Conquest in Cyberspace

The observation that “All's fair in love and war,” points to the double-edged meaning of conquest, as well. Conquest in both love and war is about the subversion of autonomy and triumph over personal will.

In war, there is very little ambiguity about the nature of the contest. Pace Clausewitz, the aim of conflict is to disarm the enemy. The tasks of conflict are often expressed as control over some medium: occupying terrain, sweeping ships from the open ocean, or claiming and maintaining air superiority.

In love, there is considerable ambiguity, self-deception, and thus no small amount of humor. But the results are often quite similar – a surrender of autonomy and the creation of dependence, which can be more or less symmetric among lovers.

Analogies apply to cyberspace.

Hostile conquest in cyberspace is about conflict. Typically, there are two sides. Defenders have an information infrastructure whose correct operations are matters of importance to, say, military security or making money. Warriors attack it from the outside (through flooding attacks, for example), but more insidiously from the inside (such as through intrusion). They aim to steal good information, implant bad information and commands, or just confound the system. Rarely is such conflict symmetric in the sense of like versus like; think, instead, of jet versus a surface-to-air missile (SAM). Permanent control over someone else's system is very difficult, and not always the point anyhow.