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Speculating On What The Cyberwar In Ukraine Means, and Whether We're Ready
-- Whether We Americans are Ready or Not for Rule of Cyber, and Whether or Not Cyber Dominance Supports Or Can Even Coexist With Democracy
Based on only a cursory search, I've come across this AP item.
I have to ask what the cost/benefits are to civilians of being informed of these ongoing activities. My first reaction is, are our elected leaders, and government in over their heads? Are we civilians? When over two million Americans subcontracting with the US government have classified clearance, how is democratic governance affected? Could the current DOJ give advice to congress about what kinds of laws it might develop to address rule of law relevance to cyber use/misuse issues, and then enforcement?
From this past June:
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-technology-90d760f01105b9aaf1886427dbfba917
On Ukraine’s battlefields, the simple act of powering up a cellphone can beckon a rain of deathly skyfall. Artillery radar and remote controls for unmanned aerial vehicles may also invite fiery shrapnel showers.
This is electronic warfare, a critical but largely invisible aspect of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Military commanders largely shun discussing it, fearing they’ll jeopardize operations by revealing secrets.
Electronic warfare technology targets communications, navigation and guidance systems to locate, blind and deceive the enemy and direct lethal blows. It is used against artillery, fighter jets, cruise missiles, drones and more. Militaries also use it to protect their forces...
It has become far more of a factor in fierce fighting in eastern Ukraine, where shorter, easier-to-defend supply lines let Russia move electronic warfare gear closer to the battlefield.
“They are jamming everything their systems can reach,” said an official of Aerorozvidka, a reconnaissance team of Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle tinkerers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns. “We can’t say they dominate, but they hinder us greatly.”
This is electronic warfare, a critical but largely invisible aspect of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Military commanders largely shun discussing it, fearing they’ll jeopardize operations by revealing secrets.
Electronic warfare technology targets communications, navigation and guidance systems to locate, blind and deceive the enemy and direct lethal blows. It is used against artillery, fighter jets, cruise missiles, drones and more. Militaries also use it to protect their forces...
It has become far more of a factor in fierce fighting in eastern Ukraine, where shorter, easier-to-defend supply lines let Russia move electronic warfare gear closer to the battlefield.
“They are jamming everything their systems can reach,” said an official of Aerorozvidka, a reconnaissance team of Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle tinkerers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns. “We can’t say they dominate, but they hinder us greatly.”
I recall a recent post in DU about IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and amother Big Tech getting military contracts (which, from what I've read elsewhere, has gone on for years now); maybe I'm mistaken.
From two years ago:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/thousands-contracts-highlight-quiet-ties-between-big-tech-u-s-n1233171
On Wednesday, newly published research from the technology accountability nonprofit Tech Inquiry revealed that the Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, have secured thousands of deals with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, IBM, Hewlett Packard and even Facebook that have not been previously reported.
The report offers a new window into the relationship between tech companies and the U.S. government, as well as an important detail about why such contracts are often difficult to find.
Tech Inquiry's research was led by Jack Poulson, a former Google research scientist who quit the company in 2018 after months of internal campaigning to get clarity about plans to deploy a censored version of its search engine in China called Project Dragonfly. Poulson has publicly opposed collaborations between American technology companies and the U.S. and foreign governments that aid in efforts to track immigrants, dissenters, and bolster military activity.
Poulson analyzed more than 30 million government contracts signed or modified in the past five years. The Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies accounted for the largest share of those contracts, with tech companies accounting for a fraction of the total number of contracts.
He found that the majority of the deals with consumer-facing tech companies involved subcontracts, a relationship in which the government contracts with one company, which in turn contracts with another company to complete obligations it doesn’t have the resources to fulfill.
Procurement contracts tend to be terse, Poulson said, masking the depth of the ties between tech companies and federal law enforcement agencies and the Department of Defense.
