Defining Civil Defense in the Information Age

Conclusions 1. With the advent of the information age the United States has lost the "sanctuary" that it has enjoyed for over 200 years. In the past ordinary citizens and businesses could be protected by control of the airspace, land, and the seas. Now an attack may be launched directly against a citizen passing right through (or around) all our traditional lines of defense. 2. The environment for developing and implementing national security policy is neither designed nor equipped to deal with events resulting from sources not rooted in the temporal or physical restrictions of the past. 3. Today's interagency approach to national security is not compatible with the speeds of the information age. Current government and civil institutions led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are not designed to deal with attacks and natural disasters that move at the speed of light, crossing geographic and legal boundaries with impunity. 4. The National Security Council (NSC) needs to define the boundaries that separate technology-based attacks that are merely a nuisance from those that constitute national security threats. The Emerging Threat We have entered an era of immense global change and we must recognize that protection of the public during domestic emergencies has taken on new meanings with new consequences. A new process needs to be developed that defines the specific responsibilities of federal and state governments for technological disasters. The DOD has taken the initiative and has established new educational and training programs focused on Information Warfare and Strategy, Command and Control Warfare, and Information Operations. But solutions to the problem are larger than the DOD and other organizations must be engaged. Issues involving information technology, national security, and civil defense cross many if not all of the traditional governmental boundaries thus ultimately requiring a truly holistic solution. Vice President Al Gore's announcement of a National Information Infrastructure was a harbinger of things to come rather than a fait accompli. Economic and public policy theorists widely tout the emergence of a "Global Economy," with its components inextricably linked as result of rapidly advancing communications technology. The nature of these linkages will help define economic, diplomatic, and military relationships well into the next century. Modern societies (particularly the United States) increasingly rely upon the kind of information infrastructures that have enabled the emergence of the Global Economy. Infrastructures that do not and cannot stand alone but by their very nature must remain interconnected to function and survive are the dominant features of this new economy. The international banking and telecommunications industries are two obvious examples of vital internetted global systems that are essential for day to day governmental and commercial operations. Both the public and the private sectors have been slow to acknowledge and deal with information age deliberate attacks, unintended consequences, accidents or natural disasters. The fact that hackers have gained access to sensitive government and commercial computer systems is common knowledge with small cults developing around some of the more charismatic. While steps have been undertaken to develop greater security for these systems, timely detection of intrusions and effective responses have yet to be achieved. Recent instances of service interruption affecting electrical grids, air traffic control and financial transfer systems have been interpreted by some as a warning of impending disaster resulting from the very linkages among our systems previously heralded as the key to progress. Leveling the Field Underlying this worldwide expansion in communications and computer networks is a global technological leveling that already draws theorists to discussion of information age battlefields consisting of databases, financial networks, as well as manufacturing and service centers. …