UNIVERSITATEA BUCUREȘTI

FACULTATEA DE ȘTIINȚE POLITICE

SECȚIA – RELAȚII INTERNAȚIONALE ȘI STUDII EUROPENE

LUCRARE DE LICENȚĂ
NEW SECURITY CHALLENGES IN THE KNOWLEDGE
SOCIETY

Absolvent
Elena Petrescu
Coordonator
Prof. Univ. Dragoș Petrescu

București
2018
Abstract

The international system is a volatile environment whose game rules are permanently changing
under the influence of a series of factors arisen in a certain period. Each change in the way it is
functioning makes imperative for analysts to come up with new theories and new solutions. In
the current interconnected world, security challenges are becoming increasingly complex. The
process of globalization and the dispersion of hyper-connected technologies, gave birth to a new
suite of security challenges.
Nowadays, we are confronting with a huge range of new threats, vulnerabilities and risks. The
Internet, for example, has triggered an explosion of open sources within the informational
environmental. That tsunami of information has flooded the cyberspace and it created a series of
instruments and tools that can be used by certain actors to manipulate and disinformation the
masses.
Risks need a more complex and innovative strategy in order to be managed at the national and
international level. Enhancing the security culture and educating the individual from a fragile age
(in order to become a responsible, informed and aware person who will be not only a consumer
but also a provider of security) are essential elements in the process of shaping an intelligent
nation.

2
 CONTENT

Introduction – The evolution of the security environment in the XXI century

1. Context and purposes of the paper
2. Structure of the paper
3. Theoretical-methodological framework
Chapter 1. New security challenges
1.1. The impact of new technologies on the international security environment
1.2. The emergence of new actors on the international scene and shifts in the classical
security studies paradigms
1.3. Cyberterrorism
1.4. Facepaganda and Tweetpaganda
Chapter 2. The knowledge society
2.1 From information society to knowledge society
2.2 Towards a knowledge building theory for future public policies
2.3 The role of security culture in the knowledge society
2.4 The role of intelligence services in the knowledge society
Chapter 3. Study case – Security Culture in Romania
3.1.Vulnerabilities in the Romanian security system
3.2. The need of a stronger security culture in Romania
3.3. A strategy for responding to security challenges in a knowledge society
Conclusions
Bibliography
Annexes

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Introduction – The evolution of the security environment in the XXI century

1. Context and purposes of the paper

For more than three centuries, the Westphalian system of sovereign nation-states
prevailed over our society. It implied an unfettered authority of the national state to exercise
sovereignty, without other external entity interfering in its internal affairs; and a clearly-defined
structure characterized by a system of customs, national armies and weaponry. 1 Even though
territorial boundaries still play a pivotal role and the state system as configured by the Treaty of
Westphalia is still relevant in understanding international relations, the twenty first century
introduced novel elements on the scene. Nowadays, actors with limited capital and crowdsourced
manpower have the power to challenge nation-states.

The beginning of the XXI century fiercely hit the post-Cold war international order. The
9/11 event was not only a terrorist attack, but a real signal that the world was changing
completely; in a plenary unipolar international system, with the United Sates as the only
superpower, a new entity arose on the international arena, showing impressive capabilities of
striking the existing order. Fareed Zakaria described the beginning of the third millennium as “a
post-American world”, but not in the sense of a declining America, but as a striking “rise of the
others” that brings on the stage a multitude of factors, actors and processes which fundamentally
redefined the international order2. “The rise of the others” is the third event of the main tectonic
power shifts3 over the last five hundred years that completely changed the distribution of power
within the international system, that Zakaria depicts in his book4. States ceased to be the only
actors endowed with power of influencing the international injunction as new preeminent forces

1
Marc Goodman, “The Power of Moore’s Law in a World of Geotechnology”, National Interest, No. 123. (January-
February 2013): 64, accessed on May 19, 2018, http://nationalinterest.org/files/digital-
edition/1357567877/123%20Digital%20Edition.pdf.
2
Freed Zakaria, “The post-American world”, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008: 1-5.
3
In “The post-American world”, Freed Zakaria depicts three main episodes that transformed the international realm
of power: the rise of the Western world, the rise of the United States and the rise of the rest (which refers both to the
rise of Asia, Mexico and some South American states but also to the rise nonstate actors).
4
Ibidem.

