======================================================================== GEORGETOWN ESSAYS ON INFORMATION WARFARE Volume 1, Number 9 Dorothy E. Denning, Editor May 3, 1999 Computer Science Department Georgetown University ======================================================================== When Computers are Weapons: Information Warfare and the Security Dilemma by Timothy Lunardi Despite their myriad of ideological differences, almost every scholar and practitioner of international security agrees that there are two salient features of the global political system: it is anarchic, i.e., there is no higher authority to which states may appeal for redress of grievances; and, consequently, states operate on the basis of self-help in pursuing their policy goals. From this accurate, albeit bleak, summing of the world, a wealth of concepts and models have been developed which serve as predictive tools. One such idea, and indeed perhaps the most famous and oft-discussed, is the so-called security dilemma. Following on the age old logic of the prisoners dilemma and building upon the findings of behavioral science research, the security dilemma maxim dictates that under conditions short of full and lasting peace any action which one state takes to ensure its security (a military build-up, change in troop distributions, the signing of a collective self-defense pact) will make another state feel less secure. This second state, then, will often take actions to ensure its security which will make either the first state or some other state feel less secure. The spiral can be drawn on practically ad infinitum. In the days of the Cold War and even today, the security dilemma was and is a formidable challenge to policymakers seeking any general decline in overall military tensions worldwide. Conventional and nuclear arms races have been born of the security dilemma and sustained far beyond what might appear to be their logical extremes. Wars such as the 1967 Six Days War in the Middle East have begun because a security dilemma escalated beyond control. In short, the existence of a widespread security dilemma is, or at least can produce, a dire state of affairs. The rise of the information age, once heralded as a potential solution to security dilemmas, may in fact be creating a new generation of more dangerous and more intractable ones. The logic is simple. As states place increased emphasis on the role which information warfare can play both as a force multiplier and a locus of operations in-and-of itself, any steps which one state undertakes to enhance its defensive or offensive information warfare posture will inherently make other states feel threatened. In traditional security dilemmas, tanks, bombers, and soldiers could easily be counted and so some level of reason injected into debates among policymakers in the vulnerable state. Not so with most tools of information warfare. Every computer, every college graduate with a computer science degree, every new phone line can be seen as an enhancement of a given countrys information warfare capabilities. Whereas the line dividing actions which precipitate a security dilemma and those which clearly do not were once relatively clear, its is easy to understand how they disappear when information war-fighting becomes a real part of national security calculus. What an adversary or potential adversary plans to do with new military hardware may be readily inferred. What those same states intend to do with a shipment of Pentium III processors cannot. Moreover, one traditional mechanism employed to temper the severity and duration of security dilemmas, namely the acquisition of forces and the adoption of policies which can only be construed as defensive, is much more difficult to use when talking of information warfare. From the limited and often partially inaccurate information which comprises the bulk of intelligence support to most governments, national security planners may find it difficult to know whether certain dual use technologies are being acquired by rivals for defensive or offensive purposes. In addition, for at least the next decade or more it is doubtful that less technologically-inclined states will possess the expertise necessary to make a proper determination as to the likely use of a given item. Under such conditions, self-interested states will have little choice to assume that their rivals are enhancing their offensive operational posture. Enter the security dilemma once more - and with a vengeance. What solutions to this budding problem exist? Few if any, is the unfortunate reply. No meaningful steps have been taken to establish workable confidence-building measures on information warfare in tense regions. In fact, at this very moment Arab and Israeli negotiators are discussing regimes designed to deal with issues ranging from nuclear proliferation to offshore fishing rights. Not one of those working groups deals with measures to stave off an information arms race. That attitude is widespread and it stands to be destructive. When the atom became a weapon, few predicted and fewer prepared for the security dilemma which would drag the world into the Cold War. Now that the computer has become a weapon, do we really want to commit the same mistake? Timothy Lunardi is a Senior in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service studying International Security and the Middle East. E-mail: lunardit@gusun.georgetown.edu. Copyright 1999 Timothy Lunardi. ======================================================================== Georgetown Essays on Information Warfare features essays by students in COSC 511, Information Warfare: Terrorism, Crime, and National Security, at Georgetown University. Outside contributions will also be considered and should be sent to the editor at denning@cs.georgetown.edu. The opinions expressed in the essays do not represent those of Georgetown University, the Computer Science Department, or the editor. This publication can be redistributed. There is no subscription list. COSC 511 home page: www.cs.georgetown.edu/~denning/cosc511 Georgetown Essays on IW:www.cs.georgetown.edu/~denning/infosec/iw-essays ========================================================================