Electronic Jihad

There's a good article in the Jerusalem Post on 'Cyberspace as a Combat Zone'. I have been following the literature on 'hacker war' with a skeptical interest for a while now--visit the excellent Information Warfare Site for all your IW needs. My belief is that the 'Electronic Pearl Harbor' (ie., catastrophic electronic-only attack on critical systems) threat is something of a cliche, more hype than threat. But what has been growing increasingly clear is that Al Qaeda makes excellent use of the Internet as a tool for, inter alia, mobilization, fund-raising, propagandizing, planning, training and communication. Indeed, I'd say that when it comes to the information war AQ is running rings around us. It inclines me somewhat to agree with Bruce Berkowitz who wrote

History will not portray Osama bin Laden as a mere terrorist. Rather instructors at West Point and Annapolis will cite him as one of the first military commanders to use a new kind of combat organization in a successful operation.[1]

Well, maybe that goes too far. I doubt Osama is blogging and YouTubing from his cave personally. Still it is the case that his followers and fellow travellers have grasped the impact of the Digital Revolution in a way which contrasts with ironic sharpness with their medieval thinking in every other respect. An interesting part of the Jerusalem post piece is this:

Reports posted by the mujahideen after attacks on Web sites indicate that these cyberassaults affect the Web sites only temporarily, if at all. In many cases the mujahideen themselves admit that their attack was ineffective and that the Web site returned to normal functioning only minutes or hours after the attack. In light of this, the mujhahideen often resort to another method in an attempt to completely eliminate the targeted site.

An Islamist hacker explained the method as follows: "We contact... the server [which hosts the target website] before and after the assault, and threaten [the server admin] until they shut down the target website. [In such cases], the 'host' [i.e., server] is usually forced to shut down the website. The battle continues until the enemy declares: 'I surrender.'"

Pure cyber attacks with no 'kinetic' element (to use the lingo) are not very effective, but cyber attacks combined with threats of violence and intimidation (good old-fashioned thuggery, in other words) work a trick. Perhaps there's a parallel here with the hoary old debate over air power's claim to strategic decisiveness independent of other arms?

[1] Bruce Berkowitz, The New Face of War: How War will be Fought in the 21^st Century, New York, NY: The Free Press, 2003, p. 17.