4
which transcend geographic boundaries, such as drug cartels, insurgents, terrorist group and
militias of all type started to play a pivotal role in shaping international relations too.
But the new architecture of the international system and security environment in the
twenty first century was not transformed only because new actors are cohabiting or competing
with nation-states, but also because globalization and new technologies were spreading across
the world at an impressive rate. The Internet put the basis of a novel social and socializing
forum, in which people can access information, exchange ideas and thoughts or simply entertain
themselves. The fact that information can be sent from Sydney to Madrid at the speed of light
over a fiber network had a colossal impact on the society at large but also on economics and the
international system in particular. The bytes are strenuously running from a country to another,
without passing through customs or being subdued to any kind of restriction. Conventional
barriers crumbled in the cyberspace, allowing certain individuals to accomplish malicious goals
and challenging this way, the international security apparatus.

That technological boom of the 90s has rapidly spreading across the globe, increasing
opportunities but also posing serious threats to the apparent stability installed after the end of the
Cold War. More and more cases (from personal experience to severe attacks against
governmental or banking computer systems) reinforced my conviction that traditional paradigms
of international relations and regional and national defense strategies seem obsolete in front of
new challenges. 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia, RockYou (2009), 2010 cyberattacks on Burma,
Stuxnet (2010), Red October (2012), 2013 Singapore cyberattacks, TV5Monde April 2015
cyberattack, WannaCry (2017), Petya (2017), are only few examples to understand how perilous
could the new technologies become, if unscrupulous entities used them in malevolent scopes and
if innovative solutions in the education at large and the intelligence in particular fields are not
promptly taken.

And this is not all. The most vulnerable element of this immense ocean of cyberthreats
remains the human component. The Internet represents nowadays an essential commodity and a
vital part of our routine. We use it for communicating, for looking for information about an
essay, for listening to the news, for shopping, for administrating our bank accounts, for finding
the way to a certain destination and the list continues. However, that Internet dependency does
not come with instructions, people are not thought how to distinguish between bad and good,

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fake and true, threat and opportunity; they deliberately make use of those technological assets.
But how dangerous can those threats become? How could they develop into real risks for
national security? Are individuals or the bodies in charge with national security ready to face
these fresh challenges?

Now that the grosso modo evolution of the international system in the last three decades
is stated and the focal elements that influence it are mentioned, I would like to frame the double
steps which will be taken in this paper: first, to localize systematic vulnerabilities and evaluate
the risk of becoming serious threats for national and human security and second, to sketch a
congruent solution to diminish and even eradicate the existing threats. The complexity and
volatility of the security environment in the twenty first century made imperative for the
institutional body of every state to promote novel strategies capable of dealing with this new
wide range of challenges. To do so, as far as I am concerned, it is pivotal nor only to exchange
information between the state and the citizens, but to shape a more complex and proficient
system, able to generate and capitalize knowledge.

However, that innovative construction should not only be focused on the readjustment on
the organizations in charge with security issues, but also on the individuals that compose the
society. To materialize that second priority, the new arrangement has to exploit the second face
of the twenty first environment, respectively opportunities for creating and sharing knowledge. A
robust and inclusive security culture could effectively respond to any challenge, as it will prepare
the individual to have a capacious contribution in protecting national values in front of potential
threats.

Starting from that hypothesis, this paper will approach a model of facing threats through
knowledge: first by a readjustment in and a better understanding of the role of intelligence in the
actual society and second, by a strong strategy in the education field which will permit the
exchange of knowledge among organizations in charge with national security and civil society.
The overall purpose of this research can be, ergo, summarize in only one question: “How can the
interchange of knowledge help at coping with new security challenges?”

