DEALING WITH RANDOM TERRORIST INFORMATION WARFARE

---

During the 1970s and 1980s, political extremism and terrorism frequently focused on ‘national liberation’ and economic issues. The collapse of the Soviet bloc, and the ending of its covert funding and encouragement of terrorism led to a decline in the militant and violent left-wing terrorist groups that were a feature of the age.

The 1990s through the present time have seen the development of a new terrorism: Random Terrorist Information Warfare. This is not to say that state-backed terrorism has ceased, but rather that the spectrum of terrorism has widened. This new extremism is frequently driven by religious fervor, is transnational, sanctions extreme violence, and may often be millennialist. The new terrorism may seek out military or government targets, but it also seeks out symbolic civilian targets, and the victims have mostly been innocent civilians (Alfred P. Murrah Building, Oklahoma City; World Trade Center, New York; AMIA Headquarters, Buenos Aires, etc.).

Growing concern about this new terrorism has been paralleled by concern about the employment of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs). ICTs offer a new dimension for political extremists and terrorists. They allow the diffusion of command and control; they allow boundless new opportunities for communication; and they allow the players to target the information stores, processes, and communications of their opponents. The sophistication of the modern nation-state, and its dependency on computer-based ICTs, make the state ever more vulnerable.

The use of ICTs to influence, modify, disrupt, or damage a nation-state, its institutions, or population by influencing the media, or by subversion, has been called “netwar.” The full range of weapons in the cyberspace armory can be employed in netwar—from propaganda campaigns at one level to interference with databases and networks at the other. What particularly distinguishes netwar from other forms of war is that it targets information and communications, and may be used to alter thinking or disrupt planned actions. In this sense, it can be distinguished from earlier forms of warfare—economic wars that target the means of production, and political wars that target leadership and government.

Netwar is, therefore, of particular interest to those engaged in non-military war, or those operating at sub-state level. Clearly, nation-states might also consider it as an adjunct to military war or as an option prior to moving on to military war. So far, however, it appears to be of greater interest to extremist advocacy groups and terrorists. Because there are no physical limits or boundaries, netwar has been adopted by groups who operate across great distances or transnationally. The growth of such groups, and their growing powers in relation to those of nation-states, suggests an evolving power-based relationship for both. War in the future is more likely to be waged between such groups and states rather than between states.

Most modern adversaries of nation-states, in the realm of low-intensity conflict—such as international terrorists, single-issue extremists, and ethnic and religious extremists—are organized in networks, although their leadership may sometimes be hierarchical. Law enforcement and security agencies, therefore, often have difficulty in engaging in low-intensity conflict against such networks because they are ill-suited to do so. Their doctrine, training, and modus operandi has, all too often, been predicated on combating a hierarchy of command, like their own.

Only now are low-intensity conflict and terrorism recognized as “strategic” threats to nation-states, and countries that, until very recently, thought that terrorism was something that happened elsewhere, have become victims themselves. The Tokyo subway attack by the Aum Shinriko, the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9-11 terrorist attacks, would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Not only was the civil population unprepared but also the law enforcement population. And this was true despite clear warning signs that such attacks were in the offing.

Cyberspace is becoming a new arena for political extremists: The potential for physical conflict to be replaced by attacks on information infrastructures has caused states to rethink their concepts of warfare, threats, and national assets at a time when information is recognized as a national asset. The adoption of new information technologies and the use of new communication media, such as the Internet, creates vulnerabilities that can be exploited by individuals, organizations, and states.

Also, the arrival of the Internet has provided the first forum in history for all the disaffected to gather in one place to exchange views and reinforce prejudices. It is hardly surprising, for example, that the right-wing militias favorite method of communication is e-mail and that forums on the Internet are the source of many wild conspiracy theories that drive the media.

Preeminent amongst the extremists and terrorist groupings who have entered cyberspace faster and more enthusiastically than others, are the Far Right, that is white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and radical Islamists. Others, such as eco-extremists and the Far Left appear to be slower in seizing the opportunities available.

