# The Global Cyber Game: Achieving strategic resilience in the global knowledge society (part 5 of 10)

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [143], part 5 of 10. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: document (PDF), 2013-05-08 (from the career record), https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf. Text: document text
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the money step (Global Village Development Bank, 2009), before the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Defence-tier report citing his cyber views; tangential to the build.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - The Global Cyber Game: Achieving strategic resilience in the global knowledge society (2013): Hardin Tibbs's 2013 report of the UK Defence Academy Cyber Inquiry for the Ministry of Defence, which...
  - Blind in the Panopticon: The decreasing marginal utility of access to information as an aspect of cyber policy (2012): Cyber policy essay: past a point, more surveillance data has negative value, because a state can collect... (suggested by machine)
  - Multipolar Realpolitik (2024): Essays arguing that a global truce among a few great powers, with treaties checked by AI, blockchains and... (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - cyber and defense: Security work for defense clients, built on one idea: set rivals to check each other. Resilience and Opportunity in...
  - CheapID to Mattereum: One identity pattern, from a person's ID card in 2006 to warranties on physical goods in 2017. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - nuclear / panflu: Pandemic, evacuation and rehousing plans. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - rich data capitalism: Cheap information changes what a market can carry: price signals hold only a few bits (2013), blockchains cut... (through a work suggested by machine)
- Topics: The Global Cyber Game (94%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: cyber (660 here; 32 sources in all, earliest dated 2009); Wired (35 here; 22 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 1 undated); Hardin Tibbs (8 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2011); DARPA (7 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2013); jobs (28 here; 85 sources in all, earliest dated 2003, 4 undated); communications (26 here; 81 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 5 undated); DNS (10 here; 23 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); Barlow (5 here; 7 sources in all, earliest dated 2013); ICANN (3 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2011); realpolitik (5 here; 11 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 2 undated)
- The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): peer-to-peer; Barlow; John Perry Barlow; economic zone; Forbes; Westphalia; real-world assets; DARPA; global commons
- Importance: core-text score 0.19 (1.00 is the top), number 371 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [243] [Multipolar Realpolitik (Omnibus draft) (2024)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/243.md): close in content (cosine 0.92)
  - [851] [Global governance in the era of blockchain. (2018)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/851.md): close in content (cosine 0.89)
- On the same works, just before: [400] [http://hub.coe.int/forum-mondial-de-la-democratie-5-11-oc... (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/400.md); [399] [Council of Europe World Forum for Democracy... (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/399.md); [395] Open Data Ireland 25 October inaugeral meeting (2012)
- On the same works, just after: [319] [A sleepless night trying to find words (2013)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/319.md); [115] [Warlords, Inc.: Black Markets, Broken States, and the... (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/115.md); [286] [Ouishare on global democracy and the real sharing economy (2016)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/286.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: The Global Cyber Game: Achieving strategic resilience in the global knowledge society, document, 2013-05-08, https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [143], https://guptaoption.com/texts/143.md.

