QUOTE: "victory in tomorrow's wars will go not to those
             who have the biggest bombs, but to those who can
             tell the best story."


Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 12:59:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: MichaelP <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Le Monde diplomatique: PREPARING FOR CYBERWAR

Le Monde diplomatique - August 1999


PREPARING FOR CYBERWAR

Mars gives way to Minerva
_________________________________________________________________

Times are changing. After the war in Kosovo some of the old certainties
inherited from the cold war are about to give way to new military
doctrines. The network - the nervous system through which information
circulates - is now the organisational paradigm. In their research into
this transformation some analysts are calling for the United States to
prepare for "cyberwar" and "netwar", in which enemies are defeated by
interrupting their command structures and their systems of thought and
communication, rather than aiming to destroy them physically.

by FRANCIS PISANI  
	* Journalist, San Francisco

_________________________________________________________________

There is a contradiction: we are supposed to be in the "information era",
where according to the visionary formula of technoguru Nicholas Negroponte
bits are going to replace atoms (1). But in the recent war in Kosovo Nato
made massive use of bombs deriving straight from the industrial age. Even
the "smart" bombs, so called because they have an independent ability to
handle information, were equipped with a very classic capacity for
physical destruction.

Behind the immediate human and political dramas of this war, a question
arises about the nature of future war. This problem has been posed by two
United States' analysts specialising in warfare in the information era.

John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (2) are the inventors of a whole series
of original concepts and formulas: "cyberwar", "netwar" and "noopolitik"
(a politics of knowledge). John Arquilla is a professor at the Naval
Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California. David Ronfeldt is an analyst
with the Rand Corporation, a research institute very close to the US
military establishment and security services. The two researchers are
convinced that "the information revolution is altering the nature of
conflict ... it is bringing new modes of warfare, terrorism and crime to
the fore". Thus they have responded to the invitation extended by
futurologists Alvin and Heidi Toffler for people to develop "a fresh
understanding of the relations between war and a fast-changing society"
(3).


.... looong snip .......


 1999 Le Monde diplomatique

<http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/1999/08/?c=11pisani>






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