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CYBERWAR IS COMING!

John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt
International Policy Department
RAND

Copyright 1993 Taylor & Francis
ISSN 0149-5933/93

This article is copyrighted 1993 by Taylor & Francis, 1900 Frost
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originally published in the journal Comparative Strategy, Volume 12,
no. 2, pp. 141-165.  Electronic reproduction and transmission for
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ABSTRACT

The information revolution and related organizational innovations are
altering the nature of conflict and the kinds of military structures,
doctrines, and strategies that will be needed.  This study introduces
two concepts for thinking about these issues: "cyberwar" and
"netwar."

Industrialization led to attritional warfare by massive armies (e.g.,
World War I).  Mechanization led to maneuver predominated by tanks
(e.g., World War II).  The information revolution implies the rise of
cyberwar, in which neither mass nor mobility will decide outcomes;
instead, the side that knows more, that can disperse the fog of war
yet enshroud an adversary in it, will enjoy decisive advantages.

Communications and intelligence have always been important.  At a
minimum, cyberwar implies that they will grow more so and will
develop as adjuncts to overall military strategy.  In this sense, it
resembles existing notions of "information war" that emphasize C3I.
However, the information revolution may imply overarching effects
that necessitate substantial modifications to military organization
and force posture.  Cyberwar may be to the twenty first century what
blitzkrieg was to the twentieth.  It may also provide a way for the
U.S. military to increase "punch" with less "paunch."

Whereas cyberwar refers to knowledge-related conflict at the military
level, netwar applies to societal struggles most often associated
with low intensity conflict by non-state actors, such as terrorists,
drug cartels, or black market proliferators of weapons of mass
destruction.  Both concepts imply that future conflicts will be
fought more by "networks" than by "hierarchies," and that whoever
masters the network form will gain major advantages.

"Knowledge must become capability."
  --  Carl von Clausewitz, On War


EMERGENT MODES OF CONFLICT

Suppose that war looked like this:  Small numbers of light, highly
mobile forces defeat and compel the surrender of large masses of
heavily armed, dug-in enemy forces, with little loss of life on
either side.  The mobile forces can do this because they are well
prepared, make room for maneuver, concentrate their firepower rapidly
in unexpected places, and have superior command, control, and
information systems that are decentralized to allow tactical
initiatives, yet provide central commanders with unparalleled
intelligence and "topsight" for strategic purposes.

Warfare is no longer primarily a function of who puts the most
capital, labor, and technology on the battlefield, but of who has the
best information about the battlefield.  What distinguishes the
victors is their grasp of information--not only from the mundane
standpoint of knowing how to find the enemy while keeping it in the
dark, but also in doctrinal and organizational terms.  The analogy is
rather like a chess game where you see the entire board, but your
opponent sees only his own pieces; you can win even if he is allowed
to start with additional powerful pieces.

We might appear to be extrapolating from the U.S. victory in the
Persian Gulf war against Iraq.  But our vision is inspired more by
the example of the Mongols of the thirteenth century.  Their "hordes"
were almost always outnumbered by their opponents, yet they
conquered, and held for over a century, the largest continental
empire ever seen.  The key to Mongol success was their absolute
dominance of battlefield information.  They struck when and where
they deemed appropriate, and their "arrow riders" kept field
commanders, often separated by hundreds of miles, in daily
communication.  Even the Great Khan, sometimes thousands of miles
away, was aware of developments in the field within days of their
occurrence.

Absent the galvanizing threat that used to be posed by the Soviet
Union, domestic political pressures will encourage the United States
to make do with a smaller military in the future.  The type of war-
fighting capability that we envision, which is inspired by the Mongol
example, but drawn mainly from our analysis of the information
revolution, may allow America to protect itself and its far-flung
friends and interests, regardless of the size and strength of our
potential future adversaries.


The Advance of Technology and Know-How

Throughout history, military doctrine, organization, and strategy
have continually undergone profound changes, owing in part to
technological breakthroughs.  The Greek phalanx, the combination of
gun and sail, the levee en masse, the blitzkrieg, the Strategic Air
Command:  history is filled with examples in which new weapon,
propulsion, communication, and transportation technologies provided a
basis for advantageous shifts in doctrine, organization, and strategy
that enabled innovators to avoid exhausting attritional battles and
pursue instead a form of "decisive" warfare.[1]

Today, a variety of new technologies are again taking hold, and
further innovations are on the way.  The most enticing include non-
nuclear high-explosives, precision-guided munitions, stealth designs
for aircraft, tanks, and ships, radio-electronic combat (REC)
systems, new electronics for intelligence-gathering, interference,
and deception, new information and communications systems that
improve command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I)
functions, and futuristic designs for space-based weapons and for
automated and robotic warfare.  In addition, virtual reality systems
are being developed for simulation and training.  Many of these
advances enter into a current notion of a military technology
revolution (MTR).[2]

The future of war--specifically the U.S. ability to anticipate and
wage war--will be shaped in part by how these technological advances
are assessed and adopted.  Yet, as military historians frequently
warn, technology permeates war but does not govern it.  It is not
technology per se, but rather the organization of technology, broadly
defined, that is important.  Russell Weigley describes the situation
this way:

"... the technology of war does not consist only of instruments
intended primarily for the waging of war.  A society's ability to
wage war depends on every facet of its technology:  its roads, its
transport vehicles, its agriculture, its industry, and its methods of
organizing its technology.  As Van Creveld puts it, 'behind military
hardware there is hardware in general, and behind that there is
technology as a certain kind of know-how, as a way of looking at the
world and coping with its problems.'"[3]

In our view, the technological shift that matches this broad view is
the information revolution.  This is what will bring the next major
shift in the nature of conflict and warfare.


Effects of the Information Revolution

The information revolution reflects the advance of computerized
information and communications technologies and related innovations
in organization and management theory.  Sea-changes are occurring in
how information is collected, stored, processed, communicated, and
presented, and in how organizations are designed to take advantage of
increased information.[4]  Information is becoming a strategic
resource that may prove as valuable and influential in the post-
industrial era as capital and labor have been in the industrial age.

Advanced information and communications systems, properly applied,
can improve the efficiency of many kinds of activities.  But improved
efficiency is not the only, or even the best, possible effect.  The
new technology is also having a transforming effect, for it disrupts
old ways of thinking and operating, provides capabilities to do
things differently, and suggests how some things may be done better
if done differently:

"The consequences of new technology can be usefully thought of as
first-level, or efficiency, effects and second-level, or social
system, effects.  The history of previous technologies demonstrates
that early in the life of a new technology, people are likely to
emphasize the efficiency effects and underestimate or overlook
potential social system effects.  Advances in networking technologies
now make it possible to think of people, as well as databases and
processors, as resources on a network.

"Many organizations today are installing electronic networks for
first-level efficiency reasons.  Executives now beginning to deploy
electronic mail and other network applications can realize efficiency
gains such as reduced elapsed time for transactions.  If we look
beyond efficiency at behavioral and organizational changes, we'll see
where the second-level leverage is likely to be.  These technologies
can change how people spend their time and what and who they know and
care about.  The full range of payoffs, and the dilemmas, will come
from how the technologies affect how people can think and work
together--the second-level effects" (Sproull and Kiesler, 1991: 15-
16).

The information revolution, in both its technological and non-
technological aspects, sets in motion forces that challenge the
design of many institutions.  It disrupts and erodes the hierarchies
around which institutions are normally designed.  It diffuses and
redistributes power, often to the benefit of what may be considered
weaker, smaller actors.  It crosses borders, and redraws the
boundaries of offices and responsibilities.  It expands the spatial
and temporal horizons that actors should take into account.  Thus, it
generally compels closed systems to open up.  But while this may make
life difficult, especially for large, bureaucratic, aging
institutions, the institutional form per se is not becoming obsolete.
Institutions of all types remain essential to the organization of
society.  The responsive, capable institutions will adapt their
structures and processes to the information age.  Many will evolve
from traditional hierarchical forms to new, flexible, network-like
models of organization.  Success will depend on learning to interlace
hierarchical and network principles.[5]

Meanwhile, the very changes that trouble institutions, such as the
erosion of hierarchy, favor the rise of multi-organizational
networks.  Indeed, the information revolution is strengthening the
importance of all forms of networks, such as social networks and
communications networks.  The network form is very different from the
institutional form.  While institutions (large ones, in particular)
are traditionally built around hierarchies and aim to act on their
own, multi-organizational networks consist of (often small)
organizations or parts of institutions that have linked together to
act jointly.  The information revolution favors the growth of such
networks by making it possible for diverse, dispersed actors to
communicate, consult, coordinate, and operate together across greater
distances, and on the basis of more and better information than ever
before.[6]

These points bear directly on the future of the military, and of
conflict and warfare more generally.


