The First Total War and the Sociotechnical Systems of Warfare

Abstract

Warcraft Evolves by identifying and adapting the technical and functional affordances of technologies to exploit vulnerabilities in adversaries’ defenses and defend against their attacks [1] . Nowhere is this arms race more apparent than cybersecurity wherein zero-day vulnerabilities are identified and exploited at an ever-growing rate [2] . Cybersecurity, however, is not limited to hardware and software. Cyberoperations require an understanding of the larger sociotechnical system that includes individual users and groups, for example, governmental, industry, and nongovernmental organizations. Indeed, the failure to identify the technical and functional affordances that allow for zero-day vulnerabilities illustrates the ambiguous and ill-defined nature of “cyberspace.”