mail service after determining that unknown parties had hacked into the system.
Electronic espionage and sabotage have been features of the computer world practically since the
Defense Department projects that eventually helped to create the Internet, said James Lewis, of
the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the think tank that is sponsoring the new
commission.
“But attackers are getting better and smarter,” Lewis said, “and they’re getting better and smarter
faster than we are.”
As chairman of a House subcommittee on emerging threats, Langevin said his method has been to
amass information about the potential dangers from weapons of mass destruction, cyberterrorism
and the like and then to confront federal officials with any shortcomings in the defenses against
such threats.
Langevin saw some parallels between this panel and the one that probed the causes of the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and laid out lessons learned from the event. But Langevin noted that the
cyber security commission lacks subpoena power and any mandate to look back at any catastrophic
attacks. He portrayed the new panel as likely to focus on “identifying” risks and creating potential
ways to minimize or prevent them.
The new commission might also raise Langevin’s profile along the way.
As a supporter of looser federal limits on stem cell research, Langevin has distinguished himself
from his peers by speaking from experience. The accident that paralyzed Langevin in his youth has
made him feel in a keen and personal way the hopes that many sick and injured people harbor for
the medical breakthroughs that the research.
Langevin also has firsthand knowledge about how hard it can be to make a national policy imprint
as one member of the large and unruly House of Representatives. As a former Rhode Island
secretary of state when he was elected in 2000, Langevin envisioned a role in eliminating
shortcomings in the nation’s election vote-counting systems. He is one of many legislators who
have invested much energy in plans to overhaul the medical system but have little too show for it.
Neither initiative has produced landmark legislation.
This year, however, Langevin earned the coveted title, “Mr. Chairman,” when his seniority and party
affiliation put him in charge of one of the subcommittees of the House Committee on Homeland
Security. It is a new and lightly trodden field; the committee was created to watch over and write
policy and budget blueprints for the Department of Homeland Security. The cabinet-level agency
was created by an act of Congress after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Langevin heads the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cyber Security and
Science and Technology.
Table of Contents
Page 4
What Infowar Might Mean To You
(blog)
By Scott Wilson, the CIO Weblog, November 05, 2007
I don't think it rises quite to the level of sabre-rattling, but some of Chinese president Hu Jintao's
recent pronouncements on China's defense policy as it relates to information technology got me
thinking. In his report to the 17th Party Congress, Hu says:
To attain the strategic objective of building computerized armed forces and winning IT-based
warfare, we will accelerate composite development of mechanization and computerization, carry
out military training under IT-based conditions, modernize every aspect of logistics, intensify our
efforts to train a new type of high-caliber military personnel in large numbers and change the mode
of generating combat capabilities.
I get the feeling that something may have been lost in translation, or maybe it's just the universal
sort of double-speak that politicians the world over are famous for; there aren't really many
specifics in that. But it's no secret that China has been aggressively developing information warfare
capabilities, as Western intelligence agencies have been reporting.
I have noticed a tendency among many IT staff and CIOs to mentally segregate day-to-day
security and the panopoly of attacks and vulnerabilities which typify modern network operations
from the loftier matter of "Information Warfare." IW is something that nations might levy against
one another and at any rate it's all a bit theoretical, right? Certainly nothing to eclipse concerns
about the next potential breach of personal credit card information.
But this attitude is just as mistaken as the dismissal of any other sort of warfare as being primarily
a matter between state actors. For many people, terrorism has driven home the fallacy of this
notion. The most effective means of striking at a nation, it seems, is to strike directly at its people,
bypassing the military and other mechanisms designed for defense. This isn't a new strategic
thought, but it may have come to its logical conclusion in our era.
The same is true with Information Warfare. Should China, or any other capable entity (whether a
state or non-governmental organization), desire to strike out at an opponent, there is little profit in
doing so toward those sectors best prepared for such an event. Instead, the best targets to incite
fear in the populace and ruin an economy and communications conduits are the group of
corporations which comprise it. And that, to a greater or lesser extent, means your company.
Information Warfare, should it ever really come of age, will do so on your servers, not on those
buried in some hardened bunker at the Pentagon.
Hu seems to acknowledge this tacitly in his report, stating the necessity of developing military and
civilian capabilities and systems hand in hand. There is no significant difference between them if
one intends to fight an IW battle, after all.
The good news is that most of the things that you are already doing to secure your network are
just as applicable in the face of IW as they are against a teenage phreaker or a syndicate of card
number thieves. The bad news is that few of us take those things seriously enough as it is. And
while a minor disaster at a particular company is no big deal at the moment, a concerted effort to
wreak havoc at dozens, or hundreds of major corporations simultaneously could have significant
effect on the nation.
Table of Contents
Cebrowski Institute, Family Celebrate Contributions of “Father of
Network Centric Warfare”
By Barbara Honegger, Naval Post Graduate Public Affairs, October 31, 2007
The Naval Postgraduate School Cebrowski Institute for Information Innovation and Superiority held
a special symposium Oct. 9 celebrating the Institute’s accomplishments and visioning its future
research on emerging themes in national security.
Page 5
The morning session on “Framing the Future” discussed future directions for the interdisciplinary
research institute named after the late Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, NPS Hall of Fame distinguished
alumnus (Computer Systems Management, with distinction, 1973) and “father” of Network Centric
Warfare. It kicked off with a presentation by Institute Director Prof. Peter Denning on “Mastering
the Mess,” followed by Deputy Director Sue Higgins on “Framing New Approaches” and Prof. Bill
Murray on “Open Network Security.”
What made the symposium truly special was the presence and active participation of the guests of
honor — Cebrowski’s life partner and wife Kathy, his older brother retired Marine Corps Capt. John
Cebrowski and members of his extended family — in the afternoon celebration of Cebrowski’s life
and revolutionary military philosophy.
“This has truly been an incredible, wonderful and once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Cebrowski’s
brother John. “We’re thrilled to be here and tip our hats to everyone who engineered this
symposium, which has exceeded all our expectations. Kathy and I are so grateful to all of you for
carrying on Art’s work in his name and that his vision lives on in the work of the Institute. We
thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”
The elder Cebrowski remembered key turning points in his brother’s early life that presaged his
later career. “As a boy, Art would spend hours at the town dump shooting rats next to Teterboro
Airport [in New Jersey], where we got our first exhilarating taste of air flight that led us both to
become pilots; Art and I both flew in Vietnam. Another profound influence was the summers in
Connecticut on our grandparents’ farm, with their deep religious faith and focus on God, country
and family. Art loved public speaking at our high school, which accepted, valued and nurtured
individualism and gave him the confidence to be apolitical, to articulate something new and
different as an intellectual leader, and to stand alone if needed to defend it. But the moment I
remember most was Art transfixed by ‘Victory at Sea.’ From that moment on, it was inevitable he
would enter the Navy.”
Professor of Operations Research Wayne Hughes, who then Lt. Cebrowski worked for when they
were both in the Pentagon, remembered that the future founder of DoD’s Office of Force
Transformation was quick to grasp key concepts.
“Art was a Hughes-trained man only in the Japanese sense of a sempai, a mentor who senses he’s
in the presence of a student who will go beyond anything he has to teach him,” Hughes said. “And
so he did. Right from the beginning, Art Cebrowski stood out as something special. He was a
trailblazer and a pacesetter for us all.”
“The Naval Postgraduate School has kept faith with Art Cebrowski,” Hughes noted. “He was the
driving force behind a major transformation of the curricula here to share core courses, and gave
us the mission to design ‘SeaLance’ — a street fighter-like small, inshore combatant ship — for a
Systems Engineering and Analysis interdisciplinary capstone research project, and of course was
the guiding light and inspiration for the Cebrowski Institute.”
John Garstka, now with the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and co-author with
Cebrowski on their paradigm-changing Naval Institute Proceedings article on network-centric
warfare, shared highlights of their seminal work together.
“Art was a deep intellect who saw the big picture,” Garstka recalled. “We met in the early 1990s,
at a Christian study group — we were both Catholics, both Polish and both math majors — and
then worked together to develop the concept and vision for network-centric warfare. One day I
called him up and laid out the idea of a shift from platform-centric to network-centric military
operations. He instantly grasped its importance and said, ‘This is an idea I can run with.’ With our
seminal article in Proceedings, we laid down the gauntlet and began the debate on networking.
Now, the debate is not on whether we need to be networked, but only how networked we need to
be.”
“The core of Art Cebrowski’s vision was that information superiority enables a more effective and
more moral use of military force,” Denning explained. “He saw that the competitive advantage in
future warfare would come from a superior ability to make sense of information and to act on it
Page 6
rapidly, and that we need to move toward clearly communicating commander’s intent and allowing
greater flexibility at lower levels in carrying it out, coordinating situational awareness and action at
all levels through networked communications.”
A number of other speakers also emphasized Cebrowski’s deep religious faith as the foundation for
the conscious moral dimension of his life’s work.
“Admiral Cebrowski said that the military’s obligation to the world is to export security as part of an
integral strategy to provide a better life for those not yet integrated into the world system,” said
Higgins. “He also said that not sharing information at the tactical level is immoral.
“This moral dimension of everything Admiral Cebrowski did and thought was his defining
signature,” Higgins continued. “In his King Hall presentation, after being honored as an NPS
distinguished alumnus, he said something amazing: ‘If you want to serve your country, there’s no
better way than to have a good marriage and to love your spouse.’ He lived those words. His love
of family and deep belief in the family as the teacher of moral values was a foundational element of
his life and work.
"This event has helped us synthesize the contributions of Art Cebrowski and further shape the
direction of the Institute,” Higgins noted. “It helped us illuminate shifts in military missions beyond
traditional warfare to areas supporting stability, security, transition and reconstruction (SSTR)
operations and the increased emphasis on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. These
changes are clearly reflected in the U.S. Navy's new Maritime Strategy, which acknowledges that
prevention of warfare operations are as important as warfare itself. Art Cebrowski foresaw that
these information age and globalization trends would require the Department of Defense to coevolve with changes in the larger world. Cebrowski Institute certificate and degree programs in
globalization and network science are under development that will create venues for growing new
generations of security leaders who are well grounded in the principles championed by Art
Cebrowski.”
