# The Global Cyber Game: Achieving strategic resilience in the global knowledge society (part 1 of 10) > One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [143], part 1 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/.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 1 of 10 [p. 1 to 3](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=1) The Global Cyber Game The Defence Academy Cyber Inquiry Report Professional Skills for Defence & Security About the Defence Academy The Defence Academy provides education and training in a broad range of subjects - including command & staff, leadership, defence management, languages, acquisition and technology - for members of the UK Armed Forces and Defence Civil Servants. The Academy is also the MOD's primary link with UK universities and international defence educational institutions. Our work serves to enhance the understanding, skills and competences of our Service and civilian personnel so that they are able to respond swiftly and imaginatively to the challenges of an increasingly uncertain world. Our teaching is underpinned by cutting- edge research by our academic partners, ensuring that education at the Academy is vibrant, current and relevant. In delivering education and training, it is our responsibility to prepare senior decision makers for the uncertainties and complexities of the challenges ahead. To that end, we recognise the value of research that has the potential to enhance our own thinking. “The Global Cyber Game” report is a good example of this. The Academy’s Research and Publications Portal provides a single point of access to a wealth of research material as well as links to Subject Matter Experts and Communities of Practice and can be accessed via our website: www.da.mod.uk The open source Cyber Inquiry underlying this Report is characterised by its independence of approach and the spread of contributions drawn from UK and internationally. Specifically, the Report proposes The Global Cyber Game as a tool of strategic, policy and operational analysis. As an Academy, we will consider ways to draw on the ideas in this report to enrich the education of our students and contribute to the Game's further development in the coming year. If you would like to do the same, or simply increase your understanding of the work done so far, contact details for the team that produced the Report are provided in this document. For further information about educational and training opportunities at the Defence Academy please visit our website. The Global Cyber Game © 2013 i www.da.mod.uk The Defence Academy Cyber Inquiry Report The Global Cyber Game: Achieving strategic resilience in the global knowledge society Report author: Hardin Tibbs Cyber Inquiry Team: Susan Ambler-Edwards, Michael J Corcoran, Hardin Tibbs This report presents a synthesis of the findings of the Defence Academy Cyber Inquiry. This programme of work, based entirely on open source material, was designed to respond to a strategic research question posed by the Ministry of Defence. The Inquiry’s overall remit was first to consider the broad question ‘how should the cyber domain be conceptualized?’ and in the light of that to examine the implications for security strategy generally, the issues raised for state actors in the Internet age, new power relationships, possible sources and modes of future conflict, and the steps that need to be taken to prepare for a range of plausible possibilities. This report gives an overview of the Cyber Inquiry’s [p. 3 to 4](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=3) conceptualized?’ and in the light of that to examine the implications for security strategy generally, the issues raised for state actors in the Internet age, new power relationships, possible sources and modes of future conflict, and the steps that need to be taken to prepare for a range of plausible possibilities. This report gives an overview of the Cyber Inquiry’s big-picture conclusions. It represents a cross-section through a highly multi-dimensional field of research and, inevitably, at this level of detail cannot do justice to the depth of research by the Inquiry into the many specific areas that contribute to a full understanding. Nevertheless, the Cyber Inquiry team believes that what is presented here is a balanced strategic assessment of the emerging meaning of security in the cyber era, clarifying the new meaning of security in a world that is now pervaded by networked digital computers. It does this, in part, by proposing the idea of the Global Cyber Game and Cyber Gameboard as a framework that can be used for practical thinking about cyber strategy, and it hopes this template may be persuasive and useful enough to be widely adopted and further developed. The Global Cyber Game © 2013 ii www.da.mod.uk Publisher’s Note The views expressed in this report are entirely and solely those of the author and do not reflect or represent the policy or official thinking of either the UK Ministry of Defence, or any other department of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom. Further, such views should not be considered as constituting an official endorsement of factual accuracy, opinion, conclusion or recommendation of the UK Ministry of Defence, or any other department of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom. Acknowledgments The Defence Academy Cyber Inquiry team would like to express its appreciation and thanks to the large number of people who assisted in the process of information gathering and discussion that comprised the overall process of the Inquiry and contributed to developing the findings included in this report. The Inquiry was greatly helped by the generosity and enthusiasm