Both Netwar and Cyberwar Are Likely

The thesis of this thinkpiece is that the information revolution will
cause shifts, both in how societies may come into conflict and how
their armed forces may wage war.  We offer a distinction between what
we call "netwar"--societal-level ideational conflicts waged in part
through internetted modes of communication--and "cyberwar" at the
military level.  These terms are admittedly novel, and better ones
may yet be devised.[7]  But, for now, they help illuminate a useful
distinction, and identify the breadth of ways in which the
information revolution may alter the nature of conflict short of war,
as well as the context and the conduct of warfare.[8]

While both netwar and cyberwar revolve around information and
communications matters, at a deeper level they are forms of war about
"knowledge," about who knows what, when, where, and why, and about
how secure a society or a military is regarding its knowledge of
itself and its adversaries.[9]


Explaining Netwar

Netwar refers to information-related conflict at a grand level
between nations or societies.  It means trying to disrupt, damage, or
modify what a target population knows or thinks it knows about itself
and the world around it.  A netwar may focus on public or elite
opinion, or both.  It may involve public diplomacy measures,
propaganda and psychological campaigns, political and cultural
subversion, deception of or interference with local media,
infiltration of computer networks and databases, and efforts to
promote dissident or opposition movements across computer networks.
Thus, designing a strategy for netwar may mean grouping together from
a new perspective a number of measures that have been used before but
were viewed separately.

In other words, netwar represents a new entry on the spectrum of
conflict that spans economic, political, and social, as well as
military forms of "war."  In contrast to economic wars that target
the production and distribution of goods, and political wars that aim
at the leadership and institutions of a government, netwars would be
distinguished by their targeting of information and communications.
Like other forms on this spectrum, netwars would be largely non-
military, but they could have dimensions that overlap into military
war.  For example, an economic war may involve trade restrictions,
the dumping of goods, the illicit penetration and subversion of
businesses and markets in a target country, and the theft of
technology, none of which need involve the armed forces.  Yet an
economic war may also come to include an armed blockade or strategic
bombing of economic assets, meaning it has also become a military
war.  In like manner, a netwar that leads to targeting an enemy's
military C3I capabilities turns, at least in part, into what we mean
by cyberwar.

Netwar will take various forms, depending on the actors.  Some may
occur between the governments of rival nation-states.  In some
respects, the U.S. and Cuban governments are already engaged in a
netwar.  This is manifested in the activities of Radio and TV Marti
on the U.S. side, and on Castro's side by the activities of pro-Cuban
support networks around the world.

Other kinds of netwar may arise between governments and non-state
actors.  For example, netwar may be waged by governments against
illicit groups and organizations involved in terrorism, proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction, or drug smuggling.  Or, to the
contrary, it may be waged against the policies of specific
governments by advocacy groups and movements, involving, for example,
environmental, human-rights, or religious issues.  The non-state
actors may or may not be associated with nations, and in some cases
they may be organized into vast transnational networks and
coalitions.

Another kind of netwar may occur between rival non-state actors, with
governments maneuvering on the sidelines to prevent collateral damage
to national interests and perhaps to support one side or another.
This is the most speculative kind of netwar, but the elements for it
have already appeared, especially among advocacy movements around the
world.  Some movements are increasingly organizing into cross-border
networks and coalitions, identifying more with the development of
civil society (even global civil society) than with nation-states,
and using advanced information and communications technologies to
strengthen their activities.  This may well turn out to be the next
great frontier for ideological conflict, and netwar may be a prime
characteristic.

Most netwars will probably be non-violent, but in the worst cases one
could combine the possibilities into some mean low-intensity conflict
scenarios.  Martin Van Creveld (1991: 197) does this when he worries
that, "In the future, war will not be waged by armies but by groups
whom today we call terrorists, guerrillas, bandits and robbers, but
who will undoubtedly hit on more formal titles to describe
themselves."  In his view, war between states will diminish, and the
state may become obsolete as a major form of societal organization.
Our views coincide with many of Van Creveld's, though we do not
believe that the state is even potentially obsolete.  Rather, it will
be transformed by these developments.

Some netwars will involve military issues.  Possible issue areas
include nuclear proliferation, drug smuggling, and anti-terrorism
because of the potential threats they pose to international order and
national security interests.  Moreover, broader societal trends
(e.g., the redefinition of security concepts, the new roles of
advocacy groups, the blurring of traditional boundaries between what
is military and what is non-military, between what is public and what
is private, and between what pertains to the state and what pertains
to society) may engage the interests of at least some military
offices in some netwar-related activities.

Netwars are not real wars, traditionally defined.  But netwar might
be developed into an instrument for trying, early on, to prevent a
real war from arising.  Deterrence in a chaotic world may become as
much a function of one's cyber posture and presence as of one's force
posture and presence.


Explaining Cyberwar

Cyberwar refers to conducting, and preparing to conduct, military
operations according to information-related principles.  It means
disrupting, if not destroying, information and communications
systems, broadly defined to include even military culture, on which
an adversary relies in order to know itself:  who it is, where it is,
what it can do when, why it is fighting, which threats to counter
first, and so forth.  It means trying to know everything about an
adversary while keeping the adversary from knowing much about
oneself.  It means turning the "balance of information and knowledge"
in one's favor, especially if the balance of forces is not.  It means
using knowledge so that less capital and labor may have to be
expended.

This form of warfare may involve diverse technologies, notably for
C3I, for intelligence collection, processing, and distribution, for
tactical communications, positioning, and identification-friend-or-
foe (IFF), and for "smart" weapons systems, to give but a few
examples.  It may also involve electronically blinding, jamming,
deceiving, overloading, and intruding into an adversary's information
and communications circuits.  Yet, cyberwar is not simply a set of
measures based on technology.  And it should not be confused with
past meanings of computerized, automated, robotic, or electronic
warfare.

Cyberwar may have broad ramifications for military organization and
doctrine.  As noted, the literature on the information revolution
calls for organizational innovations, so that different parts of an
institution function like interconnected networks rather than
separate hierarchies.  Thus, cyberwar may imply some institutional
redesign for a military in both intra- and inter-service areas.
Moving to networked structures may require some decentralization of
command and control, which may well be resisted in light of earlier
views that the new technology would provide greater central control
of military operations.  But decentralization is only part of the
picture:  the new technology may also provide greater "topsight," a
central understanding of the big picture that enhances the management
of complexity.[10]  Many treatments of organizational redesign laud
decentralization; yet decentralization alone is not the key issue.
The pairing of decentralization with topsight brings the real gains.

Cyberwar may also imply developing new doctrines about the kinds of
forces needed, where and how to deploy them, and what and how to
strike on the enemy's side.  How and where to position what kinds of
computers and related sensors, networks, databases, and so forth.,
may become as important as the question once was for the deployment
of bombers and their support functions.  Cyberwar may also have
implications for integrating the political and psychological with the
military aspects of warfare.

In sum, cyberwar may raise broad issues of military organization and
doctrine, as well as strategy, tactics, and weapons design.  It may
be applicable in low- and high-intensity conflicts, in conventional
and non-conventional environments, and for defensive or offensive
purposes.

As an innovation in warfare, we anticipate that cyberwar may be to
the twenty first century what blitzkrieg was to the twentieth
century.  Yet, for now, we also believe that the concept is too
speculative for precise definition.  At a minimum, it represents an
extension of the traditional importance of obtaining information in
war:  having superior C3I and trying to locate, read, surprise, and
deceive the enemy before he does the same to you.  That remains
important no matter what overall strategy is pursued.  In this sense,
the concept means that information-related factors are more important
than ever due to new technologies, but it does not indicate a break
with tradition.  Indeed, it resembles Thomas Rona's (1976: 2) concept
of an "information war" that is "intertwined with, and superimposed
on, other military operations."  Our concept is broader than Rona's,
which focused on countermeasures to degrade an enemy's weapons
systems while protecting one's own; yet, we believe that this
approach to defining cyberwar will ultimately prove too limiting.

