IQ2’s blurb:

It could be the greatest strategic irony of the last twenty years: the American lead in digital technologies – upon which our financial, communications and defense systems are built, and on which they depend – may also represent a serious American Achilles heel. The sophistication of our mobile phone networks, of the GPS system that guides air traffic, even of the networked command-and-control that drives our power grids, may be without rival. But it also provides one great big and sprawling target to enemies determined to discover the choke points that can cripple us in a time of war.

At least that’s the scenario as described in various, and increasingly alarmed media accounts, especially in the wake of incidents like the hacking of Google last year, by digital assailants often described (without clear confirmation) as being based in China. It’s indeed alarming, to contemplate fighting the next war with both hands tied behind our backs because a canny enemy figured out how to shut us down electronically.

Alarming – but possibly, also, alarmist? Can we really be that vulnerable? Is our digital undergirding really that exposed, especially given that the Internet itself – the foundation of all this critical connectedness – was itself initially developed as a military undertaking? Even if our enemies – state enemies or terrorists – manage to cause damage in one corner of American cyberspace, don’t we have enough redundancy built in to protect us? As one technology writer has put it, this is one of those topics where the internet press likes to get worked up into a lot of “heavy breathing.”

So which is it? Are we at existential risk in the event of a well coordinated cyber attack, and if so, are we taking measures to protect ourselves? Or will the first cyber war be a war we are already positioned not only to survive, but to win?

After that, be sure to check out Fallows’s blog entry on the same subject rounding up reactions to the imagery of a “digital Pearl Harbor” and whether or not that really is a valid concern (a topic about which I’ve previously expressed my own skepticism but is something well worth discussing).

This is not a new criticism. But even if you take out the digital aspect of this new tide in warfare, criticisms against the U.S.’s approach to security operations and conflict still seem to suggest that the American military is slow to adapt. We still have the latest technology, the biggest guns, and thousands of nuclear warheads that can destroy that world several times over. Yet, in the “War Issue” of Foreign Policy magazine released just today, a commentary on the U.S.’s lack of understanding of networking stings:

“…the United States is spending huge amounts of money in ways that are actually making Americans less secure, not only against irregular insurgents, but also against smart countries building different sorts of militaries. And the problem goes well beyond weapons and other high-tech items. What’s missing most of all from the U.S. military’s arsenal is a deep understanding of networking, the loose but lively interconnection between people that creates and brings a new kind of collective intelligence, power, and purpose to bear — for good and ill.

Civil society movements around the world have taken to networking in ways that have done far more to advance the cause of freedom than the U.S. military’s problematic efforts to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan at gunpoint. As for “uncivil society,” terrorists and transnational criminals have embraced connectivity to coordinate global operations in ways that simply were not possible in the past. Before the Internet and the World Wide Web, a terrorist network operating cohesively in more than 60 countries could not have existed. Today, a world full of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabs awaits — and not all of them will fail.”

The rest of the issue looks to be an intriguing read on the shifting tides in modern war. But perhaps even this one critique is myopic still. Unrestricted Warfare, a 1999 best-selling book in China and a heavy influence on the People’s Liberation Army, advocated this approach to war in the modern age:

“War which has undergone the changes of modern technology and the market system will be launched even more in atypical forms. In other words, while we are seeing a relative reduction in military violence, at the same time we definitely are seeing an increase in political, economic, and technological violence. However, regardless of the form the violence takes, war is war, and a change in the external appearance does not keep any war from abiding by the principles of war.

If we acknowledge that the new principles of war are no longer ‘using armed force to compel the enemy to submit to one’s will,’ but rather are ‘using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.’”

Perhaps this is what we really should be preparing for.

Still, it’s difficult to overstate the significance of this decision, especially given the morally murky nature of most relationships between Chinese authorities and major Internet players that has served as the status quo over the last decade. Will it have an impact on free speech in China? Probably not much. But Google has taken a stance, which only makes it easier for other companies to start doing the same.

But the flurry of analysis and news reports on the issue has only briefly touched on what I consider to be the larger problem underneath all this: China’s growing prowess in the art of the cyberattack. I’ve expressed my skepticism of doom-and-gloom scenarios of cyberattacks bringing down electrical grids and water supplies before, but breaches of privacy, cyber espionage, and denial-of-service attacks are common and effective. Google’s public statement released on Tuesday describes the reach of the attacks that led up to their decision to reconsider working in China:

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses—including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors—have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant US authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

Reports have surfaced that Adobe, Northrop Grumman, and Yahoo could have been other victims of similar security breaches as well.

