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Future Tech, Future War, Tactical Concepts

The Role of Swarm Intelligence for Distributed Lethality C2

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This article was submitted by guest author Marjorie Greene for CIMSEC’s Distributed Lethality week.  Ms. Greene is a Research Analyst with CNA.  Views expressed are her own.

What will distributed lethality command and control look like?   This article introduces a self-organizing approach that addresses this question.   The increasing vulnerability of centralized command and control systems in network warfare suggests it may be time to take an entirely new approach that builds on the human capacity to interact locally and collectively with one another. Building on the concept of swarm intelligence, the approach suggests that information could be “shared” in a decentralized control system, much as insect colonies share information by constructing paths that represent the evolution of their collective knowledge.

This article builds on a self-organizing system that was developed for military analyses aimed at finding out “who talks to whom, about what, and how effectively” in a wide range of operational situations featuring the involvement of naval forces and commands. In an effort to describe the content of message traffic throughout the chain of command during a crisis, a technique was used to associate messages with each other through their formal references. “Reference-connected sets” were constructed that required no interpretation of the subject matter of the messages and, when further analyzed, were found to uniquely identify events during the crisis. For example, one set that was constructed from crisis-related message traffic found in files at three command headquarters contained 105 messages that dealt with preparation for landing airborne troops. Other sets of messages represented communications related to other events such as providing medical supplies and preparing evacuation lists. The technique therefore provided a “filter” of all messages during the crisis into events that could be analyzed – by computers or humans – without predetermined subject categories. It simply provided a way of quickly locating a message that had the information (as it was expressed in natural language) that was necessary to make a decision [1].

As the leaders of the Surface Navy continue to lay the intellectual groundwork for Distributed Lethality, this may be a good time to re-introduce the concept of creating “paths” to represent the “collective behavior” of decentralized self-organized systems” for control of hunter-killer surface action groups. Technologies could still be developed to centralize the control of multiple SAGs designed to counter adversaries in an A2/AD environment. But swarm intelligence techniques could also be used in which small surface combatants would each act locally on local information, with global control “emerging” from their collective dynamics. Such intelligence has been used in animal cultures to detect and respond to unanticipated environmental changes, including predator presence, resource challenges, and other adverse conditions without a centralized communication and control system. Perhaps a similar approach could be used for decentralized control of Distributed Lethality.

Swarm intelligence builds on behavioral models of animal cultures. For example, the ant routing algorithm tells us that when an ant forages for food, it lays pheromones on a trail from source to destination. When it arrives at its destination, it returns to its source following the same path it came from. If other ants have travelled along the same path, pheromone level is higher. Similarly, if other ants have not travelled along the path, the pheromone level is lower. If every ant tries to choose a trail that has higher pheromone concentration, eventually the pheromones accumulate when multiple ants use the same path and evaporate when no ant passes.

Just as an ant leaves a chemical trace of its movement along a path, an individual surface combatant could send messages to other surface ships that include traces of previous messages by means of “digital pheromones.” One way to do this would be through a simple rule that ensures that all surface ships are kept informed of all previous communications related to the same subject. This is a way to proactively create a reference-connected message set that relates to an event across all surface ships during an offense operation.

In his book, Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener discusses the ant routing algorithm and the concept of self-organizing systems. He does not explicitly define “self-organization” except to suggest it is a process which machines – and, by analogy, humans – learn by adapting to their environment. Now considered to be a fundamental characteristic of complex systems, self-organization refers to the emergence of higher-level properties and behaviors of a system that originate from the collective dynamics of that system’s components but are not found in nor are directly deducible from the lower-level properties of the system. Emergent properties are properties of the whole that are not possessed by any of the individual parts making up that whole. The parts act locally on local information and global order emerges without any need for external control.

The Office of Naval Research has recently demonstrated a new era in autonomy and unmanned systems for naval operations that has great promise for Distributed Lethality. The LOCUST (Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology) program utilizes information-sharing

The Coyote UAV, developed by BAE, used by the LOCUST program
The Coyote UAV, developed by BAE, used by the LOCUST program

between UAVs to enable autonomous collaborative behavior in either defensive or offensive scenarios. In the opinion of this author, this program should be analyzed for its potential application to Distributed Lethality.

