IoT for Defense and National Security

21Use and Abuse of IoT: Challenges and Recommendations

Robert Douglass

Alta Montes, LLC, Sandy, Utah, USA

Abstract

IoT has tremendous potential to aid national defense and homeland security. It can provide comprehensive surveillance of entire cities and populations as well as implement rapid, distributed measures of response and control. IoT offers power well beyond mass surveillance and information extraction. IoT fuses three elements: sensing/information extraction, intelligent processing, and physical control of the environment through automated actions. By integrating these three elements in real time across dispersed networks of devices, IoT gives us a novel and uniquely powerful new force to physically alter the environment and the people in it. IoT will impact the way nations conduct wars and maintain peace. No nation can ignore the advance of IoT for defense and hope to ensure its national security. The potential benefits are just beginning to be understood. The potential dangers were envisioned at least as early as 1949 by George Orwell. Some nations are already using the power of IoT to help suppress terrorism and enforce the rule of law. Other nations are using it to suppress all opposition to the ruling government. Other chapters in this book have focused on securing IoT from attack by hostile agents. This chapter focuses on the complimentary problem: protecting individuals and societies from attack by hostile agents using IoT. The central theme of this chapter ...