China also is interested in you

Yesterday I quoted the aphorism about war being interested in you, even if you weren't interested in war. This morning the NYT has a piece about cyberwarfare, which China has busily been waging against Google, other American corporations, and probably the US Defense Department and your personal email account. Concludes Thom Shanker of a simulated attack: 'The enemy had all the advantages: stealth, anonymity and unpredictability.'

Sounds a lot like the Taliban, doesn't it? Not to mention the Viet Cong, the Chindits, the Irish Republican Army, the Arab Legion, the Boers, Quantrill's Raiders, Commandante Theresa of the Peninsular Wars, the Minutemen, Roger's Rangers.... Irregulars have been baffling regulars ever since warfare was defined as the exclusive business of the nation-state, at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Cyberwarfare is just another front in this endless contest of the weak against the strong.

Colin Gray wrote a brilliant and overlooked book on the subject of how war was going to play out in the 21st century: Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (Phoenix Press). I'm reading it now. I can't believe it wasn't required reading in War in the Modern World. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford