More on North Korea’s cyberwarfare capabilities

StrategyPage offers some sober reflections on the very possibility of North Korean cyberwarfare units and looks closer at the mysterious Mirim college. So do the North Korean cyberwarriors exist, or are they a creation of South Korean intelligence agencies trying to obtain more money to upgrade government Information War defenses? North Korea probably has some ...

StrategyPage offers some sober reflections on the very possibility of North Korean cyberwarfare units and looks closer at the mysterious Mirim college.

StrategyPage offers some sober reflections on the very possibility of North Korean cyberwarfare units and looks closer at the mysterious Mirim college.

So do the North Korean cyberwarriors exist, or are they a creation of South Korean intelligence agencies trying to obtain more money to upgrade government Information War defenses? North Korea probably has some personnel working on Internet issues. North Korea probably has a unit devoted to Internet based warfare. But we know that North Korea has a lot of military units that are competent, in the same way robots are. The North Koreans picked this technique up from their Soviet teachers back in the 1950s. North Korea is something of a museum of Stalinist techniques. But it’s doubtful that their Internet experts are flexible and innovative enough to be a real threat. Nevertheless, we know that, a decade ago, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il ordered that more emphasis be placed on Internet based espionage, as it was becoming increasingly difficult to set up spy networks in South Korea.

I agree. Same probably goes for Russia and many other states: all the youngest & the brightest simply have no incentives to go work for the state. Even if they do (at least, the patriotic ones amongst them), the state hardly ever has enough resources or know-how to keep them happy – so they leave for the private sector pretty soon.

Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Society Institute and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. He writes the Net Effect blog on ForeignPolicy.com
Tag: War

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