What characterizes these two groupings are their transnational natures. The Far Right is increasingly active in the USA and Europe, but, in contrast to its ideological roots in the 1920s and 1930s, it seeks now to unite a white Anglo-Saxon, or European-originating, entity in a rear-guard action to oppose centralized democratic government and return to some imagined past world in which an armed, racially pure, white man can live untroubled by the police, the Inland Revenue, and the world banking system. The Islamist diaspora, now spread worldwide, seeks a return to divine-ruled states (or even one transnational state) in which all Muslims will live under the norms and laws of the Saudi Arabian peninsula in the first and second centuries of the Common Era. These types of organizations make them ideal users of networks and proponents of netwar. Their ideas and their use of cyberspace will be further discussed in Chapter 14, “The Information Warfare Arsenal and Tactics of Terrorist Rogues.”

Although the use of ICTs to enhance command and control and enhance communication is apparent among Islamist extremists and among the militia movement and Far Right in America, it is less so amongst Far Right and other extremists in other parts of the world. This clearly reflects the higher ICT access in North America. Fears by western governments that their national infrastructures may be a target for information warfare or cyberterrorism may be well-founded, but the evidence so far is that sub-state groups at least, use ICTs mainly for propaganda, secure communications, intelligence gathering, and funds management.

It has been noted by one observer that the Internet has not replaced other communications media for the Far Right, and that its largest use in this regard has been to advertise the sale of non-Internet-related propaganda, such as books, audiotapes, and videos. Nor has the Internet led to an increase in mobilization. The Seattle-based Coalition For Human Dignity observed that Far Right events in the United States, which were heavily promoted on the Internet only, were in fact failures.

For some on the American Far Right, the Internet has become an end in itself. Surfing the Net has replaced real action. It is a measure of how degenerate and weak the U.S.’s movement has become, that some people actually think this is a good thing. Not only do individuals want risk-free revolution, they now want people-free revolution. Here lies the great danger of the computer for everyone who uses it. It allows individuals to live and work interacting with a machine rather than with people.

However, it does not pay to be complacent; extremists and terrorists are increasingly information-technology literate. Unless law enforcement and national security agencies can move quickly, they will leave national infrastructures defenseless. Fore example, these terror networks understand the Internet, and know that law enforcement agencies lag far behind in both skills and available technologies.

Therefore, what is significant for the Far Right and its use of the Internet is that it possesses the potential to offer the relatively small numbers of people involved a means to communicate, develop a sense of common purpose, and create a virtual home symbolically—the Internet combines both intimacy and remoteness. These properties make it uniquely suitable for maintaining relationships among groups that are prone to attrition, because forms of association can be established at a social and geographical distance.

Although some futurologists warn of an electronic Pearl Harbor, the reality is that terrorists have not yet resorted to strategic information warfare. What is apparent, however, is that warfare is shifting toward attacking civilian targets and that sub-state terrorists and other extremists are increasingly targeting civilian infrastructures.

Increasingly, the perpetrators and the victims of netwar will be from the civilian sphere. It is, therefore, the civilian infrastructure that is the most vulnerable; the military can protect its own infrastructure, despite media reports that it is vulnerable and a constant victim of hacking.

Governments are becoming increasingly concerned about protecting their own national infrastructures, but global connectivity has grown to such an extent that it is now possible to talk only of a global informational infrastructure. There is only a global information infrastructure. There is no way to draw a line around the Continental United States and say that the information infrastructure belongs to the United States. This is true because there is no way to sever the United States from the information infrastructure that connects the rest of the world. What that means is that the U.S.’s infrastructure is accessible not only to their friends around the world but also to their potential foes. It is just as easy now to engage in a cyberattack from Tehran as it is from Pomeroy, Ohio.

