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The Military The Internet

Sun Tzu 2.0: The Future of Cyberwarfare 77

Posted by samzenpus from the use-of-energy dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Cyberwar and its ramifications have been debated for some time and the issue has been wrought with controversy. Few would argue that cyber-attacks are not prevalent in cyberspace. However, does it amount to a type of warfare? Let's break this down by drawing parallels from a treatise by 6th century military general, Sun Tzu, who authored one of the most definitive handbooks on warfare, "The Art of War." His writings have been studied throughout the ages by professional militaries and can be used to not only answer the question of whether or not we are in a cyberwar, but how one can fight a cyber-battle.
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Sun Tzu 2.0: The Future of Cyberwarfare More

Sun Tzu 2.0: The Future of Cyberwarfare

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  • If Sun Tzu had one of those shiny new laptops !

  • Know thyself... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GoonDuIO ( 2724101 ) on Thursday July 30, 2015 @04:32AM (#50212567)
    and know your enemy's secrets and you will win a hundred battles. Or a hundred blackmails. You know what, forget about the 'thyself' bit, just know your enemy's dirty laundry.

    • Re:Know thyself... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Thursday July 30, 2015 @04:42AM (#50212585)
      The "knowing yourself" part is to know your own security vulnerabilities, capabilities etc. Knowing your enemy's dirty laundry is fine only if they don't know yours. The essence of that Sunzi quote is about winning decisively at little to no cost to yourself. Winning a hundred battles is hard if you have nothing to fight with after the first battle, and knowing where you stand (and that you can stand) after any number of battles is key.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Sun Tzu was saying exactly that.

        The rest of that goes something like "know your enemy but not yourself and you will always be defeated"

        His point was that you have to know your own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of your enemy.

        So you can exploit your enemies weakness while not wasting effort attacking their strengths head on. But at the same time protecting yourself by looking strong where you are weak and weak where you are strong so your opponent wastes their effort where it does nothing.

        If you

  • "Cyberwar and its ramifications have been debated for some time and the issue has been wrought with controversy"

    No serious techie uses 'cyber' in a sentence. If you do want to go online and stay safe from hacking, then buy a computer that can't be compromised by opening an email attachment [wikipedia.org] or clicking on a malicious URL (Uniform Resource Locator [computerhope.com]).

    • No serious techie uses 'cyber' in a sentence.

      That is the term being used by politicians and the military, so (as with "hacker") techies will just have to get used to the popular usage.

      • @tehcyder: "That is the term being used by politicians and the military, so (as with "hacker") techies will just have to get used to the popular usage."

        Only if you're happy to go into a room full of techies and sound totally stupid ..

  • If it is some kind of war (Score:3)

    by Lennie ( 16154 ) on Thursday July 30, 2015 @05:07AM (#50212635)

    I wouldn't be surprised if it's closest to a guerrilla war.

    It's hard to recognize the attackers before and after the battle, they are part of the crowd.

    With Anonymous and these other groups from for example Russia or Arabic countries, they might have no (direct) affiliation with any state. Just the 'cause'.

    • "I wouldn't be surprised if it's closest to a guerrilla war."

      Exactly. Sun Tzu did have some aspects of asymmetric warfare in TAOW, but Mr. Herberger is making sweeping generalizations based on an out-moded concept of warfare. TAOW was based in a time where only larger entities (political or economic) had the capacity to project force at a scale larger than just the immediately local, if just for logistical reasons. In the space that electronic warfare will take place (because cyberspace is more then just th

  • Poppycock! (Score:3)

    by Lurks ( 526137 ) on Thursday July 30, 2015 @05:32AM (#50212697) Homepage

    This really is a load of crap. Extract a bunch of fairly obvious stratagems from a received text, an English translation of generally dubious worth, and apply it to cyber warfare.... unsurprisingly it fails to stack up particularly well. Sunzi was almost exclusively fixed on the idea that armies were controlled by single entities and that virtually all actions under taken by them had cost, and thus could be factored in a set of trade-offs, or expert application of game theory, before game theory was a thing. It was insightful at the time, to say the least, it can still be useful to state the more obvious strategems of any conflict but to claim relevance today where the agents existiing in dramatically different contexts is weak sauce indeed. Sunzi, in particular, would be horrified that any engagement would essentially exist in perpetuity, if the sunzi bingfa (art of war) was indeed written by one person, then he would be horrified by the layout of modern cyber warfare, and would certainly be quite unable to add anything to the idea that one may have to defend against any number of actors, each of which potentially using different strategies at virtually no cost..

    • Re:Poppycock! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Thursday July 30, 2015 @05:59AM (#50212793)
      Where do you get the idea that Sunzi was fixated on the idea of armies controlled by a single entity? He explicitly states, in one instance, that the generals on the field can disobey a prince. Sunzi's idea of war was about coordination of multiple entities each doing their own thing to win a war.