In a deeper sense, cyberwar signifies a transformation in the nature
of war.  This, we believe, will prove to be the better approach to
defining cyberwar.  Our position is at odds with a view (see Arnett
1992) that uses the terms "hyperwar" and "cyberwar" to claim that the
key implication of the MTR is the automated battlefield, that future
wars will be fought mainly by "brilliant" weapons, robots, and
autonomous computers, that man will be subordinate to the machine,
and that combat will be unusually fast and laden with stand-off
attacks.  This view errs in its understanding of the effects of the
information revolution, and our own view differs on every point.
Cyberwar is about organization as much as technology.  It implies new
man-machine interfaces that amplify man's capabilities, not a
separation of man and machine.  In some situations, combat may be
waged fast and from afar, but in many other situations, it may be
slow and close-in.  New combinations of far and close and fast and
slow may be the norm, not one extreme or the other.

The post-modern battlefield stands to be fundamentally altered by the
information technology revolution, at both the strategic and tactical
levels.  The increasing breadth and depth of this battlefield and the
ever-improving accuracy and destructiveness of even conventional
munitions have heightened the importance of C3I matters to the point
where dominance in this aspect alone may now yield consistent war-
winning advantages to able practitioners.  Yet cyberwar is a much
broader idea than attacking an enemy's C3I systems while improving
and defending one's own.  In Clausewitz's sense, it is characterized
by the effort to turn knowledge into capability.

Indeed, even though its full design and implementation requires
advanced technology, cyberwar is not reliant upon advanced technology
per se.  The continued development of advanced information and
communications technologies is crucial for U.S. military
capabilities.  But cyberwar, whether waged by the United States or
other actors, does not necessarily require the presence of advanced
technology.  The organizational and psychological dimensions may be
as important as the technical.  Cyberwar may actually be waged with
low technology under some circumstances.


INFORMATION-RELATED FACTORS IN MILITARY HISTORY

Our contention is that netwar and cyberwar represent new (and
related) modes of conflict that will be increasingly important in the
future.  The information revolution implies--indeed, it assures--that
a sea-change is occurring in the nature of conflict and warfare.  Yet
both new modes have many historical antecedents; efforts have been
made in the direction of conducting warfare from cyber-like
perspectives in the past.  Information, communications, and control
are enduring concerns of warfighters.  There is much historical
evidence, tactical and strategic, that attempting to pierce the "fog
of war" and envelop one's foe in it has played a continuing role.[11]

In the Second Punic War of the third century B.C., Carthaginian
forces under the command of Hannibal routinely stationed observers
with mirrors on hilltops, keeping their leader apprised of Roman
movements, while the latter remained ignorant of his.  Better
communications contributed significantly to the ability of Hannibal's
forces to win a string of victories over a 16-year period.  In the
most dramatic example of the use of superior information, Hannibal's
relatively small forces were able rise literally from the fog of war
at Lake Trasimene to destroy a Roman army more than twice its
size.[12]

Another famous, more recent example, occurred during the Napoleonic
Wars.  The British Royal Navy's undisputed command of the
Mediterranean Sea, won at the Battle of the Nile in 1798, cut the
strategic sea communications of Bonaparte's expeditionary force in
North Africa, leading to its disastrous defeat.  The invaders were
stranded in Egypt without supplies or their commander, after
Napoleon's flight, where they remained until the British came to take
them prisoner.

A few years later in the same conflict, Lord Cochrane's lone British
frigate was able to put French forces into total confusion along
virtually the entire Mediterranean coast of occupied Spain and much
of France.  The French relied for their communications on a semaphore
system to alert their troops to trouble and to tell coastal vessels
when they could safely sail.  Cochrane raided these signalling
stations, then struck spectacularly, often in conjunction with
Spanish guerrilla forces, while French communications were
disrupted.[13]

Story upon story could be drawn from military history to illuminate
the significance of information and communications factors.  But this
is meant to be only a brief paper to posit the concept of cyberwar.
Better we turn directly to an early example, a virtual model of this
upcoming mode of warfare.


The Mongols:  An Early Example of Cyberwar

Efforts to strike at the enemy's communications and ensure the safety
of one's own are found, to varying degrees, throughout history.  Yet
the Mongol way of warfare, which reached its zenith in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, may be the closest that anyone has come to
waging pure cyberwar (or netwar, for that matter).  Examining Mongol
military praxis should, therefore, be instructive in developing the
foundations for waging war in a like manner in the post-modern world.
The Mongol example also reinforces the point that cyberwar does not
depend on high technology, but rather on how one thinks about
conflict and strategic interaction.

At the military level, Mongol doctrine relied for success almost
entirely on learning exactly where their enemies were, while keeping
their own whereabouts a secret until they attacked.  This enabled
them, despite a chronic inferiority in numbers, to overthrow the
finest, largest armies of Imperial China, Islam, and Christendom.
The simplest way to illustrate their advantage is to suggest an
analogy with chess:  war against the Mongols resembled playing
against an opponent who can hide the dispositions of his pieces, but
who can see the placement of both his and yours.  Under such
conditions, the player with knowledge of both sides' deployments
could be expected to triumph with many fewer pieces.  Moreover, the
addition of even significant forces to the semi-blinded side would
generate no requirement for a similar increase on the "sighted" side.
(Thus, the similarity is not so much to chess as to its cousin,
kriegspiel, in which both players start "blind" to their opponent's
position.  In our analogy, one player can see through the barrier
that is normally placed between the boards of the players.)

So it was with the Mongols.  In one of their greatest campaigns,
against the mighty Muslim empire of Khwarizm (located approximately
on the territory of today's Iran, Iraq, and portions of the Central
Asian republics of the former Soviet Union), a Mongol army of some
125,000 toppled a foe whose standing armies amounted to nearly half a
million troops, with a similar number of reserves.  How could this
happen?  The answer is that the Mongols identified the linear,
forward dispositions of their foes and avoided them.  Instead, they
worked around the defenders, making a point of waylaying messengers
moving between the capital and the front.

Muhammad Ali Shah, the ruler of Khwarizm, took the silence from the
front as a good sign, until one day a messenger, having narrowly
escaped a Mongol patrol, made his way into the capital, Samarkand.
Muhammad inquired about the news from his army and was told that the
frontier was holding.  The messenger went on to add, however, that he
had observed a large Mongol army but a day's march from the capital.
The shah fled and his capital fell swiftly.  This news, when given to
the frontier armies, led to a general capitulation.  Muhammad ended
his days in hiding on the island of Abeshkum in the Caspian Sea,
where he contracted and died from pleurisy.

The campaign against Khwarizm is typical of the Mongol strategic
approach of first blinding an opponent, then striking at his heart
(i.e., going for checkmate).  Battles were infrequently fought, as
they were often unnecessary for achieving war aims.  There were
times, however, when confrontations could not be avoided.  When this
happened, the Mongols relied heavily on coordinated operations
designed to break down the plans and controls of their opponents.

Against the Polish-Prussian coalition forces at the battle of
Liegnitz, for example, the Mongols engaged and defeated an army some
four times their size.  Their success was based on keeping a clear
picture of the defending coalition's order of battle, while confusing
the opponents as to their own whereabouts.  Thus, portions of the
Western army chased after small detachments that were simple lures,
and ended up in the clutches of the Mongol main force.  The Poles and
Prussians were defeated piecemeal.  Indeed, the Mongols were so sure
of their information that they repeatedly used a river crossing
during the battle in the intervals between its use by the Poles and
Prussians.[14]

What about Mongol advantages in mobility and firepower?  Certainly,
their ability to move a division some 80 miles per day was superior
to other armies, and their horn bows did outrange those of their
enemies by 50-100 yards, on average.  But neither of thes factors
could offset their foesU advantages in fortification technology, and
the body armor of Western forces gave them distinct advantages over
the Mongols in close combat.  Thus, Mongol tactical operations were
often significantly stymied by defended cities,[15] and close
engagements were exceedingly hard fought, with the Mongols suffering
heavily.  Indeed, the ferocity and effectiveness of the Prusso-Polish
forces at Liegnitz, especially their cavalry, may have deterred the
Mongols from continuing their invasion of Europe.[16]  At the battle
of Hims, the Mamelukes showed that the forces of Islam could also
defeat the Mongols tactically.  What neither Islam nor Christendom
could do consistently, however, was outwit the Mongols strategically.