## Passages, part 5 of 10
[p. 55 to 56](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=55) all this. Some are straightforward questions of strategic effectiveness: • Online weapons may be unreliable or uncertain in their effects, and possibly only be tactically effective in the short term. • Online weapons depend on secrecy, but the instant duplication and transparency effects of information technologies make it probable that they will be discovered if widely used. The more sophisticated and expensive the online weapon, the more pressure there will be to use it as extensively as possible to get value for money, which will increase the likelihood of discovery. If online weapons only have a short useful lifespan this will only add to the pressure for maximum early use. • Use of online weapons by powerful states will justify their use by all players, who will be able to learn from the design of weapons that were originally only within reach of the best resourced actors. When the online weapons reported here were used and detected, their blueprint became available for averagely competent programmers to copy, on behalf of smaller states and non-state actors. This inherent tendency to proliferation is much greater than with nuclear weapons, which can still only be built by a handful of nations. And unlike nuclear weapons, once an online weapon has been used and detected it cannot be used again. • Use of online weapons coupled with an explicit policy of conventional military kinetic retaliation risks rapid escalation of real-world war. This is particularly hazardous given the problem of source attribution which, although not impossible, is hedged with difficulties. • Western adherence to a purely technological emphasis in online conflict may well provoke asymmetric non-technological responses from Russia and China, which could blindside the United States and its allies. The risk for the Pentagon, with its strong reputation as a ‘technology shop,’ is that an over-emphasis on technology could become an Achilles heel. Other key points that emerge relate to the assumption that the Internet as a whole is a medium that is robust enough for destructive war fighting. Unfortunately, however, the 94 http://www.technologyreview.com/news/507971/welcome-to-the-malware-industrial- complex/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily- all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130213 accessed 18/02/13 95 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-is-increasing-pressure-on-suspects-in- stuxnet-inquiry/2013/01/26/f475095e-6733-11e2-93e1-475791032daf_story.html accessed 18/02/13 96 David Sanger, Confront and Conceal (New York: Random House, 2012) The Global Cyber Game © 2013 50 www.da.mod.uk Internet is a human construct that was not designed for the enormous volume of traffic or the intense security pressures it is now being subjected to. These pressures alone may push it to the brink of failure, even without additional aggravations, including the following: • Online attacks will tend to encourage Balkanization of the Internet, which in principle will impose disproportionate economic losses on all players. Metcalfe’s Law holds that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its users, and Balkanization will cause this effect to work in reverse. The value of a network will therefore drop like a stone as it shrinks. Dividing the Internet into, say, four equal sub-networks will cause their combined worth to drop to only a quarter that of the

[p. 56 to 57](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=56) of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its users, and Balkanization will cause this effect to work in reverse. The value of a network will therefore drop like a stone as it shrinks. Dividing the Internet into, say, four equal sub-networks will cause their combined worth to drop to only a quarter that of the undivided network. Balkanization of the public Internet would mean, almost literally, decimation of the global economic growth potential described earlier. • Many online weapons rely on the existence of Internet vulnerabilities, which must be kept open for the weapons to remain effective. The instinct of commercial companies is to close such vulnerabilities as soon as they are found, for the safety of their customers. Stuxnet, for example, exploited four ‘zero day’ (meaning that they had not been exploited before) weaknesses in the Windows operating system, which Microsoft patched as soon as Stuxnet was revealed. The designers of online weapons must continually search for new vulnerabilities and keep them secret to ensure the weapons remain useable. That means that the state is deliberately keeping the Internet unsafe, as the vulnerabilities remain open for a hostile state or non-state actor to exploit against all Internet users, including those at home. As noted earlier, even the US government is alleged to be boosting the market for previously unknown vulnerabilities known as zero-day exploits. If true, this would seem particularly short-sighted, as the United States is the preeminent worldwide leader in software products. • This difficulty also applies in the case of online domestic surveillance. If democratic nations such as the United States ask information industry companies to build features into their products or infrastructure that facilitate domestic surveillance, those same features are then available to be exploited by an enemy against the domestic population. And if the same features are included in equipment exported from democratic countries, they will provide convenient means for repressive regimes to carry out surveillance on their own population, who will be without legal recourse. • The public knowledge that there now exists extremely powerful state-sponsored malware, invisible to all commercial anti-malware programmes, may breed public distrust of the Internet, with potentially high indirect economic costs (as discussed earlier). As the United States is now publicly associated with creating surveillance and destruction software that parasitizes its own commercial software, the distrust this breeds will also be directed against its own economy. The loss of trust is of particular concern since an investment in maintaining trust in a society is the most important single factor in assuring resilience in the event of a crisis. 97 97 Leena Ilmola, presentation at a conference at Wilton Park in August 2012 The Global Cyber Game © 2013 51 www.da.mod.uk • As many as 100 countries are estimated to have military cyber units, and about 20 have serious capabilities. 98 If all these countries are launching covert cyber actions against each other, and possibly planting malware for later use, the result will be sharply