In addition to the Institute, organizations represented at the symposium were the Department of
Defense Office of Force Transformation, for which Cebrowski was the founding director; the World
Wide Consortium for the Grid (W2COG); and the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium
(NCOIC). Cebrowski inspired retired Air Force Gen. Carl G. O’Berry, then a senior vice president
with Boeing Corporation, to found the NCOIC in 2004.
“The late Admiral Art Cebrowski was the patriarch of Network-Centric Operations, which clearly had
a profound impact on how we vision defense in the 21st century,” said NCOIC senior staff member
John Poladian. “The NCOIC was honored to participate in this inaugural symposium in honor of his
life and work, and especially to witness the many personal remembrances by family members and
colleagues who worked closely with him. Most importantly, we look forward to continuing the walk
with our peers to achieve Art’s vision.”
Other morning session topics included autonomous coordination, cross sector collaboration and
security, climate change as a global security issue, globalization and network science, hastily
formed networks, information operations, information security, maritime domain awareness, mobile
devices, positive change, semantic computation, terrorism and irregular warfare and the World
Wide Consortium for the Grid.
In the early afternoon, participants toured the institute’s affiliated centers and programs in stateof-the-art Glasgow Hall East, and were feted to a reception and lavish spread after the symposium
adjourned.
A number of symposium speakers referred participants to Transforming Military Force: The Legacy
of Arthur Cebrowski and Network Centric Warfare, a new book by James R. Blaker.
“Allison Kerr was the coordinator who helped weave the vision that Peter Denning and I had for this
event into magical reality,” Higgins noted.
Table of Contents
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Russian Liberals Accuse Government of Cyber Attack
From Reuters, 9 Nov 2007
A leading Russian opposition party accused the government on Friday of being behind a hacker
attack on its Web site and the police seizure a day earlier of millions of leaflets across the country.
Union of Right Forces (SPS) leader Nikita Belykh said a hacker attack from 400 points around the
world hit the party's Web site (www.sps.ru) with 5-6,000 requests per second, forcing it off line.
"The character and size of the attack shows this is part of an operation against the Union of Right
Forces that has been going on since the beginning of the election campaign by plan of the
administration of the president," Belykh wrote on his personal website (www.belyh.ru).
Calls by Reuters to the Russian Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information,
via the press office of the Federal Security Bureau, were unanswered.
On Thursday, Belykh said police had confiscated 10 million copies of the SPS newspaper and
stopped another 4 million copies at the printer in raids as far afield as Krasnoyarsk in eastern
Siberia, the Volga region of Udmurtia, and Moscow. A police spokesman did not confirm the
newspaper raids, but SPS's charges have raised fears among opposition groups that the Kremlin's
allies are using the state apparatus to crack down on its political opponents.
Belykh said party member Internet diaries continued to work, while specialists were working to
transfer the SPS files to another internet service provider.
Analysts and opinion polls agree the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, personally supported by
President Vladimir Putin, will win the Dec. 2 polls and maintain its dominance of the State Duma
(lower house of parliament).
Polls show the weak and fractured liberal SPS are unlikely to pass the 7 percent threshold needed
to win Duma seats. Two liberal parties won seats in elections eight years ago, but they have been
dwarfed during Putin's time in office.
Table of Contents
Bangladesh Launches Internet Sabotage Probe
From Agence France Presse, 13 Nov 07
DHAKA (AFP) - Bangladesh on Tuesday launched an investigation after the country's Internet link
was sabotaged, disrupting communications nationwide for most of the day.
Officials said cables were also severed twice last week causing massive disruption to businesses in
the impoverished country.
"We are investigating the cable cutting incident which took place today (Tuesday) with high
priority," said Ziaur Rashid Sofder, general manager of security at the Bangladesh Telephone and
Telegraph Board.
"We are taking it very seriously because it was a really big sabotage," he said, adding that three
people were arrested last October following a similar attack.
"They confessed that someone had given them money to cut the cable but police are still
investigating the incident," he said.
Azahar Chowdhury, vice president of Internet Service Providers of Bangladesh, said the sabotage
had prevented all Internet use and international telephone calls for most of Tuesday.
Other industry figures called for urgent action to prevent further problems.
"We were completely detached from world communications -- it was total isolation, a complete
disaster," said Masum Billah, manager of the leading Internet service provider Grameen Cybernet.
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Chinese People's Liberation Army Modernisation Trends
By Rahul K Bhonsle, Newsblaze, 2 Nov 07
China will speed up modernization of its armed forces over the next five years as it has
correspondingly reduced overall force levels. This was the central message delivered by Chairman
Hu Jintao at the 17th CPC. "We must implement the military strategy for the new period, accelerate
the revolution in military affairs with Chinese characteristics, ensure military preparedness, and
enhance the military's capability to respond to various security threats and accomplish diverse
military tasks", said Hu.
A linkage between growth, development and defence was also underlined with the words, "Bearing
in mind the overall strategic interests of national security and development, we must take both
economic development and national defence into consideration and make our country prosperous
and our armed forces powerful while building a moderately prosperous society in all respects."
That the PLA will continue to be a people's army was also highlighted with the words, "fundamental
purpose of the armed forces serving the people." The overall control of the Party over the military
is axiomatic. A report by Xinhua highlighted the commitment of the six high-ranking generals of
the People's Liberation Army (PLA), all members of the Central Military Commission who pledged to
support the absolute leadership of the Communist Party of China for national defence construction
and PLA modernization.
The focus of modernization will be to develop information focused mechanized force, capable of
undertaking war in an information dominated environment. Personnel would also be highly trained
and equipped with weapons through "our capacity for independent innovation in R&D of weapons
and equipment with better quality and cost-effectiveness," he said. Training of military personnel
and logistics would be the other arm of the modernisation process developed through thrift and
diligence.
The focus is also likely to be on extensive training, in information and electronic rich, what the
Chinese call as the, "electromagnetic" environments. Troops are to be trained in difficult and risky
missions to be capable of winning the wars.
The remarks of Kang Fei, delegate from the Navy on training appear particularly relevant, he says,
"being resolute to rectify the unhealthy and fancy-seeking tendencies in training, and truly carrying
out the training in accordance with the needs of real war by way of stressing on actual effects,"
should be our aim. Chen Bingde, member of the Central Military Commission and chief of general
staff, emphasized that the Party committees at various levels should fully implement the spirit of
the 17th CPC National Congress, focus on the fulfillment of the historical mission of the army in the
new century and the new period, make dynamic efforts to boost the reform of military work, work
in a down-to-earth manner in the preparedness for military struggles, and promote a better and
faster development of the work and construction of the General Staff Headquarters of the PLA.
In the sphere of logistics, Liao Xilong, member of the Central Military Commission and director of
the General Logistics Department of the PLA, stressed on the logistics challenges as, "how to
resolve the important and practical problems of the PLA's logistics construction and reform, fully
strengthen and improve the construction of the CPC in the units under the General Logistics
Department of the PLA, and fulfill the missions of all-round development of modern logistics at high
standards and sound quality".
The focus on human resources development was also evident with the ability to bring out creative
initiative of the officers and the men by motivating them to excel. This was highlighted by
indicating an approach, which put people first in the army to protect their legitimate interests. As
Cheng Wanchong, delegate to the 17th CPC National Congress and deputy commander of an
aviation regiment of the PLA Air Force, highlighted, "In the grassroots units, the more the officers
and men are developed all-roundly, the better will it favour the process of the military reform with
Chinese characteristics, the maintenance and enhancement of the advanced nature of the army as
Page 9
a "big school", and the army's forefront role in the effort to promote the national civilization
quality."
While modernisation is in focus, the key issues identified are no different from other armies of the
world be it emphasis on technology absorption or human resource development. Similarly
electronic and information warfare have also received much attention. These precepts were also
practiced during Queshan 2007, an exercise carried out by the PLA in September 2007. An
essential factor, which has not received much focus, appears to be integration and jointness. A
detailed review of PLA doctrines is essential before any further comment can be made, however in
such important deliberations, integration and jointness could have possibly received greater
attention. In the final analysis, the PLA is accountable to the Party and will follow its mandate.
Table of Contents
China Conducts Electromagnetic Exercise
By Wendell Minnick, Defense News, 5 Nov 07
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) concluded a weeklong live-fire exercise, dubbed “Iron Fist2007,” on Nov. 2 in central China’s Henan Province. The exercise included a division of 10,000
troops from the Jinan Military Region. The exercise involved testing command and control, longrange maneuvers and electromagnetic warfare exercises.
Larry Wortzel, commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission,
explained that the exercise involved everything from traditional jamming to spoofing an enemy’s
communications, cyber warfare and information warfare.
“They have electronic warfare regiments in all the military regions,” Wortzel said. “It means that
they are practicing operating under conditions where they are under electromagnetic attack of their
communications, data transmissions and radar, while they are practicing the same against an
adversary.”
Thomas Kane, author of the book “Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power,” explained that the
phrase electromagnetic warfare has been surfacing regularly in Chinese military writings.
“I suspect that the term ‘electromagnetic warfare’ normally refers to what English speakers would
call ‘electronic warfare,’” he said. “In other words, it refers to attempts to transmit and receive
electromagnetic energy for military purposes while interfering with the enemy’s ability to do
likewise.
“Examples would include radar, radio communications, interception of enemy radio
communications, encryption of friendly radio communications, jamming, spoofing, passive
detection of enemy electromagnetic emissions, etc.”
Chinese military writers have been claiming that “the electromagnetic battle will densely cover all
naval battle space, penetrating all combat operations,” Kane said.
Table of Contents
Turkey To Use Sociopsychological Action Plan To Counter Terrorism
By Ercan Yavuz, Today’s Zaman, 6 Nov 07
With a report prepared by the Turkish intelligence authorities explaining that the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK) needs considerable money and weapons for a new wave of more violent
attacks and is trying to raise funds from Kurdish citizens both within the country and abroad, the
Turkish government has launched a psychological warfare action plan to counter such efforts.