Clearly, the key to Mongol success was superior command, control,
communication, and intelligence.  Scouts and messengers always took
along three or four extra horses, tethered, so that they could switch
mounts and keep riding when one grew tired.  This gave the Mongol
horsemen, in relative terms, something approximating an ability to
provide real-time intelligence, almost as from a satellite, on the
enemy's order of battle and intentions.  At the same time, this
steppe-version of the pony express (the Khan called them "arrow
riders") enabled field generals to keep the high command, often
thousands of miles from the theater of war, informed as to all
developments within four or five days of their occurrence.  For
communication between field forces, the Mongols also employed a
sophisticated semaphore system that allowed for swift tactical shifts
as circumstances demanded.  Organizationally, the Mongols emphasized
decentralized command in the field, unlike their foes who were
generally required to wait for orders from their capitals.  Yet by
developing a communication system that kept their leadership apprised
at all times, the Mongols enjoyed topsight as well as
decentralization.  The Khan "advanced his armies on a wide front,
controlling them with a highly developed system of communication";
that was the secret of his success (Chambers 1985:43).

In strategic terms, the Mongols aimed first to disrupt an enemy's
communications, then to strike at his heart.  Unlike Clausewitz, they
put little store in the need to destroy enemy forces before
advancing.  Also, Mongol campaigns were in no way "linear."  They
struck where they wished, when circumstances were deemed favorable.
That their Christian and Muslim foes seldom emulated the Mongol's
organizational and communication techniques is to their great
discredit.  When, finally, the Mamelukes defeated the Mongols
attempted invasion of Egypt, it was because they kept track of Mongol
movements and were led in the field by their king, Kilawan, who
exercised rapid, effective control of his forces in the fluid battle
situations that ensued.  Also, the Mamelukes, employing carrier
pigeons, had developed faster strategic communications than even the
Mongols' arrow riders, allowing them to mass troops in time to defend
effectively.[17]

As much as they form a paradigm for cyberwar, the Mongols were also
adept at netwar.  Early in their campaigns, they used terror tactics
to weaken resistance.  At the outset of any invasion, they broadcast
that any city that resisted would be razed and its inhabitants
slaughtered.  Surrender, on the other hand, would result simply in
coming under Mongol suzerainty; this entailed some initial rape and
pillage, but thereafter settled into a distracted sort of occupation.
As a result, peaceful surrenders were plentiful.  In later campaigns,
when the Mongols learned that both Christians and Muslims saw them as
the dark forces of Gog and Magog, heralding the "end of times," they
deliberately cultivated this image.  They renamed themselves Tartars,
as though they were the minions of "tartarum," the biblical nether
world.  Later, when it was clear that the world was not ending, the
Mongols willingly adopted both Christianity and Islam, whichever
eased the burden of captivity for particular peoples.  This
utilitarian approach to religion impeded the formation of opposing
coalitions.

Some analysts have argued that the Mongols represent an early
experiment with blitzkrieg.[18]  In our view, however, the
differences between cyberwar and blitzkrieg are significant, and the
Mongols reflect the former more than the latter.


Blitzkrieg, People's War, and Beyond

The relative importance of war against an enemy's command, control,
and communications increased with the advent of mechanized warfare.
In World War II, the German blitzkrieg doctrine--in some ways a
forerunner of cyberwar--made the disruption of enemy communications
and control an explicit goal at both the tactical and strategic
levels.  For example, the availability of radios in all of its tanks
provided Germany with a tactical-force multiplier in its long war
with the Soviet Union, whose tanks, though  more numerous and better
built, provided radios only for commanders.[19]

At the strategic level, the destruction of the Soviets' central
communications and control site, by capturing Moscow, was a key
element of the planning for Operation Barbarossa.  But when an
opportunity arose during the campaign to win large material gains in
the Ukraine, Hitler diverted General Guderian's panzers away from
their approach to Moscow, and it was never taken.  There would be no
"lightning" victory for the Germans, who soon found themselves on the
weaker side of a massive attritional struggle, doomed to defeat.[20]

Following WWII, information and communication technologies improved
greatly in the major industrialized nations, and the important wars
with lessons for cyberwar were between these nations and the
underdeveloped ones of the Third World.  A comparison of two key
conflicts illuminates the growing importance and applicability of
cyberwar principles:  the one a peoples' war waged by North Vietnam
and the Viet Cong in the 1960s and 1970s, and the recent, more
conventional conflict between the American-led coalition and Iraq.

Both wars represent turning points.  In the case of Vietnam, the
enemy may have applied cyber principles more effectively than did the
United States, not only in military areas, but also where cyberwar
cuts into the political and societal dimensions of conflict.  In the
case of the war against Iraq, the United States did superior work
applying cyberwar principles (they were not called that at the time,
of course) against an enemy whose organization, doctrine, strategy,
and tactics were from a different era.

In the Vietnam war, the United States appeared to have advantages up
and down the chain of command and control, from the construction of
quantitative indicators and computerized models and databases for
analyzing the course of the war in Washington, through field radios
for calling in prompt airstrikes, reinforcements, and rescue
operations.  But the thrall of computerization and quantitative
techniques led analysts to overlook the softer, subtler aspects of
the war where the enemy was winning.  The excellence of U.S.
communications capabilities encouraged inappropriate intrusion from
above into battles and campaigns best planned and waged within the
theater.

While U.S. forces had superior tactical communications, the
guerrillas' strategic communications were largely unaffected.
Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong operated on Mao
Zedong's doctrine that "command must be centralized for strategical
purposes and decentralized for tactical purposes" (Mao 1961:
114)[21]--a classic combination of topsight and decentralization.
The United States, on the other hand, appears to have allowed the
timely availability of vast quantities of information at high levels
to seduce leadership into maintaining central tactical as well as
strategic control, and into believing that they had topsight when
they did not.

The Vietnam example illustrates our point that good communications,
though they provide necessary conditions, are insufficient to enable
one to fight a cyberwar.  For this endeavor, a doctrinal view of the
overarching importance and value of maintaining one's own
communications, while disabling the adversary's, is requisite.  This
entails the development of tactics and operational strategies that
discard the basic tenets of both set-piece and even traditional
maneuver warfighting theories.  Neither the grinding attritional
approach of Grant nor the explosive thrusts of Guderian will suffice.
Instead, radically different models must be considered that focus
upon the objective of systemically disorganizing the enemy.

To some extent, the recent American experience in the Gulf War
suggests that an increasing sensitivity to cyber principles is taking
hold.  First, it was made quite clear by President Bush that he had
no intention of micro-managing tactical or even operationally
strategic actions.  This is, in itself, a stark contrast to the
classic image of President Johnson poring over maps of North Vietnam,
selecting each of the targets to be hit by Operation Rolling Thunder.

The military operations brought significant cyber elements into play,
often utilizing them as "force multipliers" (Powell 1992).  The
Apache helicopter strike against Iraqi air defense controls at the
war's outset is but one, albeit very important, example.  Also, the
allied coalition had good knowledge of Iraqi dispositions, while the
latter were forced to fight virtually blind.  Along these lines, a
further example of the force multiplying effect of command of
information is provided by the ability of a relatively small (less
than 20,000 troops) Marine force afloat to draw away from the
landward front and tie down roughly 125,000 Iraqi defenders.

A significant effort was also made to employ netwar principles in the
Gulf war.  The construction of an international consensus against the
Iraqi aggression, backed by the deployment of large, mechanized
forces, was intended to persuade Saddam Hussein to retreat.  His
intransigent behavior suggests that his vision of war was of a prior
generation.


An Implication:  Institutions Versus Networks

>From a traditional standpoint, a military is an institution that
fields armed forces.  The form that all institutions normally take is
the hierarchy, and militaries in particular depend heavily on
hierarchy.  Yet, the information revolution is bound to erode
hierarchies and redraw the boundaries around which institutions and
their offices are normally built.  Moreover, the information
revolution favors organizational network designs.  These points were
made in the first section of this paper.

This second section leads to related insights, based on a quick
review of history.   The Mongols, a classic example of an ancient
force that fought according to cyberwar principles, were organized
more like a network than a hierarchy.  More recently, a relatively
minor military power that defeated a great modern power--the combined
forces of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong--operated in many respects
more like a network than an institution; it even extended political-
support networks abroad.  In both cases, the Mongols and the
Vietnamese, their defeated opponents were large institutions whose
forces were designed to fight set-piece attritional battles.

To this may be added a further set of observations drawn from current
events.  Most adversaries that the United States and its allies face
in the realm of low-intensity conflict, such as international
terrorists, guerrilla insurgents, drug smuggling cartels, ethnic
factions, as well as racial and tribal gangs, are all organized like
networks (although their leadership may be quite hierarchical).
Perhaps a reason that military (and police) institutions have
difficulty engaging in low-intensity conflicts is because they are
not meant to be fought by institutions.

