In the light of Tim Weiner's article and Vint Cerf's
comments, it's
interesting to remember the original text in this
document (which was
the output of a team including Paul Wolfowitz in
2000):
<<Over the next several decades, the United States
must field a global
system of missile defenses, divine ways to control
the new
"international commons" of space and cyberspace, and
build new kinds of
conventional forces for different strategic
challenges and a new
technological environment.>>
From my own attendance at earlier days at ICANN
conferences in 2001-2,
the phrase <<the US must [...] divine ways to
control the new
"international commons" of [...] cyberspace>> rings
particularly true.
Tread softly...
-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 13 November 2004 05:02
To: Ip
Subject: [IP] NYTimes.com Article: Pentagon
Envisioning a Costly
Internet for War
Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War
November 13, 2004
By TIM WEINER
The Pentagon is building its own Internet, the
military's
world wide web for the wars of the future.
The goal is to give all American commanders and
troops a
moving picture of all foreign enemies and threats -
"a
God's-eye view" of battle.
This "Internet in the sky," Peter Teets, under
secretary of
the Air Force, told Congress, would allow "marines
in a
Humvee, in a faraway land, in the middle of a
rainstorm, to
open up their laptops, request imagery" from a spy
satellite, and "get it downloaded within seconds."
The Pentagon calls the secure network the Global
Information Grid, or GIG. Conceived six years ago,
its
first connections were laid six weeks ago. It may
take two
decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build
the
new war net and its components.
Skeptics say the costs are staggering and the
technological
hurdles huge.
Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet and a
Pentagon consultant on the war net, said he wondered
if the
military's dream was realistic. "I want to make sure
what
we realize is vision and not hallucination," Mr.
Cerf said.
"This is sort of like Star Wars, where the policy
was,
'Let's go out and build this system,' and technology
lagged
far behind,'' he said. "There's nothing wrong with
having
ambitious goals. You just need to temper them with
physics
and reality."
Advocates say networked computers will be the most
powerful
weapon in the American arsenal. Fusing weapons,
secret
intelligence and soldiers in a globe-girdling
network -
what they call net-centric warfare - will, they say,
change
the military in the way the Internet has changed
business
and culture.
"Possibly the single most transforming thing in our
force,'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has
said,
"will not be a weapons system, but a set of
interconnections."
The American military, built to fight nations and
armies,
now faces stateless enemies without jets, tanks,
ships or
central headquarters. Sending secret intelligence
and
stratagems instantly to soldiers in battle would, in
theory, make the military a faster, fiercer force
against a
faceless foe.
Robert J. Stevens, chief executive of the Lockheed
Martin
Corporation, the nation's biggest military
contractor, said
he envisioned a "highly secure Internet in which
military
and intelligence activities are fused," shaping
21st-century warfare in the way that nuclear weapons
shaped
the cold war.
Every member of the military would have "a picture
of the
battle space, a God's-eye view," he said. "And
that's real
power."
Pentagon traditionalists, however, ask if
net-centric
warfare is nothing more than an expensive fad. They
point
to the street fighting in Falluja and Baghdad,
saying
firepower and armor still mean more than fiber optic
cables
and wireless connections.
But the biggest challenge in building a war net may
be the
military bureaucracy. For decades, the Army, Navy,
Air
Force and Marines have built their own weapons and
traditions. A network, advocates say, would cut
through
those old ways.
The ideals of this new warfare are driving many of
the
Pentagon's spending plans for the next 10 to 15
years. Some
costs are secret, but billions have already been
spent.
Providing the connections to run the war net will
cost at
least $24 billion over the next five years - more
than the
cost, in today's dollars, of the Manhattan Project
to build
the atomic bomb. Beyond that, encrypting data will
be a $5
billion project.
Hundreds of thousands of new radios are likely to
cost $25
billion. Satellite systems for intelligence,
surveillance,