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GEORGETOWN ESSAYS ON INFORMATION WARFARE              Volume 1, Number 9 
Dorothy E. Denning, Editor                                   May 3, 1999 
Computer Science Department                        Georgetown University
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                       When Computers are Weapons:
               Information Warfare and the Security Dilemma 
                              
                           by Timothy Lunardi
                          
 
Despite their myriad of ideological differences, almost every scholar
and practitioner of international security agrees that there are two
salient features of the global political system:  it is anarchic, i.e.,
there is no higher authority to which states may appeal for redress of
grievances; and, consequently, states operate on the basis of self-help
in pursuing their policy goals.  From this accurate, albeit bleak,
summing of the world, a wealth of concepts and models have been
developed which serve as predictive tools.  One such idea, and indeed
perhaps the most famous and oft-discussed, is the so-called security
dilemma.  Following on the age old logic of the prisoners dilemma and
building upon the findings of behavioral science research, the security
dilemma maxim dictates that under conditions short of full and lasting
peace any action which one state takes to ensure its security (a
military build-up, change in troop distributions, the signing of a
collective self-defense pact) will make another state feel less secure.
This second state, then, will often take actions to ensure its security
which will make either the first state or some other state feel less
secure.  The spiral can be drawn on practically ad infinitum.

In the days of the Cold War and even today, the security dilemma was and
is a formidable challenge to policymakers seeking any general decline in
overall military tensions worldwide.  Conventional and nuclear arms
races have been born of the security dilemma and sustained far beyond
what might appear to be their logical extremes.  Wars such as the 1967
Six Days War in the Middle East have begun because a security dilemma
escalated beyond control.  In short, the existence of a widespread
security dilemma is, or at least can produce, a dire state of affairs.

The rise of the information age, once heralded as a potential solution
to security dilemmas, may in fact be creating a new generation of more
dangerous and more intractable ones.  The logic is simple.  As states
place increased emphasis on the role which information warfare can play
both as a force multiplier and a locus of operations in-and-of itself,
any steps which one state undertakes to enhance its defensive or
offensive information warfare posture will inherently make other states
feel threatened.  In traditional security dilemmas, tanks, bombers, and
soldiers could easily be counted and so some level of reason injected
into debates among policymakers in the vulnerable state.  Not so with
most tools of information warfare.  Every computer, every college
graduate with a computer science degree, every new phone line can be
seen as an enhancement of a given countrys information warfare
capabilities.  Whereas the line dividing actions which precipitate a
security dilemma and those which clearly do not were once relatively
clear, its is easy to understand how they disappear when information
war-fighting becomes a real part of national security calculus.  What an
adversary or potential adversary plans to do with new military hardware
may be readily inferred.  What those same states intend to do with a
shipment of Pentium III processors cannot.

Moreover, one traditional mechanism employed to temper the severity and
duration of security dilemmas, namely the acquisition of forces and the
adoption of policies which can only be construed as defensive, is much
more difficult to use when talking of information warfare.  From the
limited and often partially inaccurate information which comprises the
bulk of intelligence support to most governments, national security
planners may find it difficult to know whether certain dual use
technologies are being acquired by rivals for defensive or offensive
purposes.  In addition, for at least the next decade or more it is
doubtful that less technologically-inclined states will possess the
expertise necessary to make a proper determination as to the likely use
of a given item.  Under such conditions, self-interested states will
have little choice to assume that their rivals are enhancing their
offensive operational posture.  Enter the security dilemma once more -
and with a vengeance.

What solutions to this budding problem exist?  Few if any, is the
unfortunate reply.  No meaningful steps have been taken to establish
workable confidence-building measures on information warfare in tense
regions.  In fact, at this very moment Arab and Israeli negotiators are
discussing regimes designed to deal with issues ranging from nuclear
proliferation to offshore fishing rights.  Not one of those working
groups deals with measures to stave off an information arms race.  That
attitude is widespread and it stands to be destructive.  When the atom
became a weapon, few predicted and fewer prepared for the security
dilemma which would drag the world into the Cold War.  Now that the
computer has become a weapon, do we really want to commit the same
mistake?

Timothy Lunardi is a Senior in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign
Service studying International Security and the Middle East.  E-mail:
lunardit@gusun.georgetown.edu.  Copyright 1999 Timothy Lunardi.

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Georgetown Essays on Information Warfare features essays by students in
COSC 511, Information Warfare: Terrorism, Crime, and National Security,
at Georgetown University.  Outside contributions will also be considered
and should be sent to the editor at denning@cs.georgetown.edu.  The
opinions expressed in the essays do not represent those of Georgetown
University, the Computer Science Department, or the editor.  This
publication can be redistributed.  There is no subscription list.

COSC 511 home page:     www.cs.georgetown.edu/~denning/cosc511
Georgetown Essays on IW:www.cs.georgetown.edu/~denning/infosec/iw-essays
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