Countering Sustained Rogue Information Warfare

Countering sustained rogue information warfare (IW) is envisioned as a new dimension of information warfare, bringing rogue conflict into the Information Age. Rogue IW offers combatants the ability to execute asymmetrical attacks that have nonlinear effects against an adversary. By targeting or exploiting information and information processes, an attacker can use limited resources to reap disproportionate gains. Furthermore, rogue IW offers weaker enemies (even at the sub-state level) strategies alternative to attrition, an attractive feature especially when facing an opponent with significantly stronger conventional forces. Such potential adversaries could perpetrate a rogue IW attack against the United States, using relatively limited resources, exploiting the U.S. reliance on information systems. Targets of such attacks might include Command and Control (C2) networks, satellite systems,^[iv] and even the power grids of the continental United States. Such an attack could potentially have a strategic impact on the national security of the United States.

In contrast, terrorism has been used by states and sub-state groups for millennia. As an instrument to pursue political or social objectives where the user lacks the strength or the political wherewithal to use conventional military means, terrorism has been especially attractive. The intended target of a terrorist act goes beyond the immediate victims. Terrorists create a climate of fear by exploiting the information dissemination channels of its target population, reaching many by physically affecting only a few. The United States experienced a tragic example of this effect in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut; the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000; and, the 9-11-2001 terrorist attacks—where a small terrorist group, clearly weaker than the U.S. military, nevertheless executed an effective strategic attack against the United States.

In a recent rogue IW wargame held at National Defense University, the problem of rogue Information Warfare was not lack of capabilities, but of management and organization: The capabilities are out there already, they just are not being tapped. This “problem” has only recently emerged as a potentially new warfare area for most defense planners. The problem of terrorism, on the other hand, has been in the headlines and in the social consciousness for decades, especially since the technological advance of intercontinental flight. This part of the chapter, therefore, briefly examines these two phenomena conceptually, operationally and organizationally, seeking commonalties. If comparisons are substantiated as more than circumstantial, then the lessons that might be applied to rogue IW defense from successes and failures of 30 years of countering terrorism should be examined closely. Within the context of these comparisons, this part of the chapter will also attempt to ascertain whether there is an emergent structure or organization that suggests a “correct” approach to countering sustained rogue Information Warfare.

The bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City and the 9-11 terrorist attacks were one of many major events to remind the military that the continental United States no longer offers sanctuary from terrorism. Yet geographical borders probably will never offer sanctuary from rogue information warfare attacks. The military should organize and prepare for potential rogue IW attacks against them without necessarily having a formal definition and without having to experience a massive information attack. Establishing a rogue IW focal point involves a partial framing of the problem inasmuch as identifying key contributors to its solution. A wide-scale information attack could involve systems under the responsibility of agencies across the government, and even the commercial sector. A solution will draw on contributions from areas broader than simply military or law enforcement. In the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, organizations such as ATF and FBI investigated the incident, and FEMA responded with crisis mitigation using both federal and local resources. In a “digital OKC,” who would take FEMA’s place for crisis mitigation? Will local support be available? At present, no framework coordinates a response to rogue IW attacks, and establishing an ex post facto framework in response to an attack is unwise.

Clearly, rogue IW defense will demand many resources throughout the federal government. This does not, however, justify creation of an all-encompassing body tasked with jurisdiction and execution over all aspects of rogue IW.

For example, in the past, terrorism policies under President Reagan, suggested that such an organized U.S. counterterrorism agency (whether newly created or placed within an existing agency) would not have been feasible: This solution fails to take into account the nature of terrorism and the influence of bureaucratic politics. Terrorism is a complex phenomenon requiring a comprehensive response. No agency within the U.S. government possesses the vast array of capabilities needed to combat terrorism effectively. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to create a single department with the needed jurisdiction to control the U.S. response to terrorism, and would lead to even greater policy and process problems.

These problems are also inherent in organizing for rogue IW defense (IW-D). Furthermore, the distributed nature of the problem implies a distributed response from the respective agencies owning the appropriate capabilities. A higher office, however, should oversee this distributed response, so that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing and that these complex activities are coordinated. An IW-D Oversight Office should be endowed with an independent budget and tasking authority to coordinate the decision-making process, identify capabilities needed to respond, and inform those agencies owning the capabilities as to their defensive rogue IW roles. Staffing this office would be “point members” of the represented agencies, who would then coordinate requirements within their respective agencies. This type of organization resembles, at a much broader range, the Joint Staff of the DoD, but with a budget as well as tasking authority for IW-D. Furthermore, the office could solicit and coordinate intelligence requirements from the various members of the intelligence community.

