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5 Responses to “Gaps and blockages”

1. Charles Cameron Says:
   February 19th, 2016 at 1:32 am

   And a timely Occasional Paper from JM Berger:
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   The Islamic State’s Diminishing Returns on Twitter: How suspensions are limiting the social networks of English-speaking ISIS supporters

2. Charles Cameron Says:
   February 19th, 2016 at 3:51 pm

   Now this, from Michael Hayden:
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3. Charles Cameron Says:
   February 20th, 2016 at 11:05 pm

   And a very Suarez / Daemon post from John Robb: Why Apple is on the side of National Security and not the FBI:

   The FBI can’t access information on the iphone because the brute force technique the agency uses to “guess” user passwords doesn’t work with the iphone. Brute force password guessing would cause the phone to permanently block access to the data after 10 attempts if that option is turned on (and they think it is). Even with the option off, it could take up 5.5 years to crack the password, because the iphone inserts a 10 ms delay between password attempts.

   and:

   However, blood and guts terrorism isn’t the threat it once was. It is the last war. The growing threat will be from nations and groups armed with cognitive bots. Bots capable of accomplishing a great number of human scale tasks very, very quickly. In this new type of war, anything that slows or delays an attacker is worth preserving. In this case, the difficulty of breaking the encryption on the widely used iphone is a good thing.
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   In wars where bots do most of the fighting, all backdoors become a zero day vulnerabilities — unpatched vulnerabilities that allow attackers rapid, unopposed access to the system. Inserting vulnerabilities into the iphone would almost certainly make it useful as a major avenue of attack by the bot armed threats we’ll face in the near future.
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   Let’s not prepare for the last war by making ourselves vulnerable to the next one.

4. larrydunbar Says:
   February 21st, 2016 at 2:39 am

   “Let’s not prepare for the last war by making ourselves vulnerable to the next one.”

   *
   But, when you begin fighting the next war, one needs to know your enemy and then next know yourself, if you expect to win.

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   “Brute force password guessing would cause the phone to permanently block access to the data after 10 attempts if that option is turned on (and they think it is).”

   *
   And so, exactly who is going to be permanently blocked, the FBI/NSA or the enemy? If you don’t know who your next enemy is how can you be so sure what the “next war” looks like? John Robb seems to know the enemy, so, go on…. Mr. Robb.

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   Obviously, at least to me, John is looking towards the singularity, when all America wakes up one morning and everything that ever existed on the internet is gone, by way of targeting by bots planted within the system.

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   So who planted them (Apple?), what are they targeting (government pensions and the like) and what are their demands (let them dominate the South China Sea)?

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   I mean, after all, most of the workers who make the iphone are foreigners.

   *
   Perhaps the best way to stop the bots is to let them trigger the trap under our terms instead of theirs (seemed to work in the last Lebanon/Israeli war), if we know ourselves as well as Robb seems to think we do?

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   Maybe the problem is that John Robb knows us too well and the enemy not at all?

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   After all, to know a bot is to love a bot (i.e. the two moves in winning war: know your enemy–know yourself; love your enemy–love yourself).

5. Charles Cameron Says:
   February 21st, 2016 at 3:50 pm

   Hi Larry:
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   I think that to get a good sense of the kind of futures John is imagining & implying, you’d probably want to read Daniel Suarez’ two first novels, Daemon and Freedom. I read them a few years ago and no longer recall the details, but Suarez and John are friends, I understand, and I suspect share a sense of the future..