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 2. Structure of the paper

The paper will be composed of three main chapters: the first one, entitled “New security
challenges” which will state which are the new phenomenon of the twenty first century and the
vulnerably they created in the security system; the second one, entitled “Knowledge society”,
which will use the opportunities brought by the same phenomenon that generated the previously
mentioned vulnerabilities, to sketch models and solutions of combating those challenges via an
adequate intelligence body and a strong security culture; and the third one, which will be a study
case on the actual Romanian security system, that will firstly, evaluate the existing
vulnerabilities and risks and secondly, will outline an alternative solution represented by an
increase interdependence among institutions in charge with national security and the civil society
and a stronger strategy in the field of Education.

3. Theoretical-methodological framework

The present paper aimed to analyze the new security challenges in the last three decades
and to propose an alternative solution based on knowledge exchange, will combine several
methods of research. The general research design will be constructed through the deductive
method, starting from general to specific and exploring firstly existing theory and collecting
secondary data which will confirm or infirm the hypothesis. The data will be collected by a non-
empirical qualitative research method.

The first chapter will be constructed through an exploratory method that will determine
the nature of the issue and will examine the hypothesis without stating a conclusive solution and.
Additionally, I selected an interpretative approach to this part of the research aims to produce an
“understanding of the social context the phenomenon and the process whereby the phenomenon
influences and is influenced by the social context”5 Existing specialized literature and data from
already concluded case studies will be implemented to scrutinize the emergence of new security
challenges in the international arena in the last three decades and to evaluate the vulnerabilities
of security-maintenance mechanisms.

5
Geoff Walsham, “Interpretive Case Studies in IS Research: Nature and Method”, European Journal of Information
Systems, Vol 4. No 2, 1995: 74-81.

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 The second part of the paper will follow a similar approach as the first one, but it will
also combine

The last part will be a study case that will offer a specific context to examine the
secondary data collected in the previous chapters. As per Dubé and Paré, case studies involves
the examination of a specific phenomenon in a real-life context6. Regarding data collection
methodology, the study case approached in this paper will imply the gathering of quantitative
data from official statistics released by specialized institutions and qualitative data from
documentation and observations.

This paper will focus on three main unit of analysis: the international security system,
national intelligence services and the individual. Starting from the idea that the international
security system has suffered a striking metamorphosis in the last three decades, I come to the
conclusion that there is a acerb need of a three-leveled readjustment. Firstly, the paradigms that
define the international system should be calibrated in such a way that new transnational actors
and the transformative power of the new technologies come to represent pillars of the upcoming
theories. Secondly, intelligence services as specialized organizations of collecting and processing
information and protect national interests are to be reshaped for responding to the revolutionary
challenges of the twenty first century7. Thirdly, in a knowledge society the individual remains
the ultimate resource for producing and sharing knowledge which consequently will made the
overall system less vulnerable and more prone to prosper. Another pivotal element of analysis
for this research will be also the cyberspace which will serve both as a dependent variable (when,
in the first part of this paper, I will describe how different actors can influence it through their
actions) and independent variable (when, in the second part of the paper, I will depict how it can
be used as a primary source of information; information which then, will be transformed in
knowledge).

6
Line Dubé and Guy Paré, “Rigor in Information Systems, Positivist Case Research: Current Practices, Trends, and
Recommendations”, MIS Quarterly, Vol. 27, No.4, December 2003: 597-635.
7
George Cristian Maior, “Despre Intelligence”, București: Editura RAO, 2004: 14-16.

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Chapter I – New security challenges

The mercurial evolution of technologies which interconnected people and help at the
dispersion of democratic values, was also a cornerstone for the emergence of new transnational
actors on the international arena which have unequivocally impacted the way international affairs
were conducted and raise serious for the conventional activity of the bodies in charge with
national security.

In this first part, I will try to picture how the international security environment has
changed in the last three decades, then, to localize which are the main actors on the international
arena and to describe the new menaces that put the international and national system at risk. But
after starting this research into specialized literature in order to frame the elements of the
contemporary security environment, I consider essential to state the main terminology with
which I will operate in the following paragraphs.