The lesson:  Institutions can be defeated by networks, and it may
take networks to counter networks.  The future may belong to whoever
masters the network form.


ISSUES FOR THE FUTURE

The implications of a revolutionary technology are often not widely
perceived at first.  That was true of the tank, the machine gun, and
the telephone.  For example, with their newly developed, rapid firing
mitrailleuse, the French enjoyed a tremendous potential firepower
advantage over the Prussians in 1870.  Unfortunately, this early
version of the machine gun looked more like a fieldpiece instead of a
rifle, and it was deployed behind the front with the artillery.
Thus, the weapon that would dominate World War I a generation later
had almost no effect on the Franco-Prussian conflict.  People try to
fit new technology into established ways of doing things; it is
expected to prove itself in terms of existing standards of efficiency
and effectiveness.

It may take time to realize that inserting new technology into old
ways may create some new inefficiencies, even as some activities
become more efficient.  It may take still more time to realize that
the activity itself, in both its operational and organizational
dimensions, should be restructured, even transformed, in order to
realize the full potential of the technology.[22]  This pattern is
documented in the early histories of the telephone and the electric
motor, and is being repeated with computer applications in the
business world.

Why should anything different be expected for cyberwar?  New
information technology applications have begun to transform the
business world both operationally and organizationally.  The
government world is, for the most part, moving slowly in adopting the
information technology revolution.  One might expect the military
world to lag behind both the business and government worlds, partly
because of its greater dependence on hierarchical traditions.  But in
fact, parts of the U.S. military are showing a keen interest in
applying the information revolution.  As this unfolds, a constant,
but often halting, contentious interplay between operational and
organizational innovations should be expected.


Growing Awareness of the Information Revolution

An awareness is spreading in some U.S. military circles that the
information revolution may transform the nature of warfare.  One
hears that the MTR implies a period of re-evaluation and
experimentation not unlike the one in the 1920s and 1930s that
resulted in Germany's breakthrough formulation of the blitzkrieg
doctrine.  New questions are being asked about how to apply the new
technology in innovative ways.  For example, one set of arguments
holds that the MTR may increasingly enable armed forces to stand off
and destroy enemy targets with high precision weapons fired from
great distances, including from outer space.  But, another set holds
that the information revolution may drive conflict and warfare toward
the low-intensity end of the scale, giving rise to new forms of
close-in combat.  Clearly, military analysts and strategists are just
beginning to identify the questions and call for the required
thinking.

The military, like much of the business world, remains in a stage of
installing pieces of the new technology to make specific operations
more effective.  Indeed, techniques that we presume would be
essential to cyberwar may be used to improve the cost-effectiveness
of many military operations, no matter what overall strategy is being
pursued (even if cyberwar remains unformulated).  For example,
improved surveillance and intelligence-gathering capabilities that
help identify timely opportunities for surprise (to some extent, a
purpose of the new Joint Targeting Network (JTN) can be of service to
a traditional attritional warfare strategy.  Also, new capabilities
for informing the members of a unit in real time about where their
comrades are located and what each is doing, as in recent experiments
with inter-vehicular information systems (IVIS, may improve the
ability to concentrate force as a unit, and maintain that
concentration throughout an operation.  The list of new techniques
that could be mentioned is long and growing.

We favor inquiring methodically into how the information revolution
may provide specific new technical capabilities for warfare,
regardless of the doctrine and strategy used.  We also favor
analyzing what kinds of operational and organizational innovations
should be considered in light of such capabilities.  And we recognize
that it is quite another thing to try to leap ahead and propose that
cyberwar may be a major part of the answer.  But this thinkpiece is
not meant to be so methodical; it is meant to be speculative and
suggestive, in order to call attention to the possibility of cyberwar
as a topic that merits further discussion and research.


Indications and Aspects of Cyberwar

New theoretical ground needs to be broken regarding the information
and communications dimensions of war, and the role of "knowledge" in
conflict environments.  Cyberwar is not merely a new set of
operational techniques.  It is emerging, in our view, as a new mode
of warfare that will call for new approaches to plans and strategies,
and new forms of doctrine and organization.

What would a cyberwar look like?  Are there different types?  What
may be the distinctive attributes of cyberwar as a doctrine?  Where
does cyberwar fit in the history of warfare, and why would it
represent a radical shift?  What are the requirements and options for
preparing for and conducting a cyberwar?  Will it enable power to be
projected in new ways?  What are the roles of organizational and
technological factors, and what other factors (e.g., psychological)
should be considered?  How could the concept enable one to think
better, or at least differently in a useful way, about factors, such
as C3I, REC (radio-electronic combat systems), and psywar, that are
important but not ordinarily considered together?  What measures of
effectiveness (MOE) should be used?  These kinds of questions, some
of which are touched on in this paper, call for examination.


    Paradigm Shift

We anticipate that cyberwar, like war in Clausewitz's view, may be a
"chameleon."  It will be adaptable to varying contexts; it will not
represent or impose a single, structured approach.  Cyberwar may be
fought offensively and defensively, at the strategic or tactical
levels.  It will span the gamut of intensity, from conflicts waged by
heavy mechanized forces across wide theaters, to counterinsurgencies
where "the mobility of the boot" may be the prime means of maneuver.

Consider briefly the context of blitzkrieg.  This doctrine for
offensive operations, based on the close coordination of mobile
armored forces and air power, was designed for relatively open
terrain and good weather.  Its primary asset was speed; swift
breakthroughs were sought, and swift follow-ups required to prevent
effective defensive ripostes.

"The blitzkrieg is predicated upon the assumption that the opponent's
army is a large and complex machine that is geared to fighting along
a well-established defensive line. In the machine's rear lies a
vulnerable network, which comprises numerous lines of communication,
along which supplies as well as information move, and key nodal
points at which the various lines intersect. Destruction of this
central nervous system is tantamount to destruction of the army. The
principal aim of a blitzkrieg is therefore to effect a strategic
penetration. The attacker attempts to pierce the defender's front and
then to drive deep into the defender's rear, severing his lines of
communication and destroying key junctures in the network."[23]

By comparison, cyberwar takes a different view of what constitutes
the "battlefield."  Cyberwar depends less on the geographic terrain
than on the nature of the electronic "cyberspace,"[24] which should
be open to domination through advanced technology applications.
Cyberwar benefits from an open radio-electronic spectrum and good
atmospheric and other conditions for utilizing that spectrum.
Cyberwar may require speedy flows of information and communications,
but not necessarily a speedy or heavily armed offense like
blitzkrieg.  If the opponent is blinded, it can do little against
even a slow-moving adversary.  How, when, and where to position
battlefield computers and related sensors, communications networks,
databases, and REC devices may become as important in future wars as
the same questions were for tanks or bomber fleets and their
supporting equipment in the World War II.

Cyberwar may imply a new view, not only of what constitutes "attack,"
but also of "defeat."  Throughout the era of modern nation-states,
beginning about the sixteenth century, attrition has been the main
mode of warfare.  An enemy's armed forces had to be defeated before
objectives could be taken.  This lasted for centuries until the
grotesque, massive slaughters of World War I led to a search for
relief from wars of exhaustion.  This in turn led to the development
of blitzkrieg, which circumvented the more brutish aspects of
attritional war.  Yet this maneuver-oriented doctrine still required
the destruction of the enemy's forces as the prerequisite to
achieving war aims; attritional war had simply been "put on wheels."

Cyberwar may also imply (although we are not sure at this point) that
victory can be attained without the need to destroy an opposing
force.  The Mongol defeat of Khwarizm is the best example of the
almost total circumvention and virtual dismemberment of an enemy's
forces.  It is possible to see in cyberwar an approach to conflict
that allows for decisive campaigning without a succession of bloody
battles.  Cyberwar may thus be developed as a post-industrial
doctrine that differs from the industrial-age traditions of
attritional warfare.  It may even seek to avoid attritional
conflict.[25]  In the best circumstances, wars may be won by striking
at the strategic heart of an opponent's cyber structures, his systems
of knowledge, information, and communications.

It is hard to think of any kind of warfare as humane, but a fully
articulated cyberwar doctrine might allow the development of a
capability to use force not only in ways that minimize the costs to
oneself, but which also allow victory to be achieved without the need
to maximize the destruction of the enemy.  If for no other reason,
this potential of cyberwar to lessen war's cruelty demands its
careful study and elaboration.


