INSTRUMENTAL CORRECTIONS FOR A DEFINITION OF CYBERWAR - Cyberwar-Netwar: Security in the Information Age - page 5

For comparison, let us remind ourselves of the many papers written in a period of
formation of Computer Science: these articles were full of philosophy and even poetry,
but frequently deprived of instrumentalism, which appeared much later as a result of
focusing on solving specific practical and technological tasks.
Indeed, for the realization of any new work we, first of all, are interested in obtaining
tools, which help us carry out this work. In that case, after obtaining the necessary tools,
including the operating instructions, we confidently begin to accumulate individual
practical experience whether positive or negative.
This conclusion refers to the terms information war, netwar and cyberwar. In other
words, the terminology for logical inference in the problem area of cyberwar can be
useful only if it is the instrumental terminology. For confirmation of our words we cite
the long sentence from the famous 'The Art of War' by the guru Sun Tzu 7 :
x “What enables the enlightened rulers and good generals to conquer the
adversary at every move and achieve extraordinary success is foreknowledge.
Foreknowledge cannot be elicited from ghosts and spirits; it must be obtained
from people who have knowledge of the adversary's situation. Therefore there are
five kinds of spies used: local spies, internal spies, double spies, dead spies, and
living spies. For local spies, we use the adversary's people. For internal spies we
use the adversary's officials. For double spies we use the adversary's spies. For
dead spies we use agents to spread misinformation to the adversary. For living
spies, we use agents to return with reports. You must seek adversary spies.
Therefore, enlightened rulers and good generals who are able to obtain
intelligent agents as spies are certain for great achievements. This is essential for
warfare…“
What has changed in the world and what may force us to question the wisdom and the
eternal validity of these non-philosophical but instrumental edifications? From the point
of view of human nature nothing has changed. However the entire system of tool-
oriented communications has changed. As a result, network information resources play
the role of local, internal and double spies; similarly, bugs and intellectual agents play the
role of 'dead' and 'living' spies now. Thus borders of a conception of cyberwar are
beginning to emerge as forms of instrumental specifications.
The purpose of specifying in detail the conception of «cyberwar» consists in its
possible use in international law. We consider that a research of this subject has a
strategic importance and must be directed towards preventing potential armed conflicts
which can arise as a result of using various modern information and communication
technologies in situations when some parties will try to logically justify their own
information operations.
“No significant socioeconomic change takes place without conflict, especially large-
scale, high-speed economic change”. Alvin Toffler
What is cyberwar in the information age? Dr. Manuel Castells asserts that knowledge
and information do not have a critical role in a post-industrial period because both were
central in all societies. The characteristics of the new society by Castells are based on
information technologies and globally networked economy. That is why he has offered a
special term: an informational society 8 . Other authors were emphasizing that post-
industrial or information society is a synthesis of civil society and innovation economy 9 .
Without going into detailed discussions on the efficiency of this definition, we, at
least, can make clear a question of macrotargets of the Fourth Generation Warfare or the
4GW 10 . These macrotargets are ICT, networked innovation economy and those forms of