5GW: Manipulating Observation

Via Danger Room:

Insurgents Intercept Drone Video in King-Size Security Breach

The 5GWish money quote:

If you think militants are going to be content to just observe spy drone feeds, it’s time to reconsider. “Folks are not merely going to listen/watch what we do when they intercept the feeds, but also start to conduct ‘battles of persuasion’; that is, hacking with the intent to disrupt or change the content, or even ‘persuade’ the system to do their own bidding,” Peter Singer, author of Wired for War, tells Danger Room.

This has long been the nightmare scenario within Pentagon cybersecurity circles: a hacker not looking to take down the military grid, but to exploit it for his own purposes. How does a soldier trust an order, if he doesn’t know who else is listening – or who gave the order, in the first place? “For a sophisticated adversary, it’s to his advantage to keep your network up and running. He can learn what you know. He can cause confusion, delay your response times – and shape your actions,” says one Defense Department cybersecurity official tells Danger Room.

 

These are just the sort of systemic vulnerabilities that 5GW actors seek to exploit.

(Cross-posted at Dreaming 5GW)

Sysadmin Tales: Cultivating Afganistan

About three months ago a Sysadmin-in-miniature, the 119th Agriculture Development Team of the Indiana National Guard, deployed to Khost province in Afghanistan and Bloomington Indiana journalist Douglas Wissing is embedded with the unit and will be filing a series of reports about the unit’s experiences.

From Wissing’s most recent report:

About the size of four Indiana counties, Khost Province sits on the eastern Afghanistan border with the Taliban-controlled tribal regions of Pakistan. Populated by the Pashtun warrior tribe, Khost has been a hotbed of fundamentalist Islamic armed resistance since the start of the 1980s Soviet war. Today, elements of the society continue their insurgency against the Afghan national government and its American allies, complicating the ADT mission.

“The information that has been presented to us that far and away Khost Province is the most kinetic of the 34 provinces in Afghanistan,” said ADT Commander Col. Brian Copes. “Kinetic simply meaning shooting and explosions and IEDs and indirect fire-artillery, mortar and rocket fire.”

In late May, insurgents launched attacks on the provincial capital, Khost City, and the nearby Forward Operating Base Salerno, where the ADT is posted. Suicide attackers invaded a downtown Khost City government building to kill the governor meeting with American officers. Twenty people died in the attack. A suicide bomber exploded a truck just outside the FOB Salerno gate, killing nine Afghans. An errant Taliban rocket landed on a mosque near the base, killing three worshipers. On FOB Salerno, three ADT soldiers narrowly escaped injury when an insurgent mortar round exploded 50 meters away.

In spite of increasing risk, the ADT persists with their development work- though with precautions. To protect the soldiers, the team travels in gargantuan armored vehicles called MRAPs, designed to withstand IED blasts and ambushes.

The Agriculture Development Team is composed of 16 experts in livestock and crop farming, forestry and veterinary medicine and a security force of 35 Indiana National Guardsmen. They will be working with and advising Afghan farmers in order to improve their productivity and efficiency.

The Sysadmin aspect of this effort is further distinguished by the older and more experienced makeup of the unit with its specialist knowledge and capabilities and the language and cultural training they received before going off to Afghanistan.

Douglas Wissing’s pictures as well as print and audio reports on the Agriculture Development Team and their efforts in Afghanistan may be found at the Cultivating Afghanistan website at Newsmatters.org

XGW and Torture

Cross Posted at Dreaming 5GW

When considering the use of torture within the framework of XGW it becomes clear that torture has real utility at only three gradients of doctrine.

 

0GW Torture:

0GW – Confrontation and Conflict at its most basic level is an expression of natural selection. This genetic imperative is the principle behind any doctrine that is essentially the projection of Force for the survival of an individual organism.

When considering torture from the most basic, survival, level consideration of morality has no bearing upon the use of any method that ensures survival. The imperative is the continuation of the line, therefore, so long as the subject of the torture isn’t of that line any method of information extraction is justified.

