Sunday, 9 December 2018
On Hybrid Warfare
Inspired by a couple of posts I've seen on my own social media feeds, I think we, as a cyber security industry, need to do more to explain what we mean when we talk about "hybrid warfare".
I thought I'd use the Paris riots as a demonstration of how hybrid warfare works in practice. Lots of people will claim that the Russians are simply making up falsehoods to cause division. That is emphatically not true. The #GiletsJaunes protests are a great example of their tactics, following on from previous operations around Black Lives Matter in the States and, of course, our very own Brexit. The social problems and divisions around BLM, Brexit and Gilets Jaunes are real - no-one should use the activities of hostile actors to pretend that the underlying grievances are not genuine. However - and this is the important bit - what the Russians do is to take those divisions and use them as a lever to further weaken their targets. How? They'll produce propaganda, seed it on the Internet and social media and hope "useful idiots" pick it up and start to amplify the content by sharing it. Ask yourself where all of the pictures of the rioters are coming from (RT anyone?), the memes of protesters being water cannoned, pictures of troop carriers with an EU flag outlined in red etc etc. Some of those pictures will be 100% genuine. Most will be tinkered with or complemented by a set narrative destined for one side of the debate or the other. Anything to further polarize opinion and discourage rationality. Why is it called hybrid warfare? Because it's not all on-line; you may find a few Russian operatives or their agents at these protests agitating for more aggressive behaviour - someone needs to make sure that the relevant photo opportunities arise.
The sole aim of these operations is to cause division - you can see how effective it is by the effective hollowing out of the political centre across the West. Why do this? Because it leaves the West weak and fighting amongst itself rather than looking for more practical fixes to social issues and global trouble spots (hello Ukraine and Yemen btw).
Pet theory time - feel free to disagree :) As the western world increasingly focuses on whether QAnon or the Canary are the sole sources of truth and enlightenment, it means that there is no concerted effort to tackle climate change - the real and present danger to our species and our planet. Ask yourself, what draws together the US Right, Putin and the Saudis into their current close alliance? It's not a love of crochet. They profit hugely from fossil fuels. All of the division and conflict in the world offers a number of opportunists the chance to push their own local agendas, be that racial hatred, nationalism or disaster capitalism, but the alliance between those driving the division is much more basic - simple human greed for wealth and power. Some will happily see the world burn so long as they are paid to provide the fuel.
What to do about it? Don't share divisive nonsense you find on the Internet - you're only pushing the interests of enemies of the United Kingdom. Stick to verifiable facts. Follow people whose opinions you disagree with - do not get stuck in your own filter bubble. Go to the source materials. Find trustworthy journalists rather than propagandists. If anyone is telling you that they have easy answers, find other sources, you're being played. To conclude, if you think you're too smart to fall for psyops operations such as these then I'm afraid to tell you this but you're likely their perfect mark...
Friday, 16 February 2018
On Brexit
Yes, I know. Nobody needs more writings on Brexit. However, there are some thoughts I need to express and I hope to do so in a calm, rational and inoffensive manner. Why now? After Boris Johnson's abortive attempt to win over those who wish to remain within the EU, I got to thinking as to how he perhaps could have offered some reassurance that the future is not as bleak as many of us believe it to be. Will many of us ever be convinced that leaving the EU is a wise choice? No - but some of us could be convinced that Government is managing the departure competently should they wish to step away from bland statements of desire towards practical realities. Let's have some examples.
1. "Deep and Special partnership".
The PM likes to talk about establishing a new deep and special partnership with our European friends. Clearly the shape of that partnership is dependent upon the outcome of the Phase Two negotiations and any subsequent trade deal. Now "deep and special" sounds suspiciously like a unique set of concessions agreed between two trading entities. The exact kind of thing that the WTO Most Favoured Nation obligations are there to prevent! [In short, WTO members are not able to offer preferential terms to individual trading partners - outside of the types of free trade arrangements that we seem determined to exit. Any favourable terms offered to one trading entity must be offered to all WTO members]. Consider this the next time people talk about frictionless, tariff-free, trade: the UK may be willing to go tariff-free with the EU (and so must offer similar terms to every other member of the WTO), the EU may have more of a desire to maintain tariffs and so protect their industrial base. What could Government do to convince remainers of the bright future on offer? Talk more openly about what WTO rules mean in practice. Or indeed about the WTO in general - given the dismissal of the EU as a bureaucratic nightmare, I'd be extremely keen to hear how the WTO is any better following the collapse of the Doha trade round and the US's current refusal to ratify two judges needed to adjudicate trade disputes. Oh, and did anyone mention that WTO relies on unanymity? You thought getting 27 nations to agree on things was bad, try over 160.
