This is a cross-post from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, which hosted a seminar by former CIA officer Michael Hurley. The original post can be found here.

Michael Hurley, a former CIA Officer, was closely involved in the hunt for Osama bin Laden throughout the 2000s. He served three tours in Afghanistan post-9/11, leading Agency staff and Special Forces in southeastern Afghanistan. He was one of the CIA’s lead coordinators on the ground for Operation Anaconda, the largest battle against al Qaeda during the campaign in Afghanistan. Subsequently, he served on the 9/11 Commission’s staff as a senior counsel and director of its counterterrorism policy investigation, drafting substantial portions of the policy chapters of the Commission’s final report.

Former CIA officer Michael Hurley and Dr. Peter Neumann (Photo credit: ICSR)

Before 9/11, Hurley was detailed to the National Security Council, where he was director for the Balkans. At the CIA, he was involved in the U.S. interventions in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Haiti, and also held a range of management positions at CIA headquarters.

Mr. Hurley recently gave a seminar hosted by the ICSR discussing the intelligence community’s hunt for Osama bin Laden. Below are a few responses to some key questions.

How did the CIA go about looking for bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks?

The CIA had teams on the ground, as well as Special Forces (American, British, Australian, and others) backed with US air power. On the intelligence side, the CIA would work with local Pashtun people who could freely cross into Pakistan and come back to provide intelligence on where High Value Targets like Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, and others might be located.

The problem with going into a new country is that you don’t have vast networks of trusted, dependable agents to provide quality information, and there is always a question of reliability when money is the primary motivator. The Afghanistan-Pakistan region is not an area where you can send your own personnel for collection, and while there were technology-driven collection efforts, al-Qaeda members for example learned quickly not to use their cell phones, which could be intercepted by the US.

Mr. Hurley’s analysis of why bin Laden was able to escape during the Battle of Tora Bora

To go into Afghanistan quickly, the US had to use a light force, but the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is long, mountainous and porous. Without sufficient military personnel, the US had to rely on local militias, which brings up the question of reliability. It wouldn’t have been difficult for bin Laden, who operated in Afghanistan for years and knew the area well, to have local support and slip past the border.

On relations between the US and Pakistan after the operation to kill bin Laden

The US and Pakistan were at a nadir in their relationship even before the operation to kill bin Laden for a number of reasons, which included the government contractor who was arrested for shooting several Pakistani citizens and drone strikes where civilians were unfortunately killed.  But behind the scenes, officials from both countries do meet and resolve issues, and the fact that Pakistan is a nuclear power influences the relationship.

Difficulty in getting HUMINT sources close to bin Laden

Mr. Hurley recommends reading Chapter 4 of the 9/11 Commission report and Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars to learn more about the difficulty of getting an intelligence asset close to Osama bin Laden.

Does the success of the drone campaign indicate intelligence on the ground has improved?

The issue has always been connecting real-time intelligence with a kinetic capability. There was a time when we had drones but they weren’t armed, so they would gather intelligence and then an airstrike would have to be called in, which took time. What has changed is that the intelligence a drone collects can be collated immediately with kinetic action, and decision-making on kill-strikes is now done at a lower level in the military and CIA. There are lists of people who have been approved for lethal action, so it is much easier to receive the go-ahead to pull the trigger when the opportunity arises.

I’m still currently in the program, but I plan to write a detailed and candid post once I finish and receive my degree. In the meantime, I’d be happy to tell you about the university, some of the courses, the academic staff, and the Department of War Studies in general if you send me an email at mail@smartwar.org. I know very little about the undergraduate War Studies degree, and the PhD is a different beast altogether from the MA, but if you’re interested in either of those I can still give you some general insights.

