Viral Warfare: The Security Implications of Cyber and Biological Weapons

Koblentz, Gregory D.; Mazanec, Brian M.

doi:10.1080/01495933.2013.821845

Cited by 16 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…While a dilution of scientific quality is one possible outcome of the rallying around ‘infodemics’, the uncritical use of the term could also have political implications, and if only by entrenching unhelpful imaginaries, which end up shaping policy with work based on questionable premises. One example is provided by recent discussions around cybersecurity (Slupska, 2020) where, for example, online conflicts between countries have been described by different actors in terms of ‘viral warfare’ (Koblentz and Mazanec, 2013), ‘cyber ecosystems’ or ‘cyber architecture’, with each of these metaphors forming the basis for various policy decisions (Schön, 1993; Shimko, 1994; Slupska, 2020). During the current pandemic, metaphors abound, too: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2020) has labelled the communicative phenomena around the pandemic a ‘disinformation epidemic’.…”

Section: Adopting the ‘Infodemic’: Reasons And Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autopsy of a metaphor: The origins, use and blind spots of the ‘infodemic’

Simon

Camargo

2021

New Media & Society

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In 2020, the term ‘infodemic’ rose from relative obscurity to becoming a popular catch-all metaphor, representing the perils of fast, wide-spreading (false) information about the coronavirus pandemic. It featured in thousands of academic publications and received widespread attention from policymakers and the media. In this article, we trace the origins and use of the ‘infodemic’ metaphor and examine the blind spots inherent in this seemingly intuitive term. Drawing from literature in the cognitive sciences and communication studies, we show why information does not spread like a virus and point out how the ‘infodemic’ metaphor can be misleading, as it conflates multiple forms of social behaviour, oversimplifies a complex situation and helps constitute a phenomenon for which concrete evidence remains patchy. We point out the existing tension between the usefulness of the widespread use of the term ‘infodemic’ and its uncritical adoption, which we argue can do more harm than good, potentially diluting the quality of academic work, public discourse and contributing to state overreach in policymaking.

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Section: Adopting the ‘Infodemic’: Reasons And Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autopsy of a metaphor: The origins, use and blind spots of the ‘infodemic’

Simon

Camargo

2021

New Media & Society

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“…Previous work has explored how approaches to bioterrorism deterrence, which focus on pathogen security and defensive control of epidemics, have largely been translated from passive measures used in nuclear deterrence and point to the need for more active bioterrorism deterrence strategies to deal with disease outbreaks such as polio and Ebola (Kosal, 2014). Other work has looked at how deterrence by denial in the context of biological weapons can extend to other modalities of warfare (Koblentz & Mazanec, 2013). At the same time, other scholars have asserted that the offensive threat of biological weapons is more suitable for use as a strategic deterrent than nuclear weapons because "effective deterrence requires only a small possibility of great destruction" (Martin, 2002).…”

Section: Us Policy Shifts In Response To Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

How COVID-19 is reshaping U.S. national security policy

Kosal

2023

Polit. life sci.

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In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is actively reshaping parts of its national security enterprise. This article explores the underlying politics, with a specific interest in the context of biosecurity, biodefense, and bioterrorism strategy, programs, and response, as the United States responds to the most significant outbreak of an emerging infectious disease in over a century. How the implicit or tacit failure to recognize the political will and political decision-making connected to warfare and conflict for biological weapons programs in these trends is explored. Securitization of public health has been a focus of the literature over the past half century. This recent trend may represent something of an inverse: an attempt to treat national security interests as public health problems. A hypothesis is that the most significant underrecognized problem associated with COVID-19 is disinformation and the weakening of confidence in institutions, including governments, and how adversaries may exploit that blind spot.

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“…Typically, cyber threats are man-made and created by attackers with malicious intentions. In contrast, most infectious diseases are naturally occurring events without hostile motives (with the rare exception of bioterrorism) 24 .…”

Section: Similarities Between Virus-host Ecological System and Cyber-...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Building Cyber-Attack Immunity in Electric Energy System Inspired by Infectious Disease Ecology

Srivast,

Hussain,

Sadanandan

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Despite being man-made, cyber-power systems and the associated cyber-attacks evolve in tandem with human expertise that matures over time. This dynamic mirrors the evolutionary processes observed in infectious disease ecology within microbial and human host systems. In this paper, we delve into the parallels between cyber-power systems and infectious disease ecology, culminating in the development of a bio-inspired cyber-immunity to enable cyber-resilient system. Parallels among these two systems are more evident with the digital automation of power system to enhance situational awareness and operational efficiency. However, automation has concurrently introduced multiple potential avenues for cyber attackers to exploit. Cyber adversaries are also advancing their methods, often leveraging intelligent algorithms and technologies to infiltrate confidential data, disrupt critical networks, and compromise communication channels similar to microbial. The data and system at risk are growing over time. Therefore, cyber resilience is the need of time, giving the power system utility the ability to anticipate, withstand, and recover from any cyber-attack. This work aims to develop a bio-inspired resilient cyber defense system to identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover from more complex and well-targeted cyber attacks. The proposed framework has two key features:(i) it draws upon principles and insights from engineered and natural defense mechanisms employed in combating infectious diseases, adapting them to bolster the cybersecurity of digital substation automation in energy systems, and ii) it constantly evolves in response to cyber attacks by transmitting iterative feedback to substation networks from each component at various stages of these attacks. This iterative learning process empowers the framework to safeguard against similar types of attacks in the future. Further we discuss the bio-inspired system’s ability to defend against cyber-attacks as well as iteratively improve through feedback learning from framework components for future attacks of a similar sort was further discussed. A realistic cyber attack use case scenario has been developed using a real-time cyber-power substation automation testbed to validate the proposed framework and demonstrate its potential future adoptions. With the implementation of this framework, cyber-power systems will be able to deal with randomness, ambiguity, and the rapid advancement of potential cyber threats while applying digital substation automation technologies. With the development of more intelligent technologies that can deal with incompleteness and uncertainty better than ever before, modern cyber defense systems can mimic immunity and resilience inspired by infectious disease ecology and natural host defense systems.

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Viral Warfare: The Security Implications of Cyber and Biological Weapons

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

Autopsy of a metaphor: The origins, use and blind spots of the ‘infodemic’

Autopsy of a metaphor: The origins, use and blind spots of the ‘infodemic’

How COVID-19 is reshaping U.S. national security policy

Building Cyber-Attack Immunity in Electric Energy System Inspired by Infectious Disease Ecology

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