of all those who participated, and by the breadth of expertise and experience they provided. Contact Information The Defence Academy Cyber Inquiry team can be contacted at [email removed] Conditions of Supply—Full Rights This document is supplied to MOD in accordance with Contract No DSTLX-100064380. The document comprises information proprietary to Synthesys Strategic Consulting Limited and whose unauthorized use may cause damage to the interests of Synthesys Strategic Consulting Limited. This document is supplied to MOD as a FULL RIGHTS VERSION under the terms of DEFCON 705 (Edn 11/02) and, except with the prior written permission of Synthesys Strategic Consulting Limited, MOD’s rights of use and dissemination in the document are limited to those set out in that Condition and the Contract for the use of Full Rights Versions of Technical Deliverables. Requests for permission for wider use or dissemination should be made to Hardin Tibbs at Synthesys Strategic Consulting Limited at [email removed] Copyright Hardin Tibbs [p. 4 to 7](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=4) of Synthesys Strategic Consulting Limited, MOD’s rights of use and dissemination in the document are limited to those set out in that Condition and the Contract for the use of Full Rights Versions of Technical Deliverables. Requests for permission for wider use or dissemination should be made to Hardin Tibbs at Synthesys Strategic Consulting Limited at [email removed] Copyright Hardin Tibbs © 2013 ISBN 978-1-905962-99-0 The Global Cyber Game © 2013 iii www.da.mod.uk Contents Executive Summary 2 Preface 3 The Global Cyber Game 4 The Cyber Game and the Internet 6 The power dimension of the Cyber Gameboard 14 The information dimension of the Cyber Gameboard 18 The Cyber Gameboard 31 How the Global Cyber Game is being played 42 Scenarios for the future of the Cyber Game 71 How the Cyber Game relates to cyberspace 81 National strategic priorities for the Cyber Game 91 Recommendations: How to play the Cyber Game 103 Conclusion 107 The Global Cyber Game © 2013 iv www.da.mod.uk The Global Cyber Game © 2013 1 www.da.mod.uk Connection Computation Cognition Physical data VVirtual Knowledge and handling domain interactivity meaning domain domain Cooperation Power as positive Integrative social social reciprocity power (Infopolitik) Co-option Power as Economic balanced social exchange reciprocity power Coercion Power as Destructive negative social hard power reciprocity (Realpolitik) Information Information Information hardware software wetware Executive Summary This report presents a systematic way of thinking about cyberpower and its use by a variety of global players. The urgency of addressing cyberpower in this way is a consequence of the very high value of the Internet and the hazards of its current militarization. Cyberpower and cyber security are conceptualized as a ‘Global Game’ with a novel ‘Cyber Gameboard’ consisting of a nine-cell grid. The horizontal direction on the grid is divided into three columns representing aspects of information (i.e. cyber): connection, computation and cognition. The vertical direction on the grid is divided into three rows representing types of power: coercion, co-option, and cooperation. The nine cells of the grid represent all the possible combinations of power and information, that is, forms of cyberpower. The Cyber Gameboard itself is also an abstract representation of the surface of cyberspace, or C-space as defined in this report. C-space is understood as a networked medium capable of conveying various combinations of power and information to produce effects in physical or ‘flow space’, referred to as F-space in this report. Game play is understood as the projection via C-space of a cyberpower capability existing in any one cell of the gameboard to produce an effect in F-space vis-à-vis another player in any other cell of the gameboard. By default, the Cyber Game is played either actively or passively by all those using network connected computers. The players include states, businesses, NGOs, individuals, non-state political groups, and organized crime, among others. Each player is seen as having a certain level of cyberpower when its capability in each cell is summed across the whole board. In general states have the most cyberpower. The possible [p. 7 to 8](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=7) is played either actively or passively by all those using network connected computers. The players include states, businesses, NGOs, individuals, non-state political groups, and organized crime, among others. Each player is seen as having a certain level of cyberpower when its capability in each cell is summed across the whole board. In general states have the most cyberpower. The possible future path of the game is depicted by two scenarios, N-topia and N-crash. These are the stakes for which the Cyber Game is played. N-topia represents the upside potential of the game, in which the full value of a globally connected knowledge society is realized. N- crash represents the downside potential, in which militarization and fragmentation of the Internet cause its value to be substantially destroyed. Which scenario eventuates will be determined largely by the overall pattern of play of the Cyber Game. States have a high level of responsibility for determining the outcome. The current pattern of play is beginning to resemble traditional state-on-state geopolitical conflict. This puts the civil Internet at risk, and civilian cyber players are already getting caught in the crossfire. As long as the civil Internet remains undefended and easily permeable to cyber attack it will be hard to achieve the N-topia scenario. Defending the