To begin with, what is security? Who is to be secured, against which dangers? Many
analysists have tried to state a clearly meaning of this word and configurate some instructions of
how can it be built within a society. David Baldwin defined security as “a low probability of
damage to acquired values”8 whereas Lawrence Krause and Joseph Nye it represents “the
absence of acute threats to the minimal acceptable levels of the basic values that a people
consider essential to its survival”9. Barry Buzan focus on a more actional dimension of the term
debated, defining it as the capacity of a system to safeguard its functional characteristics under
the pressure of factors with harming or destructive potential10. Wolfers goes even further and
depicts two sides of the security concept: “security, in an objective sense, measures absence of

8
David A. Baldwin, „The Concept of Security”, Review of International Studies, vol. 23, 1997: 5–26.
9
Lawrence Krause and Joseph Nye, „Reactions on the Economics and Politics of International Economic
Organisations”, Bergsten and Krause (eds.) World Politics and International Economics, (Washington D.C.: The
Brookings Institute, 1975).
10
Barry Buzan, “People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era”,
Colchester: ECPR Press, 2007: 25-37.

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threats to acquire values, in a subjective sense, the absence of fear that such values will be
attacked”11.

Three main concepts are operated in defense literature, many times used almost
interchangeably, to describe the factors or conditions under which security as a state can be
deterred: risk, threat and vulnerability. Thus, in the following paragraphs I will offer a
conceptual clarification of this terms which will be used in the next subchapters.

The risk consists in the probability that certain phenomenon could drastically prjudice
values, peoples or goods and harm national security; whereas the threat represents the matured
state of risk, a situation in which the avoidance of a negative incident becomes almost
impossible. According with Romania’s ”National Defense Strategy 2015 – 2019”: “risks
represent the probability of manifestation of an uncertain event, having direct or indirect impact
upon national security”, whereas threats are „capabilities, strategies, intentions or plans which
may impact upon the national security values, interests and goals 12

Lastly, security vulnerabilities represent events from the inside of any society generated by a
dysfunction of the system, which dramatically decreases the capacity of reaction in front of
imminent risks or favorites their emergence and development. Romanian Defense Strategy
depicts vulnerabilities as “consequences of some systemic disruptions or shortcomings, which
may be exploited or may contribute to the occurrence of a threat or of a risk”13.

In “National Security of Romania in the Era of Globalization”, Razvan Munteanu proposes

the following example to illustrate the correlation between vulnerability-risk-threat: a person
which drives without having a driving license

(Razvan Munteanu, “Securitatea Nationala a Romaniei in Era Globalizarii, Cat de reala este
amenintarea terorista?”, Bucuresti: Editura Noua, 2012: 13)

11
Arnold Wolfers, “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol”, in Arnold Wolfers (Ed.): Discord and
Collaboration. Essays on International Politics (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1962): 149.
12
Chapter III from “National Defense Strategy 2015 – 2019. A strong Romania within Europe and the world”, The
Presidential Administration, Bucharest, 2015: 14.
13
Ibidem.

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 After 1990, the traditional concept of threat used in the military sphere, has fundamentally
changed. Security studies have started to recognized new dimensions of threats and an increase
in asymmetric forms of warfare, as well as a pivotal role of non-state actors14. New theoretical
approaches on security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks have started to appear since
that period. For example, the United Nations has acknowledged the broadening of the
conceptualization of security by identifying new security threats in the third millennium, such as
poverty, environmental degradation, infectious disease, terrorism and ethnic disputes within
different states15. Both the UN competent organizations (UNDP or FAO) and many academic
security communities have started to include into their agendas or studies the concept of human
security16.

Ergo, in the next paragraphs we will see how the burgeoning asymmetric forms of warfare
and the augmenting role of brutal non-state actors, especially terrorist networks have made
security challenges more amalgamated and intricate, and the security risks less accountable and
predictable.

