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China Reform Monitor No. 449, May 23, 2002
American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, D.C.

May 12

China has replaced Russia as Fidel Castro's main partner for electronic espionage and other activities directed against the United States in the Western hemisphere, NewsMax.Com reports in an article that first appeared in the April 2002 American Legion Magazine. Until recently, Russia paid Castro more than $200 million annually in much-needed hard currency for use of its massive electronic spy station at Lourdes. In a surprise move, however, Russian President Vladimir Putin suddenly withdrew his support and 1,500 advisers from Cuba in the wake of the September 11th attacks on Washington and New York. Now China, which had been building its own spy stations in Cuba, has supplanted the Russians as Castro's primary electronic espionage partner. Beijing has built a sophisticated new signals intelligence complex in Bejucal, Cuba, operating under the cover of Radio China.

In addition to being used for espionage, these installations are reportedly part of a robust cyber-warfare capability Castro is developing. The FCC has stated they are capable of interfering with U.S. communications and air traffic control. In one incident originating in Cuba, the report adds, U.S. officials claim that Chinese operatives sent a message to New York air traffic control replicating U.S. military fight codes and falsely identifying themselves as U.S. military transport planes - a chilling indication of things to come.

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The above to illustrate the current vulnerability to manipulation of communications by terrestrials.

Yes, IW (Information Warfare) is very important now.
Offensive and defensive measures require much effort and not the least of which is to update telecommunications laws and to determine, policy wise, if a hack attack is an act of war or a crime, and we need to figure out quickly if the hacker is a Chinese intelligence agency or some 15-yr old kid in an apartment in Moscow.

Quickly:
We have tremendous IW capabilities, we just need the laws to achieve a better understanding of IW and to develop IW doctrine, enhance our military application efforts, and to support civilian initiatives in cyber-defense development.
We can do this by collating information to enhance doctrine development and to exploit military applications.
We can also do this by welcoming civilians by recognizing their contributions to the world of IW.
(Civilians will be a part of cyber-war, bet on it. It may be your ATM machine was jammed up, or your on-line banking squished, but it will happen.)
Therefore, we need to examine IW doctrine initiatives and hardware software development efforts, both military and civilian. Towards that end, we must keep in mind that “We Must Ask Where We Are and Whither We are Tending” (Abraham Lincoln).
So, determining where we are and where we want to go regarding IW is important. Indeed, IW has transformed US national security requirements - we must be able to respond to a full spectrum of crises (lo-to-hi)
Consider: War is normally on sea, land or air. Now, however, “Information” can be (and is) a medium of war.
We have to understand what we are talking about, so here are a few terms.
Information Warfare: Any action that attacks/defends information flow.
Offensive IW: Physical bombing to planting a virus on Internet.
Defensive IW: Physical defenses to anti-virus programs.
As to the threat, consider right now there are, at least, 17-19 Million people w/skills for a cyber attack, and the DoD was “cyber-attacked” about 250,000 times in 1998. (Air Force Mag, Jan 98, War in Cyber-Space).
Who does the attacks?
Local: Recreational hackers, vandals, independent thieves.
Shared: Institutional hackers, organized crime, industrial espionage.
National: Full-Up IW and attacks by foreign governments or terrorists.
And our cyber structure is a “center of gravity” for any attack against the US. This is in line with Liddell Hart’s “Indirect Approach;” i.e., modern/thinking entities avoid attacking directly and focus on less traditional, very critical nodes (CoG’s). This means a cyber-attack is an indirect attack as it goes after our will and ability, not capability to repond. Therefore, the next conflict of any nature is likely to involve “cyber-war.”
And we need to be prepared, as reported in the Air Force magazine earlier cited, a presidential commission found 70% of US economy and infrastructures (banking, water, electrical power, general public services, etc. are vulnerable to cyber-attack. Heck, even the London Times (Friday, 17 April 1998) report William Daley, US Commerce Secretary, as saying “(the) use of the Internet is doubling every 100 Days . . . and computers, consumer electronics, software, telecommunications, satellites and the Internet [are] driving the US economy.” ANd this makes our "information" very valuable and require protection.
Because of this wide-spectrum vulnerability, we need to welcome industry to this issue and work the problem together. You see, when it comes to rapid information-based technology development, commercial industry leads---they are more agile, configured for near instant response to exploit emerging technologies for commercial gain. As John Correll, the editor of Air Force Magazine said, ““For most of their Information Technology needs, the Armed Forces must look to the commercial world.” Indeed, even our US Air Force published this in their Air Force 2020 document, wherein they said, “Development responsibilities for critical technologies and capabilities will move from government toward Industry.”

That’s about all on that subject, for now.

Rest assured that a lot of effort is being put into this subject--behind the scenes, and what I just posted is completely unclassified and open sourced. No secrets compromised.