Professor Vannevar Bush at MIT was perhaps the first person to come up with a new way of thinking about constructing paths for information-sharing. He suggested that an individual’s personal information storage and selection system could be based on direct connections between documents instead of the usual connections between index terms and documents. These direct connections were to be stored in the form of trails through the literature. Then at any future time the individual himself or one of his friends could retrieve this trail from document to document without the necessity of describing each document with a set of descriptors or tracing it down through a classification tree [2].

The current response to the dilemmas associated with command and control in any distributed operation has led this author to embrace the concept of swarm intelligence. Rather than attempting to interpret the subject matter of information exchanged by entities in confronting an adversary, why not build control systems that simply track information “flows”? Such flows would define the subject matter contained in a naval message without having to classify the information at all.

Any discussion of command and control would be incomplete without including the concept of fuzzy sets, introduced by Professor Lotfi Zadeh at the University of California, Berkeley in 1965. The concept addresses the vagueness that is inherent in most natural language and provides a basis for a qualitative approach to the analysis of command and control in Distributed Lethality. It is currently used in a wide range of domains in which information is incomplete or imprecise and has been extended into many, largely mathematical, constructions and theorems treating inexactness, ambiguity, and uncertainty. This approach to the study of information systems has gained a significant following and now includes major research areas such as pattern recognition, data mining, machine learning algorithms, and visualization, which all build on the theoretical foundations established in information systems theory [3].

Ultimately, the information paths constructed for the control of Distributed Lethality will be a function of organizational relationships and the distribution of information between them. Since a message in a path cannot reference a previous message unless its originator is cognizant of the previous message, the paths in a “reference-connected set” of messages will often reflect the information flows within a Surface Action Group. When paths are joined with other paths, the resulting path often reflects communications across Surface Action Groups. It remains to be determined whether the Surface Navy can use these concepts as it continues to explore the intellectual groundwork for Distributed Lethality. Nevertheless, it is very tempting to speculate that swarm intelligence will play an important role in the future. The most important consideration is that this approach concentrates on the evolution of an event, rather than upon a description of the event. Even if a satisfactory classification scheme could be found for control of hunter-killer Surface Action Groups, the dynamic nature of their operations suggests that predetermined categories would not suffice to describe the complex developments inherent in evolving and potentially changing situations.

Many organizations have supported research and development designed to explore the full benefits of shared information in an environment in which users will be linked through interconnected communications networks. However, in the view of this author, the model of “trails of messages” should be explored again. “Network warfare” will force an increased emphasis on human collaborative networks. Dynamic command and control will be based on communications paths and direct connections between human commanders of distributed surface ships rather than upon technologies that mechanically or electronically select information from a central store. Such an approach would not only prepare for Distributed Lethality, but may improve command and control altogether.

Ms. Greene is a Research Analyst with CNA. Views expressed are her own. 

REFERENCES:

  1. Greene, , “A Reference-Connecting Technique for Automatic Information Classification and Retrieval”, OEG Research Contribution No. 77, Center for Naval Analyses, 1967
  2. Bush, V., “As We May Think”, Atlantic Monthly 176 (1):101-108, 1945
  3. Zadeh, L.,” Fuzzy sets”, Information Control 8, 338-353, 1965
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Capability Analysis, Future Tech

Missing an Opportunity for Innovation: A Conceptual Critique of Distributed Lethality

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100 years ago today, in bunkers and boardrooms across Europe, the military and political leaders of a Europe that was being drowned in its own blood were attempting to solve the stagnant enigma of the Western Front. The traditional narrative of the First World War places the inability of military and political figures of the time to adapt to the previously unimaginable efficacy of modern defensive technology deployed on the battlefields of France and Belgium. While the popular narrative of the conflict usually ends with a nod to the tank and aircraft as the great mobilizers of the sclerotic armies, Stephen J. Biddle effectively argues with quantitative data, in his book Military Power, that it was in fact force employment (and the innovative tactics of the German Army) that broke the stalemate in the West and brought mobility back to warfare (see the Michael Offensive). The “modern system” of land warfare was born.

