Dialectics of Cyber International Relations and Cyber Defense: Towards a Strategic Research Program

1. Explorations in Cyber International Relations (ECIR) Dialectics of Cyber International Relations and Cyber Defense: Towards a Strategic Research Program John C. Mallery (jcma@mit.edu) Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology Presentation at theECIR Workshop onCyber International Relations: Emergent Realities of Conflict and Cooperation, MIT, Cambridge, October 14, 2010. OSD Minerva Research Project at Harvard & MIT Explorations in Cyber International Relations

2. Overview • Activities Under ECIR • Strategic IR Research Program • Cyber Defense Strategy • Meta-power As IR Leverage Criteria • High-leverage Research Areas • Dialectics • Computational Politics • Selected Leverage Vignettes

3. Activities Under ECIR • Stanley Cyber Monitoring & Analysis System • 5 document streams • Over 4k documents • Cross-organization Cyber Data Study • 5 themes: international interactions, crime, economics, defensive coordination, long-term transformations • Recommendations for cyber data collection • Over a dozen organizations • Cyber Defense Strategy • Work factor concept • Technology strategy • Today: Linking IR to Cyber Defense

4. Strategic Research Program • How can we prioritize research on cyber international relations to focus on the highest leverage problems? • Exhaustive enumeration is slow • Recycling pre-existing disciplinary concepts may lack relevance or leverage • Approach • Link to cyber defense strategy • Identify cyber fueled processes that drive strategy-relevant reallocations power, wealth, knowledge, cultural attractiveness, welfare • Elucidate those processes

5. What is cyberspace? • Interdependent network of information technology infrastructures (NSPD54/HSPD23) • Internet • Telecommunications networks • Computer systems • Embedded processors • Controllers in critical industries • Virtual environment of information and interactions between people (NSPD54/HSPD23) • US Military: • Electro-magnetic spectrum • Information operations • C4ISR, space • Supply chains for IT • Computers, networks, software, crypto, id mgt., etc.

6. Big Elephant: High Cognitive DifficultyDue Vast Cross-Cuts • Cyber insecurity has manifestations across the range of human activities where there is value • Business • Defense • Society • Technological basis of crisis is difficult to apprehend • Current COTs failures • 40 years of traditional computer security • Future: transformational computing & networking • Policy and legal responses are difficult • Cyber spans most traditional policy domains • Received legal concepts and categories are blurred • Best organizational modes unclear • Responses often reflectdisjointed incrementalism • Analytical reductions based onreceiveddisciplinary lenses (analogies) • Proposed solutions based on repurposed concepts • Creation of integrative frameworks) is essential • Enables cumulation across disciplines and knowledge areas

7. DoD Cyber Strategy • William J. Lynn, Deputy Secretary, DoD • Foreign Affairs, August, 2010 • NATO, September, 15 • CFR, September 30 • Vast vulnerabilities & critical reliance • Military/Intel • Critical infrastructure • Private sector • Five pillars • Domain of warfare • Active & timely defense • Protection of critical infrastructure • Collective defense with allies • Technological leverage

8. Strategic Approach • Transform US cyber-infrastructures to: • Resist attacks and continue to function under adversity • Enhance confidence in computation and communications • Enable rapid adoption of new technological advances • Strength competiveness via improved agility, effectiveness, and learning • Vision • Trustworthy systems and resilient society • Articulation of roles and responsibilities • Alignment of guiding images • Integrative Framework • Effective application of resources • Coordinated division of labor • Common language • Dynamic refinement • Objectives • Prioritized • Risk adjusted • Time horizons • Implementing strategies • High leverage • Synergistic moves

9. Defensive Complexity Analysis • Response to cyber asymmetries requires high leverage solutions • Application to the entire attack value cycle (financial, political-military) • Time frames: Short-term (0-2 yrs), medium-term (2-5 yrs), long-term (5-10 yrs) • Security meta-metrics focus on difficulty of attacker or defender tasks • Work factor (WF) is the difficulty of executing tasks • Analogous to computational difficulty in cryptography • Extends beyond the technical designs to domain embeddings (cyber operations research) • Dimensions of work factors • Resources • Computational complexity (mathematical leverage) • Cost (often related to complexity) • Expertise and Knowledge (technical specialties, domain knowledge) • Planning, execution and information management • Cognitive difficulty (model as formulation of non-linear plans and counter plans) • Learning difficulty (reversing obfuscation, devising new tactics or approaches) • Organizational effectiveness/dysfunction (integration, learning, structure, psychology) • Risk • Uncertainty (confidence, incomplete information) • Culture (risk acceptance or aversion) • Information differential gain/loss (innovation, leakage by insider, espionage, diffusion) • Make technical or policy moves that cumulatively • Impose hard problems on attackers (prefer geometric impact) • Facilitate coordinated defense (eliminate multipliers)

