Information Warfare in Business

Strategies of Control and Resistance in the Network Society

Iain Munro

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415339681
• eBook ISBN: 9781134299843
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Information Warfare in Business provides a significant and interesting perspective on the concept of the network organization. It illustrates the relations between information technology and organization, and in particular, between business organizations and the recent revolution in military affairs that has been called 'information warfare'. The main themes discussed include the network society, knowledge management, nomadic strategy, information warfare, power and identity.

1

Information warfare in business

Every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies.

(Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey)

Power is impenetrable. The man who has it sees through other men, but does not allow them to see through him.

(Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power)

This book describes the emergence of information warfare and the distinctive role that such warfare is coming to play in both business organizations and in society in general. A number of other related themes will be discussed alongside the concept of information warfare, including strategy, power, the network society, knowledge management, and identity. There have already been a number of excellent commentaries on the way in which the Internet has transformed business, for example Manuel Castells’s work on the network society, and Michael Porter’s later work on the influence of the Internet on corporate strategy (Castells 1996, Porter 2001). This book is distinctive in showing the important role of information warfare in such developments. Information warfare includes a diverse range of practices, all of which concern the security of our information resources, what we know about ourselves and what we know about the world around us. This includes both high-technology and low-technology techniques, from informal networks of gossip and rumour, to the more systematic approaches of public relations and propaganda, to entirely technological techniques of hacking and the creation of computer viruses. The general theoretical approach of the work is sympathetic to Castells’ idea of the network organization and its association with the breakdown of traditional hierarchical social relations (Castells 1996). However the argument also draws upon Deleuze and Guattari’s work (1988), by contrasting nomadic social movements with sedentary forms of organization. The network organization can adopt a sedentary form as a controlling mechanism that captures information and regulates ideas, or as a nomadic free flowing set of relations. This distinction provides a general point of differentiation from existing works on the network organization which tend to focus primarily on attempts to regulate networks, especially as found in the literature on knowledge management. This approach to the study of organizations highlights the ‘nomadic’ network as both a technological assemblage and a social formation. Today, the business world is being transformed by non-business organizations, such as the Linux and Napster user communities, which have defied the traditional models of competition. These organizations have appeared from out of the blue, posing a serious threat to their business rivals, and yet they are not themselves driven by the profit motive. They are driven instead by goals and strategies that are closer to the strategies of a guerrilla band and a more nomadic way of thinking. The theory of information warfare developed here explains the emergence of strategies in both business organizations and the military world based around the new communication technologies. This theory also explains the forces underlying a movement away from traditional disciplinary mechanisms of power, where disciplinary power is being supplemented and supplanted by more abstract networks of control. Before proceeding to a more detailed introduction to the chief arguments of this book, a few vignettes will be described, each of which illuminates the rise of information warfare.

In 1946, the Marx Brothers released A Night In Casablanca, a parody of wartime romances in the vein of the classic 1942 drama Casablanca. The Warner Brothers film studios responded by threatening to sue the Marx Brothers for infringement of their rights to the Casablanca brand name. Groucho handled the threatened legal action in a suitably comic manner, and wrote back to the film studio stating that they might as well try suing for the rights to use the name ‘Brothers’, which was another piece of intellectual property that the studio happened to share with the comic trio. In his letter, Groucho argued that, ‘Professionally, we were brothers long before you were…. And even before us there had been other brothers…’ (Marx 1948).

Understanding the legal quagmire that they might end up in, the Warner Brothers did not pursue their complaint any further, and the Marx Brothers got their way. The Guardian columnist John Naughton used Groucho’s story to illustrate some of the absurdities that surround today’s wrangles over intellectual property rights. What was, in 1946, an absurd exchange between a comic genius and a powerful film studio is fast becoming the norm in a society where the circulation of intellectual property forms a keystone of the economy. For example, in 2002, Microsoft filed a complaint against Lindows.com, an organization that distributes a Linux-based operating system free on the Internet. Microsoft lawyers believed that the word Lindows was an imitation of the ‘Windows’ brand name and hence an infringement of their intellectual property. Microsoft was concerned that the Lindows package may eat into its market share because Linux was already quite popular, has a graphical user interface, and is free. Lindows was considered good enough to be pre-installed on the cheap PCs being sold by the retail giant Wal-Mart in the US. There is a clear parallel between the Microsoft/Lindows debacle and the Warner Brothers/Marx Brothers case, where Microsoft was acting in a proprietary manner in regard to using the word ‘windows’, even though there had been many windows of one form or another well before Microsoft had developed its own software.

