[p2p-research] Slashdot | US Cybersecurity Plan Includes Offense (was Re: The stupid network will get a hearing)

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Contrast Isenberg's suggestions on a network based on plenty with today's news:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/11/14/1426208/US-Cybersecurity-Plan-Includes-Offense
"Shane Harris of the National Journal describes how the US government plans 
to use, and has successfully used, cyber-warfare to disrupt the 
communications of insurgents in Iraq. 'In a 2008 article in Armed Forces 
Journal, Col. Charles Williamson III, a legal adviser for the Air Force 
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency, proposed building a 
military "botnet," an army of centrally controlled computers to launch 
coordinated attacks on other machines. Williamson echoed a widely held 
concern among military officials that other nations are building up their 
cyber-forces more quickly. "America has no credible deterrent, and our 
adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere," he wrote. ... 
Responding to critics who say that by building up its own offensive power, 
the United States risks starting a new arms race, Williamson said, "We are 
in one, and we are losing."'"
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20091114_3145.php

So, the US military, once again, in a tremendous burst of irony, is 
developing ways to create artificial scarcity on the network of abundance. 
And they are justifying this to have new ways to further harm the people 
upset about being harmed by the illegal and immoral US invasion of Iraq.
"Illegal, Immoral Invasion of Iraq to Carve up the Middle East"
http://www.mediamonitors.net/abdullahvawda16.html

So, one illegal and immoral act begets another. One artificial scarcity 
begets another. One arms race, fueled by war profits, begets another.
   http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

How do we resolve this seemingly intractable problem?

Mutual security?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430

Intrinsic security?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

Humor? :-)
http://www.humorproject.com/doses/default.php?number=1

Jacque Fresco comments on some of this, as far as the problems of way being 
profitable, as I note here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/3b7889054e4b4317

So, after the US military gets all these shiny new cyberweapons, who are 
they going to use them against next? Who will be the next people labeled 
"insurgents"? Or goaded into it by suffering from other military-enforced 
artificial scarcities?

Anyway, people ask me why I don't just post to a blog, and that's part of 
it. All web archives and other websites may be taken out once that "arms 
race" really gets going and military doctrinal TINA rules: "There is no 
alternative (but to destroy everything)".

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.beyondajoblessrecovery.org/

Ryan wrote:
> The rise of a plenty-based network rather than one based on scarcity...
> 
> Ryan
> 
> Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: The stupid network will get a
> hearing via Open Source by Dana Blankenhorn on 11/13/09
> 
> Advocates of transforming network regulation from Bell services to dumb
> bits will get a hearing from the FCC, as David Isenberg, author of the
> classic Rise of the Stupid Network, has joined the agency as an expert
> advisor.
> 
> (Picture taken in 2004 from Isenberg’s Isen.com Web site.)
> 
> Isenberg will be part of the team that will deliver the National
> Broadband Plan to Congress in February. He wrote on his blog that, as a
> result of his agency assignment his annual conference on broadband
> reform, Freedom2Connect, will be postponed.
> 
> A bit of disclosure. I covered the 2006 Freedom2Connect conference in
> Washington for ZDNet.
> 
> In the Stupid Network essay, which he wrote while at AT&T in 1997,
> Isenberg argued that the most efficient network is controlled at the
> edge, with a design based on the idea of plenty rather than scarcity,
> and transport based on the needs of the data.
> 
> The idea, he wrote, was that the network did not need intelligence at
> the center, that it should just “deliver the bits, stupid.” Hence the
> stupid network.
> 
> The problem is that while the stupid network is fine engineering, great
> for users and consumer equipment suppliers, it doesn’t leave much for
> the telephone company to do but move bits. And Isenberg wrote at a time
> when the bit-moving market was highly competitive, with prices falling
> every few months.
> 
> Thus the phone companies have argued against the stupid network. They
> have sought to install gear within the parts of the Internet they
> control to guarantee Quality of Service, to distinguish between bits
> based on protocol or what the customer is paying to move them, and to
> stop bad bits before they arrive at a user’s desk.
> 
> “Those are nice bits there, a shame if something happened to them.” And
> the phone company is Santa Claus, deciding which bits are naughty and
> which are nice.
> 
> The problem with this is it slows the network, and creates a barrier to
> entry for innovation, which must win permission from the network
> operator in order to reach the market. It is also redundant if customer
> equipment can handle tasks previously done by the intelligent network.
> 
> The Internet, as it exists today, is essentially a stupid network.
> 
> Cellular networks, you will note, are completely different from stupid
> networks. Such networks are all centrally controlled, with the carrier
> defining different bits as separate services, controlling who can sell
> what, and taking a cut on every transaction.
> 
> Isenberg left AT&T in 1998 as “Distinguished Member of the Technical
> Staff” but has been better known as mud, Voldemort and Who’s He at Bell
> offices ever since. (This is especially true for those who work as Bell
> lobbyists.)
> 
> Isenberg will just be one member of the agency’s National Broadband
> Task Force, one voice out of many. The FCC is also taking public
> comment online and holding hearings.
> 
> But at least his voice will be heard.
> 
> 
> 
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