3 July 2010

A sends:

Manufacturing Consent and Cyberwar

The inevitable occurred this week as The Economist broached the topic of cyberwar with a couple of articles in its July 3rd issue. Note the dramatic mushroom cloud and its intimations of mass destruction.

The first article concludes that "countries should agree on more modest accords, or even just informal 'rules of the road' that would raise the political cost of cyber-attacks." It also makes vague references to "greater co-operation between governments and the private sector." When attribution is a lost cause (and it is), international treaties are a meaningless because there's no way to determine if a participant has broken them. The second recommendation is even more alarming because it's using a loaded phrase that, in the past couple of years, has been wielded by those who advocate Orwellian solutions.

The next article is a morass of conflicting messages. It presumes to focus on cyberwar, yet the bulk of the material deals with cybercrime and run-of-the-mill espionage. Perhaps this is because the author is grasping for examples to impress the reader with.

Then there's also the standard ploy of hypothetical scenarios: depicting how we might be attacked and what the potential outcome of these attacks could be.

The author shows his true colors in closing when he concludes with the ominous warning that terrorists "prefer the gory theatre of suicide-bombings to the anonymity of computer sabotage—for now."

What disturbs me the most is that The Economist never goes beyond a superficial analysis of the topic to examine what's driving all of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Perhaps that would be dysfunctional, as it might lead the press to investigate itself.

To help shed light on what's taking place in the body politic, read through the material linked below and then go back and re-visit the articles in The Economist.

http://www.belowgotham.com/LD-2010-WP.pdf

http://www.belowgotham.com/LD-2010-Slides.pdf

P.S. there's a Cryptome quote on slide 69.