This action plan intends to neutralize the effects of the PKK’s propaganda on the people in the
eastern and southeastern Anatolian regions through economic, social and cultural measures, and it
will be implemented to complement the military and diplomatic attacks on the terrorist
organization.
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The Turkish intelligence units observe that the PKK is trying to regain its former strength by
conducting shocking attacks when it loses support, cautioning that the PKK militants who were
dispersed because of the ongoing crackdown in rural areas may opt for conducting terrorist attacks
in the cities, particularly in metropolitan areas. According to the intelligence units, in the future the
PKK will distinguish between its armed attacks and social attacks. Its social attacks will aim to
create psychological uneasiness in society, and the government is planning to counter these attacks
by introducing a psychological warfare plan.
The main tenets of this plan were discussed in a National Security Council (MGK) meeting held on
Oct. 21, and it was drafted after the country’s counterterrorism strategy was determined in detail.
This plan aims to dissuade the people who support the PKK’s terrorism and includes several
measures intended to counteract the effects of the PKK’s propaganda on the people of the region.
The social aspects of the counterterrorism efforts will be emphasized. The misconceptions
disseminated by the terrorist organizations will be curtailed, and the loyalty of citizens to “the
state, the nation, the country and the flag” will be reassured. A greater importance will be attached
to channels of communication.
Due to the modified organization of the MGK, the psychological warfare plan will be conducted by
the Higher Counterterrorism Board (TMYK), chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek. As part
of the reforms the government implemented to ensure increased harmonization in Turkey’s EU bid,
the MGK began to be chaired by a civilian secretary-general in 2003, and because of this
organizational change, the MGK’s public relations department, which was formerly in charge of
psychological warfare, became dysfunctional, which in turn led to defects in the psychological
aspects of the country’s counterterrorism efforts. To eliminate these defects, the government has
decided to make the TMYK more functional. In this context, the security affairs department,
subordinated to the Prime Ministry, but which, too, was not very active, will be transformed into a
general directorate, connected to the TMYK. These public institutions will identify psychological,
social, cultural and economic priorities of counterterrorism.
As part the psychological warfare plan, data on forms of terrorism, rates of support for terrorism,
demographical structure and economic and social status of the terrorism-intensive areas have been
collected. This data will be used to guide the efforts to determine political, social, economic and
security aspects of counterterrorism. The psychological action plan also has a role for media
organizations in counter-terrorism efforts and entails coordination in this respect.
The economic and social measures will be implemented following the first meeting of the Cabinet to
be held after the return of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from the US. Furthermore, several
ministers will regularly visit the eastern and southeastern provinces to listen to the problems of the
local people. Economic measures will be prioritized and infrastructure problems of the settlements
in the region will be completely solved. Flights to the region will be encouraged, and railways and
trains will be renovated. Long-term loans will be provided for animal breeding and crafts with low
interest rates. National and international fairs and exhibitions will be organized in the provinces to
develop the industrial sector. More medical and education personnel will be assigned to the region,
and voluntary service will be introduced for the region. This service will mainly target women and
children.
Table of Contents
Partnership Key to Cleaning Up Za'ab Triangle
By Spc. Bradley J. Clark, 4th BCT, 1st Cavalry Division Public Affairs via Blackanthem Military News, Nov 9, 2007
SHARQAT, Iraq - U.S. Soldiers traveled deep into the Za'ab Triangle to meet up with their Iraqi
counterparts and conduct various operations in the desert of Salahuddin province.
Participating in building the new Combat Outpost on the outskirts of Sharqat were Soldiers from
Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 5th Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 4th Brigade
Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division.
Page 11
The reason behind the COP's construction is to improve security in the area known as the Za;ab
Triangle, which includes the cities of Sharqat, Heschel and Aitha. They all belong to Salahuddin
province, but in February, the triangle was moved into the operational control of the 4th BCT, 1st
Cav. Div., the unit who is in charge of Ninevah province. This meant the responsibility of cleaning
up the region fell on the Soldiers from 5-82 FA, who control the battelspace in southern Ninevah,
which borders Salahuddin.
"We already have COP Nepsa outside of Heschel, so building up this COP outside of Sharqat will
give us an even bigger advantage in picking apart the safe haven for terrorists in the Za'ab
Triangle," said Maj. Lance Varney, executive officer for the 5-82 FA.
The addition of a combat outpost in the region not only helps Coalition Forces, it also has many
benefits to the Iraqi security forces.
"With the completion of the COP, the Iraqis will have a Coalition presence, so whenever they need
training or coaching, they don't have to travel all the way to [Forward Operating Base] Q-West,"
said Spc. James Manning, an intelligence analyst from Butler, Pa. "Plus, we will be readily available
whenever we are needed to do joint patrols."
Before Coalition Forces can operate as frequently and easily as they want in the Sharqat area, they
must first build the combat outpost.
This task was made easier than normal because Coalition Forces already had a foundation to build
upon due to the fact that the COP;s location was previously home to the Iraqi Army's 13th
Strategic Infrastructure Battalion.
"What we are doing is providing a better setup, which in turn provides better protection," said Staff
Sgt. Jeremy Clifton, technical engineer supervisor, HHC, 111th Engineer Brigade. "We are
improving force protection by adding a second tier of [barriers] and improving the entry control
point by adding a search lane."
While the engineer element began working on the combat outpost, the remainder of American
troops began to conduct operations in the city of Sharqat to see the progress the ISF have made
since February.
One of the operations that took place was a walking tour through Market Street in downtown
Sharqat with the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police.
"The IA and IP have never done that before, it was a huge breakthrough," Varney said happily. "I
remember a time when you couldn;t drive down Market Street and be safe, it has definitely come a
long way since then."
The tour wasn;t the only evidence of an improving Iraqi security force, a few evening raids also
made a strong case for Coalition confidence in their Iraqi counterparts.
"When we got to the target locations, they set up security, had dismounted patrolmen, went in and
searched all the target houses and didn't cause any damage," said Manning. "Even though the
targets weren't there, it was good, clean practice for the Iraqis. Pretty soon they will be right there.
There isn't too much more for them to learn or do."
Their ability to conduct combat operations wasn't the only thing that impressed Manning.
"Their interaction with the local population was great," said Manning. "As soon as they went
through the houses, they immediately began positive information operations right there on the
spot. Instead of leaving after the search, they stayed on site and let the locals in the neighborhood
know what they were doing and why they were doing it - to get the bad guys so their
neighborhoods could be safe."
The Soldiers of the 5-82 FA look forward to finishing the combat outpost so that Coalition Forces
can share continued future success with their Iraqi partners. The COP is scheduled to be complete
and fully operational prior to the redeployment of the field artillerymen in early to mid-December.
Table of Contents
Page 12
Cyber Symposium Off To Elevated Start
By John Andrew Prime, Shreveport Times, November 28, 2007
The "Fly and Fight in Cyberspace" symposium got off to a lofty start Tuesday with the theoretical
and the practical meeting in a big way.
It happened in a lecture hall at the Shreveport Convention Center, with a standing-room-only
crowd of military, academics and information-technology civilians listening to an esteemed retired
professor.
He talked about viruses and evolution and how these provide both models and cautions for the
mushrooming world of technology and communications.
C.V. Ramamoorthy, professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer sciences from the
University of California, spoke for an hour as the start and keynote speaker of a daylong Center for
Secure Cyberspace-sponsored workshop.
The Fly and Fight in Cyberspace symposium continues today and Thursday at the Convention
Center. Registration is available at the door.
Opening in a folksy manner and ending on such a lofty plane that even those in the crowd with
doctorates likely hoped that Cliff's notes on the talk might soon be available.
Ramamoorthy used the evolution of physical viruses as a model for understanding, developing and
combatting metaphysical and cybernetic viruses and other threats.
His talk touched on three other related areas as well: security issues and disaster management;
the security aspects of "virtualization on the Web;" and system vulnerabilities that can create
security weaknesses in software systems.
The thrust of the talk was that technology and the knowledge base, and the dangers that result
from both chance and malice, double every few years, far outpacing mankind's ability to
understand it or defend the mushrooming infrastructure.
"The gap between the technology and education increases exponentially," he said.
Expansion of this process to the Web and the Internet over the past few years has only accelerated
this process and introduced undreamed-of aspects, he said.
"Increasingly, the Web and the Internet have been used for social networking and as a repository
for personal information," he said. This introduces new ways enemies can threaten us, but is
consciously done by those putting information on the Web, as another level of evolution.
"We want to leave a legacy to our next generation," he said. "We want to show our faces and our
personalities."
Such survival, he said, "is the alpha and the omega of all laws of evolution."
"He's hitting it pretty square on what the problems are," Lt. Col. Chuck Knofczynski, an F-15 pilot
now working with the 46th Test Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., said after Ramamoorthy ended
to applause.
Knofczynski, attending to network and learn ways his unit, the service's test and evaluation center
for Air Force air-delivered weapons, navigation and guidance systems, can work with Air Force
Cyber Command, said the talk made him think.
"How do you know you've mutated the right direction?" he asked. "How do you know the iterations
you have made are superior iterations?
"It's an exceptionally interesting concept. ... We're always reacting, we're never proactive. But at
the same time how do we know we're not going to pour a lot of money into the wrong area versus
the correct area?
"We're treating the symptoms. Every time, we're treating the symptoms."
He said Ramamoorthy's take on the Web was dead-on, too.
Page 13
"When you think about it, everything we're doing is going to the Web," he said. "So our
vulnerabilities are there. Everyone knows that."
The rest of the day included several other guest speakers, and presentation of more than a dozen
papers on topics ranging from "Annotating High Performance Computing Simulations with Semantic
Metadata" to "CyberCraft: Protecting Electronic Systems with Lightweight Agents."
In the center's exhibit hall, scores of national and local vendors, from small concerns to industry
giants, worked through the day to set up displays and booths.
These range from simple displays with printed material and posters to giant trailers packed with
state-of-the-art communications gear, such as Cisco Systems' sophisticated Network Emergency
Response Vehicle.
