Abstract
The state of development of the information society of a particular country can have a great influence on the outcome of a cyberwarfare in which it is involved. This influence, in the possible outcome of a war of this type, can be positive or negative. In addition, contrary to what might initially be thought, a low development of the information society can be advantageous to obtain a victory, if one strictly considers the scenario of cyberwar and the countries in confrontation. This way we analyze this influence and relationship between the information society and cyberwarfare in the scope of security and defense. We designate this dependency as Cybernetic Dependency Capacity. This dependence is a very important factor in the results of cyberwarfare actions and can be positive or negative for both technologically developed and less-developed countries. For these reasons, the destiny of any country, within the scope of a cyberwar, is very influenced by the dependence of this country of their information society. As a major development of the IT society in one country will not make it theoretically victorious in a cyberwarfare with a country less IT developed. This fact, which is apparently paradoxical, is because the larger information society of a country is more informatics systems have to exist. Then, if much more informatics systems exist, more cyber-doors are open for cyber-attacks, because the probability of these systems will be unprotected, from the point of view of cyber-attacks, increases with the growth in the number of computers systems. For the same reason, the countries with less dependence on the information society do not have this cyber-permeability and may be more cyber-resilient. In the limit, theoretically, the least dependent cyber-country can be the winner and the most dependent and as such, technologically more developed, be the loser in a cyberwar between the two. These scenarios are also applicable to non-states and terrorist organizations and for these reasons should be analyzed and considered in the definition of the cyber-defense policies of any country, namely in the factors like a Cybernetic Attack Capacity and a Cybernetic Dependency Capacity.
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Acknowledgements
I thank the Portuguese National Defense Institute as well as the ISEC/IPC for the support and facilities granted.
This paper is based on the work Final Report of National Defense Course, done by the author in the Portuguese National Defense Institute.
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Barbosa, J. (2020). Cybernetic Dependency Capacity. In: Rocha, Á., Pereira, R. (eds) Developments and Advances in Defense and Security. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 152. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9155-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9155-2_3
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