The US military's famed scientific wingnut farm, DARPA*, has released full details of its planned "National Cyber Range" - a mighty network which could be configured to simulate the cyberspace battlefields of the future. This would allow America's fighting nerds to train for the net conflicts of tomorrow, mounting attacks on simulated enemies or defending against devastating cyber strikes by the enemies of democracy.

The Cyber Range proposal was trailed last December, but yesterday full details for those wishing to become network killing-house builders were issued (Word file).

Essentially, DARPA seem to be after something not unlike an entire simulated world. The Range must "enable realistic testing of Internet/Global Information Grid (GIG) scale research [and] simulate national or global communications systems".

This virtual world must, of course, contain computers - of pretty much any type:

The NCR must be capable of taking a physical computer and rapidly creating a functionally equivalent, logical instance of that machine that can be replicated repeatedly... Given a never-before-seen physical computing device, [the Range must] create logical instantiations of the physical native machine that accurately replicates, not only the software on the machine, but hardware to the interrupt level, chipset, and peripheral cards and devices...

And that's not all. The Cyber Range must also be populated with simulated human beings to play the parts of users, sysadmins and so forth. DARPA refers to these software sim-people as "replicants".

Replicants must be capable of implementing multiple user roles... Replicant behavior will change as the network environment changes, as the replicated “outside environment” (i.e. DefCon, InfoCon, execution of war plans, etc) changes, and as network activity changes (detected attacks, degradation of services, etc)... Replicants will simulate physical interaction with device peripherals, such as keyboard and mice... Replicants will drive all common applications...

But all this is merely scene-setting. Moving among the swarming virtual machines and people "injected" into DARPA's Matrix-esque warzone will be the network combatants of the USA and its enemies - the OpFor, or opposing forces. The Cyber Range agents of OpFor aren't going to be script kiddies in their underpants operating from bedrooms in their parents' house. They're going to be more like Operation Screaming Fist**, or perhaps Agent Smith.

Realistic, sophisticated, nation-state quality offensive and defensive opposition forces... Capabilities include sophisticated cyber activity, from defending national assets, to computer network attack... cyber adversaries [equipped with] a malware library of offensive tools for use by DARPA-authorized individuals on the range [and] a defensive tools library...

Battling these fearsome enemies amid the hapless simulant hordes will be the cream of America's elite combat geeks, armed with network weapons of fearful potency - or "potentially revolutionary cyber research and development technologies", as DARPA puts it. The Pentagon's network gladiators add that "the range must be capable of testing a variety of technology thrusts [and] classified cyber programs".

Unsurprisingly, with crack Pentagon dorks tooled up with secret cyber thrust packages battling "nation-state quality" opposition packing weapons-grade malware, DARPA expect a lot of virtual devastation and e-blood all over the carpet. Even so, the Range must be able to clean itself up and rebuild instantly - or "sanitize resources securely and rapidly when resources are freed from tests".

It's also important that none of the devastating cyberplagues and self-replicating code pestilences unleashed in the Range get out of control. The builders must "ensure data does not spill across tests and testbeds while on the range or archived... [and] ensure a test does not perform an unintended denial of service on other tests".

And just in case all that wasn't enough, the Range must also be able to function as a time machine.

Time Dilation/Contraction... [Contractors must] develop technologies to accelerate or decelerate test time (relative to reality); to enable new capabilities (for example, to create bandwidths that are not commercially available today)...

The whole business plainly raises quite a few questions, not least the obvious one: will the Replicants know they are only software running in a giant battle simulation? And how can we be sure we aren't in the Range already? ®

*Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency

**From the seminal work Neuromancer. As if you didn't know.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

It's a thorough and devastating portrait, and every word deserves reading, largely because it lays bare the machinations that went into selling the war to the public. Yet in some ways, none of this is particularly new for anyone with eyes and ears beforehand. Did anyone watch these guys perform on TV and not intuit immediately that they were in the tank for Rumsfeld and Co.?

A crystalline example of this came during what was known as "the Generals' Revolt":

The full dimensions of this mutual embrace were perhaps never clearer than in April 2006, after several of Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals — none of them network military analysts — went public with devastating critiques of his wartime performance. Some called for his resignation.

On Friday, April 14, with what came to be called the “Generals’ Revolt” dominating headlines, Mr. Rumsfeld instructed aides to summon military analysts to a meeting with him early the next week, records show. When an aide urged a short delay to “give our big guys on the West Coast a little more time to buy a ticket and get here,” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office insisted that “the boss” wanted the meeting fast “for impact on the current story.”

That same day, Pentagon officials helped two Fox analysts, General McInerney and General Vallely, write an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal defending Mr. Rumsfeld.

“Starting to write it now,” General Vallely wrote to the Pentagon that afternoon. “Any input for the article,” he added a little later, “will be much appreciated.” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office quickly forwarded talking points and statistics to rebut the notion of a spreading revolt.

“Vallely is going to use the numbers,” a Pentagon official reported that afternoon.

The standard secrecy notwithstanding, plans for this session leaked, producing a front-page story in The Times that Sunday. In damage-control mode, Pentagon officials scrambled to present the meeting as routine and directed that communications with analysts be kept “very formal,” records show. “This is very, very sensitive now,” a Pentagon official warned subordinates.

On Tuesday, April 18, some 17 analysts assembled at the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

A transcript of that session, never before disclosed, shows a shared determination to marginalize war critics and revive public support for the war.

“I’m an old intel guy,” said one analyst. (The transcript omits speakers’ names.) “And I can sum all of this up, unfortunately, with one word. That is Psyops. Now most people may hear that and they think, ‘Oh my God, they’re trying to brainwash.’ ”

“What are you, some kind of a nut?” Mr. Rumsfeld cut in, drawing laughter. “You don’t believe in the Constitution?”

There was little discussion about the actual criticism pouring forth from Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals. Analysts argued that opposition to the war was rooted in perceptions fed by the news media, not reality. The administration’s overall war strategy, they counseled, was “brilliant” and “very successful.”

Of course, fairly early on in this conflict, there were in fact questions raised about whether the Pentagon was engaging in Psyops tactics, with the American public as the target; some of us even pondered the effects this program might have on democratic discourse.

But then, those concerns were either largely ignored or dismissed as paranoid alarmism. Now it's clear that there were reasons for that. After all, the media were too busy giving airtime to "serious" folks.

Rick Perlstein has more.