The SR strategy is one of exclusively taking the position of the interior.
defenders are in what military strategist Carl von Clausewitz calls "the position of the interior." They have to defend against every possible attack, while the defector only has to find one flaw that allows one way through the defenses ........ The attacker's clear advantage increases the scope of defection even further.
Being purely defensive gives extreme advantages to your attacker. They are defensive and offensive. You are not going to win a war by purely defensive tactics, you are only going to ensure that a single mistake on your part is all it takes for an attacker to defeat you. You should force your adversary to also take the position of the interior in respect to their own strategies, because then they also are forced to protect from every single possible attack, a much less pleasant position to be in than eternally waiting for one single weakness in their opponent.
With all due respect to you (and none whatsoever to "Carl von") this is horseshit. Clausewitz was a wanker officer type who made his bread and butter catering to other wanker types whose job it was to look dashing while peasant armies clashed for their edification. He was an aide-de-camp.. not a fighting general and as such his thoughts on strategy should be taken with the huge caveat that they are meant to be flattering to the mindset of the professional officer (i.e. by definition WANKERS).
This "oh so nice" idea of the "strategy of the interior" is completely based on line formations and taking territory. It simply doesn't WORK in asymetric warfare, or any sort of guerilla action. Nor is it any sort of metaphor for law enforcement or a COIN operation.
"..extension of diplomacy by other means" my left nut. Clausewitz can suck a dick, this is a conflict between a regime and multiple non-state actors existing embedded in a territory ideologically contested by both. As such the notions of what long dead pettifrogged wankers from the age of cannons and glory think is only relevant by accident.
The position of the interior is widely recognized as being "not bullshit" by pretty much every security expert and military strategist, and as applying to all scenarios with an attacker and a defender. It still holds true for asymmetric warfare, the defender needs to prevent all potential attacks and the attacker only needs to find one way to attack that will not be prevented. Here is the entire quote:
Network security is an arms race, and the attackers have all the advantages. First, network defenders occupy what military strategists call "the position of the interior": the defender has to defend against every possible attack, while the attacker only has to find one weakness. Second, the immense complexity of modern networks makes them impossible to properly secure. And third, skilled attackers can encapsulate their attacks in software, allowing people with no skill to use them. It's no wonder businesses can't keep up with the threat.
oops wrong one
defenders are in what military strategist Carl von Clausewitz calls "the position of the interior." They have to defend against every possible attack, while the defector only has to find one flaw that allows one way through the defenses. As systems get more complicated due to technology, more attacks become possible. This means defectors have a first-mover advantage; they get to try the new attack first. Consequently, society is constantly responding: shoe scanners in response to the shoe bomber, harder-to-counterfeit money in response to better counterfeiting technologies, better antivirus software to combat new computer viruses, and so on. The attacker's clear advantage increases the scope of defection even further.
I don't necessarily support violence being used against law enforcement (not that I give a flying fuck if they all die), but there are more sorts of attack than violent. They can be hacked and information on their agents dumped, undercovers can have their covers blown, pretty much any disruptive thing against them. One of our goals should be to be as disruptive to their operations as possible, not just to protect ourselves from them. As long as we are the only ones with anything to lose and they are the only ones with anything to gain, things are not going to go to our favor. We need to make them want us to stop compromising them, not just fend them off in the hopes that we can prevent them from compromising us. Protecting from compromise is much harder than compromising, due to the full position of the interior logic.
Visualize yourself as being tasked with defending a home from a burglar. You need to make sure every door is locked with a lock that can't be picked, that every window is locked and shatter proof, that a tunnel can not be dug under the house and into it, that the chimney can not be used as an access point, etc etc. All the burglar needs to do is find one way to enter the home. Obviously they have the much easier job.
The same concept applies equally to us. We need to make sure we can't be compromised via financial traces, via communications interception, via network analysis, via hacking, via the mail system via dozens and dozens of potential ways to fuck up and the dozens and dozens of implementations of those ways that we could fuck up. All LE needs to do is find a single way that they can compromise us. We are clearly taking the position of the interior, and I think it is bad that we are the ones in this position while we completely ignore the fact that we should be focused on not only defending our own selves but also compromising our opponents.
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