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CHAPTER THREE: CYBERINSURGENCY
Introduction
In the Industrial Age an insurgency was easily localized due to the
limited means available to spread the insurgent’s ideology. Insurgents had only
word of mouth, the effects of their actions, and the local media’s coverage of
events to spread their ideas. A message could take days to distribute and might
be limited to a few individuals. These facts severely limited command and
control, recruiting, fundraising, and consequently the development of a mass
insurgent base. Since mass mobilization was difficult, armed conflict became
the primary means to advance a cause.
Insurgencies of the Cyber Age are aimed at, and able to reach, large
numbers of people. The starkest difference is the insurgent’s capability to reach
disenfranchised members of a mass base in a direct manner via the Internet. As
one specialist noted about Muslims in Europe “the Internet stands in for the
idea of the ummah, the mythologized Muslim community.” 90 This virtual
ummah “inspires people not only to love their country but to die for it.” 91
Further, the Internet provides the means to conduct virtual operations according
to the insurgent’s needs. Most often this results in cyberrecruiting,
cyberplanning, cyberfear, cybertargeting, cyberreconnaissance, and
cyberfunding operations in addition to purely offensive operations such as virus
attacks. Most Western security specialists are preoccupied with cyberterrorism
and cybercrime that results in a focus on cybersecurity operations. Thus the
Western focus is different than the insurgent’s focus.
The Internet also offers insurgents the ability to use tested guerilla
techniques and operating procedures online (dead drops, anonymity, hit-andrun
tactics, surprise and ambush, hostage-taking, reconnaissance, and
deception). While not subscribing to all of these techniques, insurgents have
adopted some of them. In addition to creating a global village, the Internet has
also created an insurgent’s operational paradise. Without fancy command and
control, intelligence, and surveillance equipment, insurgents can accomplish
some of the same missions that these high-tech and expensive systems conduct.
US army doctrine defines an insurgency as
An armed political movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted
government, or separation from it, through use of subversion and armed
90 Lawrence Wright, “The Terror Web,” The New Yorker, 2 August 2004, p. 49.
91 Ibid.
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