My Rankings

My critique of the manifesto proposes that cyber-terrorism is an excellent addition to the Global Security Matrix. In theory, the category makes much sense, but I wanted to conduct some research to further investigate this topic. A 2002 article written by Mark Ward for the BBC blames overzealous American officials for hyping up the idea of terrorists attacking their targets in cyberspace. The article points out that disrupting services we have all come to depend on via the Internet pales in comparison to bombings and other physical acts of terrorism. Ward quotes security expert Bruce Schneier: “Breaking pager networks and stopping e-mails is not an act of terror…If I cannot get my e-mail for a day, I am not terrorised. [sic]” A 2005 article in the Christian Science Monitor is much more specific and less pessimistic about the prospects of such attacks creating large-scale ramifications. The article mentions cyber assaults on power grids and chemical processing plants as possible tangible manifestations of this form of terrorism. The author, Nathaniel Hoopes, also presents the notion of a cyber attack that is coupled with a physical assault resulting in a debilitated response by officials during the subsequent emergency. My conclusion mirrors that of the Global Security Matrix’s manifesto in some ways. Although cyber-terrorism is currently regarded as a minor threat, it has the potential to cause immense damage to an economy and could be used to augment the impact of an attack if used properly.
Another area I would like to focus on is the rankings concerns failed states. The events of September 11, 2001, as alluded to in the manifesto, allow us to see how a failed state on one side of the globe can affect all levels of analysis on the other. Suffice it to say, the threat of failure is paramount to any state. Thus, it is easy to rank at the state level. At the system level, the failure of the United Nations to establish a lasting peace in East Timor hurts the global body’s credibility and decreases the likelihood of nations lending their support to further UN intervention. Among others, Professor Noam Chomsky asserts that Iraq has become a failed state since the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Iraq has a power vacuum. Without a central authority to control the nation and provide citizens with basic support, any number of nefarious networks can use Iraq as a recruiting and training ground for terrorism. Harlan Ullman, writing in the Washington Times last week makes the same argument as Chomsky, but does so to achieve different ends (namely asking the U.S. government to send more troops into the Middle East). Both authors see the prospect of a failed state as a serious threat to the security of western nations, people in the Middle East, business networks and the legitimacy of international bodies. Global threats by failed states seem to be less consequential than the threats this phenomenon poses to the other levels examined. Granted, failed states have the potential to begin wars between major powers, but so do many other occurrences. Failed states also seem to breed the other threats considered by the GSM. For example, the idea of a terrorist organization storing or detonating weapons of mass destruction from the safe house of a failed state affects many levels of the matrix. In-and-of-themselves, failed states are less consequential than many of the other threats. This is because they are a catalyst for, not necessarily the cause of, these other phenomena.

Links:

Cyber-terrorism
http://www.cs.georgetown.edu/~denning/infosec/pollitt.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2850541.stm
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0816/p01s02-stct.html

Failed States
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/etimor/2006/0614return.htm
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/31/148254
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/hullman.htm

Posted by Joshua Rosenthal on October 6, 2006 12:40 PM | Permalink

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