Since its founding in 2005, Ontonix has focused its QCM (Quantitative Complexity Management) technology on protection, problem prevention, ‘robustification’, early warnings and identification of crisis precursors in diverse fields and industries (manufacturing, engineering design, economics, finance, traffic control, medicine, etc.).
The present blog introduces a new exotic application of the QCM technology – the use of complexity as a systemic offensive tool:
The goal is not to prevent crises or systemic collapses, the objective is to cause them.
In fact, QCM technology can be used as a new, unconventional global weapon in the context of Offensive Cyber Operations (OCO). The idea is to inject complexity into adversary’s networks, damaging or debilitating their hubs (not hubs of traffic but hubs of complexity) and propagating on a large-scale the effects of such an attack. The goal is to increase complexity to its critical levels so as to induce systemic fragility, vulnerability to trigger cascading failures by injections of minor amounts of energy. While focused, surgical attacks on a particular piece of equipment (STUXNET) will always be necessary, complexity-based OCOs are at the opposite end of the spectrum.
Inducing critical complexity levels in strategic networks can offer an effective preemptive measure which can soften enemy’s critical infrastructures prior to a more conventional attack. Complexity-based aggression, when implemented on a large-scale (i.e. when targeted at large networks or interconnected systems of networks) can offer a ‘subtle’ low-intensity and low-visibility intervention, which is hard to trace.
When it comes to attacking very large, highly complex systems or networks, which may contain millions of nodes, there are two questions that are key to the success of a complexity-based aggression:
- where to strike – an attack should maximize damage with given energy expenditure. Good targets for attack are complexity hubs, which do not necessarily correspond to locations of maximum traffic concentration or transfer of energy or data. Complexity hubs drive the fragility of a network and in most cases are often non-intuitive as complexity is never measured.
- when to strike – timing is always a crucial factor. In highly complex systems complexity hubs change over time. It is crucial to strike a system not just at its weakest points but also to do so when maximum damage can be expected. Such a state corresponds to the state of critical complexity. many complex systems sometimes come close to their critical complexity in a cyclic fashion. Often their operators have no idea that this is happening.
In a highly complex and dynamic context it is not easy to answer the above questions with conventional technologies. This is because conventional techniques do not measure complexity – the natural, endogenous enemy of large and critical infrastructures. This is why Artificial Intelligence won’t work. It cannot measure complexity, which needs to be computed, not guessed by manipulation of huge amounts of data.
Below is an example of a Complexity Map of a particular critical infrastructure at a given moment in time. The system in question is approaching its critical complexity (click image to enlarge).
The optimal targets are quite obvious. Close to critical complexity it is possible to mortally cripple a large system without the need to invest large amounts of energy or assets. This is because critically complex systems are immensely fragile.
Artificial Intuition 
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