2. Northern Ireland
Any hard border separating Northern Ireland from Ireland is likely to violate the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. You cannot have two different customs regimes without border controls - which is why the UK commited to maintaining full regulatory alignment in the Phase One agreement. I can see no way of reconciling the Good Friday Agreement with the UK government's desire to exit the Custom Union. If Remainers are to be convinced this is in hand then let's be honest about things - you can keep Northern Ireland in the Union and stick with the committed Phase One backstop or you can accept that Northern Ireland will leave the Union in order to maintain the lack of a border on the island of Ireland. Or NI stays in the UK, we get a border and a return to the Troubles. You cannot have both no customs union and no border. Time for Government to make that choice clear.
[The EU must maintain a border, in part because of the MFN obligations I've already mentioned. Claiming any erection of a border by the EU would be their choice is extremely disingenous.]
3. Regulatory bodies
Due to the Prime Minister's self-imposed red-line of no ECJ jurisdiction post-Brexit we have no choice but to leave regulatory bodies such as Euratom. Euratom looks after the safe treatment of radioactive materials - think nuclear fuel, waste and medical isotopes. Current government policy tends to be ostrich-like - it'll all just be fine. It won't. Other nations will abide by international agreements. We need to face facts and cost-up re-building our own versions of any number of regulatory bodies and agreeing competence and alignment with our trading partners. Otherwise we'll find ourselves without access to radioactive materials, global airspace, european law enforcement information (SISII) and countless other things we take for granted. Come on Boris, tell us how this is all in hand? Tell us how walking away in the No Deal scenario will not impact any of these sectors. And show us how and why, not just bland "it'll all be fine if we just muddle through being British about it".
4. Trade agreements
We currently benefit from ~50 trade agreements with countries like Japan, Canada and South Korea via the EU. The UK government has written to those countries asking them to roll-over the agreements so that we can benefit from them post-Brexit - telling them that we will not be changing much and that they should therefore treat us the same. Whilst telling the UK that we'll be taking back control and diverging as we wish. Which is it? Foreign governments are not blind, they can sense the dishonesty. Which is why the mock outrage about the EU suggesting punishment mechanisms for the UK backtracking on agreements was so misplaced. As our negotiations have been conducted in bad faith so far, all potential trading partners will want punishment mechanisms to encourage sticking to commitments. So again, I'd ask the government to be clear on current status of roll-over of agreements and clarification of self-contradictory positions.
5. Practicalities
Leaving the EU will require major investments in UK infrastructure and supporting IT infrastructure (customs, border, those regulatory bodies I mentioned earlier). It will take time to build port infrastructures to take on the load currently handled by Rotterdam on our behalf (for example). Have you seen this process starting? Land purchased? Contracts tendered? The IT systems clearly cannot be implemented until we know what they need to do. All this will be ready by March next year will it? Again, a bit of honesty and clarity about the timescales would not go amiss!
I haven't even touched on border controls or freedom of movement - it's an area with which I have personal experience. Suffice to say we have always had the legal right to control our borders, successive governments have simply failed to enforce them.
Now, I am a staunch Remainer but I do accept that a managed Brexit (e.g. Flexcit) would be possible over the course of a decade or so. That's not currently on offer - and there's been no practical discussion of how just walking away would resolve any of the issues I've raised above. With less than 10000 hours until we leave, isn't it time to cut through all of the nonsense and try a little honesty?
So, to finish off. Yes, I do believe a Final Say referendum is necessary - a clear choice between the deal on offer and the deal we currently have. No-one can claim that they knew what they voted for when that final position is still being negotiated now and could yet be anything from full customs alignment to WTO-only. Claiming that a direction set in 2016 when neither the starting point nor destination was honestly or clearly laid out is unalterable despite the emergence of new evidence is clearly irrational and undemocratic. And I place equal blame on the Remain side for that lack of clarity by the way.
In the meantime, if the government genuinely cares about bringing Remainers like me on board then it's time to stop trotting out the same old claims we didn't buy during the campaign. Tell us why the things that seem on inspection to be utterly incompatible (e.g. leaving the Customs Union whilst maintaining no border on the island of Ireland) are in fact deliverable. Oh, and if all of the Treasury forecasts are wrong, how about telling us how they are wrong - that's the nice thing about models, they come with assumptions, dependencies etc. Claiming they are wrong because they did not consider models that are not on offer or unfeasible is just a dereliction of duty. Brexiters have had 40 years to come up with a model. It's time to show it and open it up to challenge. I'm not buying a black box any time soon.
1. "Deep and Special partnership".
The PM likes to talk about establishing a new deep and special partnership with our European friends. Clearly the shape of that partnership is dependent upon the outcome of the Phase Two negotiations and any subsequent trade deal. Now "deep and special" sounds suspiciously like a unique set of concessions agreed between two trading entities. The exact kind of thing that the WTO Most Favoured Nation obligations are there to prevent! [In short, WTO members are not able to offer preferential terms to individual trading partners - outside of the types of free trade arrangements that we seem determined to exit. Any favourable terms offered to one trading entity must be offered to all WTO members]. Consider this the next time people talk about frictionless, tariff-free, trade: the UK may be willing to go tariff-free with the EU (and so must offer similar terms to every other member of the WTO), the EU may have more of a desire to maintain tariffs and so protect their industrial base. What could Government do to convince remainers of the bright future on offer? Talk more openly about what WTO rules mean in practice. Or indeed about the WTO in general - given the dismissal of the EU as a bureaucratic nightmare, I'd be extremely keen to hear how the WTO is any better following the collapse of the Doha trade round and the US's current refusal to ratify two judges needed to adjudicate trade disputes. Oh, and did anyone mention that WTO relies on unanymity? You thought getting 27 nations to agree on things was bad, try over 160.
