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【中文标题】北京的“数据轰炸”——中国怎样重新定义战争
【原文标题】Beijing's 'Bitskrieg' How China is revolutionizing warfare.
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】JOHN ARQUILLA
【原文链接】http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/13/beijings_bitskrieg
五角大楼在上周致国会的报告中，明确指明中国正在执行大规模的电子数据计划。报告断言中国人不遗余力地从美国顶尖企业——以及世界其它地方——探听敏感信息、盗取知识产权。人们被这件事吸引的同时，又发现了其它一些有关北京感兴趣的对象的相关信息。实际上，五角大楼明确探明中国的一系列战略，整体来看，中国开始着手的是一个在先进信息技术条件下崭新的军事领域。就像利用无线电规划坦克和飞机布署，使二战的闪电战成为可能，今天的计算机或许将开启巡航导弹、精确制导和其它智能武器的窗口。
总而言之，北京发动的是一场“数据轰炸”。五角大楼的报告将其分为三个步骤。首先是“盗取数据”，以获取有关军事行动、控制系统，以及可以通过网络进攻破坏掉的系统脆弱环节的重要信息。我们相信中国人在多年前就已经开始收集相关信息，这实际上是华盛顿最早在10年前公开承认所采取的行动——代号“泰坦之雨”。过去十年里，这场雨从未止歇。
有了这些数据之后，五角大楼的报告称，第二步是采取相同的方式侵入我们的防御系统，利用病毒、蠕虫和其它工具使其瘫痪。这一步的目的是延缓美国军方应对危机和冲突的反应时间。我们可以设想一下将会发生什么，比如在朝鲜半岛，当朝鲜数百万人的军队进攻时，如果我们的小股武装力量——25000人左右的军队——与总部失去联系将会如何。缺少了像进攻者一样的灵活机动能力，我们的军队将遭受强大的压力。针对自动化布署功能和空中作业系统的网络攻击，还可以延缓增援部队的行动力，阻碍空中打击行动。在第一次朝鲜战争中，中国派出了大规模的军队；这一次，他或许只需要发送几个电子指令。
五角大楼的报告认为，北京真正的收益在于其展望的第三阶段网络行动。这个时候，信息优势——也就是在敌人彻底混乱时协调自身的军事行动——转化成战场上的实质性结果。五角大楼把此时的网络进攻描述为一项重大的“军事行动”。获取这个优势意味着只需要付出极小的代价就可以取得战役的胜利。从这个意义上说，计算机驱动的“数据轰炸”可以取得和机械化轰炸一样的效果，同时还可以摧毁对方通讯。例如，1940年的法国之战，德军人数和坦克数量都少于盟军，但是盟军损失的人数是纳粹国防军的四倍。
我和我的长期科研伙伴David Ronfeldt在20年按提出了网络战争的概念，五角大楼报告中描述的第二阶段和第三阶段已经被我们预见到了。以我们的观点来看，打击敌人的信息网络、保护自己的通信畅通，是赢得未来战争的关键所在。但是，这个观点的前提是，国家领导人认可网络战争“将会影响到广泛的军事组织和理论”。
问题的重点在于科技本身并不会带来任何优势。用闪电战来举例，只有把庞大的机械化师与空中打击结合，才会产生效果。要赢得一场网络战争，必须要把军事力量化整为零，并分散行动而不是集中作战。以此来看，分散并相互协调的作战单元，让一窝蜂的数据轰炸取代了闪电战的策略，让敌人在不同方位同时受到打击。这种有组织的制导战略来自技术专家David Weinberger深思熟虑的网络理论：“小型作战单元，松散但相互协调。”
因此，五角大楼致国会的年度报告虽然已经表达了清晰的态度，但应当更加深入挖掘，分层次思考中国的网络威胁。我们希望美国通过反省自身的观点，评估自身发动网络战争的能力，来分析北京即将发动“数据轰炸”的可能性。五角大楼报告中描述的三个阶段与Ronfeldt和我在二十年前的观点基本一致，至少大家都认为这种方式的冲突即将发生。
大部分发达国家的军方都认为网络战争只是针对电网等设置的进攻策略，但中国不这样想。他们认为，对某些国家来说，网络战争仅仅是把灯熄掉那么一小会；而对另一些国家来说，网络战争可以击败对信息流通依赖性越来越强的大规模军队。灭掉的灯总可以再点亮，数据轰炸中阵亡的士兵永远无法复活。仔细阅读五角大楼的报告可以发现这一点——采取恰当的行动缩减军队的规模，并采取步调一致的行动是未来的趋势。
原文：
As the Pentagon's annual report to Congress, released last week, makes abundantly clear, China is on something of a long march in cyberspace. While most attention is being drawn to the report's assertions about Chinese snooping into sensitive classified areas and theft of intellectual property from leading American firms -- and others around the world -- there is some intriguing analysis of Beijing's broader aims as well. Indeed, the Pentagon sees a clear progression in Chinese strategic thought that, viewed as a whole, begins to elaborate what might be seen as an emerging military doctrine enabled by advanced information technologies. Just as the radio made skillful coordination of tanks and planes possible, introducing World War II-era blitzkrieg, so today the computer may be opening new vistas for cruise missiles, precision-guided munitions, and other smart weapons.
