NATION-STATE

CYBER

STRATEGIES:

THE CASE

OF

CHINA

APRIL 2009

Mr. Timothy Thomas

FMSO

• Unclassified research—travel to the country in question

• I speak Russian, not Chinese

• We do research from foreign sources (written and personal contacts), very seldom looking at US writings on the topic

• Travel research, discovery learning, emerging issues, underconsidered issues

Foreign Military Studies

Office

China’s New Mode of Thinking

• What are the new combinations ten years on after the publication of Unrestricted War?

Major General Dai in China

Mil Science, Feb 2002

• IW has 6 forms: Operational security, Military deception, Psychological warfare, Electronic warfare, Computer network warfare, and Physical destruction

CHINA

• CYBER ATTACKS AGAINST ENGLAND, AUSTRALIA, GERMANY, US, CANADA, SOUTH KOREA, JAPAN, TAIWAN—COINCIDENCE OR MULTIPLE PROBES OF A PREEMPTIVE/PREVENTIVE TYPE STRATEGY?

• IS PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY A FORM OF DECEPTION?

Western Worries about China

•29 March 2009—China may have capability to shut down Britain by crippling its telecoms and utilities; China now has 300 million Internet users

• 18 Nov 2008—Manchurian or Trojan horse microchip

• 13 Oct 2008—counterfeit Chinese computer components in planes, ships, communications

• 2 Oct 2008—Chinese studying neuroscience

• July 2008—guerrilla war for the web; $.50 party (web commentators get $.50 for each positive post, backed by the Party)

• May 2008—Beijing will target US spy satellites, navigation, and early-warning spacecraft

• Informatization and informatized appeared 48 times

• Combine offensive operations with defensive operations; People’s War; countermeasures

CHINESE

WHITE PAPER

2009

Focus of the Briefing

• Strategy

• Integrated Network Electronic Warfare

• Military Computer Course Outline

• Other Issues (Blue Teaming, etc.)

Deciphering

Information Security

• The issue of information and network security, which accompanies the development of informatization and the rise of information warfare, is an issue of technology, but above all else it is an issue of strategy.

• A prudent idea or set of ideas for employing the instruments of national power in a synchronized and integrated fashion to achieve theater, national, and/or multinational objectives. (US—JP 1-02)

• The analytical judgment of such factors as international conditions, hostilities in bilateral politics, military economics, science and technology, and geography as they apply to the preparation and direction of the overall military/war plan. (Chinese—1997 Chinese Mil Encyclopedia)

• Should PMESII be strategic?

Terminology:

US and Chinese Definitions of

Strategy

Objective-Subjective Paradigm:

The Basis of Strategy?

• Although strategy manifests itself in a war

conductor’s activities of subjective guidance, it is by no means the war conductors’ personal elaboration. Instead it is based on given objective physical conditions.

• Mao noted that war is a contest in subjective ability between commanders of opposing armies for the initiative and superiority based on material conditions.

Stratagem is designed to mislead

enemy processes of perception,

thinking, emotion and will

• Comprehensive national power (CNP)

• Comprehensive sea power (CSP)

• Comprehensive strategic interest (CSI), Comprehensive strategic targets (CST), Comprehensive strategic benefits (CSB)

• Comprehensive cyberized war (CCW)

• Comprehensive confrontation capacity (CCC)

• Comprehensive national defense construction (CNDC)

• Comprehensive support efficiency (CSuE)

• And comprehensive national strategy (CNS).

China’s Approach: Comprehensive

Major General Dai

Qingmin, 20 Aug

2000 in Zhongguo

Junshi Kexue

Informationized arms…together with information

systems, sound, light, electronics, magnetism, heat and so on turn into a carrier of

strategies.

Stratagem/technology Link

February 2008 Chinese link • Crossing the sea under camouflage: data-driven

attack

• Looting a burning house: illegal use of system files

• Creating something out of nothing: falsification attacks

• Secretly crossing over to Chencang: attacks targeting weaknesses in information protocols

• Hiding a dagger in the mouth: remote manipulation

• Stealing a goat along the way: attacks that take advantage of system administrator errors

2005/NDM—Sun

Tsu and IW

Stratagems • Lenin said there is no war

without using stratagems.

