Draft Example: Cyber warfare researcher matrix

In trying to answer a question that nobody has I’m working on an analysis of cyber warfare researchers and their particular influences and directions for what they are researching. Basically creating a grid with the “y” axis being social(ology) to technical(ology) and the “x” axis being from engineers (how to) to strategists (why to). That explains the basic precepts, but there are some interesting elements to the example given. Using a handy bibliography that is slightly dated each of the authors (40 of them) are plotted onto the graph. If they are talking about public policy and the legal frameworks they are going to be at the highest most right position on the graph. If there had been somebody explaining in great detail exactly how to wage cyber warfare using specific tools and techniques they would be in the bottom left hand quadrant. In fact what would fill the bottom left area are highly technical IEEE or similar articles on exploitation and execution of the technical/tactical nature. The absence of highly technical articles from this draft example depicted is only due to the nature of the bibliography the names were randomly pulled from.

You might notice on the right side of the graph there are three bubbles that start from the bottom and say physical, syntactic, and semantic. Those refer to specific levels that can be described using a variety of technology models. Libicki and others have referred to the technology stack over the years, but in general it is another way of describing the differences between the social and technical layers. Don’t read to much into where authors are located at this point. This is only a draft. To be valid all of the authors work toward cyber warfare would have to be evaluated using consistent criteria, and the criteria applied equally across all of the authors. In so doing another dimension (z) might be created where authors volume of contributions (pages?) could be counted and their bubble would be larger or smaller.

Some of the authors might say “I’m really technical!”, but what they are writing is about policy and influence (social issues). Other authors might be using very technical tools to accomplish something, but they are writing about the social or political impacts thus placing them in the upper right hand quadrant. A lot of people at this point are going to start jumping to conclusions, but I’ll hold the rest a little closer to my vest and say have fun thinking about this little conundrum.

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