[p. 56 to 58](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=56) a conference at Wilton Park in August 2012 The Global Cyber Game © 2013 51 www.da.mod.uk • As many as 100 countries are estimated to have military cyber units, and about 20 have serious capabilities. 98 If all these countries are launching covert cyber actions against each other, and possibly planting malware for later use, the result will be sharply rising combinatorial complexity which will be very difficult for any country to deal with. 99 All these points could suggest that not only is the Internet insecure, but state actors are adding to the problem without achieving a significant balancing benefit. To make this point with any certainty, however, requires a larger experience base than is currently available. If news reports about Stuxnet are taken at face value, it could be argued that the United States is exhibiting chess-like play on the Cyber Gameboard, making discrete moves against discrete targets. Currently there is little sign of the wéiqí style of play that characterizes Chinese cyber strategy. In the cyber arena the United States has yet to demonstrate its former mastery of integrative power. The Marshall Plan after the Second World War and the public domain sharing of space information by NASA in the 1960s gained the United States enormous worldwide legitimacy and respect. Compared to this prowess during the Cold War period, the United States is at risk of suffering a sharp loss of legitimacy if it continues its recent coercive-power cyber actions against social power players. China’s ‘invisible’ cyber strategy China reputedly views the Cyber Game as centered on the ‘right of controlling information,’ and sees information superiority as one of the ‘commanding heights’ for winning any conflict. It regards information confrontation—obtaining and counter-obtaining, control and anti- control, and destroying and counter-destroying—as the key to winning a cyber era war. 100 Like Russia, China also sees the Cyber Game as having a social dimension. According to Qiushi magazine, China’s information system must be independent of foreign control, and able to combat superstition, rumours, slander, and pornography that corrupt people’s minds and threaten national security, and also prevent domestic use of the Internet as a subversive tool. 101 China interprets the importance of information broadly, as does Russia, but sees it as being deployed in support of its ‘peaceful rise to power,’ rather than as a means to defend and restore the reputation and power of the state. The rise of China is highly significant, and forms the context for its cyber stance, so it is important to appreciate its origins. 98 http://www.technologyreview.com/news/507971/welcome-to-the-malware-industrial- complex/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily- all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130213 accessed 18/02/13 99 Presentation by John C Mallery at the 2012 Workshop on Cyber Security and Global Affairs and Global Security Forum. Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, 19th-21st June 2012 100 http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/infosecu.htm#_ftnref15 accessed 18/02/13 101 He Dejin, ‘Raise Network Security Awareness and Build Information Protection Systems,’ Quishi, 1 November 2001. Quoted in ibid. The Global Cyber Game © 2013 52 www.da.mod.uk In looking towards the future, and its own role in the world, China’s

[p. 57 to 59](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=57) and Global Affairs and Global Security Forum. Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, 19th-21st June 2012 100 http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/infosecu.htm#_ftnref15 accessed 18/02/13 101 He Dejin, ‘Raise Network Security Awareness and Build Information Protection Systems,’ Quishi, 1 November 2001. Quoted in ibid. The Global Cyber Game © 2013 52 www.da.mod.uk In looking towards the future, and its own role in the world, China’s posture is one of ‘building towards a harmonious world of lasting peace and common prosperity,’ in the words of Hu Jintao at the UN General Assembly in 2005. This mirrors the way in which, almost continuously for over 2500 years, successive dynasties, each typically lasting around 300 years, maintained order in a vast territory that seemed to sit geographically in the centre of the world. In thinking first expressed by Confucius in the ‘Warring States’ period around 500 BCE, earthly rule is to be achieved by securing the ‘mandate of heaven,’ through creating a just and harmonious society, governed by rules that mirror the harmony of natural order. Justice, according to Confucius, meant a proper harmonious relationship within a family, within a state, and between states. China’s cultural predilection is to think in terms of harmonious justice, ordered by rules, maintained by virtue of its own centrality in the world. China is vast, but was always surrounded by potential enemies and could never hope to conquer them all, so it tended to use less direct methods for maintaining power. If possible, it sought to prevent the formation of coalitions along its borders. The fear of encirclement dominates China’s strategic thinking, and is reflected in the traditional Chinese game of wéiqí, better known by its Japanese name, Go. The objective in wéiqí is to encircle the opponent in a series of simultaneous, continuously shifting power plays spanning the entire board. The Global Cyber Game © 2013 53 www.da.mod.uk Chinese strategic thinking often seeks to win by gaining sustained psychological advantage rather than by direct conflict, making it extremely subtle to the Western mind, which thinks in terms of frontal combat and decisive victory. Chinese thinking looks ahead, trying to read the direction of the evolutionary current in the strategic situation (shi in Sun Tzu) and turn it to advantage. The Celestial Court of the Manchu Qing Dynasty had been ruling China for 200 years when it first came into conflict with the industrializing European powers. In 1760 the emperor Qianlong had restricted foreign trade to the southern coastal city of Canton, but by the 1780s the insatiable British taste for tea had run up a serious trade deficit. The answer was Indian opium. By 1830, 1,200 tonnes of East India Company opium were being imported into China annually, and the trade deficit had been reversed. By the mid-1830s the Qing government could no longer ignore the financial and social consequences of drug addiction and began a crackdown. This led to growing trade frictions and, in 1840, the British government responded by sending the expeditionary force that initiated the first Opium War.