DoD has also articulated a similar concept for an office within the Executive Office of the President, organized for countering terrorism, as a potential focal point for the oversight of the U.S. antiterrorist program. This office would be a permanent body with a White House perspective; such a staff could monitor and coordinate activities of the line agency and departments; identify needed capabilities; identify special resources that might be mobilized if an international incident occurs; pull together current intelligence and ongoing analysis and research efforts; identify terrorist incidents; develop scenarios; and formulate plans. It would see to it that the necessary resources and capabilities are there when they are needed. In an actual crisis, it could function as a small battle staff for decision makers.

An Executive IW-D Oversight Office, as outlined in this chapter, would be in a prime position to identify and coordinate the investigative agencies, defense organizations, and all elements of the intelligence community that would be in positions to recognize and respond to attack. A director having cabinet rank and a seat on the National Security Council (NSC) might lead an IW-D Oversight Office. Such an office should also interact with the commercial sector, reflecting the extent to which commercial interests would be affected in IW, and the contribution industry can make toward solutions. Such interaction with the private sector might not be possible with existing agencies, due to the baggage that extant agencies might bring to the table.

In addition to reorganizing the bureaucracy, an IW-D Oversight Office might also reorganize priorities. Response strategies should not focus on protection as the only priority. One-hundred percent (100%) protection of an infrastructure is virtually impossible. Detection capabilities must drastically improve, along with crisis response and mitigation. These capabilities are fundamental to any indications and warnings (I and W) system, and are especially crucial in IW because protection is so fluid. Finally, not all crisis response and mitigation is technical. A policy for public awareness and education in the event of an information crisis (regionally coordinated in an organization similar to FEMA) might stave off panic, alert the public to measures they could take to assist, and lessen immediate public pressure on government officials to “do something.” Such pressure in the history of countering terrorism has resulted in hasty responses of overbearing lawmaking and bloody reprisals.

The past 34 years have shown the United States the paradox that “low-intensity conflict” has posed to the world’s mightiest military power. However, it is as yet unclear exactly where rogue IW falls in the spectrum of violence. As stated in the beginning, analogies can be useful, but at a certain point, relying on them for analysis becomes harmful. Although the organizational issues of rogue IW defense and counter-terrorism might be similar; this similarity might fail for solutions to other common issues. The unfortunate lesson of terrorism is that, as long as the United States is unwilling to cede their liberty to extortionate violence, there are no total solutions.

What the United States has achieved from the lessons of terrorism is improved crisis control, and policies that demonstrate an awareness of the complex nature of terrorism: its ability to affect any sector or jurisdiction of a free society, and the implications that come with those sobering realities. Information warfare has yet to emerge from its dogmatic stage, and still offers more slogans than lessons. Yet in retrospect of 34 years of fighting terrorism in a concentrated national and international effort, it is unclear whether an “electronic Pearl Harbor” would elicit a federal response other than the ad hoc overreactions and short-term task forces that have characterized U.S. counterterrorism policy. Such knee-jerk reactions have the potential to do much greater harm in IW than they have in countering terrorism: Heavy-handed, short-sighted, and hasty government measures in the information space might have unintended consequences ranging from stymied economic development to unconstitutional regulation to disastrous technical failures. Preempting an rogue IW attack with a multiagency policy of coordination could save the United States from their adversaries, and it might even save them from themselves.

Fighting against Random Rogue Information Warfare

History shows that terrorism more often than not has little political impact, and that when it has an effect it is often the opposite of the one desired. Terrorism in the 1990s and the present time is no exception. The 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi as he campaigned to retake the prime ministership neither hastened nor inhibited the decline of India’s Congress Party. Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s stepped-up terrorism in Israel undoubtedly influenced the outcome of Israeli elections, but although it achieved its immediate objective of setting back the peace process on which Palestine Authority President Yasir Arafat has gambled his future, is a hard-line Likud government really in these groups’ best interests? On the other side, Yigal Amir, the right-wing orthodox Jewish student who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1996, because he disapproved of the peace agreement with the Palestinians, might well have helped elect Rabin’s dovish second-in-command, Shimon Peres, to a full term had the Muslim terrorists not made Israeli security an issue again.

