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Chapter Two
CYBERWAR IS COMING!
*
John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt
“Knowledge must become capability.”
—Carl von Clausewitz,
On War
EMERGENT MODES OF CONFLICT
Suppose that war looked like this: Small numbers of your 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. Your forces can do this because they are well prepared, make
room for maneuver, concentrate their firepower rapidly in unex-
pected places, and have superior command, control, and informa-
tion systems that are decentralized to allow tactical initiatives, yet
provide the central commanders with unparalleled intelligence and
“topsight” for strategic purposes.
For your forces, 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 op-
*
John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “Cyberwar is Coming!”
Comparative Strategy
, Vol
12, No. 2, Spring 1993, pp. 141–165. Copyright 1993 Taylor & Francis, Inc. Used by
permission.
23
 24 In Athena’s Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age
ponent sees only its 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 Gulf
War against Iraq. But our vision is inspired more by the example of
the Mongols of the 13th 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 infor-
mation. 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
warfighting capability that we envision, which is inspired by the
Mongol example but drawn mainly from our analysis of the informa-
tion revolution, may allow America to protect itself and its far-flung
friends and interests, regardless of the size and strength of our po-
tential future adversaries.
The Advance of Technology and Know-How
Throughout history, military doctrine, organization, and strategy
have continually undergone profound changes due in part to techno-
logical breakthroughs. The Greek phalanx, the combination of gun
and sail, the
levee en masse
, the
blitzkrieg
, the Strategic Air Com-
mand—history is filled with examples in which new weapon,
propulsion, communication, and transportation technologies pro-
vide a basis for advantageous shifts in doctrine, organization, and
strategy that enable the innovator to avoid exhausting attritional
battles and pursue instead a form of “decisive” warfare.
1
Today, a variety of new technologies are once 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 decep-
Cyberwar Is Coming! 25
tion; new information and communications systems that improve
Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (C
3
I) func-
tions; and futuristic designs for space-based weapons and for auto-
mated and robotic warfare. In addition, virtual reality systems are
being developed for simulation and training. Many of these ad-
vances enter into a current notion of a Military Technology Revolu-
tion (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 technol-
ogy
per se
, but rather the organization of technology, broadly de-
fined, that is important. Russell Weigley describes the situation this
way:
. . . the technology of war does not consist only of instruments in-
tended 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 innova-
tions in organization and management theory. Sea changes are oc-
curring in how information is collected, stored, processed, commu-
nicated 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.
26 In Athena’s Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age
Advanced information and communications systems, properly ap-
plied, can improve the efficiency of many kinds of activities. But im-
proved 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 effi-
ciency 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 tech-
nologies 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-tech-
nological 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 redis-
tributes power, often to the benefit of what may be considered
weaker, smaller actors. It crosses borders and redraws the bound-
aries of offices and responsibilities. It expands the spatial and tem-
poral horizons that actors should take into account. And thus it gen-
erally 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,
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