I’m reminded of Biddle’s illustration of the birth of the “modern system” when considering Distributed Lethality, not because I view the US Navy as antiquated as the armies of the old Europe, but because Distributed Lethality seems to be an intelligent effort at bypassing the tough and expensive learning curve associated with fighting the previous war by reorienting existing resources to meet new challenges. Within it appears to be the tacit recognition of the end of the aircraft carrier as the main instrument of maritime power in the types of 21st century A2/AD environments the US Navy is most likely to find itself fighting for dominance. Carriers will continue to be essential for the support of operations during the fight for dominance, and after it has been achieved in the maritime realm, but their time at the center of naval combat, contesting control of the world’s oceans, may well be over. Distributed Lethality is an attempt at defining the Navy’s future operational flexibility in the complex future of highly contested environments that preclude overuse of its most prominent investment.

At the same time, the reorientation of the surface fleet around the concept of increasing the fighting ability of individual craft within the current system may be too simple a concept to fully address the increasing complexity of the modern maritime environment, especially when that environment is seeing a proliferation of the number of actors able to potentially upset the capabilities of today’s Navy, with more advanced and capable anti-ship missiles, underwater sensors, and unmanned technology likely to be on the way. If the US Navy will have to engage in combat with a low to medium tier opponent within the next 17 years (the technology development timeline cited by Admiral Peter Fanta), then Distributed Lethality will be able to easily carry the day in the same way the Navy has been able to do in similar conflicts (maybe even at a lower price point). If the Navy is faced with a much more complex and determined threat (represented by a recent addition to the rank of top tier naval competitors, even just a regional one), then the concept of Distributed Lethality may be little more than a patch on the inadequacies of the contemporary Navy in considering the operational imperatives of facing and neutralizing that particular set of threats. It would seem to me that Distributed Lethality is, in fact, more a response to the emergence of a high tier threat (within a constricted budgetary environment) than a low to mid-tier threat, so its efficacy must be evaluated within this context.

The Navy, in its current state, could be considered the product of post-Cold War dominance (as Vice Admiral Rowden and Rear Admirals Gumataotao and Fanta explain in their Proceedings piece) and the attempts to take advantage of the concepts of network centric warfare and the revolution in military affairs (RMA) of the 1990s. This was done within the technological confines of the time period, and through the budgetary struggles of a US Navy competing for funds and defining itself within the budgetary narrative of the Global War on Terror. Its difficulties are manifest in the Navy After Next’s loss of its key platforms to cancellation and production truncation along with the discussions surrounding how the Navy will take on the A2/AD capabilities of today, let alone the future.

The US Navy now has a tremendous opportunity (in the face of rapidly evolving threats in the Asia-Pacific), that of being able to define itself within confines of its own primary operational environment, without the time and resource constraints of being actively engaged in combat. While the aircraft carrier’s time as the dominant maritime platform may be nearing the precipice of its decline, the rumblings within the military services and think tank sphere seem to point to the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, and the promise of additive manufacturing in the service of US operational and strategic needs, if the effects of their application can be grasped with full appreciation. If the US is to truly begin to push towards achievements that will open up the promise of network centric warfare and increase the ability to disrupt the defensive systems of the adversary (with acceptable costs in terms of equipment, money and lives) then we should be looking for cheaper ways to do that than through the Navy’s existing platforms, whose survivability and ease of replacement is questionable within the context of type of operational environment Andrew F. Krepninevich lays out in his excellent Maritime Competition in a Mature-Precision Strike Regime.

While Distributed Lethality is an important concept that should inform short and medium term planning (within the 17 year range that it takes to develop and deploy a new system), long range planning must begin now that takes into account the potential coming industrial revolution and advancements in AI and robotics that will bring about the full conceptual realization of networked warfare and unmanned systems. Their development could prove to be the real advantage in naval combat that will no longer feature a dominant aircraft carrier platform and will likely be the key to maintaining American maritime primacy in areas that have the potential to be seriously contested. Unlike the armies of 1917-18, the US Navy currently has the (limited) luxury of time and space to experiment. While the accusing finger of Kitchener, a draft notice, or more efficient bureaucracy could slowly make up for operational shortfalls during the Great War (still, at great human and financial cost), today’s strategic, technological and industrial imperatives are more exacting in terms of lost opportunities.