civil Internet in depth, and hardening it by re-architecting will allow its full social and economic value to be realized but will restrict the potential for espionage and surveillance by states. This trade-off is net positive and in accordance with the espoused values of Western-style democracies. It does however call for leadership based on enlightened self-interest by state players. The Global Cyber Game © 2013 2 www.da.mod.uk Preface The Defence Academy Cyber Inquiry was set up to provide a strategic overview and assessment of the new nature of security in a world that is increasingly enabled by and dependent on networked digital computers. The result is an open source strategic assessment, not merely of what security ‘in cyberspace’ might mean, but of the way security is being transformed more generally in a world of ubiquitous computation and connectivity. Cyber security is interwoven with other security concerns, so the Inquiry’s findings as summarized in this report are relevant to everyone who is interested in the overall development of security issues. The Inquiry’s working method combined a variety of qualitative strategic research tools, to explore the ‘future anthropology’ of the cyber domain. These included interviewing, sense making, and futures thinking (both horizon scanning and scenario development), as well as decision framing and strategic thinking. The Cyber Inquiry started by taking the widest possible view of the value of the ‘global information sphere’ and from this worked back to discover what security issues it raised. This approach produces a different perspective than starting with a question about what ‘cyber’ might mean for ‘national security’. The global information sphere now largely shapes the strategic environment for all geopolitical players. It does not simply add information to the existing situation, it essentially transforms the situation, [p. 8 to 9](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=8) and from this worked back to discover what security issues it raised. This approach produces a different perspective than starting with a question about what ‘cyber’ might mean for ‘national security’. The global information sphere now largely shapes the strategic environment for all geopolitical players. It does not simply add information to the existing situation, it essentially transforms the situation, undercutting many customary assumptions. To understand how this should reset security priorities means projecting the future path of the global situation, and reflecting on the way different assumptions about strategic interests may lead to significantly different outcomes. This report looks across a variety of scales of observation, to consider how geopolitical players are struggling to transition from the old industrial world into the new information era, the cyber-enabled trends that are operating within the field of security itself, and the new strategic imperatives that are emerging because of these changes. By thinking about the forces that are transforming security this way, a fresh strategic perspective can be formed. This perspective provides a foundation for assessing the overall significance of the cyber challenge, for determining how well-adapted we are to the emerging conditions, for considering the implications for national security (broadly framed), and ultimately for deciding how cyber capability should be used, by whom, under what circumstances, and for what purpose. Overall, this report offers a wide strategic review of the cyber question, aiming to present it in a way that is both balanced and proportionate, and at the same time adequately reflecting cyber as a major driving force of future change. What it does not do is discuss cyber security at a technical level, or in terms of practical actions to be taken by individual computer users, as both have been extensively covered elsewhere. This report’s focus is strategic. The Global Cyber Game © 2013 3 www.da.mod.uk The Global Cyber Game There are many possible analogies for what is happening internationally in the cyber domain, but an illuminating one is that a new kind of global game is being played out. The idea of a game covers a span of meanings from open-ended play to competitive sport, in which skill, strength or luck may determine the outcome. It also invokes the idea of game theory, in which the interactions of groups of people are studied and the results of different kinds of play may be worked out in advance. Games also range from open ended puzzles, such as the tangram, to contests with a clear winner. A game can be finite and time-bound, or infinite and universal, with echoes of Herman Hesse’s Glass Bead Game. The beauty of the game analogy is that it captures the highly multidimensional and still puzzling nature of the cyber domain, as well as its clear evolution into an arena for business competition and geopolitical power plays. The Global Cyber Game, as envisaged here, is a worldwide effort to achieve information- enabled advantage. It is a contest to gain a competitive edge through the most [p. 9 to 10](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=9) analogy is that it captures the highly multidimensional and still puzzling nature of the cyber domain, as well as its clear evolution into an arena for business competition and geopolitical power plays. The Global Cyber Game, as envisaged here, is a worldwide effort to achieve information- enabled advantage. It is a contest to gain a competitive edge through the most effective application and orchestration of knowledge and information capability. The Cyber Game spans the infrastructural, computational and cognitive aspects of information. The game has come to