Terrorists caused disruption and destabilization in other parts of the world, such as Sri Lanka, where economic decline has accompanied the war between the government and the Tamil Tigers. But in Israel and in Spain, where Basque extremists have been staging attacks for decades, terrorism has had no effect on the economy. Even in Algeria, where terrorism has exacted the highest toll in human lives, Muslim extremists have made little headway since 1993, when many predicted the demise of the unpopular military regime.

Some argue that terrorism must be effective because certain terrorist leaders have become president or prime minister of their country. In those cases, however, the terrorists had first forsworn violence and adjusted to the political process. Finally, the common wisdom holds that terrorism can spark a war or, at least, prevent peace. That is true, but only where there is much inflammable material: as in Sarajevo in 1914, so in the Middle East and elsewhere today. Nor can one ever say with certainty that the conflagration would not have occurred sooner or later in any case.

Nevertheless, terrorism’s prospects, often overrated by the media, the public, and some politicians, are improving as its destructive potential increases. This has to do both with the rise of groups and individuals that practice or might take up terrorism and with the weapons available to them. The past few decades have witnessed the birth of dozens of aggressive movements espousing varieties of nationalism, religious fundamentalism, fascism, and apocalyptic millenarianism, from Hindu nationalists in India to neofascists in Europe and the developing world to the Branch Davidian cult of Waco, Texas. The earlier fascists believed in military aggression and engaged in a huge military buildup, but such a strategy has become too expensive even for superpowers. Now, mail-order catalogs tempt militants with readily available, far cheaper, unconventional as well as conventional weapons—the poor man’s nuclear bomb, Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani called them.

In addition to nuclear arms, the weapons of mass destruction include biological agents and man-made chemical compounds that attack the nervous system, skin, or blood. Governments have engaged in the production of chemical weapons for almost a century and in the production of nuclear and biological weapons for many decades, during which time proliferation has been continuous and access ever easier. The means of delivery (ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and aerosols) have also become far more effective. While in the past missiles were deployed only in wars between states, recently they have played a role in civil wars in Afghanistan and Yemen. Use by terrorist groups would be but one step further.

Until the 1970s, most observers believed that stolen nuclear material constituted the greatest threat in the escalation of terrorist weapons, but many now think the danger could lie elsewhere. An April 2000 Defense Department report says that “most terrorist groups do not have the financial and technical resources to acquire nuclear weapons but could gather materials to make radiological dispersion devices and some biological and chemical agents.” Some groups have state sponsors that possess or can obtain weapons of the latter three types. Terrorist groups themselves have investigated the use of poisons since the 19^th century. The Aum Shinrikyo cult staged a poison gas attack in March 1995 in the Tokyo subway; exposure to the nerve gas sarin killed ten people and injured 5,000. Other, more amateurish attempts in the United States and abroad to experiment with chemical substances and biological agents for use in terrorism have involved the toxin that causes botulism, the poisonous protein rycin (twice), sarin (twice), bubonic plague bacteria, typhoid bacteria, hydrogen cyanide, vx (another nerve gas), and possibly the Ebola virus.

To Use or Not to Use?

If terrorists have used chemical weapons only once and nuclear material never, to some extent the reasons are technical. The scientific literature is replete with the technical problems inherent in the production, manufacture, storage, and delivery of each of the three classes of unconventional weapons.

The manufacture of nuclear weapons is not that simple, nor is delivery to their target. Nuclear material, of which a limited supply exists, is monitored by the U.N.-affiliated International Atomic Energy Agency. Only governments can legally procure it, so that even in this age of proliferation, investigators could trace those abetting nuclear terrorists without great difficulty. Monitoring can overlook a more primitive nuclear weapon: nonfissile but radioactive nuclear material. Iranian agents in Turkey, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere are known to have tried to buy such material originating in the former Soviet Union.