Ryan Kuhns is a master’s student at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. He studies International Security and Commerce, focusing on defense economics, strategy, and the social/political organization of war.

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Book Review, Fiction, Future Tech

The Future of Warfare

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Ghost Fleet. P.W. Singer & August Cole, (2015). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. New York, NY: 404 pp. $28.00.

Review by Brett J. Patron

If you’ve ever wondered what an operationalized version of Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex” might look like, noted national security analysts Peter W. Singer and August Cole have a book just for you.  A true triad of military, bureaucrats, and corporations overthrows a long-running government to form an uneasy alliance to run a rather large country. Singer and Cole throw us the first of many curves by teeing this up, not in the US, but China…or, as they now call themselves, “The Directorate.”

This first fiction effort by the duo delivers wide-ranging action at a frenetic pace.  The story begins in outer space and, in mere moments, the action plunges far below the Pacific Ocean’s surface. Throughout the  story, as venues change, the reader gasps for breath and delves back in as the action continues. This is a Tom Clancy-esque thriller with most of the pieces one would expect: people unexpectedly thrust into difficult situations; well-researched, accurate portrayals of current capabilities; imaginative exploration of new, emerging, or desired technology; as well as good old fashioned palace intrigue and political gamesmanship.

For those making the Clancy connection, you’ll find this book of the Red Storm Rising genre — a look at how a world war type scenario would likely go.  Ghost Fleet looks at how the “Pivot to Asia” could go – and it can go bad pretty fast. It also plays on many of the fears that serious analysts ponder regarding military procurements, military readiness and other economic tradeoffs.  Buoyed by the massive changes spurred by their recent revolution, the Directorate decides that it is time to achieve their “Manifest Destiny” in the Pacific. A major energy discovery gives them the opportunity to challenge US supremacy in the Pacific and even take on the US militarily, with the tacit assistance of Russia.

What ensues is a massive and coordinated sneak attack that cripples US capabilities throughout the Pacific Rim, most notably in Hawaii. The Directorate, now occupying US sovereign territory and positioned to prevent response either from space or across the vast ocean, looks to turn America into a third-rate client state. To counter this the US decides to reactivate ships (and some aircraft) mothballed by the significant  cuts that US politicians foisted upon itself. This is the rebirth of the Ghost Fleet that gives this story its name.  It also evokes a slightly different comparison: this is the Navy’s version of “Team Yankee.”  Team Yankee was a very popular “must read” in the late 1980s, especially popular with the mechanized/armor community of the Army. It is about warfare at its base level, but with existential impact. In this case, the crew of a one-of-a-kind ship, which was rejected by the Navy when cuts were made, is being brought back to life by a crew desperately trying to make it work in trying circumstances and fights the battle of its life for a noble cause.

Singer and Cole introduce a number of characters:  A navy officer whose transition to retirement is rather violently interrupted; a Marine thrust into the role of guerrilla; a Sun Tzu-quoting Chinese admiral; and a seductive assassin. The story explores the very tempestuous relationship between father and son bonded in a moment of crisis while wrestling with demons of the past. The duo’s style offers some nice bonuses. The reader gets a murder mystery. The idea of “privateers” in the 21st Century is presented.  For the geopolitical thinkers, Singer and Cole skewer a lot of the shibboleths of current alliances and ask “who will really ‘step up’ when the going gets tough?” The authors present some very interesting ideas of what could happen and what could emerge if all the geopolitical knowns were to suddenly change.  Rather than distract, these threads are woven into a complex but compelling story that is both provocative and frightening.

What this book does do well — and in a scary way — is show how pervasive a wired world could be and what would happen if a major actor were to severely upset the proverbial apple cart. Among the discoveries in the opening salvos of The Directorate’s aggression are the vulnerability of so much of the electronics used both in military equipment as well as the networks that course through the US.  Ghost Fleet explores the extent to which autonomous systems change life and warfare.  Can we trust the electronics we buy from overseas? Do we depend too much on automatic, autonomous and “linked” systems in our basic and daily lives? What if a major competitor played on those fears with ruthless precision and execution? This will confirm the worst fears of the Luddite or conspiracy theorist. Those that are on the fence about the impact of autonomous systems will likely find that this book tips them one way or the other.