prominence, indeed been made unavoidable, by the advent of digital technologies and cyberspace, although it is as much about a mode of organization as it is about technology. The game can be considered as a 'competition' because although it may involve physically violent conflict, it does not need to do so, and quite probably will usually not do so, given the global trend away from violent conflict. Nevertheless, the Cyber Game spans several distinct modes of ‘competition’, running from new forms of interstate war, through new types of criminal activity, to new forms of civil society struggle, and even new forms of constructive civil society interaction. The game analogy is helpful for framing cyberpower and cyber strategy because it allows the possibility of striking a constructive balance between competition and cooperation, and because it clarifies the various components involved in a game, highlighting the key features of what is otherwise a very complex strategic puzzle. The first component of a game is a playing field or, in this case, a ‘Cyber Gameboard’ which is global, and formed from the intersection of power and digital information processing and exchange. Second, there are players, who range widely: from nations, to ordinary citizens and consumers, to businesses, to politically- and ideologically motivated non-state actors, to serious organized crime networks. All have relatively unconstrained access to the Cyber Gameboard, though with varying degrees of technical sophistication. Third, there are the rules of the game, which are just beginning to emerge, though until now it has been something of a free-for-all. Fourth, there is the nature of play and the objective of the game, which is where the emerging outlines of cyber strategy can be discerned. The Cyber Gameboard provides a framework for thinking about the global information space formed by the entire nexus of computers and telecommunications networks, including their The Global Cyber Game © 2013 4 www.da.mod.uk hard and soft infrastructures and their associated flows of information, and human cognitive interaction with the information. Play on the Cyber Gameboard implies the use of cyberpower—power exerted through or against information. This is feasible thanks to the new information infrastructure which, perhaps unintentionally, has the side-effect of allowing continuous threats to and from information. Information is not merely susceptible to power; power and information form a reciprocal relationship on the gameboard. Power is able to act against or through information, but at the same time information helps to build power, producing some subtle interdependencies that will be explored later. [p. 10 to 11](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=10) infrastructure which, perhaps unintentionally, has the side-effect of allowing continuous threats to and from information. Information is not merely susceptible to power; power and information form a reciprocal relationship on the gameboard. Power is able to act against or through information, but at the same time information helps to build power, producing some subtle interdependencies that will be explored later. If the Cyber Gameboard is envisaged as an arena for the exercise of cyberpower, it logically has a ‘cyber’ or information related dimension and a power dimension. Together, these two dimensions form a conceptual framework, the gameboard as described later, that allows various types of cyber gameplay to be analysed. Interpreting the resulting implications for cyber strategy, meaning strategy for the exercise of cyberpower, is one of the main aims of this report. Before looking at the structure of the gameboard and the game in detail it is helpful to understand what makes the Cyber Game significant, namely the very high value of the Internet and the potential hazards of its current militarization by states. The Global Cyber Game © 2013 5 www.da.mod.uk The Cyber Game and the Internet The principal reason the Cyber Game is an issue of rising global concern is its potential impact on the Internet. The Internet is the information processing system that networks almost all the world’s computers together into a single interactive medium via global telecommunication systems. The Internet is based on the Internet Protocol (IP) software which addresses and routes small packets of information across the network of networks without requiring a dedicated communication line (the IP is also the basis of isolated networks, not accessible from the public Internet, which also form part of the Cyber Game). This innovation from the 1970s allows the Internet to leap far beyond the capacity of the old circuit-switched telephone system. 1 That depended on switching in an inefficient dedicated link between any two parties who wanted to communicate, the equivalent of connecting them with a private road. The Internet, in contrast, carries a continuous stream of packets between all communicating nodes, and can re-route around blockages, rather like the flow of cars on a public highway. This has allowed exponential growth in information exchange and interaction, accompanied by an equally rapid rise in stored information content, and an enormous proliferation of information services and applications affecting all areas of the economy and culture. The spread and success of the Internet was not expected, though the very great efficiency with which it uses communication channels might have made this predictable from a technical point of view. From its early experimental beginnings it has gone on to become a major global asset shared, essentially, by all of humanity. The fact that it is human-made, unlike many other shared resources, means it also needs