At one table, a handful of Northrop Grumman representatives worked to make sure a PowerPoint
slideshow would effortless display their company's presence in the cybersphere.
The company has some 30 staffers from across the country here for the symposium and eventually
could have several hundred personnel here, depending on the needs of Air Force Cyber Command
and the Cyber Innovation Center.
"We also want to support Gov.-elect Jindal's vision of bringing technology into northwest Louisiana,
to transform and enable northwest Louisiana," said John Wright, a Northrop Grumman senior
information operations planner from Colorado Springs, Colo. "We would like to be a part of that."
Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover, seated up front, was fascinated by Ramamoorthy's presentation,
which he saw as a harbinger.
"So much of what happens in the cyber environment seems to parallel what exists within the
natural world," Glover said. "The concept of how viruses are created and mutate and the ways they
behave seem to be so similar to how life itself acts. I found that aspect of it fascinating."
On a broader note, he said the discussion and the symposium will "lead to discussions and
gatherings in facilities such as this and in classrooms around here for years and decades to come.
I'm looking forward to it. It's a good start."
Table of Contents
How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks
Are Social — Not Electronic
By Noah Shachtman, Wired.com, 27 Nov 2007
The future of war began with an act of faith. In 1991, Navy captain Arthur Cebrowski met John
Garstka, a captain in the Air Force, at a McLean, Virginia, Bible-study class. The two quickly
discovered they shared more than just their conservative Catholic beliefs. They both had an
interest in military strategy. And they were both geeks: Cebrowski — who'd been a math major in
college, a fighter pilot in Vietnam, and an aircraft carrier commander during Desert Storm — was
fascinated with how information technologies could make fighter jocks more lethal. Garstka — a
Stanford-trained engineer — worked on improving algorithms used to track missiles.
Over the next several years, the two men traded ideas and compared experiences. They visited
businesses embracing the information revolution, ultimately becoming convinced that the changes
sweeping the corporate world had applications for the military as well. The Defense Department
wasn't blind to the power of networks, of course — the Internet began as a military project, after
all, and each branch of the armed services had ongoing "digitization" programs. But no one had
ever crystallized what the information age might offer the Pentagon quite like Cebrowski and
Garstka did. In an article for the January 1998 issue of the naval journal Proceedings, "NetworkCentric Warfare: Its Origin and Future," they not only named the philosophy but laid out a new
direction for how the US would think about war.
Their model was Wal-Mart. Here was a sprawling, bureaucratic monster of an organization — sound
familiar? — that still managed to automatically order a new lightbulb every time it sold one.
Page 14
Warehouses were networked, but so were individual cash registers. So were the guys who sold
Wal-Mart the bulbs. If that company could wire everyone together and become more efficient, then
US forces could, too. "Nations make war the same way they make wealth," Cebrowski and Garstka
wrote. Computer networks and the efficient flow of information would turn America's chain saw of a
war machine into a scalpel.
The US military could use battlefield sensors to swiftly identify targets and bomb them. Tens of
thousands of warfighters would act as a single, self-aware, coordinated organism. Better
communications would let troops act swiftly and with accurate intelligence, skirting creaky
hierarchies. It'd be "a revolution in military affairs unlike any seen since the Napoleonic Age," they
wrote. And it wouldn't take hundreds of thousands of troops to get a job done — that kind of
"massing of forces" would be replaced by information management. "For nearly 200 years, the
tools and tactics of how we fight have evolved," the pair wrote. "Now, fundamental changes are
affecting the very character of war."
Network-centric wars would be more moral, too. Cebrowski later argued that network-enabled
armies kill more of the right people quicker. With fewer civilian casualties, warfare would be more
ethical. And as a result, the US could use military might to create free societies without being
accused of imperialist arrogance.
It had a certain geek appeal, to which Wired was not immune. Futurist Alvin Toffler talked up
similar ideas — before they even had a name — in the magazine's fifth issue, in 1993. And during
the invasion of Iraq in 2003, my colleague Joshua Davis welcomed in a "new age of fighting that
combined precision weapons, unprecedented surveillance of the enemy, agile ground forces, and —
above all — a real-time communications network that kept the far-flung operation connected
minute by minute."
As a presidential candidate in 1999, George W. Bush embraced the philosophy, as did his eventual
choice for defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld instituted a massive
program to "transform" the armed services. Cebrowski was installed as the head of the newly
created Office of Force Transformation. When the US went to war in Afghanistan, and then in Iraq,
its forces achieved apparent victory with lightning speed. Analysts inside and outside the Pentagon
credited the network-centric approach for that success. "The successful campaigns in Afghanistan
and Iraq took far fewer troops and were executed quicker," Rumsfeld proclaimed, because of
"advanced technology and skills." The Army committed more than $230 billion to a network-centric
makeover, on top of the billions the military had already spent on surveillance, drone aircraft, spy
satellites, and thousands of GPS transceivers. General Tommy Franks, leader of both invasions, was
even more effusive than Rumsfeld. All the new tech, he wrote in his 2004 memoir, American
Soldier, promised "today's commanders the kind of Olympian perspective that Homer had given his
gods."
And yet, here we are. The American military is still mired in Iraq. It's still stuck in Afghanistan,
battling a resurgent Taliban. Rumsfeld has been forced out of the Pentagon. Dan Halutz, the Israeli
Defense Forces chief of general staff and net-centric advocate who led the largely unsuccessful war
in Lebanon in 2006, has been fired, too. In the past six years, the world's most technologically
sophisticated militaries have gone up against three seemingly primitive foes — and haven't won
once.
How could this be? The network-centric approach had worked pretty much as advertised. Even the
theory's many critics admit net-centric combat helped make an already imposing American military
even more effective at locating and killing its foes. The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Mullah
Omar were broken almost instantly. But network-centric warfare, with its emphasis on fewer,
faster-moving troops, turned out to be just about the last thing the US military needed when it
came time to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. A small, wired force leaves generals with too few nodes
on the military network to secure the peace. There aren't enough troops to go out and find
informants, build barricades, rebuild a sewage treatment plant, and patrol a marketplace.
Page 15
For the first three years of the Iraq insurgency, American troops largely retreated to their fortified
bases, pushed out woefully undertrained local units to do the fighting, and watched the results on
feeds from spy drones flying overhead. Retired major general Robert Scales summed up the
problem to Congress by way of a complaint from one division commander: "If I know where the
enemy is, I can kill it. My problem is I can't connect with the local population." How could he? For
far too many units, the war had been turned into a telecommute. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon
were the first conflicts planned, launched, and executed with networked technologies and a
networked ideology. They were supposed to be the wars of the future. And the future lost.
Inside the Pentagon, the term network-centric warfare is out of fashion, yet countless generals and
admirals still adhere to its core principles. On the streets of Iraq, though, troops are learning to
grapple with the guerrilla threat. And that means fighting in a way that couldn't be more different
from the one Donald Rumsfeld embraced. The failures of wired combat are forcing troops to
improvise a new, socially networked kind of war.
Tarmiyah, located about 20 miles north of Baghdad, is an ugly town — traced with rivulets of
sewage, patrolled by stray dogs, and strewn with rubble and garbage. Insurgents fleeing US
military crackdowns in Baghdad and, farther north, in Baqubah, have flooded the city. The local
police quit en masse almost a year ago, leaving the security of Tarmiyah's 50,000 residents to 150
men from the US Army's Fourth Battalion, Ninth Infantry Regiment — known since an early-1900s
tour of duty in China as the Manchus.
Typically, soldiers spend hours of every day at war just trying to figure out where their comrades
are, and how to maneuver together. But hand out GPS receivers and put everyone's signals on a
map, and those tasks become a whole lot simpler. Luckily for the Manchus, the 4/9 is arguably the
most wired unit in the Army. Select troops wear an experimental electronics package, including a
helmet-mounted monocle that displays a digital map of Tarmiyah with icons for each of their
vehicles and troops. The unit's commander, William Prior, rides an upgraded Stryker armored
vehicle that shows the same info on one of many screens. It's packed with battle command
stations, advanced radios, remote-controlled weapons turrets, and satellite network terminals. No
commander at his level has ever been able to see so many of his men so easily.
"It increases the unit's combat power, no question," Prior says. Trim and dark-eyed, the lieutenant
colonel knows his tech. He has a master's in physics and taught science at West Point in the late
1990s.
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, only a fraction of the Humvees, tanks, and helicopters invading
the country were equipped with these kind of readouts on the position of other US vehicles. Still,
enough had them to allow the troops pushing to Baghdad to execute perilous maneuvers, like
sending one unit through another's kill zone — a move made even more hair-raising by dust storms
that turned the air opaque.
Today, every three-man team in the Manchus is an icon on every other team's monocles. Networkcentric doctrine says that these plugged-in soldiers should be able to cover a bigger swath of the
battlefield and take on more enemies. And, yes, the gear does let them clear neighborhoods more
efficiently and respond to enemy attacks more quickly. But a handful of soldiers still can't secure a
town of more than 50,000. Half a dozen Manchus have been killed or wounded by snipers during
their five months in Tarmiyah. Prior has handed out 25 Purple Hearts to the 150-man Comanche
Company guarding Tarmiyah. It's even worse outside town, where the equally small Blowtorch
Company was trying to keep the peace in an area three times the size of Manhattan, until the
higher-ups ordered the company onto other missions.
"A well-informed but geographically dispersed force," Garstka and Cebrowski wrote in 1998, should
be able to triumph over any foe, regardless of "mission, force size and composition, and
geography." But neither Cebrowski nor Garstka was thinking about the kind of combat where foes
blend into the populace and seed any stretch of road with bombs. Lawless towns like this can be
pacified only by flooding them with troops — collecting tips and knocking heads. That's what Prior
needs, not more gadgets. "They're just tools," he says in his flat Iowa accent.
