IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 42

infrastructures and potential disruption of another kind to present
social ethical norms in our open
society. In order to achieve resilience in these national security
spaces, we must anticipate threats
in advance - now. We also need to
form analysis in multiple dimensions of scientific, technological,
policy, and human ethical areas of
this futures scenario in anticipation of the evolution of this kind of
human-technology interface.
We begin with Libicki (1996)
from Orbis and his "Telemetry of
War" essay. Next we incorporate
Jeff Raskin's (Apple Computer
1978) idea of the information appliance applied to modern information
technologies and human intelligence
operations and attempt to construct
a futures scenario of cyborg-based
intelligence operations. We seek to
explore human-hardware-software
symbiosis solutions to advanced
situational awareness and national
power for the purpose of better
understanding the complexity of
these future national security IT
critical infrastructures.

Martin Libicki and
the Telemetry of War
Martin Libicki powerfully reimagined war and deterrence in 1996
by thinking strategy and tactics
forward to new architectures with
the direct application of information technologies quite extended
beyond present-day capabilities.
Many of his ideas have come
to fruition - though many have
not - nevertheless - the value of his
Orbis article - to construct a compelling information-war heuristic
to inform 21st century American
national power is a lasting legacy.
His operational concept - "The
Telemetry of War" serves as the
beginning point for our thought
experiment in the remainder of
this paper - the human information appliance - intelligence entity.
Libicki's analysis suggests that
information technology powerfully applied to war gives rise to a
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new heuristic of tactical and strategic doctrine. His vision was based
upon standard information system concepts (below) that directly
inform our ensuing discussion of
the human information applianceintelligence entity. Information
toward the production of operational intelligence is a function of
knowledge about...
where is the opponent's
troops, their weaponry, their
industry,
what is the opponent's troop
level of capability in terms of
firepower and training,
who is the chief decisionmaker that controls the
movement and actions of the
opponent's troops,
when will the opponent's
troops or weapons go into
action, and
why is the opponent motivated to conduct such hostilities and
how can we influence their
actions toward our desired
outcome.
Libicki goes on to construct
what he calls the "combat mesh" -
a twenty-four hour dynamic information gathering system coupled
to a smart-weapon delivery system
that can make a traditional invasion across recognized borders a
suicidal mission. Targets will be
immediately seen and destroyed -
or sufficiently crippled to lower the
threat to such a level that the threat
is effectively cancelled. (See Fig. 1.)
Consider the planet in its
three-dimensional form floating
in space combined with the fourth
dimension of time. From the depths
of the oceans - where submarines
roam - to the surface of the planet in
which fiber-optic cables criss-cross
- to 22 000 miles above the planet
where geosynchronous orbiting
satellites are relaying information
at nearly the speed of light, the
beginning of a new strategic architecture begins to take form. Connected to this information network
are the smart weapons, thereby

completing the physical relationship between them and their
targets as defined by American
strategic and tactical design. This
is the mesh, according to Libicki
and this is the telemetry of war. If
achieved, the U.S. military would
be in possession of a process that
will enable it to have certain advantages over potential adversaries in
virtually all varieties of conflict.
This was Libicki's vision in 1996
and it served as a stark example of
how traditional national security
policy - informed by traditional
theory - must enlarge to account
for technological advancement.
Let us advance Libicki's conceptualization of the battlespace
(a well understood and ubiquitous
term used in the national security
community today) toward similar
operational spaces in the homeland security community and the
diplomacy community. We have
used this terminology in our seminars for several years and it easily
translates for teaching and research
purposes - and likewise it presents
as reasonable and compelling to use
the concepts of homeland space
and diplomacy space as terms to
describe a four-dimensional operational heuristic for these alternative
security spaces to the battlespace.
It is important to note that our purpose in doing so is not to merely
create modern labels and mimic the
DOD. Our purpose in doing so is to
stimulate the imagination of scholars and professionals in these arenas
to think in new and more powerful
ways using science and technology to reimagine their missions
- their doctrines - their physical
environments - and ultimately their
tools and behaviors towards more
powerful outcomes. Consider an
alternative breakdown as:
Where is the opponent's
diplomats, their intelligence,
their political center of
existence/meaning/purpose
and the source of the production of these things?

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SUMMER 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013