What is Clausewitz on Cyber?
I was at an infosec conference not too long ago where one of the presentations discussed that lessons from Sun Tzu’s Art of War have been applied to the infosec/cyber so much that it is cliche. As in, not only is the Sun Tzu quote almost obligatory, but there’s multiple parody Twitter accounts. These presenters (@munin and @hacks4pancakes) decided to take a different approach. They looked at Terry Pratchett for some lessons.
This got me to thinking about what other material is out there that we, in the cyber arena, could learn from, but that hasn’t already been analyzed to death. In particular, I was interested in who else might have something to say on the nature of warfare.
Carl Clausewitz immediately came to mind.
His main work, On War, is kindof huge, oft cited in service schools, and is much more modern than Sun Tzu. However, as we’re talking about someone who was fighting Napoleon, he didn’t have experience with today’s technological challenges. So how much can he really contribute to the cyber domain? Well, that’s what I’m here to find out.
Something to understand about my background: I’m not an officer. I haven’t been fed Clausewitz, or any military strategy really, as part of my career. I legitimately haven’t read On War, or most popularly cited works on warfare, before.
This project is a means of working through some of that material, from the POV of someone that hasn’t studied much military theory, but does have a decent grounding in infosec.
Between this blog and the accompanying Twitter account (@CyberClausewitz) you’ll basically be seeing me work through On War in real time. This means that there will be questions that I have as I’m reading that may or may not be answered later. This also means that things I think I understand change. This is okay! Analysis should change based on new information!
Another important caveat: I don’t speak German. This means that I am stuck using a translation. As translations are a really dangerous minefield, I decided to take the advice of the fine folks at clausewitz.com and obtained the O.J. Mattijs Jolles translation (as presented in an omnibus with Art of War, because of course it is).
I mention this because a) words matter, and translation is hard, and b) this isn’t the “standard” translation, so quotes may be different than you see elsewhere. A tiny choice in what word the translator chose can make huge changes in how we, the readers, interpret what was said. So, if you have problems with my interpretation because your translation says something different… relax. I’m working with what I have here. This isn’t exactly a formal scholarly analysis where it is worth getting multiple translations and going back to the source German to get a fifth opinion when things don’t line up.
I’m not here to debate translations. I’m here to learn for myself, and am offering you the opportunity to come along for the ride. My goal is to examine how concepts of warfare from several generations ago may, or may not, be applicable to modern information/cyber warfare.
Now that that’s out of the way, thank you for joining me as I explore Clausewitz on Cyber.