Chemical agents are much easier to produce or obtain, but not so easy to keep safely in stable condition; their dispersal depends largely on climactic factors. The terrorists behind the 1995 attack in Tokyo chose a convenient target where crowds of people gather, but their sarin was apparently dilute. The biological agents are far and away the most dangerous: They could kill hundreds of thousands of people whereas chemicals might kill only thousands. They are relatively easy to procure, but storage and dispersal are even trickier than for nerve gases. The risk of contamination for the people handling them is high, and many of the most lethal bacteria and spores do not survive well outside the laboratory. Aum Shinrikyo reportedly released anthrax bacteria (among the most toxic agents known) on two occasions from a building in Tokyo without harming anyone.

Given the technical difficulties, terrorists are probably less likely to use nuclear devices than chemical weapons, and least likely to attempt to use biological weapons. But difficulties could be overcome, and the choice of unconventional weapons will in the end come down to the specialties of the terrorists and their access to deadly substances.

The political arguments for shunning unconventional weapons are equally weighty. The risk of detection and subsequent severe retaliation or punishment is great, and although this may not deter terrorists, it may put off their sponsors and suppliers. Terrorists eager to use weapons of mass destruction may alienate at least some supporters, not so much because the dissenters hate the enemy less or have greater moral qualms, but because they think the use of such violence counter productive. Unconventional weapon strikes could render whole regions uninhabitable for long periods. Use of biological arms poses the additional risk of an uncontrollable epidemic. And although terrorism seems to be tending toward more indiscriminate killing and mayhem, terrorists may draw the line at weapons of super violence likely to harm both foes and large numbers of relatives and friends—say, Kurds in Turkey, Tamils in Sri Lanka, or Arabs in Israel.

Furthermore, traditional terrorism rests on the heroic gesture, on the willingness to sacrifice one’s own life as proof of one’s idealism. Obviously there is not much heroism in spreading botulism or anthrax. Because most terrorist groups are as interested in publicity as in violence, and because publicity for a mass poisoning or nuclear bombing would be far more unfavorable than for a focused conventional attack, only terrorists who do not care about publicity will even consider the applications of unconventional weapons.

Broadly speaking, terrorists will not engage in overkill if their traditional weapons (the submachine gun and the conventional bomb) are sufficient to continue the struggle and achieve their aims. But the decision to use terrorist violence is not always a rational one; if it were, there would be much less terrorism, because terrorist activity seldom achieves its aims. What if, after years of armed struggle and the loss of many of their militants, terrorist groups see no progress? Despair could lead to giving up the armed struggle, or to suicide. But it might also lead to a last desperate attempt to defeat the hated enemy by arms not tried before. Their only hope lies in their despair.

Post Apocalypse

Terrorist groups traditionally contain strong quasi-religious, fanatical elements, for only total certainty of belief (or total moral relativism) provides justification for taking lives. That element was strong among the prerevolutionary Russian terrorists and the Romanian fascists of the Iron Guard in the 1930s, as it is among today’s Tamil Tigers. Fanatical Muslims consider the killing of the enemies of God a religious commandment, and believe that the secularists at home as well as the State of Israel will be annihilated because it is Allah’s will. Aum Shinrikyo doctrine held that murder could help both victim and murderer to salvation. Sectarian fanaticism has surged during the past decade, and, in general, the smaller the group, the more fanatical the group.

As humankind survived the end of the second millennium of the Christian era, apocalyptic movements failed to rise to the occasion. Nevertheless, the belief in the impending end of the world is probably as old as history, but for reasons not entirely clear, sects and movements preaching the end of the world gain influence toward the end of a century, and all the more at the close of a millennium. Most of the preachers of doom do not advocate violence, and some even herald a renaissance, the birth of a new kind of man and woman. Others, however, believe that the sooner the reign of the Antichrist is established, the sooner this corrupt world will be destroyed and the new heaven and earth foreseen by St. John in the Book of Revelation, Nostradamus, and a host of other prophets will be realized.