• The form and design of a stratagem requires knowledge of the adversary, and the process of using the stratagem may need to let the adversary be “aware” of something.

Sun Tsu (cont.)

• Info tech is used to create war obstacles and war mists; this gives rise to info countermeasures between the two sides, where “the phantom of stratagems exist ubiquitously.”

• Sun Tzu’s major stratagems use info to produce info deterrence, deception, and psychological attacks. Networks conduct info kidnapping or blackmailing of data.

Chapter Five: Computer Warfare

(from 1999 book on Information Opns)

• Computers develop stratagems as battle unfolds, comparing INEW information with models in computers to generate relevant stratagems, helpful due to the number of contingencies and uncertainties on the battlefield.

• “Integrating the genes of high-technology into stratagems”

• Using the comparison of a weak mouse operating against a huge cat, Li asked “How do mice hang a bell around a cat’s neck?” and answered stating it was necessary to “Entice the cat to wear the bell himself (that is, put it on himself).”

• In similar fashion, with regard to a strategy of making a technical opponent do something they don’t want to do, he asked the following: How do you make a cat eat a hot pepper?

Strategies and Technology against the

Superior Foe

• He offered three methods. You can stuff it down his throat (the most difficult), put it in cheese and make him swallow it, or grind it up and spread it on his back. The latter method makes the cat lick itself and receive the satisfaction of cleaning up. The cat is oblivious to the end goal. This is strategy.

Li (cont.)

• One philosopher said that absolute light and absolute darkness have the same effect—we cannot see anything. IO is the same way: too much information can become absolute light.

• An information rich battlefield is also a fertile place for cunning and deception.

Revolution in

Military Affairs

• War with the objective of expanding territory has already basically withdrawn from the stage of history, and even war with the objective of fighting for natural resources is now giving way to war with the objective of controlling the flow of financial capital.

RMA

• The crux of complete victory is making both warring sides, especially the offensive side, know the outcome without fighting. If it is already known beforehand that war will be detrimental to both sides, then there is a chance that both sides will mutually make concessions and stop the war. This happened at Dayton in the 1990s

Sun Tzu/Dayton Talks

• If we go our own path we will develop something never seen before in places that no one has ever thought of before; others will be unable to anticipate or resist our “self-accommodating systems”

• Remember the cat and the pepper

RMA Conclusion

Major General Dai in China

Mil Science, Feb 2002

• Integrated N-E warfare (INEW) is a point of focus; EW disrupts acquiring and forwarding of information, and CNW disrupts processing and use of information

• INEW methods (stratagems?) are interference and destruction, blockade and intimidation, luring and pinning down, creating falsities and paralyzing, feigning attacks, sowing discord, making suggestions, overloading and suppressing, impeding transmission and utilization of the network

• INEW fuses deception, secrecy and PSYOP

INEW

Following charts

are from the

book

Deciphering

Information

Security

By

Dr. Shen

Weiguang

• War with the objective of expanding territory has already basically withdrawn from the stage of history, and even war with the objective of fighting for natural resources is now giving way to war with the objective of controlling the flow of financial capital.

RMA

OTHER ISSUES

• Optical fiber

• Culture

• Blue teaming

• PSYOP

• Hackers

• Mobilization

Major General Yuan Banggen, Nov 2000

A nationwide, multi-level communications system has taken shape involving initial air, ground, underground, and seabed links and the integration of wired, wireless, and optical communications using military telephone networks

Dalian

Dandong

Mainstream US Culture’s Impact on War

Decisions

• “Manifest Destiny” as “God’s Chosen People” is the Anglo-Saxon ideology. “Saving humanity” reveals itself in US war decisions in three ways: spreading American values; the “morality and justice” of interfering outside the US; and draping naked power politics in the overcoat of democracy.

• Social Darwinism is the survival of the fittest of human society. The theory values action. US likes to attack first and seize the initiative. US interests are emphasized above all and world resources must be possessed or controlled.

Guangzhou Blue Force Training

• Established foreign military study office and invited experts to give IW lectures at the “Blue Force” unit

• Failing grade for not passing informationization training; disqualified if unable to conduct online maneuvers; removed from command if one failed two consecutive years

• Five information study groups established: characteristics and laws of IW; tactics and operational methods for IW; applied over 20 theoretical and technical IW successes to battalion and company level

• Blue forces always try to infiltrate the networks of the red forces and give them false orders or images

• PSYWAR is a fourth type of war, more important than land, sea and air warfare. There are weapons of “light” (blinding lasers, arc lights weapons), weapons of “sound” (noise simulators, electronic shouting, etc.).