 

4GW Torture:

4GW – Fourth gradient doctrines are based upon the principle of the attainment of a functional invulnerability that prevents the opponent from being able to orient upon a threat and creates a perception that saps the ability of the opponent to function effectively.

The use of torture at the fourth gradient is premised upon the creation of a sense of dread of the unknown in the minds of the opponent. Torture becomes a method not just of gathering information, but a weapon of fear. Used as an extreme, the opponent may have a fear of capture by the 4GW actor that prevents the opponent from orienting effectively, always considering most immediately the need to be able to escape rather than the most immediate method to execute their own doctrine. The morality of the use of torture at this gradient is ignored in the necessity of its utility to inspire fear.

 

5GW Torture:

5GW – Fifth gradient doctrines are based upon the principle of manipulation of the context of the observations of an opponent in order to achieve a specific effect.

Torture at the fifth gradient takes on a different aspect from the use of torture at 0GW and 4GW. At those gradients the negative moral aspect of torture is either irrelevant or used to give torture utility. For 5GW the moral aspect of torture is the most important aspect. In most  (if not all cases) 5GW is a warfare of competing ideas and ideals. At the fifth gradient the least desirable outcome is to have your ideology linked to an overwhelmingly negative meme like torture either  through your own actions, or by the manipulation of an opponent that links torture to your ideology.

 

Do the Ends Justify the Means?

Calling it torture or “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” makes no difference, if a method is seen to be torture it carries a negative moral connotation. As it is argued above, for two of the three gradients this is either irrelevant or desirable, however, for 5GW the moral aspect is paramount. At the risk of editorializing, the United States of America is at its very core an expression of an ideology, an expression of connectivity and freedom and the ideal that all good things are possible with enough hard work and determination. As such, The United States of America in spreading that ideal must always approach any conflict or confrontation from the fifth gradient mind-set.  Because of that, the USA must never engage in a method or doctrine that has a negative moral aspect, and must always guard against an opponent’s attempt to manipulate the USA into a morally negative action,  lest that negative meme be linked to the positive ideological foundation of the country.

For 5GW the means justify the end.

Swine Flu as System Perturbation

Cross-posted at Dreaming 5GW

Rule Set – System Perturbation – New Rule Set

Going back to some of my very first considerations of Fifth Gradient Warfare (Fifth Generation Warfare at the time), this very simple three part progression is the main concept that informs the process of the directed manipulation of systems that is at the heart of 5GW.  The attention that is being given to the Swine Flu outbreak offers a very good opportunity to explore the utility of this process.

The Bad:

The worst of all system perturbations is exemplified by the Black Swan scenario. This is a system perturbation that is completely unexpected and because there a no rule sets or few weak rule sets that have been established to deal with such situations, the chaos that is created is potentially massive. It may be so massive, in fact, that the system never recovers, that new rule sets aren’t able to be created or are even weaker than before, making the system even more fragile. The H5N1 Bird Flu (or other pandemic illness) is sometimes talked about as such a system perturbation due to fears that no matter what preparations are made ahead of an outbreak, the health system will be quickly overwhelmed and cease to be effective regardless of the response. While the Swine Flu doesn’t seem to be, at this point, as dangerous as Bird Flu, it is behaving in a manner that is consistent with how a Bird Flu type pandemic might begin.

The Not Quite as Bad:

While a Fifth Gradient actor might well engineer a Black Swan type system perturbation scenario in order to influence the creation of new rule sets, there is an alternate approach known as ‘Boiling the Frog’. In this sort of scenario the system perturbation is very controlled in scope in order to place calculated stresses on a system. The point of this may be to cause a collapse of systems much like a Black Swan event, but it can also serve a different agenda that highlights the ability of Fifth Gradient doctrines to be used on multiple sides of a confrontation or conflict. In this kind of situation 5GW doctrine may be used in order to strengthen as much as weaken rule sets. Swine Flu offers an opportunity for this kind of 5GW manipulation.