1.1.The impact of new technologies on the international security environment

Anne-Marie Slaughter compared two different kind of views, in her famous article “How to
Succeed in the Networked World”: the traditional chessboard view and the web view. The first
model can be understand by looking at a standard map of the world, that clearly depicts borders,
capitals and other cities, a map of delimited territories; whereas the second one can be
comprehended by staring at Google Earth map which displays the world at night, with the

14
Ekatarina Stepanova, „Terrorism in asymmetrical conflict. Ideological and structural aspects”, SIPRI Research
Report No. 23 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008): 3.
15
“[...] we know all too well that the biggest security threats we face now, and in the decades ahead, go far beyond
States waging aggressive war. They extend to poverty, infectious disease and environmental degradation; war and
violence within States; [...] the threats are from non -State actors as well as States, and to human security as well as
State security” („A more secure world: Our shared responsibility Report of the High-level Panel on Threats,
Challenges and Change,” United Nations Department of Public Information, 2004, p. 11, <http://www.un.org/
secureworld/report.pdf, accessed on May 19, 2018).
16
„Human Development Report 1994: New Dimensions of Human Security”, UNDP (New York – Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994): 22,

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illuminated statues of cities and the dark ribbons of wilderness, a map of connection 17. To see
the international system as the second cited model means to see it not as a conglomerate of states
but as an ocean of networks.

In his „The Information Age” trilogy, the Spanish sociologist, Manuel Castells, defines
„network” as a bodies of „interconnected nodes” similar to a stock exchange market.18 The more
information they absorb, the more important they become within the scheme. Also remarkable is
their power of restyling the classical operational logic of social processes. As Castells himself
emphasized in his piece of work, networks become the new “social morphology of our
societies”19, introducing the concept of a “network society” which comes to represent a social
structure based on digital information flows and communication technologies. The fast spread of
the Internet across world, made it global20.

However, this system is not characterized by homogeneity, but follows a binary logic,
whether of inclusion or of exclusion, in the sense that only certain local values, beliefs and
customs can impose barriers in the network society. There are no longer territorial boundaries
what demarcated peoples; but historical and geographical contexts, all them filtrated by the
networking dimension. As Castells himself depicts it, traditional state “even if it does not fade
away as a specific form of social organization, it changes its role, its structure, and its functions,
gradually evolving toward a new form of state: the network state”.

But how do we reach this point? What is the origin of this network society? The first idea of
an intergalactic computer network was introduced in 1962, by J.C.R. Licklider, first director of
the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at The Pentagon’s Advanced Research
Project Agency (ARPA)21, a US Department of Defense agency in charge of the development of

17
Anne-Marie Slaughter, “How to Succeed in the Networked World: A Grand Strategy for the Digital Age”,
“Foreign Affairs”, 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2016-10-04/how-succeed-networked-world
(accessed on May 19, 2018).
18
Manuel Castells, “Communication power”, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009): 19.
19
Manuel Castells, “The Rise of the Network Society”, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996: 469.
20
Idem: 25.
21
ARPA was created in February 1958, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, during the Cold War, in response to
the Soviet launching of Sputnik 1 (in 1957), the first artificial Earth satellite, which put the basis to th§e so-called
Space Race, the US-USSR competition for dominance in spaceflight capability. Since its inception, the
organization’s purpose was to ensure the expansion of frontiers of technology and science in the US at the
immediate U.S. requirements.

