L. Gordon Crovitz : Portents of World Cyberwar- A Review of “Ghost Fleet ” by Peter Singer and August Cole
http://www.wsj.com/articles/portents-of-world-cyberwar-1436740393
“Ghost Fleet” is a fictional warning that real-life technologies could expose the U.S. to a devastating attack.
Arthur Conan Doyle ventured beyond his Sherlock Holmes novels in 1914 to write a short story called “Danger!” about risks in future wars from new technologies such as submarines. Even the hardheaded Winston Churchill, then running the Royal Navy, dismissed Mr. Doyle’s predictions as pure fantasy—until German submarines in World War I started torpedoing civilian ships.
A new novel, “Ghost Fleet,” warns Americans about advances in cyberwarfare that could leave the U.S. as unprepared as Britain was against the U-boats. The title refers to mothballed warships and planes the U.S. recommissions because their pre-Internet technologies haven’t been hacked. (Disclosure: The publisher is Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, on whose board I serve.)
Authors Peter Singer and August Cole are think-tank policy wonks inspired by Tom Clancy’s 1986 “Red Storm Rising.” Clancy’s descriptions of emerging technology, including still-secret stealth aircraft, were so accurate that he was accused of using classified material. The authors of “Ghost Fleet” call their genre “useful fiction.”
“We thought fiction would be a perfect way to capture people’s attention,” Mr. Cole told me in an interview. “Fiction can focus our attention on national-security issues that are too difficult, too complex or too unpopular to take on with status quo approaches.”
The premise is that leapfrogging technologies can disrupt the Pentagon, as they have many civilian industries, and that new strategic thinking is difficult to achieve in a vast bureaucracy. The fictional enemy is China, along with its junior partner Russia. China hacks into American military computer systems to gain the advantage in cyberspace and outer space, prevailing for a time in air, at sea and on land.
Mr. Singer is a Pentagon consultant and author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar,” a nonfiction work. Mr. Cole is a former Wall Street Journal defense-industry reporter who revealed in 2009 that China broke into the computer systems of the F-35, the most advanced U.S. fighter. His scoop quoted the head of American counterintelligence warning this could mean “a fighter pilot can’t trust his radar.”
“Ghost Fleet” portrays Beijing paralyzing the U.S. military by inserting malware into chips manufactured in China for use in American warships and planes. When the Chinese activate the chips to cripple U.S. fighters, planes from the 1970s are redeployed because they don’t have Chinese chips.
Just as the Pentagon turned to Detroit to build armaments for World War II, in the novel Silicon Valley returns to its defense-industry roots to win the cyberwar. Among the characters is a high-tech billionaire who launches himself into orbit to reclaim the international space station after it is seized by Russians and used by the Chinese to destroy U.S. satellites. The hacking group Anonymous helps by defeating a Chinese cyberattack on the U.S. electrical grid.
The novel includes almost 400 endnotes with citations showing even the most far-fetched technologies in the book are based on reality. These include drone fighter jets more lethal than piloted fighters, undersea drones to protect warships, electromagnetic rail guns that seem to defy physics, and software transmitted through ink tattoos. One of the citations is to a Brookings Institution study on risks to the Pentagon from Chinese-made chips embedded in American operating systems for carriers, submarines, bombers and fighters.
The authors say they aren’t predicting World War III. They hope their novel will help focus U.S. strategy on deterring war. Their timing is excellent: The news that China hacked the personnel records of at least 20 million Americans—including everyone with a security clearance—is a reminder that Beijing is already playing the long game by using cybertools to build intelligence capabilities against the U.S.
Mr. Cole runs the Future of Warfare Project at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, which encourages artists to create works about a hypothetical World War III. An exhibit includes art in the style of the Uncle Sam recruiting poster. One future poster solicits unhacked chips: “Reduce, Reuse, Refight: Donate Microchips at Your Local Victory Drive.”
Churchill, having learned from Doyle’s unheeded warnings about World War I, tried to sound the alarm before World War II. He didn’t have much success. In “The Gathering Storm” (1948), the first of his six-volume history of the war, he observed that “the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness, and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm.”
“Ghost Fleet” is a technically sound call to action. It shows how imagination can be enlisted to focus attention on the challenge for the U.S. to deter or prevail in a cyber-led World War III.
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