• States all over the world want to implement rules on the “cyberspace commons” now, but these would be hard to enforce since 95% of internet is privately-owned.
• Elements of the coming “perfect storm” in cyberspace:
• Changing architecture of cyberspace commons
• Demographic changes—while internet developed in the West, more and more users coming from East and South.
• Global cyber-crime
• Blurring of lines between cyber-espionage and cyber-crime
• Two more that I didn’t catch
• 3.8 billion of the 5.3 billion mobile phones used globally are in the developing world.
• The western world makes up 40% of cyberspace.
• While Asia makes up about 44% of cyberspace, it is only sixth in user penetration.
• Two-thirds of internet users are under the age of 25.
• Center of gravity in cyberspace is moving east and south, so we can expect a change in the character of the cyberspace commons.
• One trillion incidents of cyber-crime per year in Canada alone.
• GhostNet, which targeted high-value political and economic organizations, spread in part through social engineering. For example, an email pretending to be from a “Free Tibet” organization sent to the Tibet government-in-exile.
• Indian defense and diplomatic establishments compromised by another botnet, discovered by Citizens Lab and traced back to China (but no solid proof that it was directed by Chinese government).
• Methods used for cyber-espionage are indistinguishable from methods used by cyber-criminals.
• More countries are becoming engaged in internet filtering over time.
• Despite the internet-aided revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, most countries that try have successfully asserted control over the cyberspace commons.
• Governments with ill intentions have benefited from the internet as well: Iran crowdsourced identification of protesters during Green Revolution by setting up website with photos. [screenshot in slide looked almost like tagging Facebook photos]

Mr. Deibert made the point that crippling cyber-attacks against the US are not in China’s national interest, but states have the unfortunate tendency to act against their own interests quite a bit. The value to China of cyber-“warfare,” if we may use that term, lies in the fact that it provides coercive influence without the same negative effects or resource requirements as traditional, armed conflict. There is, however, a definite limit to how useful it can be outside of the realm of war.

We haven’t yet seen if the US or another country with advanced military capabilities is willing to respond to a major cyber-attack (and that alone) with conventional military action, but such a scenario is unlikely for several reasons. First, pinpointing the perpetrator of a cyber-attack is not a trivial task. Attacks can be traced to a geographical region easily enough, as many attacks from China have been, but identifying the sponsor of an attack requires hard intelligence from other sources. Deibert brought up an example of a botnet that was traced back to a specific university in China. Even that level of detailed tracing, however, doesn’t prove the Chinese government sponsored or ordered the activities. A military response would be a significant investment, and the severity of the effects of an attack would determine how solid the evidence against a country would have to be. Without a severe enough attack, public pressure will keep war out of the equation. Bullets and bombs are easy to understand, but the effects of a cyber-attack are not always so tangible. The public in general cannot conceptualize a cyber-attack unless it is causing widespread havoc, such as shutting down infrastructure or disrupting financial networks.

Second, the nature of cyber-warfare is very different from conventional military power, even if the effects are sometimes the same. Take the example of the alleged sabotage of the Trans-Siberian Pipeline by the CIA. Modifying software that was a likely target for theft by the KGB (allegedly) caused a massive, three kiloton explosion in a key piece of Soviet infrastructure. If the US had physically placed a three kiloton bomb (whether by aircraft or with commandos), the nature of the incident would have been quite different and a military crisis involving a direct confrontation between two superpowers would ensue. Cyber-warfare is cheap, but deploying a brigade combat team or flying sorties from an aircraft carrier are very, very expensive in terms of money and danger to lives. The threshold to respond to a cyber-attack with hard military power, with the associated risks and costs, is so high that a country willing to engage in such attacks would likely be at the point of open hostilities. A crippling cyber-attack would be the opening act of a traditional conflict—an appetizer rather than the main course.

That brings up the third point, which is that cyber-warfare is ancillary to traditional, bullets-and-bombs warfare. It acts as a force-multiplier by disrupting the enemy, but it alone cannot defeat the enemy. If the purpose of war is to make the enemy do your will, you need violence. Cyber-warfare alone is insufficient for that purpose, as violence can simply be used to stop you from conducting cyber-attacks. If a country is not willing to use military power, such escalation is not in its interest. Major, crippling cyber-attacks can do wonders in support of a war, but a country that is not willing to cross that threshold would have to satisfy itself with nuisance attacks and cyber-espionage instead. Stealing secrets from US defense contractors is certainly annoying as hell, but not quite enough to cause America to march to war. Something more drastic, like crippling a country’s internet service or disrupting its infrastructure networks, will not achieve anything on its own and likely incite a military response. That is obviously a huge problem if you’re only willing to commit cyber-resources to a conflict.

If the US does experience a major, crippling cyber-attack, we won’t even need to have the debate about whether or not to respond military. By design, the bombs and bullets will soon follow.

