[iwar] What is a war?

From: Gary Warner (gar@askgar.com)
Date: 2001-07-10 09:11:54


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From: Gary Warner <gar@askgar.com>
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Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:11:54 -0500
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Subject: [iwar] What is a war?
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An interesting point emerged in the recent "CyberWar" between China and
the USA.

In today's technology environment, it may be possible for the first time
for individual groups and citizens in first world nations to carry out a
war without the blessing or knowledge of their respective governments.
(Tribal wars and guerilla conflicts in the third world are another
case).

In the USA it has been a tradition that "War" occurred when Congress or
the President declared it to be so.  Large deployments of our armed
forces followed or coincided with such declarations.  While individuals
or groups of individuals could engage in armed combat, their capacity
for wide-scale damage was rather limited.  Even "terrorists" have had
their actions limited in scope, unless they had a government sponsor,
primarily due to the expense of targeting and coordinating a multiple
site attack.

In today's Internet environment, it is quite conceivable that a handful
of individuals, having planted "remote control agents" in an automated
fashion across tens or even hundreds of thousands of computers, could
simultaneously attack an enormous number of strategic targets.  If these
individuals declared themselves to be "at war", and the nation, nations,
or organizations with which they were at war retaliated in force, would
it be a war?

_-_
gar


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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-09-29 21:08:37 PDT