Page 16
But Prior has just caught a break: Another several hundred soldiers, Special Forces operators, and
Iraqi troops have descended on the city to kick in doors, drop bombs on extremist hideouts, and
drive out the insurgents. Those men will leave eventually, though, and to sustain the gains they
make, Prior is supposed to recruit civilians into a kind of neighborhood watch. The idea is to have
as many eyes and ears on the streets, around the shops, and in the mosques as possible. In
counterinsurgency, it's better to have a lot of nodes in your network, connecting to the population,
than just a few. In fact, that's a key tenet of the new US strategy in Iraq — hiring watchmen
who've come to be known in other towns as "alligators" for their light-blue Izod shirts. Prior hasn't
had much luck in getting folks in Tarmiyah to sign up; even his own soldiers are reluctant to go out
in the daytime.
But the extra boots on the ground have given Prior some space. If he can recruit a few alligators in
a hurry, the extremists will be less likely to come back. So he has started spending quality time
drinking chai with local leaders instead of fighting a shooting war.
We walk into the home of Tarmiyah's former mayor, sheikh Sayeed Jassem. Everyone in town
agrees he'd be the guy to help sign up alligators. One problem: Jassem is in jail on charges of
embezzlement and funneling money to the insurgency. The Iraqi government is in no mood to let
him out. That makes the several dozen tribal leaders sitting in Jassem's 40-foot-long, lavishly
carpeted living room extremely grouchy. "Sayeed, he knows every sheikh, he knows all the
children. The first step is releasing him. Then we can arrange security," says burly, balding, gravelvoiced Abu Ibrahim. Next to him, in a white headdress and wearing a pencil-thin mustache,
Jassem's cousin Abu Abbas nods. "I couldn't make a decision until he's free."
Prior blinks. Abbas went to Jassem's jail cell the day before yesterday and got the sheikh's blessing
to proceed. "But you saw him yesterday, with your own eyes, did you not?" he asks. Abbas starts
saying something about his uncles. Prior turns to Ibrahim. "Yesterday, you said you'd have 100
men. All I'm asking for is 30. Five men, in eight-hour shifts, to guard the sheikh's home, and to
guard the Tarmiyah gate" — the main entrance to the town. The meeting has been going on for two
hours. That's typical. But after a few of these, Prior has finally learned that such gatherings are as
much about performance as ticking off agenda items. He booms out in a Broadway-loud voice: "Are
there 30 strong men in Tarmiyah who can do this?"
OK, OK, everyone answers, of course there are, don't get so excited. They spend the next few
hours drinking cup after cup of chai, hammering out exactly what the recruiting announcement will
say, whether these guardians will have badges, how they'll be vetted. Finally, they agree that 30
men will meet back at the house tomorrow morning. Prior's soldiers print up 50 makeshift
applications — better to have a few extra, just in case.
The next day, we go back to Jassem's house. More than 500 men are braving the heat, waiting in
front to sign up as alligators. A week later, that number swells to more than 1,400. In the month
since, Prior has downed a lot more chai. But he hasn't had to award a single Purple Heart.
Outside of Fallujah, on a sprawling US military base, there's an old barracks supposedly built for
Uday Hussein's personal shock troops. Down at the dimly lit end of one hallway is a tiled bathroom
that's been converted into a tiny office. Inside, three screens sit on a desk, displaying a set of
digital maps showing a God's-eye view of the entire country. Every American tank and truck is
marked with blue icons. Every recent insurgent attack is marked in red. There are more than 1,100
units like this one across the country, and the site of every major US military center in Iraq is
connected to the same system. The brass calls these futuristic command posts... well, it calls them
command posts of the future, or CPOF. (Grunts call them the command posts of the right now — CPORN.) This is network-centric warfare, translated from journal theory to war-zone reality.
Fallujah isn't more than 10 miles away, but staring at those three screens feels like observing Iraq
from another continent — maybe another planet. Outside, it's ant-under-a-magnifying-glass hot. In
here I have to pull my arms inside my T-shirt, the thermostat is turned so low. Across the city,
marines do their best to predict the insurgents' next moves. But in front of the command post, we
have so much information at our fingertips it makes Prior's tech look like a beta-test version of
Page 17
Missile Command. "There's a sea of information here. All you have to learn to do is fish in it," says
Jim Kanzenbach, a tan, goateed Army contractor and trainer with a southern-accented baritone.
Kanzenbach taps the mouse a few times. Red diamonds representing all of the insurgent sigacts
(military-speak for "significant activities") array themselves into a timeline. He sorts it by day of
the week, then by hour of the day. White space appears during a particular hour; there don't seem
to be any sigacts then. "If I was going to run a convoy, that would be the better time."
He clicks again, and the middle screen switches to a 3-D map of an Iraqi town from a driver's point
of view. Kanzenbach smiles, and his mile-a-minute Texas patter goes hypersonic. "Now let's plan
the route. You've got a mosque here. An IED happened over there two weeks ago. Here's the one
that happened yesterday. Hey, that's too close. Let's change my route. Change the whole damn
thing." He guides me through capability after capability of the command post — all kinds of charts,
overlays, and animations. "But wait — there's more," he says. "You wanna see where all the
Internet cafés are in Baghdad?"
It's hard not to get caught up in Kanzenbach's enthusiasm. But back in the US, John Nagl, one of
the authors of the Army's new counterinsurgency manual, isn't impressed. He's a lieutenant colonel
and an Iraq vet, an Army batallion commander at Fort Riley in Kansas. He's also the author of
several influential articles and books about counterinsurgency, including Learning to Eat Soup With
a Knife, an analysis of Vietnam and Malaya. When I ask him about CPOF, he's more interested in
what the screens don't show. Historical sigacts don't actually tell you where the next one's going to
be. Or who's going to do it. Or who's joining them. Or why. "The police captain playing both sides,
the sheikh skimming money from a construction project," Nagl asks, "what color are they?"
CPOF was designed for planning short, decisive battles against another regular army — the Soviets,
the Chinese, Saddam's Republican Guard, whoever — as long as they had tanks to destroy,
territory to seize, and leaders to kill. The counterinsurgency game has completely different rules.
The goal here is to stabilize a government, not bring it down; to persuade people to cooperate, not
bludgeon them into submission. In fact, many of these kinetic bombs-and-bullets activities can
actually undermine a counterinsurgency, creating more enemies than they kill. "Some of the best
weapons for counterinsurgency do not shoot," Nagl's counterinsurgency manual says. Instead, it
advises troops to get to know the locals — both individually and as groups — and gain their trust.
The locals generally know which of their neighbors are insurgents and which aren't; they're already
plugged into the communal network. "Arguably," the manual says, "the decisive battle is for the
people's minds."
Cebrowski and Garstka wrote about a different kind of power, one that came when connected
troops started to share information in ways that circumvented, and bypassed, the Industrial Age
military chain of command. But that helps only if troops can connect in the first place. It can take
up to a week for them to wrangle their laptops into updating the biometric databases that track
who gets in and out of Fallujah. Intelligence reports can take even longer. The people best
equipped to win the battle for people's minds — US troops on the ground, local policemen, Iraqi
Army officers, tribal leaders — are left out of CPOF's network. It's a bandwidth hog, and the
soldiers and marines fighting these counterinsurgencies aren't exactly carrying around T3 lines.
Only recently did infantrymen like the ones in Fallujah even get their own radios. The Pentagon's
sluggish structure for buying new gear means it can take up to a decade to get soldiers equipped.
(Though to be fair, CPOF was purchased and deployed years ahead of schedule.) In Fallujah, the
marines of Fox Company, based in an abandoned train station, mostly use their CPOF terminal to
generate local maps, which they export to PowerPoint. Their buddies in Fox Company's first
platoon, working out of a police precinct, have it even worse. When they want to get online, they
have to drive to the station.
As for Iraqi access, while CPOF technically isn't classified, all of the data on it is. Locals can't see
the information or update any of those databases with their own intelligence. A key tenet of
network theory is that a network's power grows with every new node. But that's only if every node
gets as good as it gives. In Iraq, the most important nodes in this fight are all but cut off.
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Meanwhile, insurgent forces cherry-pick the best US tech: disposable email addresses, anonymous
Internet accounts, the latest radios. They do everything online: recruiting, fundraising, trading
bomb-building tips, spreading propaganda, even selling T-shirts. And every American-financed
move to reinforce Iraq's civilian infrastructure only makes it easier for the insurgents to operate.
Every new Internet café is a center for insurgent operations. Every new cell tower means a
hundred new nodes on the insurgent network. And, of course, the insurgents know the language
and understand the local culture. Which means they plug into Iraq's larger social web more easily
than an American ever could. As John Abizaid, Franks' successor at Central Command, told a
conference earlier this year, "This enemy is better networked than we are."
The insurgent groups are also exploiting something that US network-centric gurus seem to have
missed: All of us are already connected to a global media grid. Satellite television, radio, and the
Internet mean that many of the most spectacular attacks in Iraq are deliberately staged for the
cameras, uploaded to YouTube, picked up by CNN, and broadcast around the world.
American forces have been trying to solve the insurgent puzzle in Fallujah since 2003. Massive
battles devastated the town, damaging more than half the homes there and driving out 90 percent
of the populace. The insurgents kept coming back. But in the past year, things have shifted. Today,
Fallujah is calm: Shops are open, kids are in school, men are smoking their cigarettes and holding
hands in outdoor cafs. "The people just decided they couldn't take al Qaeda anymore," says George
Benson, executive officer of the marines' Second Battalion, Sixth Marine Regiment, Regimental
Combat Team Six, which is responsible for the town. Benson believes that a beefy, blue-eyed kid
raised in the Cleveland suburbs is a big part of the reason Fallujah has gone so quiet.
His name is Joe Colabuno, and he's a sergeant who works in psychological operations — psyops, in
military-speak. His job is to win the hearts-and-minds battle, and his tools are almost comically
simple: posters drawn in Photoshop, loudspeaker and radio broadcasts pasted together with
SonicStage and saved to MiniDiscs, the occasional newspaper article, and, above all, his own big
mouth. Arab culture lives by its oral traditions; talk is often the most important weapon. "I find the
right people to shape, and they shape the rest," Colabuno says.