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emerging technologies use by the military. Licklider used the term to refer to a networking
system “imagined as an electronic commons open to all; the main and essential medium of
informational interaction for governments, institutions, corporations, and individuals.22”In
1965, another America scientist, Donald Davies, developed the “packet switching” method that
made possible the transmission of information from one computer to another, which put the basis
of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) of the US Department of
Defense. In 1969, only four computers were connected to the ARPANET, but the networks were
dramatically growing in the 70s after the computer scientist, Vinton Cerf invented the
“Transmission Control Protocol” (TCP), an instrument that would allow all of the worldwide
mini-networks to communicate with one another.23 His formidable protocol transformed the
Internet into a global network used by researchers and scientists to exchange files among their
computers. However, maybe the most decisive moment in the history of the Internet was the
creation of World Wide Web (WWW), in the 90s by the revolutionary design of the British
scientist Tim Berners-Lee. The internet was no longer a military instrument or a way to send
files form one place to another, but a real “web” of information that anyone on the globe could
access. In 1992, after the creation the Mosaic24 browser developed by researchers from the
University of Illinois, the US Congress decided that the Web could be used for commercial
purposes, so different companies started to set up own websites to sell their products to
customers.
The beginning of the third millennium brought a new concept in the computer science
literature. Analysts started to talk about a shift from a Web 1.0 version, which refers to phase of
the WWW where interaction between sited and web users was limited as the last category has
not the opportunity to post comments, reviews and feedbacks; to a Web 2.025 version, a stage
that allows users to interact, collaborate and share information without encumbrance among
them26. Services such as Google Docs or social websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Orkut,

22
Mitchell Waldrop, “The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution that made Computing Personal”,
New York: Penguin Books, 2002: 413.
23
“The Invention of the Internet”, History, 2010, https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-
internet (accessed on May 29, 2018).
24
Mosaic was the first browser that is considered as making the Web accessible to ordinary people thanks to its
novel and attractive graphical interface.
25
Tim O’Reiilly, “What is Web 2.0. Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software”,
O’Reilly, 2005, https://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html (accessed on May 30, 2018)
26
“Web 2.0 Revolution: Power to the People”, Applied Clinical Trials Magazine, last modified on August 1, 2006,
http://www.appliedclinicaltrialsonline.com/web-20-revolution-power-people (accessed on May 30, 2018)

13
Linkedin illustrates the turn from a static dimension of the Internet to a dynamic one, which
empower users with “information sharing capabilities”27. Due to the Web 2.0 revolution which
erase all kind of barriers of accessing and sharing, practically, each and every Internet user have
become both beneficiary and producer of information and his or her influence power in the
cyberspace has reached colossal peaks.28
The hypothesis from which I started this chapter, respectively that the evolution of new
technologies have definitely challenged conventional nation-state-based theories by its
transnational character and its astronomical inclusiveness of people in its mechanisms, was
fortified even more when looking at recent statistics on this subject. According to the Internet
World Stats latest statistics, on 31st of December of 2017, more than 4 billion people from
around the world, which represent 54.4% from the entire population, became Internet users. The
same data shows that from 2000 to 2018, there is a growth of 1.052% of people becoming
Internet users29. These statistics shows on one hand, the gargantuan evolution of the Internet in
the last eighteen years and its rapid engulfment in its structures of people from the entire world;
and on the other hand, they confirm a new trend of the twenty first century with potential of
influencing and even harming critical national infrastructures.
Ergo, it is to say that the monumental evolution of Web 2.0 technologies broke the
conventional coherence of the international security system and raised particular concern for the
security community over the systematic vulnerabilities and attack vectors they introduce 30. In the
next subchapter, we will see how the emergence of new actors on the international arena, as a
consequence of the formidable widening and deepening of the cyberspace, is challenging the
conventional security studies paradigms.

1.2. The emergence of a new space and new actors on the international scene and
shifts in the classical security studies paradigms

27
Ibidem.
28
Iancu Cristian, “Fast forward în analiza de intelligence: limite și provocări”, in George Cristian Maior (coord.),
Despre Intelligence, Bucuresti: Editura RA0, 2014: 159.
29
„Internet Usage Statistics. The Internet Big Picture”, Internet World Stats, last modified on December 31, 2017,
https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm (accessed on May 30, 2018).
30
„Cisco 2010 Annual Security Report”, Cisco, 2011,
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/vpndevc/security_annual_report_2010.pdf (accessed on May 30, 2018).

