Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Late night thoughts

  • We're in an OE we created and don't control.

  • Cyber is the new Urban and the adversary is the insurgent.

  • The adversary looks like the populace, sounds like them, lives in their midst, and hides his activities among the normal and legitimate activities of the populace.

  • Regular tactics don't work against irregular adversaries.

  • Know your doctrine, study the adversary's.

  • If someone punches you in the face, you're in a fight.

  • If you stand still you will continue getting punched in the face.

  • Espionage is a peacetime effort to us. To them, it's used as an opening salvo to position the pieces to control the center.

  • There is a lot of room for deception in the modern computing environment.

  • A mix of unorthodox and orthodox strategies is the only way to succeed.

  • Know and understand the needs, capabilities, tactics, tools and methodologies of the adversary. This is asymmetry.

  • Predictive capability can only come from studying history, yours and theirs.

  • The use of malware, viruses, worms and other destructive software is encouraged, and condoned. This is killing with a borrowed knife.

  • If I was in a different country, I would be expected to use my computer as a weapon.

  • The siegfried line was overrun through cunning and persistence.

  • The maginot line was flanked.

  • A hardened structure can only protect you from that which it is hardened against.

  • Siege warfare mentality no longer applies, yet it is practiced.

  • A stationary target will always succumb to cunning and persistence, if it remains stationary.

  • Counter offensives launched from stationary positions will hardly be effective.

  • You must move as quickly as the adversary.

  • Your culture has shaped your entire life. Study a different culture and adapt.

  • When a country only wants to buy two of your products, it's so they can reverse engineer and copy them. Russia learned this the hard way.

  • The farewell dossier event occured nearly 30 years ago.

  • Master your own perception before manipulating the adversary's.

  • If the adversary is hungry. He can be easily manipulated.

  • Learn to build snowmobiles.

  • The world is non-linear. Think in conceptual spirals.

  • True intelligence is the result of synthesis.

  • Once a target, always a target. Once a target, always a victim. Once a victim, always a victim.