GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

Security and the 'Holographic Society'

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Eric B. Schnurer
Board of Contributors

Jul 12, 2019 | 11:00 GMT

A NATO training center conducts an exercise on cyberwarfare and security on June 22, 2017, in Bydgoszcz, Poland.

A NATO training center in Poland conducts an exercise on cyberwarfare and security. Many future-of-war theorists believe that conflict will rarely involve the physical any longer, but rather attempts to "win" without seizing direct physical control over people and territory.

(JAAP ARRIENS/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Highlights

  • The very distinction between the virtual and physical worlds is itself dissolving. Is it time we started thinking about security in the physical world as we do in cyber?
  • Successful attacks cannot be entirely prevented but can be survived by building multiple pathways so the enemy cannot take down the entire system.
  • Every point in the network has access to the information, so it can, as a practical matter, never be destroyed or altered, something like a hologram. In that way, blockchain essentially models the logic of “defense” as dispersion and redundancy.
  • "Distributed" rather than concentrated systems are more survivable and secure in the real world, not just the virtual: To the extent that our concern is purely physical survival, even then, the more dispersed or redundant a population, an economy or a culture, the less a physical attack on it will make any sense.

The cyber world is dissolving distinctions between war and non-war, between what's "inside" a country and what's outside it, between the state and society. In fact, the very distinction between the virtual and physical worlds is itself dissolving. So perhaps we ought to be thinking about security in the physical world as we do in cyber....

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