[p. 59 to 60](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=59) opium were being imported into China annually, and the trade deficit had been reversed. By the mid-1830s the Qing government could no longer ignore the financial and social consequences of drug addiction and began a crackdown. This led to growing trade frictions and, in 1840, the British government responded by sending the expeditionary force that initiated the first Opium War. British gunboats crushed mediaeval Chinese weaponry, and brought one of the world’s longest-lasting civilizations to its knees. Over the decades that followed, gunboat diplomacy and unequal trade impoverished the empire and addicted its people, inflicting a lasting trauma on the Chinese psyche. A new ‘warring states’ period had begun, and China began the long road of adaptation to modernity. China’s own narrative of its modern history begins with gravely unfair treatment by bullying Western powers, and leads on to a ‘century of humiliation’ at the hands of foreign imperialists. China now thinks that its long period of weakness has ended, and that the first twenty years of the twenty-first century represent a ‘strategic opportunity period.’ As acknowledged by State Councillor Dai Bingguo, writing in December 2010, the world has grown smaller, and major issues now require an unprecedented degree of global interaction. Peaceful development, he observes, is neither a ruse by which China ‘hides its brightness and bides its time’ nor a naive delusion that forfeits China’s advantages. Other forces within China remain cautious. PLA Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu wrote earlier in 2010 that China’s rise, and a peaceful world, can be safeguarded only if China nurtures a ‘martial spirit’ and amasses military force sufficient to deter, or if necessary, defeat its adversaries. Whether China can grasp the ‘strategic opportunity period’ will depend greatly on its ability to address the significant internal vulnerabilities that exist: economic, social and environmental, each one of which could fatally fracture it. If it can master these problems, much will then depend on its ability to gain power and yet remain at peace with the rest of the global community. Whether the militaristic or developmental current of thought becomes dominant in China will depend to a great degree on the nature of its interactions with the West, and here there is considerable scope for mutual misunderstanding. In the strategic game of establishing and The Global Cyber Game © 2013 54 www.da.mod.uk avoiding encirclement, preemptive moves are a means of deterrence. Moves that China sees in this light tend to be viewed by the West as displays of aggression, and possibly a prelude to war. Meanwhile, China is far advanced in the global game of strategic encirclement, including moves in the Cyber Game, though largely below the Western radar. Moves that the West sees as deterrent, such as the US strategic tilt towards East Asia, tend to be seen by the Chinese as representing an intolerable threat of encirclement. It is possible to interpret China’s cyber strategy in the context of its ‘strategic opportunity period’, though not without some residual ambiguity. Some of this may be

[p. 60 to 61](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=60) the Western radar. Moves that the West sees as deterrent, such as the US strategic tilt towards East Asia, tend to be seen by the Chinese as representing an intolerable threat of encirclement. It is possible to interpret China’s cyber strategy in the context of its ‘strategic opportunity period’, though not without some residual ambiguity. Some of this may be because future cyber conflict may take many forms that are not yet familiar. On the other hand, ambiguity can be a deliberate way to create hidden strategic options, somewhat like the two inconsistent telegrams sent simultaneously by Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis. A strategy can also be intended to hide in plain sight, as part of its design ingenuity. Consider therefore the following description, which is based on one possible interpretation of Chinese cyber strategy. It is a thought experiment, and something that might, in principle, be attempted by any country. This is a hypothetical cyber strategy of enormous global ambition and audacity in which knowledge itself is directly the prize. This might well be the ultimate type of cyber ‘initiative’ in a global knowledge economy. One of its interesting features is the difficulty of characterizing it appropriately using the terminology currently available in English, particularly in regard to its underlying intention. Imagine a formidable knowledge-era ‘competitor’, for example a powerful national government, one that is ingenious and unconstrained. This ‘competitor’ decides to mount a global knowledge raid on multiple coordinated fronts. At the cyber level, acting through proxies for deniability, it breaches computer systems around the world on an industrial scale, exfiltrating many petabytes of information on a sustained basis. This raid actually goes undetected during the first few years, because initially most of the target organizations are not equipped to identify the attacks. Once it is detected, it remains eminently deniable because each specific instance