2. Northern Ireland
Any hard border separating Northern Ireland from Ireland is likely to violate the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. You cannot have two different customs regimes without border controls - which is why the UK commited to maintaining full regulatory alignment in the Phase One agreement. I can see no way of reconciling the Good Friday Agreement with the UK government's desire to exit the Custom Union. If Remainers are to be convinced this is in hand then let's be honest about things - you can keep Northern Ireland in the Union and stick with the committed Phase One backstop or you can accept that Northern Ireland will leave the Union in order to maintain the lack of a border on the island of Ireland. Or NI stays in the UK, we get a border and a return to the Troubles. You cannot have both no customs union and no border. Time for Government to make that choice clear.
[The EU must maintain a border, in part because of the MFN obligations I've already mentioned. Claiming any erection of a border by the EU would be their choice is extremely disingenous.]
3. Regulatory bodies
Due to the Prime Minister's self-imposed red-line of no ECJ jurisdiction post-Brexit we have no choice but to leave regulatory bodies such as Euratom. Euratom looks after the safe treatment of radioactive materials - think nuclear fuel, waste and medical isotopes. Current government policy tends to be ostrich-like - it'll all just be fine. It won't. Other nations will abide by international agreements. We need to face facts and cost-up re-building our own versions of any number of regulatory bodies and agreeing competence and alignment with our trading partners. Otherwise we'll find ourselves without access to radioactive materials, global airspace, european law enforcement information (SISII) and countless other things we take for granted. Come on Boris, tell us how this is all in hand? Tell us how walking away in the No Deal scenario will not impact any of these sectors. And show us how and why, not just bland "it'll all be fine if we just muddle through being British about it".
4. Trade agreements
We currently benefit from ~50 trade agreements with countries like Japan, Canada and South Korea via the EU. The UK government has written to those countries asking them to roll-over the agreements so that we can benefit from them post-Brexit - telling them that we will not be changing much and that they should therefore treat us the same. Whilst telling the UK that we'll be taking back control and diverging as we wish. Which is it? Foreign governments are not blind, they can sense the dishonesty. Which is why the mock outrage about the EU suggesting punishment mechanisms for the UK backtracking on agreements was so misplaced. As our negotiations have been conducted in bad faith so far, all potential trading partners will want punishment mechanisms to encourage sticking to commitments. So again, I'd ask the government to be clear on current status of roll-over of agreements and clarification of self-contradictory positions.
5. Practicalities
Leaving the EU will require major investments in UK infrastructure and supporting IT infrastructure (customs, border, those regulatory bodies I mentioned earlier). It will take time to build port infrastructures to take on the load currently handled by Rotterdam on our behalf (for example). Have you seen this process starting? Land purchased? Contracts tendered? The IT systems clearly cannot be implemented until we know what they need to do. All this will be ready by March next year will it? Again, a bit of honesty and clarity about the timescales would not go amiss!
I haven't even touched on border controls or freedom of movement - it's an area with which I have personal experience. Suffice to say we have always had the legal right to control our borders, successive governments have simply failed to enforce them.
Now, I am a staunch Remainer but I do accept that a managed Brexit (e.g. Flexcit) would be possible over the course of a decade or so. That's not currently on offer - and there's been no practical discussion of how just walking away would resolve any of the issues I've raised above. With less than 10000 hours until we leave, isn't it time to cut through all of the nonsense and try a little honesty?
So, to finish off. Yes, I do believe a Final Say referendum is necessary - a clear choice between the deal on offer and the deal we currently have. No-one can claim that they knew what they voted for when that final position is still being negotiated now and could yet be anything from full customs alignment to WTO-only. Claiming that a direction set in 2016 when neither the starting point nor destination was honestly or clearly laid out is unalterable despite the emergence of new evidence is clearly irrational and undemocratic. And I place equal blame on the Remain side for that lack of clarity by the way.
In the meantime, if the government genuinely cares about bringing Remainers like me on board then it's time to stop trotting out the same old claims we didn't buy during the campaign. Tell us why the things that seem on inspection to be utterly incompatible (e.g. leaving the Customs Union whilst maintaining no border on the island of Ireland) are in fact deliverable. Oh, and if all of the Treasury forecasts are wrong, how about telling us how they are wrong - that's the nice thing about models, they come with assumptions, dependencies etc. Claiming they are wrong because they did not consider models that are not on offer or unfeasible is just a dereliction of duty. Brexiters have had 40 years to come up with a model. It's time to show it and open it up to challenge. I'm not buying a black box any time soon.
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