to be actively kept in being by continued cooperative decision making among its stakeholders. This in turn depends on a widespread appreciation of its value. The public Internet, and the World Wide Web it [p. 11 to 12](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=11) become a major global asset shared, essentially, by all of humanity. The fact that it is human-made, unlike many other shared resources, means it also needs to be actively kept in being by continued cooperative decision making among its stakeholders. This in turn depends on a widespread appreciation of its value. The public Internet, and the World Wide Web it enables, link the whole world together, quite literally, into a single shared communication space. This has unleashed enormous creativity and initiative, producing solutions for a world of seven billion people that could not have been provided by any other means. The Internet is now the primary enabler of the world’s globalized economic system. It is relied on for financial transfers and exchange, market and commercial transactions, coordination of transport and supply chain logistics, distributed manufacturing systems, engineering and design teamwork, management communications, geographic positioning, infrastructure services such as power and water, news reporting, weather forecasting, advertising, product documentation and instructions, customer feedback—in short just about everything that makes the globalized economy work. The value of the Internet The exact value of the enabling and coordinating role of the Internet is hard to assess, as without it the economy as a whole could not function at its current level of transactions. However, research by McKinsey in 2011 showed that when Internet consumption and 1 John Naughton, A Brief History of the Future (London: Phoenix Paperbacks, 2000), p.123 The Global Cyber Game © 2013 6 www.da.mod.uk expenditure is measured purely as a sector of the economy, it is now bigger than agriculture or energy. On average, for the 13 countries covered by the research, it now contributes 3.4 percent to GDP, and its total contribution worldwide is equal to the GDP of Spain or Canada, and growing faster than Brazil. In relative terms, the United Kingdom was in second place, with an Internet contribution to GDP of 5.4 percent, behind Sweden, but ahead of the United States in fifth place with 3.8 percent. 2 The Internet is a major source of economic growth. The McKinsey study found that, on average, the Internet had contributed 21 percent to growth in mature countries during the five years to 2009, up from 10 percent for the previous 15 years. It contributed 3 percent to growth in rapidly growing countries. A recent study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) expects the Internet economy to grow by more than 10 percent a year, and that it will contribute a total of $4.2 trillion to the G-20’s total GDP by 2016. In other words, if it was a national economy, it would rank among the world’s top five. In developing markets, the Internet economy will grow at an average annual rate of 18 percent, and is expected to grow at about 11 percent a year in the UK. 3 The Internet is also important for jobs and profitability. Among 4,800 small and medium-size enterprises surveyed for the McKinsey study, use of the Internet created 2.6 jobs for each [p. 12 to 13](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=12) In developing markets, the Internet economy will grow at an average annual rate of 18 percent, and is expected to grow at about 11 percent a year in the UK. 3 The Internet is also important for jobs and profitability. Among 4,800 small and medium-size enterprises surveyed for the McKinsey study, use of the Internet created 2.6 jobs for each job lost to technology related efficiencies, and increased profitability by 10 percent on average. In addition, most of the extra economic value is not in the technology sector but in more traditional industries, which capture 75 percent of the benefits. Overall, businesses using web technologies grew twice as fast as others, brought in twice as much export revenue as a percentage of total sales, and created twice as many jobs. Use of the Internet also correlates with national resilience and the ability to weather a financial crisis. An analysis by David and Matthew Cleevely compares 10 year government bond rates for 15 countries against BCG’s e-intensity index, which is based on adoption, expenditure and use of the Internet and e-commerce. This shows that countries with high e- intensity, such as the UK, have far lower bond rates than countries with low e-intensity, such as Spain or Portugal. In other words, this suggests that countries with high e-intensity have also either eliminated or minimized underlying structural problems, or created a flexible and robust economy that can respond more flexibly to shocks and crises, or both. 4 In the words of the BCG report, ‘no one—individual, business, or government—can afford to ignore the ability of the Internet to deliver more value and wealth to more consumers and citizens more broadly than any economic development since the Industrial Revolution.’ As things stand, the United Kingdom is well positioned to be a leader in gains from this economic potential. 