is not enough to justify a retaliatory response, and the overall scale of the attack cannot be seen unless the whole picture is assembled and made public, which the target organizations are mostly unwilling to do, for reputational and other reasons. Even if the picture is put together, it still flies under the radar of international law as, at worst, it constitutes espionage, which is tacitly permitted under the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). By making use of commercial competition for the implementation of its national geopolitical strategy, the ‘competitor’ also exploits pro-competitive economic regulation in the target economies, which are predominantly open in comparison with its own closed economy. It makes extensive state-bankrolled purchases of many critical parts of the local economies and infrastructure under the guise of independent commercial acquisitions. These include contracts for provision of national Internet backbones, and equity stakes in utility companies. These enable it to control ever larger parts of the target economies, to instal national-scale The Global Cyber Game © 2013 55 www.da.mod.uk wiretaps in domestic networks and, in effect, to place remote off-switches in elements of critical national infrastructure. Finally, to round off the

[p. 60 to 62](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=60) These include contracts for provision of national Internet backbones, and equity stakes in utility companies. These enable it to control ever larger parts of the target economies, to instal national-scale The Global Cyber Game © 2013 55 www.da.mod.uk wiretaps in domestic networks and, in effect, to place remote off-switches in elements of critical national infrastructure. Finally, to round off the effort, the ‘competitor’ simultaneously makes a massive effort to build its own domestic knowledge industry, sending students around the world in vast numbers to learn local languages and acquire advanced technical skills. In some cases, these students even manage to obtain funding from the target country educational systems. This effort, which only pays off on long timescales, allows it to consolidate and make full use of the information it has exfiltrated from around the world. In short, in this thought experiment, a knowledge era ‘offensive’ is underway. If it is allowed to continue for long enough, the target countries will find that they have lost so much autonomy to the ‘competitor’ country that they are unable to resist a full cultural and economic take-over, which is ultimately accomplished without open hostilities ever being declared, or at least not of a type that would be recognizable as industrial-era conflict. What lessons emerge from this thought experiment? This is in many ways the most extreme form of pure knowledge era conflict that can currently be imagined. Yet while LOAC is appropriate for industrial-era kinetic conflict, it is largely blind to actions which are hostile in the context of a knowledge economy. An attack can be highly distributed, so that the cumulative seriousness cannot be seen until it is too late. In terms of national security, our collective thinking has not caught up with the possibilities of cyber-era conflict, making us unable to recognize the overall pattern of what is underway or to attribute the right significance to it. National geopolitical strategy can be disguised as normal commercial The Global Cyber Game © 2013 56 www.da.mod.uk activity and, even if this is noticed, it cannot be challenged within the legal systems of target countries. Thus an international-scale offensive could be mounted without it ever being understood as such. These difficulties are somewhat reminiscent of the industrial cartelization strategy pursued by Germany in the years running up to the Second World War. This carefully orchestrated form of economic warfare was effectively invisible because it was positioned in the cognitive blind spot of British Empire industrialists. Until war broke out, and the deliberately engineered shortage of materials became apparent, they were unable to see it as anything but apparently profit-seeking industrial strategy on the part of German industry. 102 What sort of response should be made to a strategy like this, in the absence of anything that would be regarded as the use of force under international law, or any convincing evidence that one is imminent? Retaliatory kinetic attack would in any case be counterproductive because of the vital importance of mutual economic ties and