      And I contest that contexts are dramatically different. The contexts for tactics may be different, but overall strategies are still the same. Identify weak spots while hide or disguise your own. Borrow your enemies resources to attack them. Usage of spies. etc etc. The main reason why Sunzi was opposed to protracted warfare was the cost to the citizens. If what you say is true, that costs in cyberwarfare are negligible, then that concern of Sunzi doesn't apply. However, given how much money has to be spent on something like the NSA and still be completely ineffective, then your critique is wrong and the concern of protracted warfare does apply and the strategies to suit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        "given how much money has to be spent on something like the NSA and still be completely ineffective,"

        And you know this? How? They've been sending you memos?

        • Why don't you read the news. Luckily, you're on a news site where I'm sure this fact has been reported many times.

          • Luckily, you're on a news site where I'm sure this fact has been reported many times.

            Opinion. Not fact.

            Note that if NSA is doing its job properly, you'll never hear about its successes. So it could be 99.9% successful and fail 0.1% of the time, and you'd still hear about nothing but its failures in the news.

            Likewise, of course, for 0.1% success and 99.9% failure.

            Which is why any information about the NSA's functionality is an opinion. Even if it's promulgated by Congress, President, NSA head, whatever

            • If they were doing a good job, Snowden would not have been able to leak.

            • Note that if NSA is doing its job properly, you'll never hear about its successes.

              Don't we hear about foiled terrorist plots and infiltrated groups all the time?

              Also, one might argue that as an institution in a democratic society, NSA isn't doing its job properly unless you, the citizen, hear enough about its successes and failures to form an informed opinion about it. Because that's what democracy is: subjecting the institutions - both organizations and traditions - of the society to the will of the peopl

      • Sunzi's idea of war was about coordination of multiple entities each doing their own thing to win a war.

        Exactly, that text was fixated in bridging the gap from second to third generation warfare and was still focused on massed maneuvers of infantry against well defined targets. The world saw first hand the pinnacle of that during the German Blitzkrieg and by the time the Cold War between the US and the USSR set in the it was done with it. Traditional war between super power states had set the barrier to entry too high for new players to enter in and so the Maoist model of warfare has become predominant. Every

        • Again, no. The need for coordination does not necessarily translate to massed maneuvers. Sunzi was not concerned with tactics because they change with technology. Sunzi only discusses principles that applies regardless of the organization.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      True. No single English translation will ever fully capture the "Bing Fa". ("Strategic methodologies" would be an alternative rendition.) The Denma group's translation is arguably the closest so far, but you need to read a few different versions, really.

      Plus there's actually another 7 ancient Chinese books on war and strategy, including the Sun Bin (possibly a descendent of Sun Wu) which was rediscovered in the early 70s. Just focusing on the Sun Tzu and shoehorning it into every situation is simplistic at

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by lhowaf ( 3348065 )

      This really is a load of crap.

      Absolutely! Applying The Art of War to cyberwarfare is pretty goofy. There are many actors with many motivations, targets, aspirations, strategies (or lack thereof) and tactics. The general principles can apply if you are focused on a particular opponent but are meaningless to "cyberwarfare" at large.

  • If your operating system isn't smart enough to require a list of resources to feed a program you want it to run, you lose.

    If you built your entire civilization on such a stupid foundation, you lose.

    Anyone smarter than that can wipe you off the face of the earth, unless you can survive long enough to correct your deeply embedded mistake.

  • Disclaimer: Like many other, I abhor and reject all terms including "cyber" except "cyberspace" in its proper meaning (see William Gibson's novel "Neuromancer") which has very little in common with the Internet or any other present-day technology.

    That said, yes - "cyberwar" is entirely possible and would be immensely harmful. But no, we have not seen anything even slightly related to full-blown "cyberwar". If it happened, we would notice: trust me. It would blow the doors off computer systems most people ha

    • As so often before, Henry Baker sums up the issue to perfection:

      "Once again, in our asymmetric world, people who live in glass houses shouldn't be throwing rocks—especially at those who don't live in glass houses". http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks... [ncl.ac.uk]

      It's quite certain that, of all the nations in the world, the USA has far more to lose from "cyberwar" than any other.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Opyros ( 1153335 )

      Like many other, I abhor and reject all terms including "cyber" except "cyberspace" in its proper meaning

      What about "cybernetics"?

    • "I abhor and reject all terms including "cyber""

      That reminds me of a business teacher that I once had. She told the class that any business with the word "cyber" in it would simply fail - which I found ridiculous.

      ...especially since I had just left a company who used that word in their business name and was a multi-million dollar e-commerce company.

      • The teacher's assertion was different from mine. I said that I don't like such words. She made a statement about what kind of business would succeed or fail. Her mistake was to neglect the published views of such luminaries as:

        "You’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public".
        - Phineas T Barnum (Barnum’s Law)

        "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public".
        - H. L. Mencken

  • if your enemy doesn't like you on their networks, they can always disconnect or turn off their machines.

    the only way to win is not to play.

  • He posts a point like "intended target must stay the same" or and then gives more support for the opposing side.
    I could easy take every one of his points and argue the exact opposite probably more effectively than him.
    Most of the cyber attacks today seem to be undirected from rogue disconnected parties with undefined or
    constantly changing goals and no way to achieve any sort of victory unless victory is defined as "causing chaos".

  • Minor (!) inaccuracy in the article: Sun Tzu did not live in the 6th century but the 6th century B.C.

    Off by more than a thousand years...

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