2 http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/research/technology_and_innovation/internet_matters accessed 18/02/13 3 https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/media_entertainment_strategic_planning_4_2_tril lion_opportunity_internet_economy_g20/ accessed 14/02/13 4 http://www.thenbells.com/2012/02/font-face-font-family-cambriap.html accessed 14/02/13 The Global Cyber Game © 2013 7 www.da.mod.uk An analogy with world trade The value of the Internet is directly comparable with the value of world trade. The principle of comparative advantage has long been the rationale for open markets, with each region specializing in what it does best and exchanging the results. This produces a much more prosperous whole than if each nation struggled to provide all of its own needs, including those it is ill-suited to manufacturing or producing. In an Internet context, goods are not the currency in play; information is. Some of this information is exchanged simply in support of trade in goods and services: contracts and specifications are emailed across the world and credit card payments made for services. These efficiencies alone would be large enough to justify protecting the unity of the network to protect trade, a logic most nations are familiar with. But beyond this there is a second effect. One of the primary impacts of the Internet is a global increase in the quality of decision-making because of the ease with which experts on [p. 13 to 14](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=13) for services. These efficiencies alone would be large enough to justify protecting the unity of the network to protect trade, a logic most nations are familiar with. But beyond this there is a second effect. One of the primary impacts of the Internet is a global increase in the quality of decision-making because of the ease with which experts on any topic can be located and consulted. This applies equally to academic collaborations, business decisions, policy deliberations, and personal life. Although hard to quantify, given the extremely decentralized nature of the effect, the long term impact of generally better decision-making at every level due to the ability to source expertise from anywhere in the world on an as-needed basic cannot be overstated. A typical example is medical outsourcing, in which X-rays taken in San Diego are read by highly trained doctors in Bangalore. The same effect is used in software outsourcing, design agencies operating online and many other areas. But this is simply the commercial aspect of a much wider phenomenon, found when people are debugging or configuring software and looking for help on the Internet, or wondering up how to look after a particularly tricky species of tropical fish. The help accessed is seldom local. If the Internet were to be Balkanized or subdivided, the odds of finding help on a particular question would drop very quickly, and accumulating mistakes would silently be made all over the world. This may sound abstract, but this kind of passive cooperation is a huge part of the ordinary everyday economic utility of the internet: searching for answers to practical questions. As more expertise is documented, as better tools connect people to the knowledge resources or embodied expertise they need, the more valuable the global network becomes. Over the course of a few decades, this phenomenon is likely to transform human endeavour in invaluable and completely unexpected ways. Internet vulnerability However, for its economic and social potential to be realized, Internet connectivity must be capable of growing very significantly, in terms of connected nodes and traffic carried, and remain stable as it does so. Internet traffic growth is accelerating exponentially, and according to Cisco was up 42 percent in 2011. Cisco estimates that Internet traffic could grow from its 2011 level of about 300 Exabytes a year to about 1300 Exabytes a year by 2016 (an Exabyte is a million Terabytes). 5 Unfortunately the Internet was not designed with the expectation of current or expected traffic levels, or security threats, and has a number of 5 http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/sp/vni/vni_forecast_highlights/index.html accessed 14/02/13 The Global Cyber Game © 2013 8 www.da.mod.uk known, and no doubt unknown, vulnerabilities that make it potentially liable to sustained catastrophic outage. The risks of failure include online actions that can affect the whole Internet, such as the fundamental weakness in the Domain Name System (DNS) discovered by Dan Kaminsky in 2008, that would have allowed takeover of the entire Internet had he not revealed it publicly, allowing immediate steps to be taken [p. 14 to 15](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=14) that make it potentially liable to sustained catastrophic outage. The risks of failure include online actions that can affect the whole Internet, such as the fundamental weakness in the Domain Name System (DNS) discovered by Dan Kaminsky in 2008, that would have allowed takeover of the entire Internet had he not revealed it publicly, allowing immediate steps to be taken to fix it. 6 Similarly, so-called communication ‘black holes’ that already exist in the Internet could either begin to multiply spontaneously though sheer overload, or could be deliberately triggered, for example by deliberately overloading routers, as in the Internet-wide ZMW-style online attack described by Max Schuchard at the University of Minnesota. 