10. Defensive Strategy Decomposition:Planes of Action • Leadership organization • Policy community • Technology visionaries • Domain architects • Cyber technology base • IT capital goods industry • Telecommunications operators • Identity management & crypto sectors • Standards bodies and certification/accreditation authorities • Public sector domains • Military & intelligence systems • Government systems • Defense industrial base • Private sector domains • Critical infrastructure • Research and education infrastructure • Supply chain • Major enterprise • Smaller enterprise • Consumer • International cooperation • Allies • Trading partners • Regional or issue groups • Global • International competition • Mutual understandings • Declaratory policies • Norms

11. Solutions vs. Mitigations • Solution Domains (10-30 years) • Science, technology, engineering • R&D infrastructure • Human capital • IT capital goods industrial organization • Critical infrastructures • Threat mitigation domains • Information assurance management • International cyber crime law enforcement • Cooperative engagement (like minded) • International norms (agreements 10+ yrs) • Deterrence (cross domain responses)

12. Meta-power (BBB) As Leverage Framework • Power: Set of action possibilities and payoffs for actors within an interaction framework • Meta-power: Action possibilities that change the distribution of power resources among actors (Deutsch: Nth order power) • Strategic Competition: Contention over meta-power resources • Leverage: Impact of cyber-fueled international processes on national strategies

13. High-leverage Research Areas • Information Diffusion • Economic strategy based on knowledge activities becomes problematic • Globalization • National location of key industries (and spread effects) more difficult • Cyber-enabled organizational learning => higher adaptive capacities • Race for more effective organizations as a basis for national advantage • Computational support for cyber decision-making and understanding • Modeling, mechanism design, precedent reasoning, game theory, grammars of action • Cultural interpenetration • Global digital ecumene -> clash of civilizations or transcendence? • Empowerment of small groups • Ability of “terrorists” to organize and cause trouble

14. Dialectics • Information assurance is slippery with many potentially self-defeating moves • Centralization -> aggregation of threat • Standardization -> low diversity -> scale economies of attack • Conservation of threat -> attacks move to weaker surfaces • Two definitions of dialectics: • Process and complement process • Action and reaction

15. Examples of Cyber Dialectics • Ready access to S&T knowledge • Faster research cycle within countries • Unprecedented rates of global knowledge diffusion • Empowers global business operations (e.g., IT sector) • More efficient resource utilization • More conflict over loci of production • Virtual concentration of dispersed groups • Critical mass to articulate knowledge interests • Critical mass to organize insurgencies or nihilistic actions • Informationalized militaries (e.g., GIG) • Global power projection (Gulf War 1 forward) • Asymmetric power projection (cyber war) • More effective bureaucracy • Improved domestic operations, law enforcement, transparency • Reduced autonomy of the state (via network interpenetration, higher scrutiny)

16. Computational Theories of Politics and IR • Karl Deutsch • Political cybernetics and systems dynamics • Integration theory • Hayward Alker • Mathematical politics (limits – degrees of freedom, structural change) • Systems dynamics (limits – structural transformation) • Generative grammars (limits – descriptive) • AI and text-interpretive theories of IR (learning, meaning) • Dialectics of world order • Herbert Simon • AI and political science (search paradigm) • Computational search in organizations (“bounded rationality”) • Lloyd Etheredge • Government learning (1985) (psychology and structure) • John Mallery • Computational politics (1988) • Application of computational models of cognition to IR

17. CyberSocial Systems • Networking and computation spread ubiquitously 1992-2010 • Cyberphysical systems • Now: • Computers provide cognitive prosthetics • Networks link human-computer cognitive systems • Speed -> gain in systems • Faster rates of interaction • Global immediacy • Co-evolution and interpenetration of cyber systems and biological cognition • Computational analytical frameworks needed • Individual => social network => organization

18. Digital Noosphere(Tailard Desjardins) • Collective knowledge of humanity • Under active assembly on the Web today • Culture becomes digital • Expectation of increasing cultural gain • Organizational adaptation requires increased rates of learning • Faster interactions (digital diplomacy) • More informationmarshaled • Better knowledge: Conflict vs. homogenization • Major challenge of modernity • Networked global ecumene • Opportunities for broader international integration • Clash of cultures: West, Islam, South Asia, East Asia

19. Globalization (World System Analysis) • Reinforces and extends ability of transnational firms to coordinateglobalproduction • Increases centripal impact on loci of production • Reduces state sovereignty, but some states can influence firms’ locationalcalculi (e.g., China) • New Neo-mercantilism (world order threat) • Competition for future industries • Lock-in of raw materials and new markets (e.g., Africa) • “Currency wars” • Refocus on developmental economics • “Conditioned development” (Cardoso) • “Spread effects” (Myrdal), “staple theory” (Innis) • Industrial policy helps understand emerging powers • Necessary strategy for national economic renewal

20. Strategic Research Program • How can we prioritize research on cyber international relations to focus on the highest leverage problems? • Exhaustive enumeration is slow • Recycling pre-existing disciplinary concepts may lack relevance or leverage • Approach • Link to cyber defense strategy • Identify cyber fueled processes that drive strategy-relevant reallocations power, wealth, knowledge, cultural attractiveness, welfare • Elucidate those processes