Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • May 31, 2022 9:42 AM

@ ALL,

When all is said and done, wars are about three things,

1, Resources
2, Ideology
3, Influance.

Mostly they boil down to control pf an area, region or territory in some way.

Historically that was “land”, and control was via “Boots on the ground”.

As time pushed forward resource issues became less of an issue, because often both sides wanted someting the other had, so it was control of “trade” that became important.

Thus history moved forward and the paths of trade by land and sea became the control points. So the idea of Navel / Maratime warfare came into play. Which has gone through surface warefare, briefly through air warfare and back to submarine warfare.

Just as submarine warfare became practical, so aerial warfare became practical, but like surface warefare aerial warfare has a “visability” issue, the presence of forces can nolonger be hidden. The old adage of,

“He who holds the high ground”

Moved upwards into “space” but is effectively flawed. To “stay in space” currently requires one of two things,

Firstly to be in “free fall” which in practical reality is a very slow, and highly predictable spiral down a gravity well to destruction.

Secondly to expend vasts amounts of not just energy but matter to navigate the gravity well and rise up it.

Both have significant disadvantages, as has been demonstrated by atleast four nations. That is destroying satellites is not just possible, it is actually fairly easy, just costly and has significant down sides.

So the fight has been moving from active or kinetic conflict on the ground, in the sea, air and space to Ideology.

Ideology is a battle for minds, so far all we realy know is to win,

1, You have to get at minds before they can defend themselves.
2, Stop alternative information that conflicts being available.

The first we politely call “indoctrination” the second “propaganda”.

In both cases to attack them requires freely available “information” that is widely disseminated.

But information is a tool it knows not truth / falshood, good / bad, right / wrong. Those are “subjective” and arise in the minds of observers.

What many forget is that weapons designed for one war-space are often fairly ineffective in another war space. A torpedo even when carried on an aircraft, is effectively usless in either air combat or land combat. Missiles whilst effective in most combat spaces are usually way to costly to be practical except in highly targeted ways against very high value targets, or when the payload has significant radius.

Technically “information” does not occupie a physical space as by it’s self it has no agency in a physical space.

Therefore “information weapons” are limited to action in what are non physical spaces of the mind, and processing of information.

Thus to be effective in other war-spaces a bridge is needed for an information weapon to get “agency” in a physical space.

Currently few understand how to build such bridges, thus information weapons have limited utility.

All we currently know is that to be effective current information weapons require as a minimum,

1, Access.
2, Fragility or nonresilience.

If neither exists then current information weapons fail.

Clive Robinson • May 31, 2022 11:23 AM

@ dbCooper,

My observation is the [XXXX] fraction of the [YYYY] have mastered building these bridges.

Actually they have not[1].

What they have achieved is “indoctrination” of a few by “propaganda”. There are certain personality types that are not just amenable to this, but positively crave it and directly or indirectly become “zelots”. This has been a process of cults and religions for many thousands of years.

So much power can be obtained over their minds in the information space that they selfharm willingly including castrating and disembowling themselves if “asked” to do so directly or indirectly.

But it is still a “Directing Mind” controling an information tool, that in turn controls another more local directing mind “with agency” There is nothing in the physical spaces that actually has agency, hence no bridge.

Now if you can get a directing mind to type commands at a keyboard that leaves one physical system and ends up in another physical system and that second physical system executes them without constraint to cause physical disruption/harm to an asigned operation then you have built a bridge.

But as noted you first have to gain “access” and secondly the second system has to be “nonresilient” or “fragile”.

The essence of security is three part,

1, Stop unauthorised access.
2, Stop unauthorised acctions.
3, Stop or limit agency.

Whilst they all stop “the bridge” at various points, as a general rule the first is easier than the second which in turn is a lot easier than the last.

[1] By the way as has oft been observed on this blog there are many XXXX factions of many YYYY entities. They are basically seaking “control” through “power” or “Status” which they have aquired by “anti-social” behaviours, often as a consequence of mental disability that shows up as one or more of “Narcissism, Sadism, Machiavellism, or socio/psychopathy” for which there are tests, but no cures currently.