• Since 2008, the process of military transformation in Russia has led to a “civilianization” of armed forces leadership.
• Traditionally, General Staff would set policy and Ministry of Defence would implement it.
• Responsibilities shifting to MoD.
• MoD becoming civilian: last estimate is that out of 10,000 employees, only 3,000 are military.
• Former KGB and intelligence officers taking leadership roles.
• Security Council’s relevance began when Putin became Secretary in 1999.
• This year, the Security Council’s responsibilities were expanded to include forecasting & assessing threats and policy-making.
• Intelligence agencies have two seats on Security Council, but in practice at least six of eleven members have a background in the intelligence services.
• Former KGB members can be found everywhere oversight of the military is concerned.
• Example of intelligence services’ influence: Russian military felt it did not perform well in terms of information warfare during the 2008 war against Georgia. The FSB vetoed its attempts to create a dedicated information warfare section, as it wanted to handle all information warfare itself.
• Current military transformation marks the start of real civilian control of military, though not quite by Western standards. (Control by intelligence agencies would not be considered civilian in the West.)
• New command structure
• Military districts reorganized into four Joint Strategic Commands.
• Devolution of command authority down to district commanders, who now head Joint Strategic Commands (similar to US strategic commands?)
• Reasoning: preparing for local wars, where local administrator knows region of responsibility best. Possibly also meant to better prepare military for defense.
• Point of controversy: will local commander have authority to act independently of Moscow?
• There is a history of the military action without a higher level of approval.
• Possibility that 2008 war was started without prior civilian or military approval?
• Unclear exactly how Spetsnaz will be integrated into new structure.
• Transformation a way for Putin to put his cronies into place in preparation for his return to Presidency?
• Military is/was resistant to changes, though they have been unable to stop it.
• New leadership is heavily drawn from intelligence background like Putin, whereas military leadership is harder to personally control.
• Junior officers entering service now have grown up being told how the Soviet Union was the heyday of Russian primacy and power, but lack direct experience of the Soviet era means their perception not tempered by reality.
• NCO shortage because of lack of qualified candidates (ability to do quadratic equations apparently a requirement?), meanwhile a vast over-supply of junior officers. Thus junior officers end up filling NCO billets and quite unhappy about it.
• Planners’ ingenious solution to over-supply of junior officers was to stop all new officer intake. Soon-to-be shortage of officers likely forthcoming.

Personally, I’ve always considered Justice Potter Stewart’s thoughts on hardcore pornography instructive: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description… But I know it when I see it.”

Alas, that does not quite fly in the study of war, despite being a social science. Consider, then, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on “War“:

War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities. Thus, fisticuffs between individual persons do not count as a war, nor does a gang fight, nor does a feud on the order of the Hatfields versus the McCoys. War is a phenomenon which occurs only between political communities, defined as those entities which either are states or intend to become states (in order to allow for civil war).

This falls roughly in line with the definition Dr. Jan Willem Honig (who, with Dr. Michael Rainsborough, will be teaching the module) discussed. As Clausewitz notes in Chapter 1, §24 of On War, “war is not merely an act of policy but a true political statement, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means” (from the Howard & Paret translation). That politics is a necessary component of war is generally agreed upon, but what about the actors involved in war?

Soon after 9/11, Marcel Berlins wrote:

There can be no such thing, legally, as a war between a sovereign state and a group of terrorists. To talk of “declaring” war is therefore meaningless.

…

But all this definitional talk is of no consequence when the legal concept of war has long been overtaken by the reality of international and intra-national hostilities, and by the activities of terrorists. The decisions the USA is making will have very little to do with international law. The law is inadequate, out of date or nonexistent regarding the World Trade Centre outrage. The US cannot be blamed for, in effect, creating its own legal frameworks and definitions.

Dr. Honig brought up a point in class: does a violent conflict between gangs constitute a war? As any movie or TV show about any criminal organization (“The Sopranos” & “The Wire” immediately come to mind) will tell you, gang bosses love to employ military terminology: “soldiers” for street thugs, “war” for confrontations with other gangs, etc. There is no question that a crime “war” is not war in the conventional sense, nor would you even call it a war if one party was a state (think FBI vs. organized crime during Prohibition). Can non-state actors that lack aspirations to statehood but still have political objectives be involved in a conventional war?