True, there is no hard evidence to prove that these recent attacks were caused by Chinese governmental authorities themselves (although nobody is shy in suspecting as much). Concerns over China’s increasing expertise in cyberattacks – especially in probing other countries’ networks – is not new. Last October, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission released a report entitled “Capability of the People’s Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation.” Part of the report notes:

General James Cartwright, while serving as the Combatant Commander of US Strategic Command, testified before a Congressional commission that China is actively engaging in cyber reconnaissance by probing the computer networks of U.S.
government agencies as well as private companies. He further noted that the intelligence collected from these computer reconnaissance campaigns can be used for myriad purposes, including identifying weak points in the networks, understanding how leaders in the United States think, discovering the communication patterns of American government agencies and private companies, and attaining valuable information stored throughout the networks.

A review of the scale, focus, and complexity of the overall campaign directed against the United States and, increasingly, a host of other countries around the world strongly suggest that these operations are state-sponsored or supported.

The report goes on to detail the level of sophistication reached by the PLA’s efforts to build their information networks and exploit that of others.

Simply put, China’s use of cyber attacks has reached such a problematic point that even a major company like Google sits up and sounds the alarm to the point of threatening to pull out entirely. The silent discomfort between U.S. and China over the consistent probing of American networks may finally break into vocal protest.

Cyber warfare is a fascinating topic, mainly because it’s new, mysterious, and potentially could inflict damage comparable to that of a nuclear weapon. Few need to be reminded of the security threats that our increasing inter-connectedness exposes us to on a daily basis: online fraud, identity theft, invasions of privacy, accidentally revealing embarrassing music tastes on Facebook, the list goes on. And because of the nature of the Internet, all of these criminal activities operate internationally, and often in complex yet organized rings. But more sinister cyber attacks have cropped up in recent years — take Estonia’s three-week outage by a denial-of-service attack in 2007. Hackers targeted several government and commercial websites during a conflict between Estonia and Russia, at times “vandalizing” sites with images or altered text. The commercial transactions lost by the DDoS attacks resulted in millions of dollars worth of economic damage.

Denial-of-service attacks are fairly common, and have been a frequent tool in political and international conflicts. DDoS attacks were also used in the conflict between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia, and in various skirmishes between Israeli and Palestinian groups.

Cyber warfare is becoming an increasingly attractive tool for the tech-savvy and the aggravated, no doubt. Hacking is a huge problem, and so is privacy and security. The more problematic feature for me is when the discussion turns to an end-of-the-world scenario — namely, if cyber attacks are used to bring down a city’s power grid, or water system. From the 60 Minutes report:

“Do we believe that there are, the governments have planted code in the power grid?” Kroft asked.

“Steve, I would be shocked if we were in a situation where tools and capabilities and techniques have not been left in U.S. computer and information systems,” McConnell said.

Of all the critical components in the U.S. infrastructure, the power grid is one of the most vulnerable to cyber attack. The U.S. government has control of its own computers and those of the military. The power grid, which is run and regulated by private utilities, is unbeholden to government security decrees.

The idea of a group of angry yet sophisticated acne-laden teenagers (after all, many of today’s modern hackers are teenage boys) clicking away to bring down an entire power grid is terrifying, to say the least. But how realistic is it? The problem is that few of us are technologically sound enough to understand both the possibilities of hacking and the security design of something like a power grid, leaving us only to trust a handful of “experts” in news stories. Will the cyber warfare discussion evolve into a Cold War-esque nuclear scare as it becomes more and more of a possibility? Surely we have learned by now that fear can’t take priority over hard, verifiable facts. So before we all start doing safety drills under our desks, let’s dig for more information first.

We were left aching, lying in a street in Timba, a woman approached, ‘What has happened?’… ‘A kidnapping,’ I managed to say. We cried in each others arms in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about Teo, for God’s sake how am I going to explain all these bruises. How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street. How to describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their enjoyment that I could see as they beat us, their lifting my skirt as they dragged me half naked to the car.

Read the rest at Global Voices Online.

In other news, last week, a five-week legal battle between oil trader Trafigura and the UK’s Guardian newspaper came to a close when Trafigura ended a secret injunction with the news organization. How did this all start?

In 2006, a scientific study eventually called the Minton Report began to collect evidence that Trafigura was dumping toxic waste in the waters of the Cote d’Ivoire. The report was commissioned when hundreds of people in the Cote d’Ivoire claimed to have been poisoned and flooded the hospitals. In more detail:

The Minton report – though it was preliminary in nature – made dismaying reading for Claude Dauphin, the Trafigura director in charge of oil preparations. It said the process had been so amateurish that it had probably left a high quantity of noxious sulphur compounds in the vast quantity of stinking black waste.

Minton went on to list half a dozen potentially unstable chemical compounds which could burn or poison people who came into contact with them. Some of them could also generate the killer gas hydrogen sulphide in certain conditions.

Minton said such waste could never have been dumped legally on a landfill in Europe and ought to have received specialist and expensive chemical treatment called “wet air oxidation” to make it safe. None of this had happened.

Among the effects of the sludge, Minton listed: severe burns to the skin and to the lungs; permanent ulceration; corneal damage; vomiting, diarrhoea, loss of consciousness and death. One of the chemicals was branded “very toxic to humans and dangerous to the environment”.