Just as in Tarmiyah, troops in Fallujah are looking to recruit locals to keep tabs on their
neighborhoods. Yesterday, on the west side of town, an alligator helped catch one of the
Americans' top insurgent targets in Fallujah. After seeing a photograph, the watchman ID'd the guy
as a neighbor, living just a few houses down the street.
But an alligator-recruiting drive yesterday in the Askeri district, in the northeastern corner of town,
didn't go so well. The marines got less than half of the 125 they were looking for. So Colabuno
hops into a Humvee to find out why.
We pull up to a narrow, unpaved street alongside the Askeri recruiting station. A group of seven
men sit on the gravel, beneath a set of drying sheets. In the middle of the crowd, leaning on a
cane, fingering prayer beads and dressed in white, is a rotund, bearded man. He's clearly the
ringleader. Colabuno and his wire-thin interpreter, Leo, approach him. In every other district,
they've recruited plenty of alligators. "Why not in Askeri?" Colabuno asks the ringleader.
The money's not good enough, he answers. An alligator makes only $50 a month; day laborers get
$8 a day — when there's work, that is.
"That's the weakest argument ever," Colabuno says. The men looked stunned; Americans don't
normally speak this directly — they're usually deferential to the point of looking weak, or just
condescending.
"Do you remember Sheikh Hamsa?" Colabuno asks. Sure, sure, the men nod. The popular imam
was killed more than a year ago by insurgents, but they're a bit surprised that Colabuno knows
who he is. Most of the US troops here have been in town for just a few months. "Well, Sheikh
Hamsa told me that weak faith protects only so much.'" The ringleader stares down at the ground
and fingers his beads. Colabuno has hit a nerve. "You know, I looked in the Koran. I didn't see
anything about Mohammed demanding a better salary before he'd do God's work," Colabuno says,
jamming his forefinger into his palm.
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A skinny man at the back of the pack speaks up, telling Colabuno that the Americans are just here
to take Iraq's oil. "Yeah, you're right. We want your oil," Colabuno answers. Again eyes grow big
with surprise. "We want to buy it. So you can pay for jobs, for water, for electricity. Make you rich."
The men chuckle. Everyone shakes hands. Askeri's alligator quota is filled by the next morning.
Colabuno joined the Army because, frankly, it sounded better than his other option: managing a
local steakhouse. When his recruiter told him about psyops, Colabuno loved the idea. It sounded
like something out of The X-Files. "Does the job involve LSD?" he jokingly asked. It did not.
Instead, Colabuno has spent the better part of four years, and all of the past 17 months, getting
comfortable with the residents of Fallujah. And now that he has cracked Fallujah's cultural code, the
brass is reluctant to let him leave.
We head back to the base. Colabuno's office looks like a dorm room, with mountain bikes hanging
on the wall next to posters of Kristin Chenoweth, Vida Guerra, the Denver Broncos cheerleaders,
and Corona beer. "Theme of the week," reads a white board, "terrorism causes CANCER... and
impotence." Colabuno's early efforts to persuade the population were just as subtle. He shows me
a collection of his early posters, tabloid-sized pages laid on a table. Against a flaming background,
a terrorist holds a child. The text asks why the parents of Fallujah would let insurgents harm their
kids. Wrong move. This is a culture based on shame and honor; now you've just called the parents
inadequate. Plus, the piece is just too on the nose, too blatant. The best propaganda is sneaky.
So Colabuno started spoofing the insurgents' posters instead. He put a logo similar to that of the
terrorist Islamic Army at the top of a simple black-and-white sheet. "A young boy died while
wearing a suicide vest given to him by criminals," one flyer read. "You should remember that
whoever makes lies about Allah should reserve his seat in hell." The extremists went nuts —
screaming at shopkeepers and locals who posted the flyers, blaming other insurgents for defaming
their good names. All the while, Americans watched the action through high-powered surveillance
cameras. Consequently the marines knew who to question, and who to capture or kill. "We know
where you are and what you are doing," another poster proclaimed. "Who will you trust now?"
American forces here set up a tip line so the locals could report on any insurgents (and get a little
reward for their efforts). The extremists responded by blowing up the local cell towers, which
Colabuno then turned into another psyops poster criticizing their self-destructive behavior. "Now
we've got them making really stupid decisions," he says, grinning. "They communicate by cell
phone, too. They can't argue that they're just attacking the foreigners."
General David Petraeus knows all about these mind games. The man in charge of the American
military effort in Iraq helped turn soldiers' training from tank-on-tank battles to taking on
insurgents. He oversaw the writing of the new counterinsurgency manual that John Nagl worked
on. The book counsels officers to reinforce the local economy and politics and build knowledge of
the native culture, "an operational code' that is valid for an entire group of people." And the
manual blasts the old, network-centric American approach in Iraq. "If military forces remain in their
compounds, they lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared, and cede the initiative
to the insurgents," it says.
So I get escorted across Baghdad's concrete-ringed International Zone, around the manicured
lawns of the Republican Palace, up its marbled stairs, past ambassadors and generals, through a
seemingly endless series of gates and checkpoints, and into Petraeus' office. But even this far
inside the US war machine, I'm expecting a frontal assault on network-centric warfare.
Instead, he sings me a love song.
"It's definitely here to stay. It's just going to keep getting greater and greater and greater,"
Petraeus says. I settle on a couch, and he shuts off the air conditioner. "I was a skeptic of networkcentric warfare for years," he confesses. But thanks to years of wartime funding, he says, the
military now has the ability "to transmit data, full-motion video, still photos, images, information.
So you can more effectively determine who the enemy is, find them and kill or capture, and have a
sense of what's going on in the area as you do it — where the friendlies are, and which platform
you want to bring to bear."
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Of course, he adds, he doesn't believe the Rumsfeld-era idea that you can get away with fewer,
better-networked troops. Petraeus is the man behind the "surge," after all. Anyone who thinks you
don't need massing of troops is living in an "academic world," he says. And Petraeus believes "the
most important network is still the one that is between the ears of commanders and staff officers."
Yet he's a believer, just like a whole lot of other Army generals. He supports the $230 billion plan to
wire the Army, a gargantuan commitment to network-centric war. "We realized very quickly you
could do incredible stuff with this," he says. "It was revolutionary. It was."
I press my hands to my forehead. What about all the cultural understanding, I ask him. What
about nation-building? What about your counterinsurgency manual?
"Well," Petraeus says, "it doesn't say that the best weapons don't shoot. It says sometimes the
best weapons don't shoot. Sometimes the best weapons do shoot." A war like Iraq is a mix, he
adds: In one part of the country, the military is reinforcing the society, building things; in another,
it's breaking them — waging "major combat operations" that aren't all that different from what
might have gone down in 2003. And this technology, he says, it's pretty good at 2003-style war.
When Cebrowski and Garstka wrote about adding information technology to the military's way of
finding and wiping out enemies — the kill chain — to a certain extent, they were right. In 1991,
Operation Desert Storm began with a long bombing campaign, then a ground assault. But in
Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraq war, soldiers on the ground handed off coordinates to bombers and
fighter planes, who attacked with laser- and satellite-guided munitions. The effect was devastating,
shrinking the so-called sensor-to-shooter cycle to mere instants. During the first Gulf War, it
typically took three days of paper pushing to assign a plane a target to hit. This time around, in
parts of Anbar province, it took under 10 minutes. A relatively small number of Special Forces, sent
to neuter Scud missile sites, took control of an area about the size of South Carolina — despite
being outnumbered on the ground at least 10 to 1, and in some spots 500 to 1. The Iraqis never
got off a single Scud.
But for all that, Cebrowski and Garstka weren't really writing about network-centric warfare at all.
They were writing about a single, network-enabled process: killing. In 1998, to a former fighter
jock and missile defender, the two things must have seemed the same. A decade later, it's pretty
clear they aren't — not with American troops nation-building in Afghanistan, peacekeeping in
Kosovo, chasing pirates off Djibouti, delivering disaster relief to Indonesia, and fighting insurgents
in Iraq.
The fact is, today we rely on our troops to perform all sort of missions that are only loosely
connected with traditional combat but are vital to maintaining world security. And it's all happening
while the military is becoming less and less likely to exercise its traditional duties of fighting an oldfashioned war. When is that going to happen again? What potential enemy of the US is going to
bother amassing, Saddam-style, army tanks and tens of thousands of troops when the insurgent
approach obviously works so well? "The real problem with network-centric warfare is that it helps
us only destroy. But in the 21st century, that's just a sliver of what we're trying to do," Nagl says.
"It solves a problem I don't have — fighting some conventional enemy — and helps only a little
with a problem I do have: how to build a society in the face of technology-enabled, superempowered individuals."
Admiral Arthur Cebrowski died of cancer in 2005. The Office of Force Transformation he headed has
been disbanded. John Garstka is still at the Defense Department, working in the Office of the
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Forces Transformation and Resources. It reports to the Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict and Interdependent
Capabilities, which in turn reports to the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Policy). I ask
Garstka if he'd like to meet up. "Sure," he answers. "The Ritz-Carlton does a nice lunch."
In the Ritz's oak-paneled dining room a few minutes' walk from the Pentagon, Garstka sits with his
arms folded across his white button-down shirt and his Defense Department badge. He's not
exactly pleased with his new position — the length of his office's name is perhaps inversely
proportional to its influence. "I have to be a good soldier," he sighs. But he takes comfort in
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knowing that network-centric warfare is "past the point of no return." It's been "demonstrated
beyond a reasonable doubt" — not just in traditional battles, like the invasion of Iraq, but also
during so-called stability operations, like the four-plus years since "mission accomplished." (He
says he'd like to go to Iraq one day to see it all for himself.)
If network-centric warfare has flaws, he adds, don't blame the concept. The slow-moving Defense
Department bureaucracy hasn't worked quickly enough to roll out wired gear for the troops.
Insurgents seized on commercial technology quicker than anticipated. And anyway, Garstka says,
people have hijacked the term network-centric warfare to mean all sorts of things, from investing
in fiber optics to rejiggering an organizational chart, without really understanding what it means.
