Article 1080 of sci.crypt:
>From: Chriz@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Twenty-first Century Warfare
Message-ID: <4286@cup.portal.com>
Date: 3 Apr 88 15:43:40 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

"Normative-Empathetic warfare" is the combat mode of the twenty-first
century. The method involves adopting an empathetic view of the victim,
parsing his value schemata, and then creating a situation where his
value schemata bias him in favor of an action that can later lead to the
victim's control by the adversary, and/or ultimately his destruction.

For theory, it is based on the writings of Karl Mannheim and Jurgend
Habermas (_Sociology of Knowledge_, and _Knowledge and Humand
Interests_). For practice, it refines the art of "dirty tricks" to an
empirical science.

Let's take a practical example to illustrate how a normative-empathetic
attack on a three-letter intelligence community employee might occur.
Let's for the sake of argument assume we don't know who the intelligence
community employee is, i.e. we have no idea of his name, his address,
his personal life, his income, etc. The only thing we know of are his
values, and the fact that he investigates "anomalies" in the political
and social life of say, the United States.

Here is how it would be approached.

1. Like any good war, the goals of the endeavor need to be thoroughly
planned out before the operation begins. Let's say, for the purpose of
this discussion, that the object is to produce the forced retirement
of a group of particularly effective intelligence agents, as a purely
internal disciplinary measure on the part of the intelligence agency.

2. In order to do this, some knowledge of the internal auditing and
counterintelligence resources deployed internally in the agency needs to
be at least theoretically assumed. Since similar operations tend to have
similar controls, the adversary's counterintelligence policies would do
nicely as a model for the victim's controls. The goal then, is to create
enough of a prima facie case against the agents that an internal audit
and counterintelligence effort is undertaken. The key is that a one-time
application of this approach is inadequate, rather, using a variety
of channels the prima facie evidence must appear again and again, so
that the more effort the agents expend in trying to do a good job, the
greater the investigative resources the internal auditors will deploy
against them.

3. Let's, for the sake of argument, design an attack against the crews
monitoring nuclear forces in the USSR. How would the USSR discredit the
Free World analysts of satellite data? Remember, they don't know who
they are, only what the analysts do. The only advantage the USSR has is
that it >controls< the input, i.e. what the satellites see. The U.S.
analysts must write about what they see, and therein lies the rub.

4. Here's how a normative empathetic attack against Satellite Analysts
might proceed:

Day One: The phrase "WE PAY $20,000 TO YOUR ACCOUNT" is spelled out
using truck and missle equipment normally hidden in siberia, in a
message several hundred yards long. The satellite analysts spot it and
report it up the command chain.

Day Two: Twenty thousand dollars in cash suddenly turns up in packets
delivered to U.S. Embassies across the world.

Day Three: A satellite suddenly veers off course, and drops a small
parachuted package into a sparsely populated portion of Colorado, near a
strategic command center. The package has a strong radio beacon attached
to it. When the authorities find it they discover it contains a bottle
of high quality imported scotch, with a U.S. price tag on it. It has the
fingerprints of the Secretary of State, and the President on it.

Day Four: All of a sudden, encryption on the Soviet Diplomatic
Communications Channels ceases, and arguments over the best local
restaurants, vodka, personal marriage problems, confessions of
loneliness, complaints about embassy food, apartments, furniture, and
clothing are broadcast in plaintext.

Day Five: A plainload of schoolboys from Moscow lands in Washington
D.C., each with a diplomatic passport. Their luggage consists of a
single attache case, with twenty-thousand dollars in small, worn bills
in it. They are hustled aboard a bus, have lunch at the Soviet Embassy,
and are put on the next AEROFLOT flight back to Russia.

Day Six: Everything returns to normal. The events described above are
not repeated. The fun begins.


5. The normal conceptualization and processing of intelligence data
would cease, and the experts would have to report a crisis to their
superiors. Because of the money, booze, and plaintext messages, the U.S.
would be forced to conclude that somebody with access to this anomalous
information had gone bad. A major counterintelligence investigation
would ensue, into the most sensitive areas of the U.S. Government.
Repeating this process using different actions, timed and placed for
different targets would effectively throw the intelligence community
into a loop!

Chris Lapp