Two things that one would expect to find in such styled books are not found in this one. One is probably the book’s only serious flaw. The story does not give time stamps and the reader may not realize that the scenario has advanced in time as it changes chapter. Without this context, the reader may become confused on why or how things changed so fast within the story.

The other creative difference is a positive: there is very little discussion of the machinations of the American politicians. Singer and Cole — in a choice very likely calculated to avoid the politics of the moment — do not really describe much, if anything about the moves, motives, or response of the President, or most of the national security apparatus. While the Secretary of Defense is omnipresent, no one else is — nor are there any real discussions on national politics at play. Some may be greatly disappointed by this while others may find it a welcome departure in the genre.  Although cyberspace capabilities are a significant aspect of the storyline, this is not a book about “cyber war.”

If anything, this is may be the first real exploration of Demchakian “cybered conflict” in story form. Cybered Conflict is a construct provided by  Naval War College professors Chris Demchak and Peter Dombrowski. The premise is that the nature of conflict remains the same but that cyberspace capabilities add a new dimension. They further purport that cyberspace is not a separate domain, per se, but is instead just another aspect of how humans interact and compete. Cyberspace is itself not decisive but can certainly tip the scale in an existential conflict. There are ample examples in this book on how this could occur. It is certain to ignite debate on the nature of “cyber war.”

Thriller readers will find this a welcome addition to their collections. Thinkers, advocates, policy wonks, geeks and nerds will all find something to chew on that will confirm or challenge their own biases. Scheduled for a June release, this highly recommended story is a daring look at the fusion of traditional and modern warfare, delivered at “machine speed.”

Brett Patron retired from the US Army after serving twenty-two years with Special Forces, Special Operations, Infantry, and Signal Corps units. After retirement, he’s worked as a defense analyst, supporting Navy, Army, Marine, Special Operations, Joint and Cyberspace organizations. He is now an independent consultant, focused on cyberspace capabilities integration, doctrine development, and policy/law. He makes his home in Yorktown, Virginia.

Readers interested in reviewing books for CIMSEC can e-mail the book review editor at [email protected].

Cyber War, Strategic Outlook

For a Good Time Hack OPM

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Guest article by Brian Scopa, USN.

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it’s enemy action.”

-Ian Fleming

 

M looking for W? W looking for M? PRC looking for Intel?

The revelation that the Office of Personnel Management has been hacked, allegedly by the Chinese, has profound implications for the safeguarding of classified US information. Beyond the typical identity theft problems associated with any breach of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from a government or private database, the fact that the data on 4.1 million military and  government personnel contained  information on their security clearances is extremely grave. This is not only an egregious breach of individual privacy, but when combined with two other hacks of private websites make for a counterintelligence nightmare.

Allowing ourselves to go briefly down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, two additional hacks of private websites are worth considering in conjunction with the OPM hack:

Linkedin in 2012. 

“LinkedIn Security professionals suspected that the business-focused social network LinkedIn suffered a major breach of its password database. Recently, a file containing 6.5 million unique hashed passwords appeared in an online forum based in Russia. More than 200,000 of these passwords have reportedly been cracked so far.”

The consensual aggregation of personal and employment information online has greatly simplified the task of finding targets for intelligence gathering. The technology that makes finding a project manager with an MBA and five years of experience fast and convenient also makes it easy to track down missile and radar engineers on LinkedIn. The publicly available information on LinkedIn is a trove of intelligence in itself regarding military, government, and contract employees that work in defense related industries. Having the private email addresses and passwords of LinkedIn members has staggering spearfishing implications ala STUXNET.