[p. 62 to 63](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=62) of German industry. 102 What sort of response should be made to a strategy like this, in the absence of anything that would be regarded as the use of force under international law, or any convincing evidence that one is imminent? Retaliatory kinetic attack would in any case be counterproductive because of the vital importance of mutual economic ties and very high levels of trade. To the extent that this does accurately describe Chinese strategy, possibly the United States and China could decide to wage an ongoing unacknowledged cyber war involving malware that stops short of physical damage. But is retaliation of any kind appropriate? Should the Cyber Game be played as a zero-sum game? The essential problem is that the strategy involves IP 102 Joseph Borkin and Charles A Welsh, Germany’s Master Plan (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1943) The Global Cyber Game © 2013 57 www.da.mod.uk theft on a grand, indeed global scale. This is real destruction of value for those companies and agencies who have been targeted, as a firm like Dyson is quick to assert. 103 Is there any other way of looking at this? Possibly the one thought that trumps Western outrage at the idea of information theft is to recall that it can be stolen without being lost, though it may be devalued. It may not be the knowledge itself but how we create it and use it that is important. In this view, the Cyber Game, being ultimately knowledge-based, is genuinely a non-zero game. Among economic players of the Cyber Game, this understanding is gradually turning into an approach that author Don Tapscott calls ‘radical openness’. As an illustration, he points out that in October 2012 the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline took the unprecedented step of releasing all its clinical trials data on the Web. CEO Andrew Witty said the data would be released whether the clinical trial was successful or not. He called the move essential for finding new drugs, and to end suspicion that the company had secrets to hide. 104 In this light, a true knowledge-era strategy may not be stealing information but sharing it, playing the Cyber Game high on the gameboard, as Internet pioneers have been doing all along. Maybe Western democracies should respond to China’s alleged actions in the same way. Dare they choose to reframe in this way? The hypothetical cyber strategy is an example of wéiqí-like play on the Cyber Gameboard, creating a pattern of mutually reinforcing positions across the entire board, including the social power zone. However, in terms of actual Chinese cyber strategy, this is perhaps the point of greatest weakness. Instead of developing true integrative power beyond its diaspora, China appears to be primarily trying to achieve a comparable effect through public relations activity in cell 6 of the Cyber Gameboard. This desire to be seen in a favorable light in itself creates an opening for positive dialogue. Furthermore, to the extent that China may be following the spirit of wéiqí, what

[p. 63 to 64](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=63) developing true integrative power beyond its diaspora, China appears to be primarily trying to achieve a comparable effect through public relations activity in cell 6 of the Cyber Gameboard. This desire to be seen in a favorable light in itself creates an opening for positive dialogue. Furthermore, to the extent that China may be following the spirit of wéiqí, what does this say about its ultimate intentions? In wéiqí just fifty-one percent of the board constitutes victory, without requiring Clausewitzian-style destruction of the enemy citadel as in a game of chess. Is there a point at which China will simply stop its alleged strategy, alien though that may be to Western thinking? This prompts an interesting question: what would China lose if it stopped, and conversely, what if anything would the rest of the world gain? China is far from being one single official line of thought. Different tendencies and outlooks are competing for primacy. To a degree, which aspect of its policy is encouraged, and which constituencies gain influence, will reflect which of their perceptions Western countries choose to act on. The part of China that is on the economic leading edge is very much open to change and adaptation. China’s lingering official resentment about the Opium Wars means it can readily present itself as the wronged party and demonize the West. But it could potentially move beyond this, particularly if there is explicit recognition by the West, and specifically by Britain, of the historic injustice. Britain might also add its own thoughtful reflections about the long term burdens of empire. Alternatively, if simply treated as an 103 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8936685/Sir-James-Dyson-attacks-China-over- designs-theft.html accessed 18/02/13 104 Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams, Radical Openness (TED Conferences (iBook), 2012) The Global Cyber Game © 2013 58 www.da.mod.uk aggressor, Beijing may adopt a hardline position and be less accommodating to Western countries. Likewise the potential for mutually accepted global rules in relation to cyber conflict may be greater than Western countries imagine if framed in terms of Chinese conceptual thinking. Any such proposals are likely to be much better received if put forward as being aimed at establishing a ‘harmonious global order’ rather than as rules presented as being in conformity with the enlightened Western way, which is increasingly seen as discredited and chaotic by China. China may of course regard itself as primus inter pares in any global order, but at least there are indications that it does accept in principle the idea of a multi-polar world. Russia’s cyber strategy The Russian view of the Cyber Game is set out in the Doctrine of Information Security of the Russian Federation of 2000. Information is seen as having strategic value and as being a key factor for the stability of the state, the regime and influential and leading actors. It is also important in war. According to the Russian Military Doctrine of 2010, information warfare should be used during the initial phase of a conflict against the opponent’s command and control capability, and in

