Offensive Cyber Operations: Understanding Intangible Warfare

Abstract

When it comes to cyber, it is common to hear calls for interdisciplinary approaches, be it in the private sector, policy circles or academia. Daniel Moore is someone capable of marrying technical knowledge on information security with strategic studies proficiency. His Offensive Cyber Operations: Understanding Intangible Warfare is an authoritative account of the tactical exploitation of computer technologies and networks in interstate conflicts. The book is a welcome addition to the broader literature on cyber studies as it successfully moves beyond the many hyperbolic narratives of a debate prone to the technological determinism of the revolutions in military affairs. The central argument of the book is that computer network exploitation represents the latest stage in the evolution of ‘intangible warfare’, all those non-kinetic ‘efforts to undermine transmission, reception, and processing of data’ (p. 8) in the larger theatre of operations. In his account of the tactics of warfare that do not have a physical manifestation, Moore explains that the targeting of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for military and intelligence purposes is the result of gradual counter-innovations to military technologies during the 20th century, from the First World War to the Gulf War.