    Organizational and Related Strategic Considerations

At the strategic level, cyberwar may imply Mao's military ideal of
combining strategic centralization and tactical decentralization.
The interplay between these effects is one of the more complex facets
of the information revolution.  Our preliminary view is that the
benefits of decentralization may be enhanced if, to balance the
possible loss of centralization, the high command gains topsight, the
term mentioned earlier that we currently favor to describe the view
of the overall conflict.  This term carries with it an implication
that temptations to micro-manage will be resisted.

The new technology tends to produce a deluge of information that must
be taken in, filtered, and integrated in real time.  Informational
overload and bottlenecking has long been a vulnerability of
centralized, hierarchical structures for command and control.[26]
Waging cyberwar may require major innovations in organizational
design, in particular a shift from hierarchies to networks.  The
traditional reliance on hierarchical designs may have to be adapted
to network-oriented models to allow greater flexibility, lateral
connectivity, and teamwork across institutional boundaries.  The
traditional emphasis on command and control, a key strength of
hierarchy, may have to give way to an emphasis on consultation and
coordination, the crucial building blocks of network designs.  This
may raise transitional concerns about how to maintain institutional
traditions, as various parts become networked with other parts (if
not with other, outside institutions) in ways that may go "against
the grain" of existing hierarchies.

The information revolution has already raised issues for inter- and
intra-service linkages, and in the case of coalition warfare, for
inter-military linkages.  Cyberwar doctrine may require such
linkages.  It may call for particularly close communication,
consultation and coordination between the officers in charge of
strategy, plans, and operations, and those in charge of C3I, not to
mention units in the field.

Operational and tactical command in cyberwar may be exceptionally
demanding.  There may be little of the traditional chain of command
to evaluate every move and issue each new order.  Commanders, from
corps to company levels, may be required to operate with great
latitude.  But if they are allowed to act more autonomously than
ever, they may also have to act more as a part of integrated joint
operations.  Topsight may have to be distributed to facilitate this.
Also, the types and composition of units may undergo striking
changes.  Instead of divisions, brigades and battalions, cyberwar may
require the creation of combined-arms task forces from each of the
services, something akin to the current Marine Air-Ground Task Force.

There are many historical examples of innovative tinkering with units
during wartime, going back to the creation of the Roman maniple as a
counter to the phalanx.  In modern times, World War II brought the
rise of many types of units never before seen.  For example, the U.S.
Army began using combat commands or teams comprised of artillery-
armor-infantry mixes.  The German equivalent was the kampfgruppe.
These kinds of units could often fulfill missions for which larger
bodies, even corps, had previously failed.  The U.S. Navy was also an
innovator in this area, creating the task force as its basic
operating unit in the Pacific War.  Our point here is that what have
often been viewed as makeshift wartime organizational adjustments
should now be viewed as a peacetime goal of our standing forces, to
be achieved before the onset of the next war.


    Force Size Considerations

A cyberwar doctrine and accompanying organizational and operational
changes may allow for reductions in the overall size of the U.S.
armed forces.  But if the history of earlier sea-changes in the
nature of warfighting is any guide, long-term prospects for
significant reductions are problematic.  All revolutions in warfare
have created advantages that became subject to fairly rapid
"wasting," since successful innovations were quickly copied.[27]

If both sides to a future conflict possess substantial cyberwar
capabilities, the intensity and complexity of that war may well
require more rather than fewer forces.  The better trained, more
skillful practitioner may prevail, but it is likely that "big
battalions" will still be necessary, especially as the relative
cyberwar-fighting proficiency of combatants nears parity.  In any
case, whether future U.S. forces are larger or smaller, they will
surely be configured quite differently.


    Operational and Tactical Considerations

Cyberwar may also have radical implications at the operational and
tactical levels.  Traditionally, military operations have been
divisible into categories of "holding and hitting."  Part of a force
is used to tie down an opponent, freeing other assets for flank and
other forms of maneuvering attacks.[28]  Tactically, two key aspects
of warfighting have been fire and movement.  Covering fire allows
maneuver, with maneuver units then firing to allow fellow units to
move.  Fire creates maneuver potential.  Tactical advance is viewed
as a sort of leapfrogging affair.

Cyberwar may give rise to different, if not opposite, principles.
Superior knowledge and control of information are likely to allow for
"hitting without holding," strategically, and for tactical maneuvers
that create optimal conditions for subsequent fire.


    Nuclear Considerations

What of nuclear weapons and cyberwar?  Future wars that may involve
the United States will probably be non-nuclear, for two reasons.
First, the dismantling of the Soviet Union is likely to persist, with
further arms reductions making nuclear war highly unlikely.  Second,
the United States is ill-advised to make nuclear threats against non-
nuclear powers.

Besides the lack of central threat and the normative inhibitions
against using nuclear forces for coercive purposes, there is also a
practical reason for eschewing them in this context:  bullying could
drive an opponent into the arms of a nuclear protector, or spur
proliferation by the threatened party.  However, even a successful
proliferator will prefer to keep conflicts conventional, as the
United States will continue to maintain overwhelming counterforce and
countervalue advantages over all nascent nuclear adversaries.
Therefore, the likelihood that future wars, even major ones, will be
non-nuclear adds all the more reason to make an effort to optimize
our capabilities for conventional and unconventional wars by
developing a cyberwar doctrine.

In the body of strategic and operational thought surrounding war with
weapons of mass destruction, an antecedent of cyberwar is provided.
Nuclear counterforce strategies were very much interested in
destroying the key communications centers of the opponent, thereby
making it impossible for him to command and control far-flung nuclear
weapons.  The "decapitation" of an opponent's leadership was an
inherently cyber principle.  The dilemmas of mutual deterrence forced
this insight into warfighting to remain in a suspended state for some
decades.

Before leaving nuclear issues, we would note an exception in the case
of naval warfare.  Because the United States enjoys an overwhelming
maritime pre-eminence, it is logical that our potential adversaries
may seek ways to diminish or extinguish it.  Nuclear weapons may thus
grow attractive to opponents whose navies are small, if the pursuit
of their aims requires nullifying our sealift capabilities.  A
century ago, the French Jeune Ecole, by developing swift vessels
capable of launching a brand new weapon, the torpedo, sought to
counter the Royal Navy's power in international affairs.  Today,
latter-day navalists of continental or minor powers may be driven to
seek their own new weapons.[29]

Fortunately, the U.S. Navy has been following a path that elevates
the information and communication dimensions of war to high
importance.  For, at sea, to be located is to become immediately
vulnerable to destruction.  In fact, naval war may already be
arriving at a doctrine that looks a lot like cyberwar.  There may be
deep historical reasons for this, in that our naval examples, even
from the Napoleonic period, have a strong cyber character.


Suggested Next Steps for Research

Our ideas here are preliminary and tentative and leave many issues to
be sorted out for analysis.  Yet we are convinced that these are
exciting times for rethinking the theory and practice of warfare, and
that cyberwar should be one of the subjects of that rethinking.  This
is based on our assumption that technological and related
organizational innovations will continue moving in revolutionary
directions.

We suggest case studies to clarify what ought to be taken into
account in developing a cyberwar perspective.  As noted earlier,
these case studies should include the Vietnam and Gulf conflicts.
Combined with other materials (e.g., literature reviews, interviews)
about the potential effects of the information revolution, such
studies may help to identify the theoretical and operational
principles for developing a framework that serves not only for
analysis, but potentially also for the formulation of a doctrine that
may apply from strategic to tactical levels, and to high- and low-
intensity levels of conflict.  Such studies may also help distinguish
between the technological and the non-technological underpinnings of
cyberwar.

We suggest analytical exercises to identify what cyberwar, and the
different modalities of cyberwar, may look like in the early twenty-
first century when the new technologies should be more advanced,
reliable, and internetted than at present.  These exercises should
consider opponents that the United States may face in high- and low-
intensity conflicts.  The list might include armed forces of the
former Soviet Union, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and Cuba.  Cyberwar
against a country's command structure may have a special potency when
the country is headed by a  dictator whose base of national support
is narrow.[30]  Non-state actors should also be considered as
opponents, including some millennialist, terrorist, and criminal
(e.g., drug smuggling) organizations that cut across national
boundaries.  We expect that both cyberwar and netwar may be uniquely
suited to fighting non-state actors.

Moreover, we suggest that the exercises consider some potentially
unusual opponents and countermeasures.  The revolutionary forces of
the future may consist increasingly of wide-spread multi-
organizational networks that have no particular national identity,
claim to arise from civil society, and include aggressive groups and
individuals who are keenly adept at using advanced technology for
communications, as well as munitions.  How will we deal with that?
Can cyberwar (not to mention netwar) be developed as an appropriate,
effective response?  Do formal institutions have so much difficulty
combatting informal networks, as noted earlier, that the United
States may want to design new kinds of military units and
capabilities for engaging in network warfare?