One of al-Qaeda’s stated goals is the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate, but that’s a relatively nebulous objective that the terror network does not seem to have an active strategy to achieve. Their more immediate objectives are realistic and undoubtedly political, such as ending US influence in the Middle East. (The oft-cited al-Qaeda “grand strategy,” of provoking the US into invading a Muslim country and engaging it in a long war of attrition, first hypothesized by Bassam al-Baddarin, seems more likely to be an example of the organization engaging in historical revisionism and taking credit for an unintended consequence of the 9/11 attacks)

So al-Qaeda is a non-state actor not seeking control of a state, but possessing political objectives, strategy, and violence as part of its toolkit. Are the United States and al-Qaeda engaged in war? If not, does the modern understanding of “conventional war” have to be changed to reflect that?

Let’s put it this way: the MA department is so massive they split it up into two induction sessions, and even then mine was filled over capacity. I estimate there are about 300-400 MA candidates in total, and that includes the specializations within the department. While I am going for an MA in War Studies, I’ve met quite a few doing International Relations, Terrorism, International Peace & Security, and Conflict Studies (one day I’ll have to figure out the precise differences between all these concentrations). It’s also quite an international crowd, as one would expect in a field such as this.

I’m a huge fan of the Kings of War blog, so it was a bit surreal to see Dr. David Betz in the flesh to introduce us to the department. While King’s College doesn’t seem to have a well-run or communicative bureaucracy (I actually applied for admission last year, but was given my acceptance so late I had to defer to this year), now that I’m here, I’m quite excited to be part of the Department of War Studies, where Andrew Exum (author of another blog I’m a huge fan of) earned his PhD last year.

Part I of the Reading List for Newbies covers Blogs & Online News Sources. You can download all these feeds as an OPML file here, which can be imported into your favorite RSS reader. Click “subscribe” next to each category to get the feeds as a Google Reader bundle. The forthcoming Part II of the Reading List will cover books and periodicals.

(UPDATED 8/22/11: Added links to individual websites, plus links to a few sites I missed. h/t to Frances Arias and MilNews.ca for their suggestions.)

Essential Blogs & Online News Sources

Strategy (subscribe)

• The Long War Journal
• Abu Muqawama
• Ink Spots
• Kings of War
• The Offshore Balancer
• Think Defence
• Thinking Strategically
• Clausewitz (Economist)
• Atlantic Review
• On War and Words
• Rethinking Security
• The Best Defense
• Small Wars Journal

Intelligence (subscribe)

• Dirk’s Weblog
• Secrecy News
• National Security Archive (GWU)
• Sources and Methods
• Analysis Intelligence
• “Intelligence Community” feed (Google News)

Military Blogs + News (subscribe)

• Stars and Stripes
• Marine Corps Times
• Army Times
• DoD Buzz
• DefenseNews
• Danger Room (Wired)
• Rafairman’s Blog
• War is Boring
• Michael Yon
• Ares
• At War (NY Times)
• Military History Blog

Naval + Maritime (subscribe)

• Information Dissemination
• Navy Times
• Lloyd’s List – News
• NOSI Naval Intelligence Feed
• US Naval Institute blog

Regional (subscribe)

• Arabist
• Registan
• CHUP! (Changing Up Pakistan)
• Marc Lynch (FP)
• The AfPak Channel (FP)
• Waq al-Waq (Big Think)
• Wings Over Iraq
• Views From the Occident
• Latin America News Dispatch
• Security Scholar
• Ghosts of Alexander

Commentary (subscribe)

• Gunpowder and Lead
• Thomas Rid
• Shadow Government (FP)
• Dart-Throwing Chimp
• Informed Comment
• Passport (FP)
• Daniel W. Drezner (FP)
• The Future Forum
• @laurenist
• Foreign Policy Fight Club
• The Becker-Posner Blog
• On Violence
• Zenpundit

Resources (subscribe)

• The Oil and the Glory (FP)
• The Will and the Wallet

Terrorism (subscribe)

• Wanted Dead or Alive (as I said, fuzzy categorization)
• COMOPS Journal
• Jihadica
• Terrorism Monitor (Jamestown Foundation)
• All Things Counter-Terrorism

Miscellaneous (subscribe)

• War is Schlep – an entertaining comic blog by a freshly-commissioned Army Lieutenant
• Afghanistan Tour 2010 – not updated anymore, but it’s worth checking out the old posts

Other Useful Resources

• Afghanistan Analyst

Am I missing something? Sound off in the comments or email me about a blog or RSS feed I should be including.