By Dr. James Norrie
Recent disclosures by Symantec and the New York Times suggest a recent Chinese cybersecurity hack against U.S. interests involved re-purposing and then attacking us with a cyberweapon using previously deployed, NSA-manufactured hacking code. They had intercepted after it was used against them.
The age of unwinnable cyberwar is upon us.
Think of this situation as analogous to neighbors throwing rocks at each other. Obviously, the first thrown rock is easily retrieved and re-launched at the opposing side. And subsequently so. This can go on forever until one side either gains strength in additional attackers, or escalates by deploying a new weapon.
At that point, one side prevails, “winning” the war. For nations, the advantages of war have always been justified as securing a strategic, economic or cultural/religious gain. We typically fight wars to support ambitions of dominance.
With the range of modern weaponry in warfare, they are so destructive they leave nothing to “throw back”. Once deployed, the weapons destroy and are destroyed. This is why technology matters more in modern warfare than ever before because technology advantages win ground wars for nation states. Easy right?
But does that thinking apply to the concept of cyberwar? Is any technical advantage really sustainable in cyberspace now? We had no proof that an offensive cyberweapon could be intercepted, repurposed and thrown back at us, although as professionals in the field we knew it was theoretically possible. In fact, the NSA has always feared exactly that: a purely level playing field where as quickly as new cyber hacks are developed and deployed, they are repurposed and redeployed by the enemy. And now we have absolute proof of this.
So, what if the very concept of cyberwar is flawed in a sense of never being able to actually get a sustainable, winning advantage? Where new technology instantly becomes a source of an almost instant counter-attack, leveling the playing field? Where permanent advantage in cyberspace becomes impossible to achieve and maintain, defeating the very concept of cyberwar ever being winnable?
If one accepts that possibility, it takes us globally to a different point of resolution: a situation demanding co-operation and coordination to set supra-national rules for how to protect a global asset for mutual advantage and gain instead of simply the unsustainable gain of the temporarily technically mighty. To accomplish this requires that we return to the meta-physical view of cyberspace as a “place”, much like the oceans or space, which we all need to protect for the greater good.
To accomplish this, we have to eliminate incentives for nation states to engage in cyberwarfare.
Here are the requirements: first, the leading nations of the world currently battling for supremacy in cyberspace (primarily the United States, Russian and China and their associated allies) must reconcile to the view of there being no potential to win permanent advantage in cyberspace. That requires an aspirational leap of some note.
While utopian to its core, and seemingly unlikely, as each nation faces a counter-attack in kind of a weapon or advantage they thought was uniquely theirs, this dawning realization will become more real. There will be a reckoning to the essential idea of never being able to win the war in cyberspace. This could remove the strategic advantage of engaging in cyberwar.
The second obvious requirement would be for those nations to secure their own cybersecurity assets better, and those of their resident citizens and companies, as their first priority (defensive cybersecurity). This would provide less and less economic incentive for the other nations to try and gain even a temporary advantage in cyberspace because the value of the advantage falls. This could mostly remove the economic incentive for war in cyberspace.
Lastly, we come to the question of eliminating the cultural advantage of cyberwarfare, which may actually be the most difficult détente to achieve.
Many nations are vying for control in cyberspace today, trying to claim a cultural victory. They do it in the name of “democracy”, or “the free flow of information” and “fighting imperial repression”, etc. Or they do it to ensure that their own world view is sustained and supported to validate the superiority of their own political and economic system.
These are often questions of national ego or status, and perhaps harder to relinquish as a result. Big nations always want to be seen as superpowers and what better advantage than controlling cyberspace, right? But we must get to a new place for the ravages and damages of cyberwarfare will shortly no longer be worth the potential gains.
Because cyberwar is not a winnable proposition – for anyone, anytime and now evermore.
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