The Lindows example is by no means an isolated incident, and the battle between Microsoft and Linux is long standing. Many of the computer viruses that circulate the Internet are targeted at Microsoft programmes specifically, and the users of Linux software have been largely safe from attack or infection. Microsoft has even devoted a website to anti-Linux propaganda, or what it terms ‘Linux myths’, claiming that Linux is unreliable and compares unfavourably to its own Windows software. Despite this, Linux usage is on the increase. When understood as a whole, this strategy to undermine Linux using public relations, propaganda and intellectual property laws, may be seen as a general campaign of information warfare within the business community. The gang of computer programmers who created and developed Linux might themselves be compared with a loose-knit band of guerrilla fighters, irregulars dedicated to a clear set of ideals, not least being the free exchange of information across the Internet.

Naomi Klein’s book No Logo contains a host of similar examples, which she describes as ‘copyright bullies’, where large corporations have flexed their legal muscles to ward off any potential threats to their brand name or intellectual property. Klein concedes that artists and inventors really do need to be protected from thievery, reproaching anti-copyright radicals as being provocative rather than practical. That said, Klein goes on to give a list of instances that she believes demonstrates rather too much enthusiasm on the part of large corporations to appeal to copyright laws to restrict our freedom of expression. A classic example of this corporate heavy handedness occurred when the toy company Mattel used copyright laws to block the release of a movie. The film in question was Todd Haynes’, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, based on the life story of the anorexic pop star. Mattel could interfere in the release of this movie because its director had taken the unusual step of using a cast entirely peopled by Barbie dolls, which happens to be one of Mattel’s best-selling products. Although this is a somewhat unusual example, Klein is genuinely concerned that when we communicate using the language of brands and corporate logos we run the risk of being sued. The legal restrictions placed on the ownership of ideas and the circulation of intellectual property is a much wider concern, as has been pointed out by the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz (2002). As a former economist for the World Bank, his work is quite critical of TRIPS, the international agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property, and he has questioned the wisdom of such restrictions where they have resulted in the prosecution of companies that are seemingly engaged in projects of great social benefit, for example producing cheap generic drugs for the treatment of AIDS in impoverished countries. Even though TRIPS was not purposively designed to do people harm, much human misery has certainly resulted from such tight protection of intellectual property. In this case, the close protection of information resources by the wealthy could easily be interpreted as a kind of information warfare against the impoverished. One need not overtly attack someone to do them harm; one need only withhold a vital resource.