All of the foregoing may lead to requirements for new kinds of net
assessments regarding U.S. cyberwar capabilities relative to those of
our potential opponents.  How much of an advantage does the United
States have at present?  How long will the advantage persist?  Such
assessments should compare not only the capabilities of all parties
to wage and/or withstand a cyberwar, but also their abilities to
learn, identify and work around an opponent's vulnerabilities.

Finally, despite the inherently futuristic tone of this thinkpiece,
two dangers are developing in the world that may be countered through
the skillful application of netwar and cyberwar techniques.  The
first comes from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
While the specifics of acquisition and timetables for development of
credible, secure arsenals are open to debate, American opposition to
proliferation is unquestioned; effective action must be taken now to
forestall or prevent it.

The prospects for proliferation in the post-cold war era create a
highly appropriate issue area for the application of netwar
techniques, since suasion will be much preferred to the use of
preventive force[31] in dealing with most nation-state actors
(including Germany and Japan, should either ever desire its own
nuclear weapons).  A netwar designed to dissuade potential
proliferators from acquiring such weapons might consist of a "full
court press" along the many networks of communication that link us to
them, including diplomatic, academic, commercial, journalistic, and
private avenues of interconnection.  The ideational aspect of the
netwar would concentrate on convincing potential proliferators that
they have no need for such weapons.  Obtaining them would create new
enemies and new risks to their survival, while the benefits would be
minuscule and fleeting.

The second danger likely to arise in the post-cold war world is to
regional security.  American defense spending is likely to continue
decreasing for at least the next decade.  U.S. forces will be drawn
down, and overseas deployments curtailed.  The number of air wings
and carrier battle groups will decrease.  Each of these developments
spells a lessened American capability to effect successful deterrence
against conventional aggression.  From South Korea to the South Asian
sub-continent, from the Persian Gulf to the Balkans and across the
territory of the former Soviet satellites to the Baltic Sea, American
forward presence will vary between modest and nonexistent.  Indeed,
when we consider the likely rise of age-old ideological, religious,
ethnic and territorial rivalries, we see a world in which regional
deterrence is going to be a problematic practice.

If regional wars are likely, and if American forces will be fewer and
farther away from most regions than in the past, then a cyberwar
doctrine may help to compensate for problems of distance and small
force size.  If we are correct about the implications of cyberwar,
that traditional force requirements against opponents varying in size
and strength no longer hold, then the United States ought to be able
to hurl back aggressors when it chooses, even with relatively small
forces.  General Colin Powell summarizes the essence of this notion
succinctly, based on his analysis of the Gulf War:

"A downsized force and a shrinking defense budget result in an
increased reliance on technology, which must provide the force
multiplier required to ensure a viable military deterrent....
Battlefield information systems became the ally of the warrior.  They
did much more than provide a service.  Personal computers were force
multipliers." (Powell, 1992).

While a cyberwar doctrine should provide us with robust war-fighting
capabilities against the largest regional aggressors, we must
recognize that the small size and (perhaps) unusual look of our
forces may have less of an "intimidation effect" on our future
adversaries, thereby vitiating crisis and deterrence stability.
There are two ways to mitigate this emergent dilemma.  First,
applying netwar techniques in regions that bear upon our interests
may provide early warning signals, and an opportunity to dissuade a
potential aggressor as soon as we become aware of his intentions.
The second means of shoring up regional deterrence consists of
signalling our resolve tacitly.  This may involve the deployment or
"show" of military force quite early in a crisis, and could even
include the exemplary use of our military capabilities.[32]  Indeed,
if this sort of signalling was aimed at targets suggested by cyberwar
doctrine, such as critical communication nodes, the aggressor's
capabilities for offensive action might come close to being nil from
the outset.

What might a cyberwar against a regional aggressor look like?  In
most cases, it may well follow a "Pusan-Inchon" pattern.[33]  First,
the aggressor's "knockout blow" would have to be blunted.  Then,
American forces would counterattack.  The burden of preventing a
complete overrun at the outset of a war would surely fall heavily
upon the U.S. Air Force and its ability to knock out the attacker's
communications and logistics.  The details will vary across regions,
as some attackers may be more vulnerable to strategic paralysis than
others.  For example, future Iraqi aggression against the Arabian
peninsula would depend on its ability to use a few roads and two
bridges across the Tigris River.  On the other hand, North Korea has
many avenues of advance to the south.

The forces needed to roll back aggression would likely be modest in
size.  Since the invader will have been blinded by the time U.S.
ground forces arrive, the latter will be able to strike where and
when they wish.  On the Arabian peninsula, for example, even an
invading army of a million men would not be able to hold out against
an American cyberwar, particularly if a defensive lodgement had been
maintained.  The attacker, not knowing where the Americans might
strike, would have to disperse his forces over a theater measured in
many hundreds of kilometers in each direction.  American air power
would blind him, and destroy his forces attempting to maneuver.
Then, counterattacking forces would strike where least expected,
destroying the invader's very ability to fight as a cohesive force.
As the Mongols defeated an army some ten times their size in the
campaign against Khwarizm, so modern cyberwarriors should be able
routinely to defeat much larger forces in the field.  Of course,
details will vary by region.  Again, the Korean example would be a
bit more complicated, although the lack of strategic depth on that
peninsula is more than offset by robust South Korean defensive
capabilities.

It seems clear that a cyberwar doctrine will give its able
practitioner the capability to defeat conventional regional
aggression between nation states decisively, at low cost in blood and
treasure.  Will it fare as well against unconventional adversaries?
This is a crucial question, as many, notably Van Creveld (1991), have
argued that war is being transformed by non-state actors, and by
smaller states that must ever think of new ways to fight and defeat
their betters.  Thus, crises will likely be characterized by large,
well-armed irregular forces, taking maximum advantage of familiar
terrain, motivated by religious, ethnic or tribal zeal.  Finally,
they may move easily within and between the "membranes" of
fractionated states.

Cyberwar may not provide a panacea for all conflicts of this type,
but it does create a new, useful framework for coping with them.  For
example, in the former Yugoslavia, where all of the above factors
have manifested themselves, the U.S. Army's AirLand Battle, or even
Operation Desert Storm, should not be used as models for analysis.
These frames of reference lead to thinking that an entire field army
(400,000-500,000 troops) is the appropriate tool for decisive
warfighting in this environment.  Instead, an intervention could
easily follow cyberwar's Pusan-Inchon approach to regional conflict.
For example, indigenous defenders in Bosnia and other areas of the
former Yugoslavia could be armed so that they could prevent any sort
of overrun (the campaign's "Pusan").  Next, a small combined arms
American task force, including no more than a division of ground
troops,[34] might strike opportunistically where and when it chose
(the "Inchon").  Enemy forces would be easily locatable from the air,
from radio intercepts, and by unmanned ground sensors, especially if
they try to move or fight.  The fact that the aggressors are
dispersed makes them easier to defeat in detail.  If they
concentrate, they fall prey to tremendous American firepower.

The Balkan crisis may prove to be a framing event for future
unconventional conflicts.  It may also provide an important case for
developing cyberwar doctrine in this sort of setting.  We note,
however, that our assessment does not imply support for intervention
in this case.

While the advent of cyberwar enables us to feel more comfortable
about the prospects for maintaining regional security in an era
likely to be characterized by American force drawdowns and
withdrawals, there is another concern associated with this sort of
warfighting capability.  Should the United States seek out coalition
partners when it fights future regional wars?  It seems obvious that
we should, since both international and domestic political problems
are mitigated by the vision of a group of nations marching arm in
arm, if not in step, against an aggressor.  However, we should be
concerned about trying to incorporate other nations' armed forces
into a cyberwar campaign.  Aside from difficulties with integration,
the United States should not be in any hurry to share a new approach,
particularly with allies who may have been recruited on an ad hoc
basis.  It's one thing to take a long-standing ally like Britain into
our confidence; Syria is quite another matter.  Perhaps this new
tension can be resolved by having our allies defend the lodgements,
the "Pusans," while we engage in the "Inchons."  It is ironic that
our ability to fight and win wars in accordance with the principles
of the information revolution may require us to withhold our new-
found insights, even from our friends and allies.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Carl Builder, Gordon McCormick, Jonathan Pollack,
Ken Watman, and Dean Wilkening for their comments on earlier drafts.
This article does not represent the views of RAND, its management, or
any of its sponsors.


