[Dailydave] The underlying structure is foamy

Thomas Lim thomas at coseinc.com
Sat May 25 04:43:40 EDT 2013


Once again the Hungarian Bart has done it again. Such Masterpiece!

However i kind of think that Your argument, though very valid, is on a
different plane as what Halvar and Dave were arguing.

If i recall correctly, what Dave meant (Dave please correct me if i
misrepresent you) was that in the old world, which ever country has a
strong navy dominates the world. Examples would be Portugal, Spain,
Britain. In more recent time, it was the power Navy of the USA that
allows Uncle Sam to project his military power across the globe. In
today's world, to be superior to your adversaries, you need "cyber
dominance" or "cyber superiority". Therefore I do not think Dave and/or
Halvar believe that "Cyber" would replace the Navy but that it is
something that most nation-states wants as part of their military plan.

ok i think i need more mushroom.

Thank you
Thomas Lim

On 24/5/2013 10:03 PM, Ben Nagy wrote:
> In the final determination, I have opted for prose, because my first
> sonnet, in the Italian form, had already taken over an hour by the time
> I got to construct the volta, plus I had ciabatta to make.
> 
> I am not going to take Dave's email apart by paragraphs, nor Halvar's
> keynote slides, because not only am I disinterested in scoring 'points'
> but I also feel that they both presented many interesting arguments,
> several of which would reward your extended consideration. Sadly, most
> of the parts that I found interesting were argued primarily, or were
> isolated metaphors of their own, not inextricably linked to the
> fundamentally faulty "New Navy" analogy. In other words they're right in
> spite of a broken metaphor, not because of it. In particular privateers,
> letters of marque, and 'what happens when your cyberweapon doesn't share
> your worldview?'
> 
> Why is it fundamentally flawed?
> 
> I - It's not an Ocean
> 
> There are two critical things about the Oceans - their size and their
> topology. It is FAR to go from one port to another, and there are only a
> certain number of ways you can go without pranging into rocks or getting
> eaten by kraken or whatever.  Those two fairly fundamental properties
> underlie a great deal of human history and military strategy. Why can't
> we just shell Mongolia from Miami? Because it's TOO FAR.
> 
> A corollary of being FAR is that it takes a while to get your gold bars
> or F-35s or whatever from A to B, and during this time you are exposed
> to attack. Not only that, your adversary has a fair idea of how you're
> going to get to B and can just lurk around at C with a bunch of subs - a
> fact the Germans exploited merrily in WWII until they had crypto
> failure. The further corollary being that if you get a hole in your ship
> at C ( C, right? Sea what I did there? ) then it sinks and you probably
> die. All of this means that a substantial amount of "stuff that matters"
> takes place in transit between A and B - ie at sea.
> 
> Contrast this with Cyberships. Cyberships move at a significant fraction
> of the speed of light, they can get to their destination via countless
> routes INCLUDING OUTER SPACE, and if one gets sunk, you can just send
> another one. In other words, there is no meaningful distance, nor
> meaningful topology. This doesn't break the 'Commons' analogy in and of
> itself, it just renders it completely useless, because nothing
> interesting happens in it.
> 
> II - ... so it doesn't need a Navy
> 
> So I don't want to be disrespectful to the fine women and men of the
> Navy, nor understate the importance of Navies in modern military
> strategy. But. What does a Navy do, in meatspace? First of all, it
> carries stuff from one place to another, those places often being "out
> of range" and "in range". Secondly, they make sure that all the stuff
> you need for making war gets to where it's going.
> 
> How does that translate into Cyber? There's no distance. There's no
> range. There's no supply chain of big, bulky items packed aboard
> ridiculously vulnerable wallowy transport ships that need to make it
> through a minefield while under attack by subs. What, then, would a
> Cybernavy do, and how is it useful to compare it to a real one?
> 
> If it's reasonable, at all, to posit a military analogy, surely the Air
> Force is a better one? Pilots have a very different recruitment,
> education and training profile to basic naval personnel who, I
> understand, mainly tie bowlines, swab decks and play the hornpipe. One
> pilot is in charge of one fighter plane, which is a stupidly expensive
> bit of kit, but it takes a huge team to maintain that weapon, design
> improvements, paint the fierce little animals on the side ... or
> whatever it is they do. I don't geek on war.
> 
> So, whatever cyber force gets built, it's not a Navy. It doesn't protect
> the Commons, and it doesn't support logistics. It's essentially a
> specialised tool for finding things out or for turning things off.
> 
> Basically, we started with 'The Commons' and that led us to "so
> it's like the ocean, right?", at which point we could have saved a lot
> of trouble by saying "No, Dave. No it's not." Anyway, now that it's like
> the ocean, now we need some weapon thing, because the government buys
> WEAPONS, they don't rent out boxer-clad, caffeine-swilling nerds who
> have never SERVED their GODDAMN COUNTRY for a DAY in their MISERABLE
> LIVES, right? So.. Ocean - Navy. Boom. This analogy stuff is easy!
> 
> III - ...and Cyber will never deter a committed adversary.
> 
>  "I believe that cyber can replace nuclear (and has, to some extent
>  already) as a military deterrent." ~ Dave
> 
> As foreshadowed, this is where the most serious of my disagreements lie.
> 
> First of all, and I am not a military strategy guy, I don't think you
> can _replace_ the nuclear deterrent unless everyone else gets rid of
> theirs at exactly the same time. Correct me if I'm MAD or something.
> 
> Secondly, and this is where I will offend some people, let's look at
> 'deterrent'. One possible definition is 'offering a threat of
> retributive harm which is sufficient to persuade against action'.
> I don't think you can cyber a country with sufficient vigor that they
> will throw up their hands and surrender, having started to do war in a
> committed manner. You could sink a ship. You can turn off some of the
> economy.  You can make it impractical for Dave to be able to microwave
> his burrito on some humid Miami afternoon. Maybe turn off his aircon.
> That'd rile him up some, I bet. Hell you could probably halt all
> production of Oreos, everywhere, FOREVER. Apocalypse.
> 
> Hey, look, you could kill some people. Probably civilians, which is not
> only uncool, but doesn't actually make them surrender ( we learned this
> with strategic bombing in WWII, over and over, on both sides, up until
> ... oh wait!  nukes! ). My point being that only first world people with
> massive reliance on technology and a low stomach for inconvenience are
> honestly afraid of someone turning off the lights. How effective have
> economic sanctions been? Trade embargoes? Asset freezes?
> 
> Maybe, MAYBE, you could convince me that it could be employed as a
> military tool, as kind of a 'pre-war' leverage or bargain, like sending
> troops to the Spratlys, or some friendly bombing over the Syrian border
> or whatever - but to suggest that it would _replace_ the nuclear ( or
> even military ) deterrent is just the final link in an ill-forged chain
> of sophistry.
> 
> And that is why I think that Dave is wrong, and why Halvar, who took off
> from Dave's analogy is also wrong, but in different ways. Many of the
> points that were made along the way are not wrong, however, because ( in
> case you were unaware ) I have a great deal of respect for both of them,
> and we get along fine in real life.
> 
> Remind me not be let myself be baited in this manner again. :/
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> ben
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