About a month ago, The Guardian got word of this report. Trafigura, claiming the report’s evidence was preliminary and inaccurate, went to lengths to file an injunction on The Guardian effectively prohibiting them from publishing the content and findings of the Minton Report. And not only that, but they also filed what has become known as a “super injunction” – a gag order banning The Guardian from even disclosing that they were under an injunction. News of the Minton Report still got out in cyberspace, particularly in Wikileaks, and was circulated madly on Twitter. (For a full story of how the news leaked all over the Internet, refer to the Online Journalism Blog).

But finally, largely under pressure by social media networks and blogging communities, Trafigura released The Guardian from the injunction, and the super injunction. They even admitted that the waste could have caused a “range of short term low level flu like symptoms and anxiety.”

The obvious takeaway – in a social media world, important news is becoming even tougher to suppress. But this is still food for thought about the current state of press freedom – even in the UK – and of course, about the role of companies like Trafigura and their environmental responsibility.

Related Links:

The Minton Report, in full

The Guardian’s clause-by-clause analysis of the super injunction

Iran, still reeling from protests and extensive media repression by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is reported to have “reached the gates of the infernal trio at the very bottom – Turkmenistan (173rd), North Korea (174th) and Eritrea (175th) – where the media are so suppressed they are non-existent.”

The U.S. moved from being #36 in the rankings in 2008 to a new spot at #20 – largely due to Obama’s presidency and his “less hawkish” approach to foreign policy and the media. Still, the report warns, the U.S.’s actions towards journalists in Iran and Afghanistan is still a matter to be concerned about – the U.S. military has injured or arrested several journalists in those countries.

June started off with a plane crash of an Airbus flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. President Obama went to Cairo to make a speech about Muslims and the U.S — some people thought it was pretty good while others had more measured reactions. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, widely reported to be sickly with cancer, tapped his youngest son Jong Un as successor, and his sushi chef said he’s just like his dad. Palau decided to accept a few of the Uighur Guantanamo detainees, and a few of them were also taken in by Bermuda. The Bermudans, however, weren’t so happy about how that happened. A little later, Iran had a Presidential election. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won under most likely fraudulent circumstances because more people voted in some towns than existed there. People protested, and Twittered, and protested some more, with violent repercussions. New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped after 7 months of being held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan. In a seemingly pro-feminist move (but actually to the chagrin of many feminists), Nicolas Sarkozy supported a ban of the burqa in France. In Honduras, President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a coup, and the U.S. military finally withdrew troops from Iraq to focus more instead on efforts to curb Taliban influence in Afghanistan.

In Urumqi, China, riots broke out between the majority Han Chinese and the minority Uighurs, and ethnic tension has remained heightened since, including recent claims that Uighurs are attacking Han Chinese with HIV infected needles. Two hotels were bombed in Jakarta, Indonesia. Hillary Clinton went to the Congo and brought attention to the use of rape and sexual violence as a tool of war (against men, too). Bill Clinton flew to North Korea and saved journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been captured in March and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. It was a good week to be a Clinton.

Former President of the Philippines Corazon Aquino died. RIP, Cory. In Taiwan, there was a really big typhoon. Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial was held over the question of whether or not she violated the terms of her house arrest when a crazy American guy swam through a lake to visit her on a supposedly divine mission. She was found guilty. The American was freed (but remained crazy). Everybody found out that private contractor organization Blackwater (now Xe) was hired by the CIA to assassinate targets. Scotland allowed the one convicted Lockerbie bomber to return to Libya because he is dying of cancer. Everybody was really, really mad, especially because it was probably because of oil. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe came down with the H1N1 virus. The Darfur conflict was reported as coming to an end. Afghanistan held Presidential elections which showed incumbent Hamid Karzai leading, but like Iran, this was probably also fraud. Unlike Iran, they’re actually recounting votes and throwing out bad ones.

Hopefully, that’s refreshed your mind with a whirlwind of memories from the past three months. But here are a couple of things that perhaps you might have missed:

China reversed its one child policy, but only in Shanghai.

Cambodia set out to host a “Miss Landmine” pageant to challenge traditional beauty standards by promoting a pageant for landmine victims. The pageant was quickly banned.

A Ukranian polka band came up with this cover of Katy Perry’s “Hot n Cold.”

Some of the lawsuits over harmful pesticide effects made by Nicaraguan farmers for Dole Food Co. turned out to be fraudulent (involving faked sterility tests, among other indicators), effectively casting doubt on all the other farmers who might have actually been harmed by the pesticides.

China tried to use electroshock therapy to cure teens of Internet addiction. The practice was quickly banned.

Canada granted refugee status to a white man from South Africa who claimed he was being persecuted in his native country on the basis of his race.

An IT company in South Africa ran a test to see what could send data faster: South African Internet service or a carrier pigeon. The pigeon won.

Anything missing? Of course. Drop a comment to add in any other summer global affairs news that slipped through the cracks!