During the 1990s, Kevin Mitnick became notorious as the most wanted hacker in the United States. He went under several false identities to avoid capture including: Eric Weiss, a legal assistant, Brian Merrill, a hospital assistant, Houdini, a notorious hacker, and the real Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick’s recent legal battle reads like it was taken from the plot of a second-rate science fiction novel, rather than being a genuine ground-breaking legal case. Mitnick is one of a select group of US citizens who have been legally prohibited from using or possessing any type of information technology, including a mobile phone or an Internet connection. As part of his legal defence his lawyers argued that he had been diagnosed as suffering from the new psychological disorder of ‘computer addiction’. His crime, according to the FBI and companies like Sun Microsystems, was the theft of important data costing millions of dollars. However, Mitnick never actually made any money from the systems he infiltrated, nor did he cause them any direct damage. In Mitnick’s own eyes, the worse thing he did was to charge other people for his use of the telecommunications networks. In effect, his crime was that of looking at material he had not been authorized to look at. Despite this, he ended up serving a five-year prison sentence. He served some of this period in solitary confinement, imposed on him in the belief that he had the ability to inflict massive damage to US communication networks, even whilst safely ensconced behind the walls of a prison. It was even rumoured that Mitnick possessed the ability to launch a nuclear missile by means of his extraordinary hacking skills. Perhaps his skills and his threat to society were exaggerated, nevertheless he was considered sufficiently dangerous to be placed into solitary, utterly cut off from the world outside. Since his release from prison, Mitnick has worked as an information security consultant and is the author of several books on this subject. He is, however, forbidden from writing about the specific misdeeds for which he ended up in prison. Since his release, Mitnick’s work has emphasized the fact that one need not resort to sophisticated techniques of computer hacking to extract valuable information from a person or corporation. No matter what technological precautions are taken to increase the security of information, humans are by nature social beings and are therefore always vulnerable to leaking vital information. In Mitnick’s own words, ‘Every computer system in the world has at least one human that uses it. So, if the attacker is able to manipulate people who use the systems, the obscurity of the system is irrelevant’ (Mitnick 2002:82). The main skill required for this approach to hacking is not so much any expertise in computer programming, as it is the ability to quickly build trust, to mislead and then to execute a confidence trick. Despite Mitnick’s own technological mastery, he prefers to emphasize the social elements of hacking, where technology is only one aspect of security within a wider network of social interaction. In many ways, his case is exceptional but it also provides an exemplar of the kinds of underlying social changes that are underway concerning the value placed on information, the importance of intellectual property and the regulation of access to the global flows of knowledge and information. Precisely the same trends in the technological, social and economic infrastructure have given rise to the emerging doctrine of information warfare.

Intelligence agencies, such as the CIA and the NSA, devote massive resources to protecting their computer systems from the outside. But no matter what their technological precautions, they are always vulnerable to the human factor. This was no more apparent than in the case of John Deutch, the former director of the CIA, who faced criminal charges after using an unauthorized and insecure computer for dealing with classified intelligence information (Powers 2002). As it turned out, the CIA’s investigators found no evidence that his computer has actually been compromised. However, they did find evidence that this insecure computer had also been used to access pornographic material on the Internet. Visitors to such sites can sometimes leave their computers open to subsequent attacks from hackers and to a host of computer viruses. ‘Troll’ programs have been developed by hackers, which install themselves on the computers of visitors to these sites, and pass information from the infected computer back to the hacker. Despite this apparently serious breach of security by John Deutch, who was then a senior member of the CIA, he was later pardoned by President Clinton and the legal case against him was dropped. Information warfare is being taken very seriously by our intelligence services today. This is no more apparent when looking at the current director of the National Security Agency, Lieutenant General Michael V.Hayden, who previously held a job investigating information warfare for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The futurists Alvin and Barbara Toffler have observed that, ‘Throughout history, the way men and women make war has reflected the way they work’ (Toffler and Toffler 1993:35). In ancient times, war was normally a seasonal activity since the abundance of food required to feed soldiers was available only at certain times of the year. Likewise, the object of warfare tended to be the capture or destruction of the enemy’s agriculture. The logistics, communications and weapons of warfare tend to mirror the tools that we use for work. With the mechanization of work came the mechanization of warfare. Now that the productive basis of society is becoming increasing orientated around information, so are the weapons of warfare. Paul Virilio (2000a) has remarked that the United States has become a pioneer in the development of a military doctrine for information warfare during the first Gulf War and the Balkans conflict. According to Virilio, the power of this new form of warfare ‘rests on three fundamental principles: the permanent presence of satellites over territories, the real-time transmission of the information gathered and, lastly, the ability to perform rapid analysis of the data transmitted to the various general staffs’ (Virilio 2000a:18). It is worth noting that these three fundamental principles of information warfare described by Virilio are also revolutionizing the way we do business and the wider global flows of commodities and finance.