Extremist millenarians would like to give history a push, helping create world-ending havoc replete with universal war, famine, pestilence, and other scourges. Those who subscribe to such beliefs number in the millions. They have their own subcultures, produce books, and CDs by the thousands, and have built temples and communities of whose existence most of their contemporaries are unaware. They have substantial financial means at their disposal. Although the more extreme apocalyptic groups are potentially terrorist, intelligence services have generally overlooked their activities; hence, the shock over the subway attack in Tokyo and Rabin’s assassination, to name but two recent events.

Apocalyptic elements crop up in contemporary intellectual fashions and extremist politics as well. For instance, extreme environmentalists, particularly the so-called restoration ecologists, believe that environmental disasters will destroy civilization as they know it (no loss, in their view) and regard the vast majority of human beings as expendable. From such beliefs and values, it is not a large step to engaging in acts of terrorism to expedite the process. If the eradication of smallpox upset ecosystems, why not restore the balance by bringing back the virus? The motto of “Chaos International,” one of many journals in this field, is a quotation from Hassan I. Sabbah, the master of the Assassins, a medieval sect whose members killed Crusaders and others in a “religious” ecstasy; everything is permitted, the master says. The premodern world and postmodernism meet at this point.

Future Shock

Scanning the contemporary scene, one encounters a bewildering multiplicity of terrorist and potentially terrorist groups and sects. The practitioners of terrorism, up to the present time, were nationalists and anarchists, extremists of the left and the right. But the new age has brought new inspiration for the users of violence.

In the past, terrorism was almost always the province of groups of militants that had the backing of political forces such as the Irish and Russian social revolutionary movements of 1900. In the future, terrorists will be individuals or like-minded people working in very small groups (like the 9-11 terrorists), on the pattern of the technology-hating Unabomber, who apparently worked alone sending out parcel bombs over two decades, or the perpetrators of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. An individual may possess the technical competence to steal, buy, or manufacture the weapons he or she needs for a terrorist purpose; he or she may or may not require help from one or two others in delivering these weapons to the designated target. The ideologies such individuals and minigroups espouse are likely to be even more aberrant than those of larger groups. And terrorists working alone or in very small groups will be more difficult to detect (like the 9-11 terrorists) unless they make a major mistake or are discovered by accident.

Thus, at one end of the scale, the lone rogue terrorist has appeared, and at the other, state-sponsored terrorism is quietly flourishing in these days when wars of aggression have become too expensive and too risky. As the century draws to a close, terrorism is becoming the substitute for the great wars of the 1800s and early 1900s.

Proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction does not mean that most terrorist groups are likely to use them in the foreseeable future, but some almost certainly will, in spite of all the reasons militating against it. Governments, however ruthless, ambitious, and ideologically extreme, will be reluctant to pass on unconventional weapons to terrorist groups over which they cannot have full control; the governments may be tempted to use such arms themselves in a first strike, but it is more probable that they would employ them in blackmail than in actual warfare. Individuals and small groups, however, will not be bound by the constraints that hold back even the most reckless government.

Society has also become vulnerable to a new kind of terrorism in which the destructive power of both the individual terrorist and terrorism as a tactic are infinitely greater. Earlier terrorists could kill kings or high officials, but others only too eager to inherit their mantle quickly stepped in. The advanced societies of today are more dependent every day on the electronic storage,^[v] retrieval, analysis, and transmission of information. Defense, the police, banking, trade, transportation, scientific work, and a large percentage of the government’s and the private sector’s transactions are on-line. That exposes enormous vital areas of national life to mischief or sabotage by any computer hacker, and concerted sabotage could render a country unable to function. Hence, the growing speculation about infoterrorism and cyberwarfare.

An unnamed U.S. intelligence official has boasted that with $6 billion and 70 capable hackers, he could shut down America. What he could achieve, a terrorist could too. There is little secrecy in the wired society, and protective measures have proved of limited value: teenage hackers have penetrated highly secret systems in every field. The possibilities for creating chaos are almost unlimited even now, and vulnerability will almost certainly increase. Terrorists’ targets will change: Why assassinate a politician or indiscriminately kill people when an attack on electronic switching will produce far more dramatic and lasting results? The switch at the Culpeper, Virginia, headquarters of the Federal Reserve’s electronic network, which handles all federal funds and transactions, would be an obvious place to hit. If the new terrorism directs its energies toward information warfare, its destructive power will be exponentially greater than any it wielded in the past—greater even than it would be with biological and chemical weapons.

