The end of the Cold War has brought into sharper focus the many aspects of security which are beyond the stark fear of loss of territorial integrity, which has characterised national defence policies for so long. These new security concerns, sometimes characterised as soft security issues, were not all born as a result of the end of the superpower confrontation, but have assumed relatively greater importance now that the threat of a nuclear global war has declined so markedly. Technology has an impact on these new security concerns, and just as in the more traditional defence field, the impact of technology can be for good or ill. In this short presentation, I shall cover those aspects of wider security concerns in which it seems that technology is a key factor, and what this may mean for public policy.
Governments are expected to take steps to ensure the security of their citizens. While in the traditional narrow sense this has meant adopting a defence policy which provides appropriate military and diplomatic capability to deter, or if necessary repel, any threat to national vital interests, we now look to appropriate provision for the current - and perhaps as importantly future - well-being of our citizens. We can thus think of security in terms of protecting our citizens from a number of potential ills. Physical violence against citizens may come from war, from terrorism or from crime. It can also come from nature in the form of natural disasters: earthquake, floods, fires, famine and hurricanes. Citizens expect governments to protect them from early death or disability, and so the control of disease becomes a security issue in this brave new world. We also expect our children and grandchildren to be protected from current activities which may harm them in the future. Environmental issues become vital interests for nations, particularly when the economic effects of today have to be offset against the environmental effects of tomorrow.
We live in a time of extraordinary technological change. It is not a new development that economic success is every bit as important to national security as the provision of a sufficient military capability. The interdependence of the world in the economic field has made this a much more complex area for public policy, and new national vulnerabilities have emerged which are exacerbated by technological developments.
In brief, national security must consider the classic threats to territorial integrity and vital interests, and in addition add the concerns about terrorism, crime (both internal and international), disease, poverty, migration (either for economic or terror reasons), environmental and pollution threats, access to and availability of required natural resources, economic viability and vulnerability to external actors.
If we have a number of new concerns which fall into the security category, we also have a bewildering number of technologies which affect these new threats for good or ill. Perhaps the most important examples of these are the developments in information technology and biotechnology. This is not to ignore the important roles that the many other research fields in mathematics, chemistry and physics are having, and I shall touch on some of those as well. However to try to contain my topic to manageable proportions, let me just look at these two - information technology and biotechnology - for a moment.
We have grown used to the effects of Moore's Law, the doubling of computing power every 18 months. I bought my first personal computer just 20 years ago. It cost just on £3000 at today's prices and it had 8k Ram. Compare that with today's desktop machines which have the power of yesterday's supercomputers, Ram of 64 Mb and can be bought in a supermarket for less than £1000. The Y2K, the Millennium Bug, problem has brought home to us how dependent we have become on computers in every form. Integrated circuits, which so reduced the cost of manufacturing electronic devices through mass production techniques, are in every corner of society. They have given us extraordinary benefits in cost reduction and in capability increase in devices from the egg timer to the space shuttle. Yet dependence carries with it new vulnerabilities. The Millennium Bug is a security issue. If fly by wire aircraft crash, international financial transactions are scrambled, and nuclear power station controls malfunction through a program bug - the effects are real, and governments are expected to safeguard citizens from the consequences. Perhaps we should be grateful to those early Cobol programmers for leaving this legacy to remind us not to abandon the normal manual safeguards
If we expand the information technology concerns to the implications of interconnected systems, we have an area that gives rise to a number of extra security concerns. Many of you will be aware in the military sphere of the focus, particularly in the United States on Information Warfare - an omnibus title that encompasses many of the military strengths and weakness that arise from the new reliance on computing power, communications and connectivity. I will not spend too much time on this as we can come back to it in our discussions. Suffice it to say, that from a military point of view information warfare is nothing new - the technologies and techniques may be novel, but the battle and counter-battle in the the information field has a long history.
What is new are the non-military security concerns which stem from the wired world. The electronic global banking system offers opportunities to the high tech criminal or the terrorist. There are worries that enemy states might be able to disrupt economies by hacking such systems. Protective measures are needed for commercial reasons, but there seems little doubt that any computer connected to an external communications system is at risk. It is fascinating watching the internet community at work breaking new encryption techniques, offering advice on the ways to get through firewalls, and designing ever more malignant viruses, trojan horses and worms. Nor do you have to be a computer whizz to cause catastrophic failure of data systems. A small quantity of crude explosive at a key node in a system is always an alternative for the less technically able terrorist. We have therefore new vulnerabilities across a range of key systems in banking, energy, air traffic, and a thousand other parts of a modern society's infrastructure that are potentially more vulnerable as a result of new technology.
Perhaps one other aspect of the internet and security that is important to this audience is the empowerment of individuals with information. It is now ever more difficult to keep secrets. Information flashes around the world, and coupled with satellite phone systems, pictures, sound and information is available instantaneously everywhere. This should not be a problem for liberal democracies most of the time, but it will embarrass on occasions. It is of course also a very effective and cheap way to propagate misinformation, which may be a security concern as single issue groups try to change public opinion. I think on balance however this aspect of the internet has many more positive aspects for liberal democracies.
