A brief history of Cyber warfare theory.

In the beginning, there were the theorists. The US government looked at its thinktanks, and said "Tell us what you think might happen. Tell us the future of Cyber warfare," and so the thinktanks went to thier underground bunkers, postured and postulated, and came up with a scary picture of what Cyberwar would look like.

The government painted picture of cyber war was one of cloaks and daggers. hostile states infiltrating eachothers networks. Secrets being stolen, data being collected. Communications would be jammed, mainframes and intranets would come crashing down under Denial of Service assaults. Satelites would go dark, nuclear weapons would be detonated purely for thier Electromagnetic pulse properties, the ability to fry all electronices for miles around.

Of course the government was wrong, for the most part. You can't blame the government think tanks for trying, but you must wonder if we could have possibly saved money by just asking Madame Cleo to read the cards for a good idea of the future of cyberwarfare.

Granted, there are cyber spies out there. The Chinese government for one is infamous for attempting to hack into DOD computers. But does cyber spying really count as cyber warfare? In my opinion, no. Spying has always been prevelant. Machiavelli and Sun Tzu both wrote reams about the topic. Spying is business as usual. Spying is the war that is present in the absence of war. Enemies spy on eachother, allies spy on each other. Diplomats spy, and are granted political immunity to ensure their safety while doing it. The internet just provides the spy world with yet another dimension to operate in. Some spies skulk in the night, some dive through dumpsters in search of documents, and some hack the internet.

And what of all the DDOS and EMP pulse weapons? What about GPS and comm satellite jamming? Sorry, close but not quite also. Signals intelligence and electronic warfare has been part of the military equation for quite some time too. In the tactical environment it takes the form of chaff and flares, Radar jamming, radio jamming. And spyplanes that study enemy radio and radar systems. Yet again, the internet merely gives the enemy another dimension to practice a new form of the same old game.

No, we're talking about Cyber War. A new and complete form of warfare. A form of warfare where the internet isn't a side show, but the show.

Anonymous now practices this form of warfare. Its entire Command, control, and communications infrastructure is based online. Its propaganda machine is based online. Its leaders value and impact is fundamentally linked with their knowledge and ability to utilize the internet and the technology to their advantage. The only real world offline activities are the peaceful protests that they coordinate. Those are coordinated online, afterwards the videos are posted online as part of the propaganda machine. It lives on the internet, it fights on the internet, it would be nothing without the internet.

So what is anonymous? No one knows. Its not an organization, its not a club. Its not a society. It can't even really be defined as "A group of people..." Anonymous is an unknown number of individuals who has declared a cyber war on the church of Scientology due to a reason that is personal to each member of anonymous. There are no leaders. There are no foot soldiers. Coordination and participation is entirely voluntary. Terrorist groups are arranged in small cells. Tiny groups of people isolated from the rest of the organization for the purpose of maintaining operational and information security. The survival and successfulness of the cell is entirely dependent on these security measures. They must appear normal, they must go unnoticed. If they are detected, the damage must be minimized, for that reason they operate in secrecy and with a minimal amount of personal data. Anonymous takes the principles and elevates them to the Forefront. Individual members are a cell of one. Most terrorists are tripped up by their inability to assimiliate into a hostile environment, and their own pride and ego. Anonymous members pride themselves on the key to their undetectability. Their anonymity.

When you take the one aspect of your operatoins that is linked to your survival and effectiveness, and make it a key tenet of your culture, you are rewarded with a combat unit that is surprisingly resilient. Anonymous has done just that.

That is the strengths of anonymous. Of course, there are weaknessses. Those I will probably expound upon in the next post.