Still, the vulnerability of states and societies will be of less interest to terrorists than to ordinary criminals and organized crime, disgruntled employees of big corporations, and, of course, spies and hostile governments. Electronic thieves, whether engaged in credit card fraud or industrial espionage, are part of the system, using it rather than destroying it; its destruction would cost them their livelihood. Politically motivated terrorist groups, above all separatists bent on establishing states of their own, have limited aims. The Kurdish Workers Party, the IRA, the Basque ETA, and the Tamil Tigers want to weaken their enemies and compel them to make far-reaching concessions, but they cannot realistically hope to destroy them. It is also possible, however, that terrorist groups on the verge of defeat or acting on apocalyptic visions may not hesitate to apply all destructive means at their disposal.

All that leads well beyond terrorism as has the military has known it. New definitions and new terms may have to be developed for new realities, and intelligence services and policy makers must learn to discern the significant differences among terrorists’ motivations, approaches, and aims. The Bible says that when the Old Testament hero Samson brought down the temple, burying himself along with the Philistines in the ruins, “the dead which he slew at his death were more than he slew in his life.” The Samsons of a society have been relatively few in all ages. But with the new technologies and the changed nature of the world in which they operate, a handful of angry Samsons and disciples of apocalypse would suffice to cause havoc. Chances are that of 100 attempts at terrorist superviolence, 99 would fail. But the single successful one could claim many more victims like it did on 9-11, do more material damage, and unleash far greater panic than anything the world has yet experienced.

The Menace of Amateur Rogue Information Warfare

With a member base of 46,000, the amateur rogue CyberArmy may have the biggest armament the Net has ever seen, rallying to take down Web sites that “abuse” the World Wide Web—and removing power from governments. Some missions include hunting for, and taking down, child pornography Web sites.

The CyberArmy wants to self-regulate the Internet so that the government doesn’t come in and regulate it. CyberArmy started off as a small group of advocates promoting free speech and Internet deregulation. Growing to a full size army of “Netizens,” the group has since shifted its views—due to privacy issues and government intervention.

Now they believe in Internet self-regulation. If you deregulate, you end up with anarchy. In other words, the CyberArmy is set up just like a game. Members have to solve puzzles (which is usually breaking codes and encryption) to move on to the next commanding level.

Missions Possible

Commanding ranks give a member more power and involvement in the organization’s missions. As previously mentioned, some missions include hunting for, and taking down, child pornography Web sites. They’re really trying to get rid of child pornography on the Internet,” Overlord said.

The commanding structure begins at the bottom with troopers, rising through the ranks of 2nd Lieutenant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lt. Kernal, Kernal, General, and Marshal. Each division within CyberArmy has its own job to complete, with one of the divisions devoted solely to child pornography Web sites.

The division has taken down around four dozen child porn sites in the last year, and was also instrumental in bringing down the Wonderland Club child porn ring recently. The group is an advocate of ordinary citizens policing the Internet. Due to the Internet being global, governments aren’t the right authority to police it.

Hacktivists

In defending the “hacktivist” title that the group has been branded with, the group doesn’t believe in defacing a Web site just for the fun of it. If a site is defaced it’s usually in the form of protest.

The group was a bit more “hackerish” in 2000, however—they were considered an amateur menace for a time. However, they’re moving away from that. There are more social minded people on the Net now, which is good. The reason for being in CyberArmy is because many members are sick and tired of child pornography and Net censorship.

Finally, CyberArmy’s mission is to prove that there are good hackers, not just Script Kiddies out there. The CyberArmy site also posts discussion boards and Internet tools for users, and has a section dedicated to teaching network security.

^[iv]John R. Vacca, “Satellite Encryption,” Academic Press, 1999.

^[v]John R. Vacca, The Essential Guide to Storage Area Networks, Prentice Hall, 2002.

---