14
 In order to offer a better insight into cyberterrorism, which will be the first major
challenge approached in this paper, this subchapter will follow three main steps: firstly,
cyberspace will be defined together with the asymmetries it created in the international security
environment; secondly, it will identified who are the new actors performing on the international
arena; thirdly, it will be demonstrated why the classical paradigms of security studies are no
longer applicable under the current circumstances created by those new actors.

The term “cyberspace” comes from the Greek word “kybernis” which means rudder and it
was first introduced by William Gibson in a science fiction story, entitled “Burning Chrome”,
published in 1982 in the “Omni” magazine, which was developed even more in “Neuromancer”.
Gibson’s novel became an emblematic reference for cyberpunk, a subgenre of the science fiction
literature originated in the New Wave science fiction movements of the 60s and 70s, which
describes life in the next centuries as a “combination of lowlife and high tech” and as monitored
and controlled by giant corporations31 or and the impact of technological and scientific
breakthrough on the social order32. However, the word became very popular in the 90s, with the
dramatically fast spread of the Internet across the world and the emergence of new ideas and
phenomena within the society. Cyberspace became, then, the largest forum of sharing
information, interact, conduct business, spend free time by playing a game or watching a movie,
exchange ideas; in brief, it became a social and socializing component of the world from the 90s
to the present, a human indispensable habitat33.

Many scholars characterized it as a dynamic, anonymous and frontier-less place; which

thank to its particularities created opportunities for the development of the informational society
into a knowledge society but also, risks on all levels (individual, national and transnational) 34. As
Philip Bobbitt states it, globalization and the Internet has increased the wellbeing of people,

31
For more details about the cyberpunk movement see Simona Maries, “Cyberpunk sau intrarea in oglinda”, Steaua,
No. 1-2 (2010); and Gabriela Grosseck, “Incursiune in ciberspatiu (I)”, “Informatica Economica”, No. 3 (27), 2003:
11.
32
Donald M. Hassler, “New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction”, University of South Carolina Press, 2008: 75-
76.
33
Michael Benedikt, “Cyberspace: First Steps”, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1991: 122.
34
Madalina Daniela Ghiba, “New Threats to Global Security”, “Buletinul Universitatii National de Aparare Carol
I”, Vol. 2, No.3 (September 2015): 110.

15
economic, political and cultural opportunities, but on the other side, it made the whole national
and international systems more vulnerable and fragile. The so-called “connectivity paradox”
reflects the asymmetries and the dual nature which were spread across the world, in the twenty
first century as a consequence of the technological and informational boom.35
Utopian visions that saw the Internet as an enormous forum in which the “global
village”36 could meet and exchange thoughts and ideas, and as a valuable instrument of
spreading and stimulating democracy throughout the world, were challenged when pornographic
and violent content has started to be uploaded on the web. Additionally, groups with very
divergent political objectives but leagued in their eagerness of employing terrorist tactics started
using the WWW to dispense their propaganda, to attract and communicate with their supporters,
to raise sympathy for their causes, and even to execute malicious operations.
A pivotal feature of cyberspace relevant for security studies is the so-called “problem of
attribution” which refers to the difficult in confirming an attacker’s identity within cyberspace37.
It is almost impossible to certainly determine who is the doer behind a cyberattack because even
if the computer itself from which the offense was planned and performed is identified. For
example, the leading case of “GhostNet”, which represented a large-scape cyber espionage
operation which came to control crucial national infrastructures and to infiltrate into political,
economic and media locations from 103 countries, reiterates the idea that attacks that took place
in the cyberspace make difficult for the investigators to come up to clear evidence. The activity
of controlling the infected servers, after the trojan once delivered through social engineered e-
mails was opened by the target, was based in the People’s Republic of China, according to a
detailed study conducted by the Information Warfare Monitor, in 200938. However, there was no
pellucid proof indicating who was involved in the operation. Thus, the mentioned study
significance stays in the fact that it demonstrates that the “subterranean layers of cyberspace,
about which most users are unaware, are domains of active recoconnaissance, surveillance and

