The New Phase of Conflict

A few weeks ago, a news article blaming North Korea for a cyber attack using viruses on South Korea and US networks came out. It was able to paralyze non hardened systems and thus affect the delivery of basic goods and services. As far as I can remember, attacks of the same type has always been by individuals usually out to prove a point or to pull a scam or to phish or to simply pull a prank. However, if it is indeed a state sponsored attack then we are entering a new phase of conflict on the world stage.

Conflicts between sovereign nations have traditionally involved disputed territories or dispute over resources. In this particular type of conflict, the new resource that is being fought over is information. And in this age where everything is stored digitally, it is a resource more valuable than all the oil combined in the world.

The new battlefield in this war is the information superhighways, be it the internet or the hardened networks of the military and the command and control networks of nation states. Here the laws of armed conflict hold little sway and thus it allows a no holds barred assault without fear of reprisals in international tribunals.

It is such a vast and complex system that it is almost impossible to trace the source of the attack or even if the source is traced, it is difficult to find out the funder of the attack. In this battlefield, outcomes are not determined by the number of divisions that you put out into the field but by the ingenuity of your programmers.

However, the loser in this developing war zone is still the same as an armed conflict. The citizens of the recipient of the attack are ultimately the one who suffers from the lack of deliverable services that is impaired whenever an event occurs. And adding insult to injury, our courts suffer from the inability to acquire jurisdiction over the perpetrators of crimes such as this. (Just look at all the machinations the US tried just to acquire jurisdiction over the creators of the "I Love You" virus.)

With this in mind and with this conflict mode's very international character, perhaps its time to create an international body can acquire jurisdiction over the different participants. However, the difficulties of this proposition is very real because it requires that States surrender some of their sovereignty so as to bind them and their citizens. Still, it's an idea worth thinking about.