[p. 64 to 65](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=64) is seen as having strategic value and as being a key factor for the stability of the state, the regime and influential and leading actors. It is also important in war. According to the Russian Military Doctrine of 2010, information warfare should be used during the initial phase of a conflict against the opponent’s command and control capability, and in the form of a public information campaign during a conflict. Russia sees information warfare capabilities as including computer network operations, electronic warfare, psychological operations, deception campaigns (maskirovka), and the deployment of malware, back doors and logic bombs. 105 The cyber attacks against Estonia in 2007, widely believed to have originated in Russia, and the cyber attacks from within Russia that coincided with Russian military action in Georgia in 2008 are consistent with this policy, even though the Russian government has denied any involvement. 106 Interestingly, if they were to have involved the Russian government, the Georgian cyber attacks would be the classic case so far of a ‘strong’ definition of cyber war, which is the use of cyber attacks in conjunction with conventional warfighting, not cyber attacks in isolation. Russian information security is not seen only in destructive terms, however, as the 2000 Doctrine lists the importance of protecting against ‘information influence of foreign political, economic, military and information structures on development and realization of strategy of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation.’ It also cites the need to ‘ensure formation in a new generation and preservation in the society of necessary moral values, patriotism and civil responsibility for the destiny of the country.’ 107 It is instructive to appreciate why this is viewed as legitimate by Russia, and part of the answer goes back to a school of thought that sees Russian society and politics as being founded on the idea of a ‘government of truth’ in contrast to the ‘government of law’ principle in Western democracies. Faith in the ability of a 105 Roland Heickero ‘Emerging Cyber Threats and Russian Views on Information Warfare and Information Operations’ FOI, Swedish Defence Research Agency, March 2010 http://www.highseclabs.com/Corporate/foir2970.pdf accessed 08/03/13 106 http://www.economist.com/node/12673385 accessed 30/03/13 107 ‘Doctrine of Information Security of the Russian Federation’ 9th September 2000, p.26 & p.31 http://www.dcaf.ch/Chapter-Section/Information-Security-Doctrine-of-the-Russian-Federation accessed 28/03/13 The Global Cyber Game © 2013 59 www.da.mod.uk Russian leader to know the truth is grounded in a belief in the spiritual superiority of Russian culture. Information is then the means whereby the government presents the truth (pravda) to the people and propaganda (advocacy) for the truth is a legitimate tool. To do this well, the state must be strong but, as Vladimir Putin said in 2000, ‘the stronger the state, the freer the individual’. 108 This stance is not, of course, consistent with the Western concept of ‘Internet freedom’, though it is consistent with industrial-era ‘Westphalian’ sovereignty. But the Cyber Game is both a global and a globalizing game, pushing into post-Westphalian territory, so this issue of the legitimacy of state control of Internet content is a

[p. 65 to 66](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=65) stronger the state, the freer the individual’. 108 This stance is not, of course, consistent with the Western concept of ‘Internet freedom’, though it is consistent with industrial-era ‘Westphalian’ sovereignty. But the Cyber Game is both a global and a globalizing game, pushing into post-Westphalian territory, so this issue of the legitimacy of state control of Internet content is a key source of tension, and underlies the ITU versus ICANN struggle for Internet governance. It also needs to be defused if we hope to achieve the upside N-topia scenario described later. In the West the public value of information stems from the right to exchange it freely, regardless of what it is. In Russia the public value of information stems from the power to keep it true. The Western Enlightenment wisdom is that no ruler can be trusted to determine the truth, so the authentic Western cyber perspective should be, as during the Cold War, that vesting truth-telling in the people will ultimately win out over vesting it in a ruler. 