Warriors & Scholars

Written the 2nd of July 2008

I sent this link to John Robb a while ago. I should have posted it before, anyway, better late than never…

Source

Hackers demanding cash disrupted power utilities, CIA says

The Associated Press
Friday, January 18, 2008
WASHINGTON: Hackers literally turned out the lights in multiple cities after breaking into electrical utilities and demanding extortion payments before disrupting the power, a senior CIA analyst told utility engineers at a U.S. trade conference.

All the break-ins occurred outside the United States, said senior CIA analyst Tom Donahue. The U.S. government believes some of the hackers had inside knowledge to cause the outages. Donahue did not specify what countries were affected, when the outages occurred or how long the outages lasted. He said they happened in “several regions outside the United States.”

“In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities,” Donahue said in a statement. “We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet.”

A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency on Friday declined to provide additional details.

“The information that could be shared in a public setting was shared,” said spokesman George Little. “These comments were simply designed to highlight to the audience the challenges posed by potential cyber intrusions.”

Donahue spoke earlier this week at the Process Control Security Summit in New Orleans, a gathering of engineers and security managers for energy and water utilities.

The Bush administration is increasingly worried about the little-understood risks from hackers to the specialized electronic equipment that operates power, water and chemical plants.

In a test last year, the Homeland Security Department produced a video showing commands quietly triggered by simulated hackers having such a violent reaction that an enormous generator shudders as it flies apart and belches black-and-white smoke.

The recorded demonstration, called the “Aurora Generator Test,” was conducted in March by government researchers investigating a dangerous vulnerability in computers at U.S. utility companies known as supervisory control and data acquisition systems. The programming flaw was fixed, and equipment makers urged utilities to take protective measures.

Here is what I consider important and to be remembered:

Hackers literally turned out the lights in multiple cities after breaking into electrical utilities …

… ”In at least one case, the disruption [note the singular] caused a power outage affecting multiple cities [note the plural]” …

… little-understood risks from hackers to the specialized electronic equipment that operates power, water and chemical plants …

Written the 19th of February 2008

Some readers might already know John Boyd’s OODA (Observation Orientation Decision Action) loop. Yet, the original and complete OODA loop goes well beyond the traditional four steps diagram—and applications—you might already know. As you can see:

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(John Boyd’s complete OODA loop – Source)

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Accordingly, the presentation of Frans P.B. Osinga’s book Science, Strategy and War: The strategic theory of John Boyd (1) rightly states that:

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Frans P.B. Osinga is one of the few—if not the only one—who analysed Boyd’s complete work in his book. Although being a though read, I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in modern strategy.

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(1) Osinga, F.P.B. (2007). Science, strategy and war: the strategic theory of John Boyd. London New York: Routledge.

Written the 11th of February 2008

As an ex-photographer and avid enthusiast of photography, I am a strong advocate of Black & White photography.

Now, like B&W photography, our world system does not consist of just black and white; gray zones do exists. Unfortunately, human beings appear to have a strange need for classification, where they have the tendency to ignore the shades of gray which, like in B&W photography, brings the picture to life…

Following this little theory, here is a look at the main issues tackled by three U.S. presidential candidates in their essays published in the magazine Foreign Affairs. The candidates are: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.

Would you be able to attribute the issues to the right Democrat or Republican candidate? Try to guess and then click on the candidate’s link to see who came up with those issues…

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Candidate #1

Winning the war on terror
Defending the homeland
Uniting the world’s democracies
Revitalizing the transatlantic partnership
Shaping the Asia-Pacific century
Building an hemisphere of peace and prosperity
Aiding an African renaissance
Preventing nuclear proliferation
Securing energy and saving environment
Preparing to lead

Candidate #2

Common security for our common humanity
Moving beyond Iraq
Revitalizing the military
Halting the spread of nuclear weapons
Combating global terrorism
Rebuilding our partnerships
Building just, secure, democratic societies
Restoring America’s trust

Candidate #3

Power and principles
A stronger America
Winning the real war on terror
Security through statesmanship
Strengthening alliances
Building the world we want
Reviving the American idea

Written the 10th of February 2008

I highly recommend John Robb’s book Brave New War (1) as well as his blog:

Global Guerillas

He his becoming more and more influent, and his work simply should not be neglected.

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(1) Robb, J. (2007). Brave new war: the next stage of terrorism and the end of globalization. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

Written the 9th of January 2008

Here is another excellent PBS | FRONTLINE documentary: ‘Cyber War’

Particularly enlightening if you read John Robb’s book Brave New War (1), and if you are familiar with his notion of system disruption.

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(1) Robb, J. (2007). Brave new war: the next stage of terrorism and the end of globalization. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

written the 2nd of January 2008

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

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T.E. Lawrence in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) (1)

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(1) T.E. Lawrence (2000). The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. London: Penguin Classics.

written the 1st of November 2007

written the 29th of October 2007

PBS is a rare example of intelligent television and provides truly remarkable documentaries as well as internet content.

Here is a link to some of their documentaries I strongly recommend:

PBS | FRONTLINE

Most of them are available to watch online.

Enjoy.

written the 24th of October 2007

Dear visitor,

I apologise for what might appeared as a lack of perseverance. The truth being that I recently travelled a lot, which was added to the continuous work I have.
Nevertheless, now that the incessant trips finally stopped, I would be able to publish some scattered posts before the end of the year.

So please come have a look around time to time, some interesting things might happen…
Regards,
Padre

written the 5th of August 2007

Picked in Robert Young Pelton’s book Licensed To Kill: Hired Guns In The War On Terror (1) is an observation T.E. Lawrence made about Iraq:

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Concise, enlightening, and too late…

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(1) Pelton, R. Y. (2006). Licensed to kill: hired guns in the war on terror. New York: Crown Publishers.