What's coming from Beijing is, in a word, "bitskrieg." The Pentagon report describes this as a three-phase process. First, there is a "focus on exfiltrating data" so as to gain vital information needed about military command and control systems as well as the points in our critical infrastructure that are vulnerable to disruption by means of cyberattack. It is believed that the Chinese have been engaging in this sort of intelligence gathering for many years -- intrusions that Washington first openly acknowledged 10 years ago, giving them the code name "Titan Rain." It has been raining steadily for the past decade.
With all these data in hand, the second step -- per the Pentagon report -- is to use the same intrusive means that mapped our defense information systems to disrupt them with worms, viruses, and an assortment of other attack tools. The goal at this point is to slow the U.S. military's ability to respond to a burgeoning crisis or an ongoing conflict. Think of what might happen, say, on the Korean Peninsula, if our small contingent there -- a little over 25,000 troops -- were to lose its connectivity at the outset of a North Korean invasion by its million-man army. Without the ability to operate more nimbly than the attacker, these forces would be hard-pressed from the outset. Cyberattacks on mostly automated force-deployment and air-tasking systems could also slow the sending of reinforcements and greatly impede air interdiction operations. In the first Korean War, the Chinese intervened with massive numbers of troops. In the second one, they might only have to send electrons.
The real payoff for Beijing, though, is in what the Pentagon report describes as China's envisioned third phase of cyber-operations. This is the point at which the information advantage -- that is, the ability to coordinate one's own field operations while the adversary's have been completely disrupted -- is translated into material results in battle. The Pentagon describes cyberattack at this point as amounting to a major "force multiplier." Gaining such advantage means winning campaigns and battles with fewer casualties relative to those inflicted upon the enemy. In this respect, computer-driven "bitskrieg" could, it is thought, generate results like those attained by mechanized blitzkriegs -- which also aimed at disrupting communications. In the Battle of France in 1940, for example, where the Germans had fewer troops and tanks, the Allies lost more than four times the number of soldiers as the Wehrmacht.
When my long-time research partner David Ronfeldt and I introduced our concept of cyberwar 20 years ago, the second and third phases of cyberattack that the Pentagon report describes are what we had in mind. In our view, striking at an enemy's ability to maintain information flows, while keeping one's own communications secure, would be the key to gaining a war-winning advantage in conflicts to come. But this would only hold true, we affirmed, if senior leaders recognized that cyberwar poses "broad issues of military organization and doctrine."
The point being that technology alone doesn't create or sustain the advantage. In the case of blitzkrieg it was concentrating tanks in panzer divisions and closely linking them with attack aircraft that made the difference. To succeed at cyberwar, it will be necessary both to scale down large units into small ones and "scale them out" across the battlespace rather than mass them together. In this fashion -- spread out but completely linked and able to act as one -- the sweeping maneuvers of blitzkrieg will be supplanted by the swarming attacks of bitskrieg, characterized by the ability to mount simultaneous strikes from many directions. The guiding organizational concept for this new approach flows closely from technologist David Weinberger's thoughtful description of online networks: "small pieces, loosely joined."
Thus should the Pentagon annual report to Congress be delved into more deeply -- for the document reflects a clear awareness of, and takes a subtle, layered approach to thinking about, the Chinese cyber threat. One can only hope that the U.S. military analysis of Beijing's looming capacity for bitskrieg is mirrored by introspective views and similarly nuanced considerations of American capacities for waging cyberwar. For the three phases described in the Pentagon report -- so consistent with the original vision Ronfeldt and I described two decades ago -- reflect the kind of conflict that is coming.
The militaries of most advanced countries think of cyberwar as a new form of strategic attack on power grids and such. The Chinese view differs, seeing this mode of conflict as much less about turning off the lights for a while in some other country and much more about defeating an opposing military grown dependent upon sustained, secure, and ubiquitous flows of information. Lights can always be turned back on. Soldiers' lives lost amid the battlefield chaos caused by a bitskrieg can never be reclaimed. Thoughtful reading of the Pentagon report should affirm this -- and appropriate action, along the lines of scaling down and "scaling out" our forces, and encouraging them to "swarm," must follow.
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