• PSYWAR techniques include image projection technology (holograms) and camouflage by transfiguration to deceive an enemy.

• Mind control can be achieved via electronic wave technology, sound and microwave weapons.

“Modern High Tech and

PSYWAR,” Jan/Feb ’02 (tie to

Russian view?)

• Secondary sound waves in the 3-17hz range will be the super killers in future wars. It may be possible to use them in intercontinental conflict.

• Special human abilities (telepathy, etc.) and mind control.

• Source: Contemporary Navy, No. 100 and 101.

“Modern High Tech and

PSYWAR,” Jan/Feb ’02 (Cont.)

• NPW might include the establishment of websites to publish deceptive, disturbing, leading and deterring information. Idea is to disrupt normal judgment, block other information, and create misconceptions.

Network

Psychological War

EP-3 Incident Of 1 April

• Internet chat room—showed both sides of Chinese and U.S. citizens—or were the reserves involved?

• Eventually the cyber confrontation turned from a chat room insult/sympathy forum to an Internet war.

Insults Leading up to an Internet

War… • 1 April—collision

• Sina.com, Sohu.com and Chinadotcom Internet chat rooms most popular; 60,962 respondents took part in a Chinadotcom survey (18% said stay unyielding, 15% took it as act of war, 22% said keep the plane for examination, 25% said free the crew, 3% said get to the bottom with an inquiry)

• 2 April— “We should keep the plane”; “This is the third time the American imperialists have dumped crap down China’s neck”; “We can forego joining the WTO but we cannot afford to loose face” “We should calm down and find out the truth”; “Why can’t the U.S. show any human rights concern to the poor missing pilot?”; “Can a thief, under arrest, claim no search of his stuff?”

Insults (Cont.)

• 4 April—“The whole nation is waiting to see if China can play hardball with the U.S.”; “We should sentence all of the American crew to jail terms and execute the pilot of the U.S. plane, and boycott American products”

• 11 April—first Wired article on “A Chinese Call to Hack U.S.”; Pr0phet makes first political reference

• 14 April—first Poizonb0x defacement of a Chinese site after spy plane incident, but no reference to the incident

• Wang Wei’s online shrine was established by Netor.com, a leading host of mourning sites in China

Honker Union of China

Lin Yong ( ) “Lion” founder

and leader of the Honker Union

of China

China Eagle Union

Wan Tao ( founder and

leader of China Eagle Union

Red Hacker

“Sharp Winner” founder and

leader of Red Hacker

Little Yang, Boboo, Coldface,

Coolswallow, B-105, etc.

Withered Rose Goes to

Jail for Blackmailing

other Hackers

“A victorious army first wins and then

seeks battle. A defeated army first battles

and then seeks victory.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Reconnaissance

• Computer network reconnaissance is the prerequisite for seizing victory in warfare. It helps to choose opportune moments, places, and measures for attack.

Dai—Direct IW

Chinese Activities of Concern

• Titan Rain

• Internet attack on the Naval War College

• Blinding US satellites

• Shooting down a Chinese weather satellite

• Military industrial sales

• Computer attacks against Japan and Taiwan

Countermeasures

Countermeasures

• In China’s 2006 White Paper, when discussing army projects, it was noted that information countermeasure units were one of three units that required priority development

• Focus on collecting technical parameters and specific properties of all categories of information weapon systems and electronic information products

Methods

WHAT

CURRENT

ISSUES ARE

PREVALENT IN

CHINESE

THINKING?

• City8.com—street view • Tudou.com & youku.com– same as

YouTube • TaoTao & fanfou.com—Chinese

Twitter equivalents • Mimiwang.com.cn—sharing secrets of

the heart • 365ju.com—business social

networking • Baidu—Chinese search engine, like

Google • Yupoo—Flickr • Sina—news and information on China

What are these Chinese sites?

Summary

• Stratagems are gems of strategy!

• Pay attention to military science and definitions to better understand China’s unique approach to any military issue.

• Stratagems, comprehensiveness, mobilization, countermeasures