Using Swine Flu to turn a Black Swan Grey:

Because Swine Flu appears to be very similar to Bird Flu yet, less dangerous (at least at this point), it offers a 5GW actor (who may have potentially created such as system perturbation or may merely seize the moment) the opportunity to stress and manipulate the infections disease response system in order to strengthen those parts of the system (rule sets) that are effective, eliminate or repair the parts of the system that are ineffective, and create new rule sets that cover situations that hadn’t been considered before (for example, the most infectious part of the Swine Flu so far has been the uninformed panic it has inspired on users of Twitter. Filters for such occurrences are being created by the community and will doubtless come into use on Twitter and in other social networking platforms in future situations).

Consider the Anthrax letters that followed in the wake of September 11, 2001. While they were undoubtedly the work of a very angry and disturbed individual, the response they caused served more to strengthen the system than it did to permanently disrupt the system. Now mail is scanned for agents such as Anthrax and potential targets of such attacks are much more aware of the risks as well as the correct response to a potential attack. Additionally, law enforcement now has the experience of responding to such attacks and what is involved in tracking those who would perpetrate those sorts of attacks.

Swine Flu offers the potential for a similar sort of  ‘practice run’ for an outbreak of pandemic influenza. The rule sets involved will now be subjected to real-life stresses that cannot be createdby any ’simulation’ and will involve, by necessity, all aspects of the response system at the same time. Only at such times can the true strengths and vulnerabilities of the system be recognized.

Non-Kinetic Uses for Robotics in Counterinsurgency

I am currently reading Wired For War: Robotics and 21st Century Conflict by P. W. Singer, as well as following the Wired for War Symposium at CTLab, previously mentioned here, so understandably robots are very much on my mind.

Matt Armstrong of MountainRunner has an article in the symposium that discusses the military robot in the context of General Charles Krulak’s ’strategic corporal’.

“The intoxicating allure of technology risks unintended consequences in the psychological struggle for minds and wills in modern conflict. In my many conversations on the “public diplomacy” of unmanned warfare, few consider the robots, autonomous or remote controlled, in a war fought among the people. How do we build relationships with the locals in the sterility of robot-human interfaces? Will improved human-robot interfaces really overcome the understandable perception that American lives are worth more than locals?”

My question (via an on-line networking platform) was what were the possible non-kinetic applications of robotics that could contribute as effective and/or strategic aids to a counterinsurgency effort, yet not be percieved as ‘military’? Perhaps building infrastructure (I was thinking along the line of robotic street sweepers, pothole fillers, well diggers and underground pipe and cable layers).

Matt Armstrong quickly responded:

“Strategic aids” as you put it could include unmanned water and food trucks, even garbage trucks (remember SWET? “Sewage, Water, Electricity, Trash” as an effective COIN approach?). Then there’s tele-medicine, and more.”

Seeing as how 5GW, being a response to 4GW guerilla/insurgent warfare, has greater non-kinetic than kinetic utility what else could the “and more” include? How could robotics (autonomous, semi-autonomous, or remotely controlled) be deployed as part of a larger 5GW effort? What sort of scenarios might they be involved in?

Already on the table:

Street sweeping

Road repair

Well drilling

Underground pipe and cable laying

Water and food delivery trucks

Garbage trucks

Tele-medicine

Link: CTLab Virtual Symposium on Wired for War

CTLab is hosting an online/virutual symposium exploring the topics raised by P. W. Singer’s new book, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.

I’m not quite finished with the book yet, but so far it is excellent and well worth the price of admission. For any military thinker, futurist or tech junkie out there this is a great read. The symposium, starting today, already looks to be off to a great start with a great lineup of contributors.

 

Link: Military Futurism at Red Team Journal

 

Military Futurism at Red Team Journal by Adam Elkus

“As long as human beings have killed one another, theorists have struggled to forecast the nature of future slaughter correctly. Military futurism, however, is different from more popular forms of futurism. Speculation about future warfare inevitably garners more attention than debates over the nature of technological change and human civilization. One reason may be that people are particularly attuned to matters of life and death. But an emerging technology or social change may have just as” much long-term impact as a new kind of weapon or tactic. So why does Patton always flatten Schrödinger and his cat under his tank treads?”