108 Douglas Carman, ‘Translation and Analysis of the Doctrine of Information Security of the Russian Federation: Mass Media & the Politics of Identity’ Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, University of Washington School of Law, (Spring 2002) https://digital.lib.washington.edu/dspace- law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/757/16_11PacRimL%26PolyJ339%282002%29.pdf?sequence=1 accessed 05/03/13 The Global Cyber Game © 2013 60 www.da.mod.uk For the moment, Russia appears to be biding its time while it builds capability. It does not see itself as necessarily constrained by the same rules that govern Western countries, but it is likely to maintain a cautious stance as long as it still relies on Western cyber infrastructure and until it has built up its own cyber infrastructure. Civil society cyber players Civil society cyber players, who span everything from NGOs to open-source software developers, mostly operate in the social power level of the Cyber Gameboard. Possibly the perspective that best reflects their thinking about the Cyber Game is the idea of fluid and open connectedness, or as Geoff Mulgan of NESTA calls it, reviving an old English word, connexity. 109 In this view, the rapid growth in global flows of information, travel, transport, and cultural exchange are making obsolete the previously dominant concepts and practices of a world of independent isolated actors. New concepts are emerging for dealings among actors who are no longer neatly bounded, and are subject to complex systemic interlinkages and instantaneous feedbacks. Powerful hierarchies still exist, but the new connectivity is favouring the rise of networks that are able to link concerned individuals directly and foster cooperation, rapid knowledge sharing and adaptation. The flexibility of networks, and their ability to organize quickly around issues and groups in need, is making them far more effective in dealing with complex problems than hierarchies built on the principle of specialized functional activities and layers of coordination and control. There is an important generational perspective involved here too. In the words of Ben Hammersley, an Internet adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, ‘even if we personally are

[p. 66 to 67](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=66) and groups in need, is making them far more effective in dealing with complex problems than hierarchies built on the principle of specialized functional activities and layers of coordination and control. There is an important generational perspective involved here too. In the words of Ben Hammersley, an Internet adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, ‘even if we personally are fine with trusting our rulers to decide... [what] we can and cannot see, the Internet collectively is absolutely not fine with it.’ This, he says, is a point where the divergence of opinion between ‘the networked, techno-literate generations (i.e. those who’ve grown up using the Internet) and the hierarchical non-literate ones (those who haven’t) is most acute’. He goes on, ‘For anyone who lives their life on the Internet, it is considered rude when someone denies you access to something. The Internet was built and is still creating itself through a principle of collaboration. If you post something on-line that is restricted access, you are rejecting that collaborative instinct. You should not be surprised that your content is likely to be targeted by hacktivists—on-line activists who use their hacking skills to gain access to the very data that you’ve tried to lock away.’ 110 To so-called ‘digital natives’, the Cyber Gameboard has always been there, and it has its own established and evolving ethic. Those who go against this ethic are seen as lacking legitimacy and credibility. 109 http://www.demos.co.uk/files/File/networklogic04mulgan.pdf accessed 14/02/13 110 Ben Hammersley, 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2012) The Global Cyber Game © 2013 61 www.da.mod.uk Many of the national security players about to enter the hard power level of the Cyber Gameboard must expand their view of the game from militarization to include cooperation, the top level of the gameboard, or they may find that the clash of perspectives provokes a cyber conflict of quite a different sort than they were expecting. For example, governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria have found large international networks of volunteers supporting protester and revolutionary groups on their soil, pushing from outside for regime change and transparency. 111 Many of these volunteers, digital equivalents of the International Brigades, but who are ‘fighting’ from their own soil, are not fighting because of a perceived kinship with revolutionary groups. They may even lack detailed knowledge of the local political situation. But they do recognize the general appearance of state repression of what they think of as legitimate protest, and are reaching over national borders to provide sophisticated technical assistance to the underdogs simply because they are underdogs. Although no major incident has yet come from this kind of activism, untangling the resulting diplomatic issues could be complex, particularly in scenarios where physical world hard power retaliation was visited on activist networks by the states they were acting against. Lines become particularly confused when a given packet of information crosses jurisdictional and player-network boundaries several times. For example, data about human rights abuses may be passed

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Continues in https://guptaoption.com/texts/143-6.md (part 6 of 10).
End of [143] The Global Cyber Game: Achieving strategic resilience in the global knowledge society, part 5 of 10. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.