Adult Friend Finder (AFF) in May 2015 

“Andrew Auernheimer, a controversial computer hacker who looked through the files, used Twitter to publicly identify Adult FriendFinder customers, including a Washington police academy commander, an FAA employee, a California state tax worker and a naval intelligence officer who supposedly tried to cheat on his wife.” (emphasis mine)

Catching Flies

Developing intelligence sources costs time, money, and effort, regardless of the method employed, and intelligence agencies are constantly searching for ways to more efficiently target and recruit intelligence sources. The OPM and LinkedIn hack simplify the targeting, but it’s the AFF hack that helps with recruitment.

One of the most useful tools intelligence agencies have for recruiting sources is blackmail, and a ‘Honey Trap’ is the practice of luring a potential intelligence source into a compromising position with a romantic partner that’s working for an intelligence agency, and either gaining their cooperation in the name of love, or blackmailing the source into compliance.

The Chinese are apparently particularly fond of this specific type of intelligence gathering operation:

“MI5 is worried about sex. In a 14-page document distributed last year to hundreds of British banks, businesses, and financial institutions, titled “The Threat from Chinese Espionage,” the famed British security service described a wide-ranging Chinese effort to blackmail Western businesspeople over sexual relationships.”

The AFF hack is probably the first Massive Multiplayer Online Honey Trap (MMOHT).  Even better for foreign intelligence agencies (FIAs), it was self-baiting and required zero investment of resources.

How bad is it?

Perverting the Drake Equation for this exercise, we can conduct a thought experiment about the number of potential intelligence sources created by the confluence of the three hacks mentioned above, expressed mathematically as P = O * W * N * Y, where:

P = Total number of useful possible US government employee intelligence sources that could be exploited.

O  = All government employees with security clearances whose personally identifiable information has been compromised, reported to be 4.1 million.

W = Fraction of O that are AFF members. This number has not been made public by the DoD, if it’s known, but the reported number of member profiles compromised was 3.5 million.

N = Fraction of W that desperately want their activities on AFF to remain undisclosed and could be effectively blackmailed. Not everyone will be embarrassed by their activities on AFF.

Y = Fraction of O that has been or is currently employed in a position that a FIA would find useful to turn into a source of intelligence.

Since I don’t have any insight into the any of the variables with the exception of O, I won’t speculate on what P might be, but I have no doubt that it’s an actionable, non-zero number that FIAs must be rushing to exploit.

AdultFriendFinderIntel

 

Lessons Re-identified, Still Unlearned

Any information that’s online can be accessed online- full stop. We should all assume that any device connected to the public internet is hackable, and act accordingly. While there are many good precautions and security features that individuals, companies, institutions, and governments can take to better protect online dealings and information, such as two-factor authentication, tokens, and salted password hashing, it has been demonstrated time and again that the advantage in the cyber security arms race is with the attacker. You cannot count on technical means alone to protect your information.  If individuals with security clearances have used the internet to facilitate behavior that the knowledge of by a third party could lead to blackmail, the individuals should assume the information will be made public.

Security through obscurity is always a loser, but anonymity is still worthwhile. The critical information that makes blackmail possible in this instance is being able to identify government employees that were also members of AFF. If AFF members had taken care to remain anonymous by making their member profiles non-attributional, using email addresses and phone numbers not otherwise linked to them, using non-identifiable pictures, and keeping locations ambiguous, they may yet have some measure of protection from identification.

What’s next?

This is only the beginning of this particular saga. In the coming months I have no doubt we’ll hear about the hacks of other popular dating, hook-up, and porn sites. The hacking itself has probably already happened; it’ll just take time for the discoveries to be made.

The news is grim, but there is opportunity here. While FIA see openings, our own counterintelligence organizations have an unprecedented opportunity to identify potential targets before they can be contacted by FIAs and possibly prepare them to act as double-agents, turning the honey traps on the attackers. If nothing else, the act of sharing the blackmail information with the security services helps to inoculate the individuals against blackmail, since it’s typically (but not always) the fear of disclosure that makes the information useful, not the specific behavior that’s problematic.

In any case, it’s time for a DoD-wide effort to review the list of AFF members and check it against current and past employees with security clearances. Then, command security officers can start having the difficult, closed-door conversations necessary to learn the scope of the possible vulnerability. Doing so will limit the damage from this hack, and it’ll be a useful exercise in preparing for the next episode.

Which has already happened.