A valuable insight by Adam Elkus, a co-blogger of mine at Dreaming 5GW, on the difficulty of peering into the crystal ball to determine the future of anything, much less warfare. I personally favor the approach of trying to find those elements of warfare that don’t change, that remain constant independent of technology or social change, to use as the basis for theory. I think this is one of the strengths of the XGW framework, that you can take any given situation in any given era and use the XGW framework to classify the gradient of the methods being used, the doctrines behind them, and judge if the response was appropriate or not, and if not, to use the framework to suggest what reaction could have been more effective.

XGW and Cyberwar

Adam Elkus has an article up at GroupIntel called The Rise of Cyber-Mobilization.

This very interesting read links cyberwar with the theories of thinkers like Antoine-Henri Jomini and Alfred Thayer Mahan and got me thinking about how XGW applies to cyberwarfare.

In principle, XGW should be able to describe the doctrines used on any given battlefield and at any level of conflict or confrontation from the tactical to the grand strategic. Some applications of cyberwarfare seem obvious fits into certain gradients. Individuals of groups that engage in vandalism and cybercrime could be 0GW and 1GW respectively. Massive botnet attacks that attack networks on a broad scale fit very nicely into the second gradient. Third gradient cyberwarfare doctrines could act to target very specific choke-points of networks or even to disrupt real-world infrastructure like electrical and communications grids through cyberspace.

Fourth and fifth gradient doctrines seem to be a lot more subtle, crossing from the, relatively speaking, kinetic actions of cybercrime and cybervandalism, into less kinetic actions like subversion and co-optation. These would likely be doctrines that inform activities rarely if ever observed by the average person no matter how technologically connected they are.

At the fourth gradient cyberwarfare doctrines might entail carefully building vulnerabilities into systems that can be selectively targeted to accomplish certain effects all at once that are virtually impossible to react to until after the attack has already occured. For example, creating and distributing a computer virus that penetrates multiple systems and sits dormant until intentionally activated at a particular time to shut down or hijack the networks those systems are linked to. Unlike a brute force botnet attack that overloads the system (very cyber-kinetic), in this case the system is gradually subverted until control of the network is stripped away and/or the system attacks itself.

Cyberwarfare at the fifth gradient might involve essentially shaping networks and systems themselves. It might involve a targeted effort to control cetain types of information or movements in networks or systems. The key at this gradient should be using systems and networks to shape the context of perception in order to affect certain network elements, thought processes, or even feelings of the users of those attached to the network.

It might even try to make you think a hacker can blow up your computer.

An Example of Different Gradients of Doctrine Being Used at Different Levels of the Expression of Force.

From NPR News:

U.S. Officials: Al-Qaida Leadership Cadre ‘Decimated’

“CIA-directed airstrikes against al-Qaida leaders and facilities in Pakistan over the past six to nine months have been so successful, according to senior U.S. officials, that it is now possible to foresee a ‘complete al-Qaida defeat’ in the mountainous region along the border with Afghanistan.

The officials say the terrorist network’s leadership cadre has been ‘decimated’ with up to a dozen senior and midlevel operatives killed as a result of the strikes and the remaining leaders reeling from the repeated attacks.

‘The enemy is really, really struggling,’ says one senior U.S. counterterrorism official. ‘These attacks have produced the broadest, deepest and most rapid reduction in al-Qaida senior leadership that we’ve seen in several years.’ “

The CIA is apparently using MQ-9 Reaper UAVs combined with improved intelligence to find and target the leadership of Al-Qaida in the mountainous areas along the Afganistan and Pakistan border. This particular scenario is a perfect illustration of two different gradients of doctrine in the XGW framework (3GW and 4GW) being used simultaneously at two different levels of the expression of Force (Tactical and Operational).