But by the time Garstka finishes his 8-ounce Angus cheeseburger, he's willing to acknowledge
some of the potential gaps in the strategy. "I'm not an expert in stability operations," he admits.
Maybe network-centric combat isn't perfectly suited to the wars we're fighting now. And it certainly
requires a different skill set than counterinsurgency or nation-building. "Stability operations is like
soccer. Major combat operations is like football. So it's almost impossible [for one team] to win
both the World Cup and the Super Bowl in the same year," he tells me. "Not when you're playing
two different games."
Finally, at the end of our meal, Garstka suggests that the model he helped create will have to
change again. "You have to think differently about people," he says. "You have your social networks
and technological networks. You need to have both."
So the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are updating the playbook. Technological networks like WalMart's are out. The social network warfare of Nagl, Prior, and Colabuno is in.
The Army has set aside $41 million to build what it calls Human Terrain Teams: 150 social
scientists, software geeks, and experts on local culture, split up and embedded with 26 different
military units in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next year. The first six HTTs are already on the
ground. The idea, basically, is to give each commander a set of cultural counselors, the way he has
soldiers giving him combat advice.
In western Afghanistan, for instance, a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division was being targeted by
rockets, over and over, from the vicinity of a nearby village. But no one from the unit had bothered
to ask the townspeople why. When the Human Terrain Team finally paid a visit, villagers
complained that the Taliban was around only because the Americans didn't provide security. And
oh, by the way, they really wanted a volleyball net, too. So a net was acquired. Patrols were
started. There hasn't been an attack in two months.
At the HTT's suggestions, the brigade also invited the province's head mullah to bless a newly
restored mosque on the base. He "was so delighted that he recorded an announcement in Pashto
and Dari for radio broadcast denouncing the Taliban," an after-action report noted. In his initial
evaluation, the brigade commander credits the HTT with an astonishing 60 to 70 percent drop in
the number of bombs-and-bullets strikes he has had to make. It's a number that even some HTT
members have a hard time believing. But the commander insists that 53 of 83 districts in his area
now support the local government. Before the HTT arrived, it was only 19.
"We got trapped into thinking that killing/destruction mechanisms of the highest technical quality
could replace true human understanding. The vote is in, and we were wrong," says Steve
Fondacaro, a cleft-chinned, chipped-toothed former Special Forces operator who now heads the
HTT program. "We had been trying to take the test without doing the course work. That never
works in school, and it hasn't worked any better in war."
The program is still new, and many questions remain about how it'll actually operate. Will the social
scientists — many of them civilian academics — carry guns? Wear uniforms? Will they be
conducting fieldwork or just doing research at their desks? How will these people be trained? What
kind of credentials do they need? Will commanders listen to what they have to say? And is it even
ethical to use their skills in wartime?
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One thing is clear: The Human Terrain Teams will eventually do more than just advise. Soon each
team will get a server, a half-dozen laptops, a satellite dish, and software for social-network
analysis — to diagram how all of the important players in an area are connected. Digital timelines
will mark key cultural and political events. Mapmaking programs will plot out the economic, ethnic,
and tribal landscape, just like the command post of the future maps the physical terrain. But those
HTT diagrams can never be more than approximations, converting messy analog narratives to
binary facts. Warfare will continue to center around networks. But some networks will be social,
linking not computers and drones and Humvees but tribes, sects, political parties, even entire
cultures. In the end, everything else is just data.
Table of Contents
Report: China Targeting All 'Enemy Space Vehicles' Including GPS
Satellites
From World Tribune, 27 Nov 07
China’s anti-satellite and space warfare program includes plans to destroy or incapacitate 'every
enemy space vehicle' that passes over China.
The annual report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, released last
week, listed among Beijing's goals that of ensuring that Chinese space weapons are “conducted
covertly so China can maintain a positive international image.” China has called for a ban on space
weapons at the United Nations.
The report said that China also is developing civilian technology that can be applied to military
space programs and is acquiring the “ability to destroy or temporarily incapacitate every enemy
space vehicle when it is located above China,” the report said.
The Chinese also plan to attack U.S. global positioning system (GPS) satellites through various
means, including anti-satellite weapons, high-energy weapons, high-energy weather monitoring
rockets and ground attacks on earth-based stations.
One section of the report, based on public and classified briefings, concluded there was a need for
more information about Chinese activities and intentions.
Research from nearly 100 Chinese sources identified 30 proposals and recommendations by
Chinese military leaders “regarding the development of space and counter-space weapons and
programs.”
The military is also developing stealth satellites and a space program that will “provide key support
for Chinese combat forces.”
“Some of these proposals appear to have been implemented already, as evidenced by January’s
kinetic anti-satellite test and earlier laser incidents involving American satellites,” the report said.
Table of Contents
A Force of Cyberwarriors Protects Pentagon Data
From Seattle Times, 30 November 2007
The responsibility for protecting the Pentagon's global information grid, composed of 12,000
networks and 5 million individual systems, rests with the Joint Task Force-Global Network
Operations, an arm of the Strategic Command, or STRATCOM.
Task-force personnel work behind two banks of computers in a government building in Arlington,
Va., keeping a 24/7 vigil. Spokesman Timothy Madden said threats cover "a large and diverse"
range, and he acknowledged the perpetrators include "nation-states," which he declined to identify.
Two years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration developed a "National Strategy
to Secure Cyberspace," which put the then-new Department of Homeland Security in charge of
cyberprotection. The strategy has included development of the "Einstein" early-warning system to
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spot attacks on government computers, as well as public-private exercises known as "Cyber
Storm."
The blueprint for the military is a classified document that includes both defensive and offensive
measures, according to officials and analysts. Likely offensive tactics include disabling an enemy's
command-and-control networks, destroying data or dispatching false information to weapons
networks, often as part of a larger attack with air power and other traditional weaponry.
As an outgrowth of the strategy, Air Force leaders established a provisional cybercommand at
Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and plan to develop a permanent command at an as-yet
undesignated site on Oct. 1, 2008.
Maj. Gen. William Lord, who heads the provisional command and is leading the search for a site,
said the headquarters will consist of about 500 personnel charged with training and coordinating
cyber-activities within the Air Force. Lord said he's been contacted by congressional delegations
from at least seven states, including California and Texas, who hope to land the command and its
attendant economic benefits.
As many as 40,000 Air Force personnel are assigned to cybertasks, and Air Force officials envision
an emerging breed of warrior who fights with a computer and keyboard. But he's expected to be as
formidable as the soldier with a gun.
Dr. Lani Kass, special assistant to Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said at a recent
seminar that Air Force cyberwarriors would be "trained killers" and "not a bunch of geeks."
Table of Contents
U.S. "Under Widespread Attack In Cyberspace"
By Dave Montgomery, Seattle Times, 30 November 2007
WASHINGTON — While U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan engage the enemy with guns, tanks,
airplanes and missiles, the Pentagon is quietly fighting a much different kind of war on a new front
— cyberspace.
Military officials say that a cyber-attack by foreign enemies or terrorist groups could result in "an
electronic Pearl Harbor" that would shut down electricity, banking systems, cellphones and other
tools of day-to-day life.
A report issued Thursday by security-software firm McAfee said government-affiliated hackers in
China are at the forefront of a brewing "cyber Cold War" still in its infancy.
Within two decades, according to McAfee, the scuffle could erupt into a worldwide conflict involving
hundreds of countries attacking one another's online networks with sophisticated software.
McAfee said about 120 countries are developing cyber-attack strategies and most are merely
testing them to determine the risks involved in certain tactics — though devastating international
attacks could come one day.
Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of more limited cyber-assaults are already bombarding the
firewalls of government computer systems daily, prompting U.S. officials and military leaders to
declare the United States is already at war on the cyberfront.
"America is under widespread attack in cyberspace," Gen. James Cartwright, then-commander of
the U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees the military's computer grid, told Congress in March.
"Our freedom to use cyberspace is threatened by the actions of criminals, terrorists and nations
alike."
As a result, the U.S. military is aggressively incorporating cybertechnology into its war-fighting
arsenal in the same sort of evolutionary pattern that saw air power emerge from the early biplanes
of the past century. All branches of the military have cyber-operations, and the Air Force is moving
to set up a full-fledged cybercommand that will have the same stature as its other commands.
U.S. officials acknowledge that the computer-dependent military and federal government are
threatened by virtually every malevolent concept of the cyber-age, from worms and viruses that
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aim to cripple or shut down networks to illegal intrusions that attempt to steal classified
information.
"We're vulnerable every day," said Greg Garcia, the assistant secretary for cybersecurity and
communications at the Department of Homeland Security, which is charged with overseeing
cyberprotection for the federal government and the private sector. "Everybody is seeing some form
of intrusion or attack."
The department received 37,000 reports of attempted breaches on government and private
systems in fiscal 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared with 24,000 the previous year. Assaults on
federal agencies increased 152 percent during that period, from 5,143 to 12,986.
A worst-case attack could shut down computer command-and-control systems that run banking,
water and sewer systems, traffic lights, oil and gas networks and nearly every other element of the
public infrastructure.
The roster of adversaries in cyberspace includes foreign militaries and intelligence services, hackers
who could be working in league with foreign governments, and "hacktivists" — hackers with
political agendas. Terrorists, thus far, are considered only a limited threat, but they could become
more dangerous as technically proficient younger members join the ranks, the Government
Accountability Office said in September, citing the CIA.
The United States, with its multilayered systems and advanced firewalls, has avoided the type of
extensive attack that caused widespread disruptions throughout government agencies and
institutions in Estonia this spring. But it's not for lack of trying. Numerous assaults, most of them
harmless, pound U.S. military and government computers once every several seconds, experts say.
"The Pentagon is probably one of the most attacked networks in the world," said Matt Richard, the
director of the rapid-response team for VeriSign iDefense, a California-based firm that specializes in
cybersecurity.
A limited attack on an unclassified system in the Pentagon this summer was traced to China,
according to news accounts, but the Chinese government vehemently denied any involvement.
