Netwar and Cyber-attacks

This posting was prompted by the recent cyber-attacks launched on U.S. government and South Korean websites. It was initially thought that the North Korean government was responsible, but now news reports indicate that it may have been the work of a broader spectrum of players, including prankers and industrial spies. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that such attacks are nothing new and will persist as long as information technology increasing and at hyper-speed becomes more and more a part of our daily lives.

Fifteen years ago, on New Year's Day 1994, approximately 4,000 insurgents of the Zapatista Liberation Army (EZLN) led by Sub-commandante Marcos, occuppied six towns in Chiapas and declared war against the Mexican government. At the time I was doing an internship at the Rand Corp. with David Ronfeldt, a genius policy analyst and strategist, and now a good friend. We looked at this, the first case of a social "netwar" where a group of transnational NGO activists formed a vast, highly networked, transnational coalition to constrain the Mexican government's response to the Zapatista insurgency in Chiapas. Throughout the 90's Sub-commandante Marcos become a household name in Mexico and support for the EZLN remained moderate, especially in its stronghold in Chiapas. Today, support is almost non-existent, but you can still buy a Sub-commandante Marcos T-shirt online or outside the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico, (UNAM), and read his communiques online.

The recent cyber-attacks against South Korea and the United States (supposedly supported and led by North Korea) while different in their purpose and organization illustrate how the global information revolution has and will continuously change the nature of social conflict.

See Chapter Sixteen: A Comment on the Zapatista “Netwar” by David Ronfeldt and Armando Bravo Martinez in the book:

In Athena's Camp