Let me turn to the second major example of how technology is changing our definition of security. The field of biotechnology is perhaps at the stage that the information revolution was at 30 years ago. It took two decades of research to move from Crick and Watson's discovery of how genetic information was stored and replicated through the double helix structure of the Deoxyribonucleic acid - DNA - molecule, to developing techniques for manipulating these genetic codes. Now, we are making progress in mapping the human genome, assisted by the computing power that is now available. Genetic engineering is refining techniques for altering the characteristics of any living things from viruses to mammals. The prospect of being able to select required characteristics and then replicate through cloning is already moving from the laboratory into the commercial field as we see with the current interest in genetically modified foods. This new technology is still in its infancy, and like so many advances can be used for good or ill. It also introduces new concerns about unintended consequences.
In the direct military security field, we are of course worried by the implications of biotechnology for new forms of biological warfare. Although BW is not new - the Mongols used plague corpses in 1346 to infect the defenders at the siege of Caffa - it has been used rarely as a weapon of war and to no great effect. From a military point of view, BW has been unpredictable, unreliable and slow. As a terror weapon, disease does have greater potential, but again the bomb has been the preferred weapon of terrorist through the ages for its immediacy, predictability and ease of manufacture. These limitations on the efficacy of BW weapons may change significantly as agents can be tailored to have particular characteristics. An agent with the speed and deadliness of the ebola virus might be given the infectivity of 'flu, and perhaps even more terrifyingly be designed to target people with particular genetic markers. This would be a weapon that targeted ethnic groups. It is encouraging that the Biological Weapons Convention has been formulated ahead of the development of such weapons. However, the problems of verification are immense, and as genetic engineering becomes more commonplace, as every human gene is mapped and labelled, and biotechnology moves from the laboratory to the workplace, the risks will rise significantly.
Let me not leave you with an unmitigated vision of gloom, because as with most technology in the weapons field it can be applied to the defence as well as the offence. We can expect genetic engineering to provide fast detectors of threat and antidotes. However as the search for a cure for HIV/AIDS has shown, finding successful techniques is not easy.
But we are talking about new and wider security concerns that stem from technological developments. I shall not rehearse the arguments currently in play over the question of GM crops. It is clear that there is a wider security issue in terms of the health of populations. We may be able to use biotechnology to provide more food for the world, and hence reduce one of the long term security concerns, but if the unintended consequence is a repeat of the DDT problem, or the BSE crisis, the net effect may not be to enhance the safety of our peoples.
Biotechnology really is in its infancy, and the effects on the world can only be guessed at. As we design organisms for specific purposes, we may find that we will be able to use microbes to produce oil substitutes directly from plants, just in the same way as yeast produces alcohol from sugars. This could bring geostrategic changes if the importance of underground oil was diminished. We may see the next stage of improving integrated circuit density being achieved by growing the circuits. Bio chips might then replicate themselves and be self repairing.
As I said in my opening remarks, we are now having to address a much wider range of security concerns and some will stem from new technologies and some will find their solution through technical advances. The world's need for energy, and the consequent effect on the environment, is a growing security issue. The problem is not generated by technology - global warming, pollution and decreasing biodiversity - will come from old fashioned energy generation using fossil fuel. The solution to the problem may come from a mix of new technologies. Some of the most exciting possibilities for the future may come from nanotechnology. Already machines of atomic dimension are beginning to be realised in the laboratory. The implications of these developments are in time possibly going to rival the information revolution and the possibilities we are now realising through biotechnology.
As we meet, the security concerns are less those posed by new technologies, but more those defined by deep historical divides dating from 600 years of history in the Balkans. New technologies in terms of sensors, satellite navigation, smart weapons, stealth, cruise missiles, laser designation, electronic warfare, real time intelligence and all the gadgets of modern warfare are on show. Yet the nature of the conflict is not affected by the technology. The effectiveness of the systems may be orders of magnitude greater than those of the World War 2, but we still see an air campaign with a traditional sequence of targets. Interestingly one of the major concerns that is emerging in NATO is the likely difficulty of interoperability between allies as US technology continues to draw further ahead. Again terrorists still prefer the old fashioned bomb as a weapon of terror. Technology offers more effective counter-measures, but the ability for terrorists to cause havoc remains. Our worries about nuclear weapons tend to stem from old systems ("loose nukes") which might be sold on, rather than new technology. The decreasing expenditure on defence budgets will also slow up the introduction of new technology to armed forces.
The vulnerabilities that I have touched upon are all aspects of the technologically based society. This is not new. As countries industrialised they became more dependent on a complex infrastructure, which gave new vulnerabilities. The failure of one electric power sub-station can knock out whole districts for prolonged periods, with further cascading effects on other parts of society. The incorrect handling of a nuclear power station can cause contamination across a continent. As we learn to rely on the benefits of technology, we introduce new dependencies and hence new vulnerabilities.
The most important need is for policy makers to have a sound understanding of all the implications of new technologies. Many nations underinvest in the key research areas for wider security needs. In a book that I wrote ten years ago (The Technology Trap) , I concluded that we needed more scientists in the corridors of government. I think the need is now even more urgent.
Sir Timothy Garden
30 March 1999