Literature also has much to teach us about the techniques and methods of information warfare. The writer William S.Burroughs is one of the most insightful and original voices on information warfare in his literary experiments and in his essays on methods of social control (Burroughs 1986, Burroughs and Odier 1989). Burroughs conceived of a dystopia based around the control mechanisms of drug addiction and the mass media. The desire for control is itself something that one can become addicted to. His work is highly critical of the monopoly power of the media, which he saw as a real threat to the democratic process. Burroughs gave his own distinctive approach to the subversion of these mechanisms of control the name ‘civilian defense’; nevertheless, the methods he proposed are almost identical to the definitions of information warfare given by leading exponents in computer security (Denning 1999) and military strategy (Arquilla and Rondfeldt 1997). He conceived of his dystopia as built up of secret organizations, some being official arms of the state apparatus, such as the intelligence services, and others being subversive organizations that hope to hide their activities from the prying eyes of the official apparatus. Each of these groups uses information and the power of communications technology as their preferred weapon of choice. Burroughs himself was clearly on the side of the subversives, giving his fictional rebel societies names like ‘Civilian Defense’ and the ‘Johnson Family’. According to Burroughs, the monopoly of the mass media constitutes a huge machine for laying down lines of association in our subconscious, telling us what to buy, who to vote for, and how to live. His books are full of techniques for scrambling the lines of association that the mass media builds in our subconscious, and of lessons in the disruption of its propaganda. He even coined a slogan for this approach to civil resistance, ‘You have nothing to lose except your prerecordings’ (Burroughs 1968: 129). The citizen is a guerrilla fighter engaged in an information war against forms of monopoly control that are exercised by the massive corporate conglomerates. Burroughs recommended that citizens make use of their own recording devices and communications networks for dissemi nating their alternative stories and viewpoints. He noted that the electronics revolution was providing many more opportunities for people to take the media into their own hands (Burroughs and Odier 1989). With the emergence of the Internet, these channels for communication have expanded even further and the kinds of information warfare that have been developed within these networks is precisely the kind of disruptive activity that was anticipated by Burroughs.

The practice of information warfare is appearing throughout many diverse areas of society, performed by isolated individuals or as part of business strategy, as part of national security or as part of military strategy. The main themes of the book are divided into three parts: (i) creative forms of organization, (ii) the use of information as a weapon in the network society, and (iii) the power relations associated with these changes. A brief description of the scope and purpose of each part now follows.

Part I:
Creative organizational forms

The first part of the book comprises two chapters that examine creative organizational forms that have arisen within the network society. Chapter 2 describes the emergence of organizations that appear to have adopted principles remarkably similar to those of guerrilla warfare in their fight for survival. These organizations tend to use information technology as a cornerstone of their strategy, which allows them to exist as distributed networks, either as individuals or as cells. A number of strategic principles are derived from T.E.Lawrence’s approach to guerrilla warfare. These principles revolve around the importance of ideas, communication and speed in overcoming one’s opponents. The implementation of these principles can be greatly facilitated using advances in information technology, and as such they are particularly well suited to the concept of information warfare. A variety of different organizations are shown to have successfully used similar principles in their growth, including the Zapatista rebels in Mexico, the Linux and Napster Internet communities and the international Slow Food Society. Taken-for-granted assumptions, such as the pursuit of wealth or the expansion of territories, are challenged by the nomadic strategies that have been developed by such groups. In this respect, these principles may also be seen as a general strategy for groups that are attempting to resist some of the effects of globalization; however, the innovations made by these organizations are often also adopted and exploited by business organizations.

Chapter 3 explores recent innovations in the treatment of knowledge in organizations, most notably the invention of Intellectual Property Rights and business fads such as Knowledge Management. These approaches for capturing and domesticating knowledge are leading to intensified levels of surveillance over an increasing traffic of information, both for economic and judicial reasons. One of the main limitations in monitoring and mapping flows of knowledge and information is that much of it is actually invisible, hidden as the thoughts in workers’ brains and in the tacit skills of their bodies. Approaches to knowledge management that focus mainly on techniques for mapping knowledge fail to capture the hidden tacit aspects of the creative process. Therefore, this book highlights the ways in which knowledge remains undomesticated and proposes a creative or nomadic philosophy of knowledge production. This argument will contrast those tendencies towards the increasing com-modification of knowledge with counter currents such as the call for an ‘intellectual commons’.

Part II:
The weapon of information

Part II outlines the idea that information is increasingly being used as a weapon, both in the civilian and the military worlds. The virus is the para-digmatic form of information warfare on the Internet; however, information warfare embraces a range of other disr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Information warfare in business
• PART I Creative organizational forms
• PART II The weapon of information
• PART III Changing power relations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index