“Often the high-level contract description between tech companies and the military looks very vanilla and mundane,” Poulson said in an interview. “But only when you look at the details of the contract, which you can only get through Freedom of Information [Act] requests, do you see the workings of how the customization from a tech company would actually be involved.”
Out of all the companies that surfaced in Tech Inquiry’s research, Microsoft stood out with more than 5,000 subcontracts with the Department of Defense and various federal law enforcement agencies since 2016...
Cloud solutions and storage for large government clients, however, isn’t the type of thing that can be bought off the shelf. Government cloud services are typically tailored to meet the security needs of the agency, according to Poulson, who worked as a professor of mathematics at Stanford University prior to his research role at Google.
Poulson's experience at Google helped inform his research.
In 2018, Google workers staged a protest of defense work over Project Maven, an initiative with the Department of Defense for Google to build artificial intelligence that tracks moving targets for drones. The project spurred thousands of Google employees to sign an internal petition. Some quit in protest.
None of Project Maven's contracts mentioned Google at all, Poulson said, and it was only through employee whistleblowing and investigative journalism that Google’s involvement became known.
The report offers a new window into the relationship between tech companies and the U.S. government, as well as an important detail about why such contracts are often difficult to find.
Tech Inquiry's research was led by Jack Poulson, a former Google research scientist who quit the company in 2018 after months of internal campaigning to get clarity about plans to deploy a censored version of its search engine in China called Project Dragonfly. Poulson has publicly opposed collaborations between American technology companies and the U.S. and foreign governments that aid in efforts to track immigrants, dissenters, and bolster military activity.
Poulson analyzed more than 30 million government contracts signed or modified in the past five years. The Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies accounted for the largest share of those contracts, with tech companies accounting for a fraction of the total number of contracts.
He found that the majority of the deals with consumer-facing tech companies involved subcontracts, a relationship in which the government contracts with one company, which in turn contracts with another company to complete obligations it doesn’t have the resources to fulfill.
Procurement contracts tend to be terse, Poulson said, masking the depth of the ties between tech companies and federal law enforcement agencies and the Department of Defense.
“Often the high-level contract description between tech companies and the military looks very vanilla and mundane,” Poulson said in an interview. “But only when you look at the details of the contract, which you can only get through Freedom of Information [Act] requests, do you see the workings of how the customization from a tech company would actually be involved.”
Out of all the companies that surfaced in Tech Inquiry’s research, Microsoft stood out with more than 5,000 subcontracts with the Department of Defense and various federal law enforcement agencies since 2016...
Cloud solutions and storage for large government clients, however, isn’t the type of thing that can be bought off the shelf. Government cloud services are typically tailored to meet the security needs of the agency, according to Poulson, who worked as a professor of mathematics at Stanford University prior to his research role at Google.
Poulson's experience at Google helped inform his research.
In 2018, Google workers staged a protest of defense work over Project Maven, an initiative with the Department of Defense for Google to build artificial intelligence that tracks moving targets for drones. The project spurred thousands of Google employees to sign an internal petition. Some quit in protest.
None of Project Maven's contracts mentioned Google at all, Poulson said, and it was only through employee whistleblowing and investigative journalism that Google’s involvement became known.
But given what seems to have become as much cybarwar testing as "saving democracy for the West" (I also read somewhere during the midterms that Microsoft has its own cyber warroom), I have to ask what the US military's interest is in cyber domination. Does the US military really care whether or not it's paid by a democracy or a corporatocracy?
I also have to ask, could the war in Ukraine be a US miltary beta test of how governments, democratic politics and innocent humans survive?
Given its tech capabilities, to what extent need the US military concede to civilian command, anyway. I know what the military's oaths are; however, it's what the military does as a sector that reveals whether it, overall, carries out its oath.
Perhaps members in the National Security & Defense Group have information and thoughts on the meaning of these ongoing events?
Of course I know I'm over my head. But I'm not alone. Which is why I bring all this up to begin with -- cyber war in Ukraine, Big Tech military contracts, Big Tech's interests with force and democracy, civilian command.