7 Widespread loss of the Internet through physical damage is also possible, as with the 90 percent reduction in Chinese and Southeast Asian Internet service for several weeks in 2006 after an earthquake in the South China Sea severed six undersea cables 15 kilometres south of Taiwan. Internet failure could also be caused by widespread computer damage, say from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) burning out all unshielded computers in a very wide area, either caused by a bomb-like device or a major solar flare such as the 1859 Solar Superstorm. The consequences of prolonged Internet failure would be severe. As Su Tzu-yun, a Chinese military analyst, put it in 2001, ‘as soon as its computer networks come under attack and are destroyed, the country will slip into a state of paralysis and the lives of its people will grind to a halt.’ 8 A study in Finland by Leena Ilmola of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) showed that total loss of Internet services in the country would lead to a failure of the food supply within two days. 9 In short, the Internet is a critical component in the global life support system. It is not an exaggeration to say that the lives of a large proportion of the world’s population depend on it. Internet insecurity The Internet was not originally designed with its own security in mind and, as a result, individual nodes (connected computers) are vulnerable to online incursion and attack. 10 Message traffic can be intercepted and the Internet as a whole can be used as a medium for online theft or manipulation of information assets or destructive attacks on information related or real-world assets such as critical national infrastructure (CNI). The level of online attacks has been rising rapidly for some years and, in the words of Jonathan Evans, the head of the UK's Security Service, MI5, ‘Vulnerabilities in the Internet are 6 An attack known as DNS cache-poisoning, largely prevented by vendor patches that implement source port randomisation in the nameserver http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/800113 and http://unixwiz.net/techtips/iguide-kaminsky-dns-vuln.html accessed 30/03/13 7 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20113-the-cyberweapon-that-could-take-down-the-internet.html accessed 18/02/13 8 Frank Gaffney, War Footing (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005) 9 Leena Ilmola, presentation at a Strategic Foresight conference at Wilton Park, 13th-17th August 2012 10 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc959354.aspx accessed 14/02/13 The Global Cyber Game © 2013 9 www.da.mod.uk being exploited aggressively not [p. 14 to 15](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/20130508-Cyber_report_final_U.pdf#page=14) vendor patches that implement source port randomisation in the nameserver http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/800113 and http://unixwiz.net/techtips/iguide-kaminsky-dns-vuln.html accessed 30/03/13 7 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20113-the-cyberweapon-that-could-take-down-the-internet.html accessed 18/02/13 8 Frank Gaffney, War Footing (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005) 9 Leena Ilmola, presentation at a Strategic Foresight conference at Wilton Park, 13th-17th August 2012 10 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc959354.aspx accessed 14/02/13 The Global Cyber Game © 2013 9 www.da.mod.uk being exploited aggressively not just by criminals but also by states,’ and ‘the extent of what is going on is astonishing.’ 11 Symantec, a US computer security company, reported that a total of over 5.5 billion malware attacks were blocked by its software in 2011, an increase of 81 percent over 2010. They also reported that web based attacks increased by 36 percent in 2011 with over 4,500 new attacks each day. 12 The definition of ‘attack’ in such statistics can sometimes include ‘pings’, which are Internet Protocol (IP) ‘echo request packets’ sent as probes. These usually fall short of being attacks, so some care is needed in interpreting the data, but clearly the level of the problem is increasing. Kaspersky Lab, the Russian computer security company, reported that in 2011 the number of browser-based attacks increased from 580,371,937 to 946,393,693 and the number of web- based attacks was 1.63 times the total for 2010. Although this is an extremely steep increase, they comment that it ‘points to a much slower rate of growth than we have seen over the course of the past three years. In 2010, we recorded a far greater surge in the number of attempted infections—8 times as many as in 2009.’ They say this was because there were no fundamentally new mass-infection methods in 2011. 13 During 2011 two new black market exploit collections (hacking kits), BlackHole and Incognito, became popular with online criminals. BlackHole appeared in 2010 and costs $1,500 for an annual license. 14 Black market sales of such kits, and other resources for online crime such as stolen credit card information, are made through online business structures based on elaborate value chains reminiscent of legitimate online commerce. 15 The direct and indirect cost from all types of online crime are hard to estimate but are substantial, roughly in the hundreds of millions of pounds a year in the United Kingdom and in the billions worldwide. 16 The indirect costs tend to be several times larger than the direct costs, since online crime makes consumers and businesses tend to avoid online transactions, imposing costs from loss of the economic benefits already discussed. Clearly this is a serious and growing problem that requires fresh approaches and more focused resources. There is also the threat of online espionage or attack by state actors. A number of countries around the world are reputed to have a military malware (sometimes called milware) capability, although they have mostly avoided making any official announcements. However, in June 2012 the German government confirmed that its military has an operational top secret ‘cyberwarfare’ unit. 17 On the same day Google announced that it would be --- Continues in https://guptaoption.com/texts/143-2.md (part 2 of 10). End of [143] The Global Cyber Game: Achieving strategic resilience in the global knowledge society, part 1 of 10. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.