From: David Honig <honig@otc.net>
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 02:24:08 +0800
To: Ryan Lackey <weidai@eskimo.com>
Subject: Re: cypherpunks and guns
In-Reply-To: <Wei Dai's message of Tue, 6 Jan 1998 00:51:36 -0800>
Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980106100807.007ab610@otc.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 05:28 AM 1/6/98 -0500, Ryan Lackey wrote:
>
>I am fairly certain that as an irregular army soldier I could inflict
>a substantial amount of damage upon an occupying military.  With maybe
>$20k in equipment and several hundred hours of training, you could make
>life very difficult for any luckless squad that happens your way.  Multiply
>that by 100 million armed citizens and you see that armed civilian
>resistance *can* defeat an occupying army.

A distributed decentralized terrorist group can trash almost any country's
infrastructure as well.  The gov't knows this, but if it were to start
happening (or their intelligence indicated it might) guards would be 
sent to the power stations, transformers, water works, radio relays, 
NAPs, refineries, etc.  

These guards would be physical, guarding physical resources against 
physical threats.  They would be able to resist smaller threats.
As you say, if outnumbered, they're eventually hosed.

The recent gov't interest in 'cyber' threats against infrastructure
reflects the fact that the government doesn't dominate the digital domain,
and can't protect it with troops, and needs it to run civilization and its
armies.





------------------------------------------------------------
      David Honig                   Orbit Technology
     honig@otc.net                  Intaanetto Jigyoubu

	"How do you know you are not being deceived?" 
	---A Compendium of Analytic TradeCraft Notes, 
	Directorate of Intelligence, CIA