The military operates under far different expectations. Where the financial industry likes to operate in a precise world, down to the fourth decimal point, the military is used to operating in the fog of war, a world of uncertainty, and at levels of efficiency that might reach 5 or 10 percent—that is, a soldier has less than one chance in ten of hitting the enemy when he fires his rifle. Such levels of uncertainty mean that we in the military so overload our capacity to conduct warfare that a hacker who steals our secrets, inserts misleading information, or injects confusion will not cripple a military operation, only lower its efficiency.

Still, if the opposing military forces are somewhat close to parity, then computer attacks might spell the difference between victory and defeat in battle.

This is the good news. The bad news is that the U.S. military has an extensive capacity to fool itself.

We can talk ourselves into believing our own lies.

Imagine the situation I described earlier: We have entered the computer system associated with the enemy’s command and control for air defense, and have depicted a mythical raid in the western part of his country, while our Stealth bombers are in the east. Believing what he sees on his displays, he sends his interceptor forces to the west.

In the meantime, another echelon of U.S. command is secretly pirating the enemy air defense command-and-control data and feeding this information to our air defense units. However, owing to the classification of the computer insertion activity, some good guys don’t know what the other good guys are doing. As a result, the intelligence gatherers believe we are really attacking to the west. As a result, when our attacking force returns to friendly territory after their unopposed attacks, they are engaged by their own friendly air defenses, who have concluded that they are enemy attackers.

This example is simplistic, yet it illustrates how complicated new forms of warfare can become, and how dangerous can be the failure to work as one force, one team. Control must be all-encompassing in every aspect of the conflict, and it must be coordinated both offensively and defensively. Modern warfare’s widespread communications, computer-assisted information systems, and surveillance of the battle space will dictate that the dominant forces have full knowledge of the battle and control of its environment.

They also mean that the victor will be the combatant who can act with the greatest speed.

SPEED