The lead-off paragraph of this post by Professor Aaron Brantly, Army Major Nerea M. Cal, and Army Major Devlin Winkelstein on Lawfare sparked a thought:
Most Americans might consider the events occurring in Ukraine—a distant conflict somewhere along the border between the Russian Federation and Western Europe—to be someone else’s problem. What that perspective fails to appreciate, however, is how these seemingly distant events set the stage for a new form of hybrid warfare that is already targeting Western citizens. Many of the techniques we are observing in Ukraine, especially those in the digital realm, are not meaningfully constrained by international borders; if left unchecked they could significantly undermine Western digital, physical, and political structures.
That lack of constraint remark made me wonder: are we talking about a single organism? Does the Internet have a meaningful analogy in the idea of it being a single organism, made up of smaller, contingent pieces, perhaps a creature of emergent evolution, but also subject to attack by other organisms?
It certainly seems so to my untrained eye. The Internet, much like any fair-sized critter, is often physically unaware that it is hosting many other organisms, many of which have a purpose unconnected to that of the host (these are the parasites, biologically speaking, or the spammers, scammers, and associated criminals), while others have a purpose connected to that of the host (these, the symbiotes, and, in terms of the Internet, the various computers and associated organizations dedicated to the survival and promotion of the network, as well as, to greater or lesser extents, the commercial operations which benefit, in part or in whole, from the qualities of the Internet). The analogy may be unsurprising.
But an analogy can lead to beneficial conclusions drawing from the known case. Can we appraise our knowledge of processes and approaches to disease, for example, and find application to the problems of the Internet? Perhaps, if they exist, medical philosophers might have some thoughts on how to approach some of the problems with criminals on the Internet. It’d be an interesting project to pursue.
