Info Militia and Cyberwar in Russia and Georgia

Robb has an excellent post up discussing cyberwarfare as a specific instance of open source warfare.

Perhaps the most important point Robb makes is that the best trained cyber-warriors will likely come from the civilian (and, very often, criminal) world. These won’t be employees on the government payroll.

A related theme I’ve expored here in the past regards the role of non-technically skilled participants in these cyberconflicts [1]. Evgeny Morozov offers a compelling account in Slate of just how low the barrier to entry is: you need a pc and an internet connection.

We are left with another bizarre hybred of modern and traditional: nationalist fevor, channeled through IT, to create cyberswarming attacks.

[1] Info Militias and 21st Century People’s War