Cyber Warfare Is Not Fully Understood - 2407 Words

Cyber-warfare is a relatively new concept to the imagination, but its novelty should not belie its importance to be understood at all echelons of a command structure. It is an emerging reality, and its relevance is proportionate to the continuous global expansion and convergence of digital networks. The capabilities of cyber-warfighting strategies and tactics are extensive, and a need for a common language and understanding is necessary for cyber-warfighting capabilities. Within any culture, language is developed through a symbolic evolution, and military science has largely built its own unique vocabulary and terminology to describe conventional and unconventional warfare. Whether this language can be applied to cyber-warfare is not fully†¦show more content†¦The essence of Glad’s essay is that descriptions of war are largely reflective of the culture and political environment of their time. This applies just as easily to our modern era, when cyber-warfare presents a n unknown frontier through which it must be described in intelligible terms. Beyond the cultural context through which we understand warfare is the biological context. The vocabulary of kinetic warfare derives from our five senses, similar to how classical physics started with an exploration of objects and phenomena that were readily available to our senses. Our senses initially limited how science was conducted. The smallest object that an unaided eye can see is about 0.1 mm in diameter (). The farthest a 6 feet tall standing human can see is about 3 miles because of the curvature of the earth. Unlike other organisms, such as sharks, humans cannot sense electrical stimuli and locate objects based off of changes in electric currents (). For the majority of humans, vision is the primary sense for navigating the world. Other organisms, such as ants, rely on smell as their primary sense for navigation (). Vision makes the world appear as having sharp boundaries, whereas navigating the world via