FOOTNOTES

[1] Delbruck (1985 edn.) describes warfare as a dual phenomenon:  it
may be waged with either "exhaustion" or "annihilation" in mind.

[2] This notion borrows from an earlier Soviet notion of a scientific
technology revolution (STR).

[3] Weigley (1989: 196), quoting Van Creveld, (1989: 1).

[4] See Bell (1980), Beniger (1986), and Toffler (1990).

[5] The literature on these points is vast.  Recent additions
include:  Bankes and Builder (1991), Malone and Rockart (September
1991); Ronfeldt (1991); Sproull and Keisler (1991, and September
1991); Toffler (1990).

[6] Ronfeldt, "Institutions, Markets, and Networks," in preparation.

[7] Terms with "cyber-" as the prefix--e.g., cyberspace--are
currently in vogue among some visionaries and technologists who are
seeking names for new concepts related to the information revolution.
The prefix is from the Greek root kybernan, meaning to steer or
govern, and a related word kybernetes, meaning pilot, governor, or
helmsman.  The prefix was introduced by Norbert Wiener in the 1940s
in his classic works creating the field of "cybernetics" (which is
related to cybernetique, an older French word meaning the art of
government).  Some readers may object to our additions to the
lexicon, but we prefer them to alternative terms like "information
warfare," which has been used in some circles to refer to warfare
that focuses on C3I capabilities.  In our view, a case exists for
using the prefix in that it bridges the fields of information and
governance better than does any other available prefix or term.
Indeed, kybernan, the root of "cyber-" is also the root of the word
"govern" and its extensions.  Perhaps rendering the term in German
would help.  A likely term would be leitenkrieg, which translates
loosely as "control warfare" (Our thanks to Denise Quigley for
suggesting this term).

[8] We are indebted to Carl Builder for observing that the
information revolution may have as much impact on the context as on
the conduct of warfare, and that an analyst ought to identify how the
context may change before he or she declares how a military's conduct
should change.

[9] The difficult term is "information;" defining it remains a key
problem of the information revolution.  While no current definition
is satisfactory, as a rule many analysts subscribe to a hierarchy
with data at the bottom, information in the middle, and knowledge at
the top (some would add wisdom above that).  Like many analysts, we
often use the term information (or information-related) to refer
collectively to the hierarchy, but sometimes we use the term to mean
something more than data but less than knowledge.  Finally, one
spreading view holds that new information amounts to "any difference
that makes a difference."

[10] The importance of topsight is identified by Gelernter (1991:
52), who observes:  "If you're a software designer and you can't
master and subdue monumental complexity, you're dead:  your machines
don't work.  They run for a while and then sputter to a halt, or they
never run at all.  Hence, 'managing complexity' must be your goal.
Or, we can describe exactly the same goal in a more positive light.
We can call it the pursuit of topsight.  Topsight--an understanding
of the big picture is an essential goal of every software builder.
It's also the most precious intellectual commodity known to man."

[11] Van Creveld (1985:264) puts it this way:  "From Plato to NATO,
the history of command in war consists essentially of an endless
quest for certainty..."

[12] See Caven (1980).

[13] Brodie (1944) and Grimble (1978) describe Cochrane's methods in
some detail.

[14] Chambers (1985) is the principal reference to Mongol military
doctrine for this paper.  Curtin (1908) translated the original
Mongol sagas, rendering them with eloquence and coherence.  Lamb
(1927) remains an important exposition of Genghis Khan's approach to
strategy.

[15] Perhaps this is why the Mongols slaughtered besieged forces (and
civilian supporters) who resisted their attacks.  As word of this
brutality spread, fewer cities resisted (a gruesome example of
netwar).

[16] Domestic political strife within the Mongol empire also played a
part in halting operations.

[17] Kilawan also showed sensitivity to the importance of command and
control at the tactical level.  At the outset of the battle of Hims,
for example, he sent one of his officers, feigning desertion, over to
the Mongol commander, Mangku-Temur.  When close enough, the Mameluke
officer struck Temur in the face with his sword.  At the same moment
the Mamelukes attacked.  The Mongol staff officers, tending to Temur,
were thus distracted during the crucial, opening phase of the battle,
which contributed to their defeat.  See Chambers (1985: 160-162).

[18] See Liddell Hart (1931), wherein his early formulation of
armored maneuver warfare mentions the Mongols as a possible model for
blitzkrieg.

[19] The memoirs of Guderian (1972) and Mellenthin (1976) are replete
with examples of how radio communication allowed German armor to
concentrate fire until a target was destroyed, then shift to a new
target.  In particular, fire would be initially concentrated on enemy
tanks flying command pennants, as the Germans were aware of the radio
deficiencies of their foes.  Though the Russians were heavily
victimized by communication inferiority, even France, with its
superior numbers of heavier armed tanks, suffered in 1940 because,
while all armor had radios, only command vehicles could transmit.
The French also suffered because they deployed their tanks evenly
along the front instead of counterconcentrating them.  Finally, it is
interesting to note that Guderian began his career as a
communications officer.

[20] Stolfi (1992) contends that the German "right turn" into the
Ukraine fatally compromised Hitler's only chance of winning a war
with the Soviet Union by striking at the heart of its strategic
communications.  Liddell Hart (1970:157-170) refers to the debate
over whether to attack Moscow directly, or to destroy Soviet field
armies, as the "battle of the theories," which was won by the
"proponents of military orthodoxy."

[21] Mao (1961) bases his theoretical point about guerrilla warfare
on his experience in fighting the Japanese who, as the Americans
would in Vietnam, focused primarily on the disruption of tactical
communications.  Miles (1968) echoes Mao's point in his analysis of
the same conflict.  Lawrence's (1938) analysis of the Desert Revolt
is also confirmatory.

[22] See the earlier quotation from Sproull and Kiesler (1991).

[23] Posen (1984: 36).

[24] This is another new term that some visionaries and practitioners
have begun using.  For example, see Benedikt (1991).  It comes from
the seminal "cyberpunk" science-fiction novel by Gibson (1984).  It
is the most encompassing of the terms being tried out for naming the
new realm of electronic knowledge, information, and communications--
parts of which exist in the hardware and software at specific sites,
other parts in the transmissions flowing through cables or through
air and space.  General Powell (1992) nods in this direction by
referring to "battlespace" as including an "infosphere."

[25] Bellamy (1987) grapples with some of these issues in his
analysis of future land warfare.

[26] Note that the acclaimed U.S. intelligence in Desert Storm rarely
got to the division commanders; for them, every major encounter with
the enemy's forces reportedly was a surprise.  See Grier (1992).

[27] Waltz (1979) considers this phenomenon of "imitation" a major
factor in the process of "internal balancing" with which all nations
are continually occupied.  If a new military innovation is thought to
work, all will soon follow the innovator.  A good example of this is
the abrupt and complete shift of the world's navies from wooden to
metal hulls in the wake of the naval experience with ironclads in the
American Civil War.

[28] A classic example is the 1944 battle for Normandy.  Field
Marshal Montgomery's forces tied down the German Seventh Army,
allowing General Patton's Third Army to engage in a broad end run of
the German defenses.

[29] The authors are grateful to Gordon McCormick for his insights on
this topic.  Also on this point, see Arnett (1989).

[30] This last point is inspired by the thinking of RAND colleague
Ken Watman.

[31] There is a class of proliferator toward which our reluctance to
employ forceful measures will be diminished.  Iraq, Iran, North
Korea, Libya and Cuba are some of the nations whose threatened
acquisition of weapons of mass destruction may justify intervention.
The notion that the United States should adopt a doctrine of
"selective preventive force" against "outlaw" states is discussed in
Arquilla (1992a).

[32] Arquilla (1992b) discusses this issue in detail.

[33] This notion is drawn from the Korean War, where U.S. forces
began their involvement by preventing the overrun of the Korean
peninsula in the opening months of the war.  The Pusan perimeter held
a portion of South Korea free, serving as a magnet for North Korean
forces.  The amphibious counterattack at Inchon, far from the battle
fronts, threw the invaders into complete disarray.

[34] Kenney and Dugan (1992) call for a "Balkan Storm" without
employing any American ground forces.  We disagree with this
approach, rooted as it is in theories of "limited liability" and "air
power exceptionalism."  Nonetheless, they do identify many of the key
types of aerial cyberwar tactics that might be employed, even if
their omission of an American ground component would seriously dilute
any gains achieved.


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