Some of the most adept hackers are based in Russia, Asia and Eastern Europe, Richard said. A
freelance group known as NCPH is based in China and reputedly has at least loose ties to the
government. A prolific group of hackers in St. Petersburg, Russia, which uses the name of a
legitimate Russian business network, allegedly has ties to the Russian mob.
China has steadfastly denied it is engaged in any cybercrime and said its networks, too, have been
targeted.
"China has also been attacked by hackers of some countries, so the Chinese government attaches
great importance to and participates in the international law-enforcement cooperation in this area,"
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a briefing Thursday.
Liu declined to reveal which countries were targeting China.
The McAfee report, which included the company's research and input from security experts with
NATO, the FBI and other intelligence outfits, said hackers in China are believed responsible for four
out of five major cyber-attacks on government targets in 2007.
The biggest intrusions appear to have targeted a Pentagon computer network and government
agencies in Germany, India, Australia and New Zealand.
"The Chinese have publicly stated that they are pursuing activities in cyber espionage ... they
speak of technology being a large part of war in the future," the McAfee report read.
McAfee said there were more attacks reported on critical national infrastructure in 2007 than ever
before. Targets included financial markets, utilities and air traffic control machinery, and the attacks
were thought to have been launched by governments or government-allied groups.
Table of Contents
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Electrical Supe Charged With Damaging California Canal System
By Dan Goodin, the Register (UK), 30 November 2007
A former employee for a federally-owned canal system in California was charged with installing
software that damaged a computer used to divert water out of a local river.
Michael Keehn, of Willows, California, faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a
$250,000 fine. Federal court documents claim the former electrical supervisor with the Tehama
Colusa Canal Authority "intentionally caused damage without authorization to a protected
computer."
The TCCA operates two canals that move water out of the Sacramento River for using in irrigation
and agriculture in Northern California. As part of its duties, the TCCA uses a supervisory control
and data acquisition (SCADA) system to regulate the system.
Attempts to reach Keehn for comment were not successful. A report found here
(http://www.localnews1.net/1state&localbriefs/9_7_07/vmfbi.html) quoted Keehn as saying "I'm
sure I did something to cause it" but that he wasn't entirely sure. Keehn worked for the TCCA for
more than 17 years before being fired on August 15, the date he is alleged to have installed the
unauthorized software.
The security of SCADA systems has emerged as a sensitive issue in the post 9-11 world. In 2000, a
disgruntled former employee for a water system in Australia used a SCADA system to spill raw
sewage into waterways, hotel grounds and canals in the area, according to this article
(http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9050098&intsr
c=hm_list) from ComputerWorld.
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In Iraq, Psyops Team Plays on Iran Fears, Soccer Love
By Noah Shachtman, Wired, November 30, 2007
Psychological operations specialist spent a year-and-a-half Sgt. Joe Colabuno helping convince the
Sunni residents of Fallujah to turn against local extremists by appealing to citizens' sense of civic
pride, pumping up their love of the national soccer team, citing the Koran, and provoking jihadists
to overreact. Colabuno also appealed to the Sunnis hatred and fear of Shi'ites, and of Shi'ite Iran.
"For 7 or 8 months," Colabuno tells me, "all we hear about is 'Iran is doing all [of the attacks], Iran
is behind everything.' There was frustration from them [Fallujah's locals] because we wouldn't
'admit it.' Like maybe the U.S. was conspiring with Iran."
"We'd stress in our SITREPS [situation reports] that in order to get these people on our side, we've
got to play into their fears abut Iran," he adds.
Then, in January, "the White House suddenly got involved," talking tough about how Tehran was
stoking instability in Iraq. "That overnight changed the attitudes of the people towards us. They
took it as almost an apology," he adds.
In local newspaper articles, in radio and loudspeaker broadcasts -- and in talks on the street -Colabuno started playing up "operations against Shi'a militia." He played up how the U.S. troop
"surge" was silencing Shi'a leader Moktada "al-Sadr's yipping and yapping."
The successes of the American counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq have, so far, been hyperlocal:
local watchmen, patrolling their mini-neighborhoods; local tribal and political leaders, making deals
with American commanders. And in that context, playing on fears on Shi'ite boogeymen in Sunni
regions makes a ton of sense.
The question, though, is what are the national consequences of this local strategy. How can the
U.S. encourage country-wide reconciliation -- while riding a wave of sectarian hate?
Local psychological operations are given a fair amount of flexibility to operate as they please. But
their primary messages and handed down from much further up the chain of command. Major
Brian Yarbrough, who, until recently headed up all pysops work in Anbar province, told me, "We
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operate within psyops objectives determined in Washington. Baghdad draws up the supporting
objectives. Then we work out specific themes and actions."
This wasn't Colabuno's only message, of course. When the Iraqi national soccer team won the Asia
Cup, psyops teams started printing up glossy magazines extolling the team -- and the local police,
and the virtues of national unity. Colabuno's team has even printed up t-shirts showing policemen
as cartoonishly muscular -- Ahnolds of Mesopotamia.
Even bad news was turned to good. When I was in Fallujah, a prominent Sunni Imam was
murdered in his Jolan district mosque by a suicide bomber. "Unfortunately, as tragic as an event
that is, it's great for me," Marine reserve Colonel Wally Powers, an information operations officer,
told me the next day. "When they [the jihadists] are just attacking us, people are like, 'yeah,
whatever.' They don't care. Now they're attacking mosques, too. That pisses people off.
Beautiful! We didn't have to do anything!" Later that day, I went with Colabuno to visit a local
police chief, a Captain Mohammed. His Imam was the one that got killed. And Captain Mohammed
was so angry, he asked Colabuno to print up flyers with his face -- unheard of in the area -- telling
people he wasn't afraid.
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Nov. 19 Airpower Summary: EC-130J Supports OIF, OEF
From Air Force Print News, 19 Nov 07
11/20/2007 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- Coalition airpower integrated with coalition ground
forces in Iraq and the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan during operations Nov.
19, according to Combined Air and Space Operations Center officials here.
In Afghanistan, Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles engaged enemy combatants with guided bomb unit12s, GBU-31s, GBU-38s, and cannon rounds southwest of Garmsir. The on-scene joint terminal
attack controller reported the mission as a success.
During the same mission, a hellfire missile from an Air Force MQ-9A Reaper was used against the
enemy combatants. The mission was reported as successful by the JTAC.
An enemy compound in Kajaki Dam was hit by GBU-31s and cannon rounds fired from F-15Es. The
aircrew supported coalition forces in hostile contact against enemy combatants. The JTAC
confirmed the mission as successful.
An Air Force B-1B Lancer dropped GBU-38s and GBU-31s against enemy combatants during an
engagement in Deh' Rawod. Additionally, a show of force with flares was performed to deter enemy
activities in the area.
During the same engagement, a Royal Air Force Harrier GR-7 launched rockets against enemy
positions in Deh' Rawod.
A show of force with flares was performed by an F-15E to deter enemy activities in Deh' Rawod.
Additionally, the aircrew dropped a GBU-38 against an enemy fighting position in Asadabad. The
JTAC confirmed the missions as successful.
An enemy compound in Musa Qal'eh was struck with a GBU-12 from a French Mirage 2000. The
mission was reported as successful by the JTAC.
A Mirage 2000 and a French Mirage F-1 CR conducted shows of force to deter enemy activities in
Musa Qal'eh. The mission was assessed as a success by the JTAC.
Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt IIs fired cannon rounds against enemy combatants in Asadabad. The
JTAC reported good hits on the targets and declared the strike as successful.
In total, 37 close-air-support missions were flown in support of the ISAF and Afghan security
forces, reconstruction activities and route patrols.
Seven Air Force surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft flew missions in support of operations in
Afghanistan. Additionally, two RAF aircraft performed tactical reconnaissance.
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In Iraq, a RAF Tornado GR-4 conducted a show of force to deter enemy activities in Baqubah. The
mission was reported as a success by the JTAC.
Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons destroyed a vehicle borne improvised explosive device with GBU12s and a GBU-38 in Samarra. The JTAC reported the mission as successful.
A show of force with flares was performed by an F-16 to deter enemy actions in Hawijah. The
mission was reported as a success by the JTAC.
In total, coalition aircraft flew 43 close-air-support missions for Operation Iraqi Freedom. These
missions supported coalition ground forces, protected key infrastructure, provided over watch for
reconstruction activities and helped to deter and disrupt terrorist activities.
Twenty-four Air Force and Navy surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft flew missions in support of
operations in Iraq. Additionally, three Air Force and RAF aircraft performed tactical reconnaissance.
Air Force C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster IIIs provided intratheater heavy airlift support,
helping to sustain operations throughout Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa.
Approximately 156 airlift sorties were flown; 379 tons of cargos were delivered, and 3,011
passengers were transported. This included approximately 78,615 pounds of troop re-supply airdropped in Afghanistan.
Coalition C-130 crews from Australia, Canada, Iraq, and Japan flew in support of operations in
Afghanistan or Iraq.
On Nov. 18, Air Force, French, and RAF aerial refueling crews flew 36 sorties and off-loaded
approximately 2.3 million pounds of fuel to 183 receiving aircraft.
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120 countries building cyber-war capacity
From UPI via Middle East Times, November 30, 2007
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- More than 100 countries are developing cyber-war techniques,
using the Internet for political, military or economic espionage, says a new report.
The annual Virtual Criminology Report by Internet security firm McAfee says that with an estimated
120 countries working on their cyber-attack capabilities, the world is likely headed for a "Cyber cold
war."
"In 10-20 years, experts believe we could see countries jostling for cyber-supremacy," it reads.
The report, released Thursday, cites one researcher who said he had come across hackers in
Eastern Europe producing custom-built viruses, Trojan horses and other malware designed
specifically to attack individual corporations and government agencies.
"Cybercrime is now a global issue," said Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs. "It
has evolved significantly and is no longer just a threat to industry and individuals, but increasingly
to national security. We're seeing emerging threats from increasingly sophisticated groups
attacking organizations around the world."
The report is based on consultations with "more than a dozen security experts at the world's
premier institutions" including NATO, the FBI and the London School of Economics.
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