Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Hostile Conquest as Information Warfare
- 3 Information Warfare as Noise
- 4 Can Information Warfare Be Strategic?
- 5 Information Warfare Against Command and Control
- 6 Friendly Conquest in Cyberspace
- 7 Friendly Conquest Using Global Systems
- 8 Retail Conquest in Cyberspace
- 9 From Intimacy, Vulnerability
- 10 Talking Conquest in Cyberspace
- 11 Managing Conquest in Cyberspace
- Appendix A Why Cyberspace Is Likely to Gain Consequence
- Index
7 - Friendly Conquest Using Global Systems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Hostile Conquest as Information Warfare
- 3 Information Warfare as Noise
- 4 Can Information Warfare Be Strategic?
- 5 Information Warfare Against Command and Control
- 6 Friendly Conquest in Cyberspace
- 7 Friendly Conquest Using Global Systems
- 8 Retail Conquest in Cyberspace
- 9 From Intimacy, Vulnerability
- 10 Talking Conquest in Cyberspace
- 11 Managing Conquest in Cyberspace
- Appendix A Why Cyberspace Is Likely to Gain Consequence
- Index
Summary
Two thought experiments may help flesh out the idea that an enterprise – in these cases, a nation – can exercise great influence by creating an enterprise cyberspace that persuades others to link up, join in, and follow along. One is built around a U. S. database of geospatial data. The other is a global identification system, putatively motivated by the desire to detect terrorists.
In presenting these cases, we make no claim that U. S. influence on the world in these realms could or should be exercised solely through cyberspace. The general edge that U. S. companies have in the satellite construction, software, and even biometrics would lend them influence without it. The size of the U. S. economy and the size of its national security investments alone would lend it considerable influence in setting the patterns for such systems.
Nor is either prospect necessarily likely. Concepts of information sharing – that lately discovered virtue – that underlie the discussion about geospatial data run antithetical to the everyday norms of the intelligence community, which owns the data. Similarly, despite polls taken in the wake of September 11, 2001, that showed substantial majorities of the public in favor of a national ID system, opposition to such a notion is visceral and the Bush administration has gone out of its way to deny having any such thoughts.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Conquest in CyberspaceNational Security and Information Warfare, pp. 169 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007