35
Philip Bobbitt, “Terror and consent: the wars for the twenty-first century”, New York: Alfred A. Knopt, 2008: 97.
36
“Global village” represents a metaphoric terminology of referring to the vast community of people interconnected
by electronic technology, coined for the first time by Marshall McLuthan in the book “The Gutenberg Galaxy: The
making of Typographic Man”, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; and popularized in his next piece of
work, “Understanding Media: The extensions of Man”, Whitby, CA: McGraw-Hill 1964.
37
Jack Goldsmith, ”How Cyber Changes the Laws of War”, in European Journal of International Law, Vol. 24, No.,
2013: 129-138.
38
“Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network”, Information Warfare Monitor, 2009,
https://www.scribd.com/doc/13731776/Tracking-GhostNet-Investigating-a-Cyber-Espionage-Network (accessed on
May 30, 2018).

16
exploitation” and that “the information security is an item requiring urgent attention at the highest
level”39.
Professor Nicholas Taleb calls the strategic surprises from the sphere of the highly
improbable, “black swans” or “the trap of inductive thinking”. He gives the example of the
Europeans who arrived from the first time in Australia convicted that all swans are white; but
when reaching those lands, their encountering with only one black swan nullified the general
character of the affirmation that “all swans are white”40. According to Taleb, a black swan is an
event that fulfills the following three conditions: it is an extremely rare event whose genesis took
everybody by surprise due to the fact that any proof from the past has not signaled the possibility
of its emergence; its effect is paradigmatic, completely changing the game rules; and post
factum, the spectator feels that the specific event could have been anticipated as “it was obvious
that it would have taken place”. If we take a retrospectively look at the wide range of events,
such are the cases of 9/11, “GhostNet” or other attacks which took place within the cyberspace,
we will realize that they fulfill almost all the conditions of a “black swan”. Starting from the
axiom that a “black swan” cannot be anticipated and that the cases of those phenomenon are
dramatically increasing in the Web 2.0 society, the early warning function of an information
service is put under question.
The new actors capable of exploiting or acting on this humongous space of possibilities are
not only states following national interests, but many other groups with uncertain purposes, such
as hacktivist groups, individual criminals, terrorists, syndicate organizations or privateers, all of
them having a transnational nature. Due to the easy access, little regulation or other forms of
government control, anonymity of communication, fast flow of information, inexpensive
development and maintenance of a web presence, potentially huge audiences spread throughout
the world, the Internet became an ideal arena of performance for organizations of any kind,
around the globe41.

39
Ibidem: 49.
40
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in Prologue of „The Black Swan. The Impact of the highly improbable”, New York:
Random House, 2007.
41
Gabriel Weimann, „How Modern Terrorism Uses the Internet”, United States Institute of Peace, Special Report
No. 116, March 2004: 3.

17
 Another angle of this new arena of coexistence and combat is the modus operandi of
cyberattacks, such as ransomware, phishing, denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, malware
attacks42. According to
The paradox of the twenty first century asymmetry shows how something that seems
insignificant in comparison with traditional criteria of defining power, could become indomitable
if it comes to apply an adequate strategy and to intelligently make use of the technological
resources it can easily procure43.
The applicability of traditional paradigms in this complex environment are more and more
questioned, as is the case of the classical Realist theory of International Relations, supported by
Hans Morgenthau or E.H. Carr, which places the state in its center, as well as the principle of
balance-of-power (that suggests that national security is heightened only when military
capabilities are distributed in such a way that none state is strong enough to dominate all
others44) and the pivot-idea of interest as a driving factor of the evolution and dynamics of
relations among states within the international system. The new balance-of-power are more
dynamic and complex nowadays as states are no longer the dominant element of the international
arena; neither the capabilities nor the interests of actors. Moreover, not even the Liberal theories,
with all the malleability in recognizing the inestimable value of international institutions or the
progress created by interdependence among states and globalization in international relations,
could be employed in order to clearly explain the actual international security environment45.
Unfortunately the concept of security in the twenty first century goes beyond power or peace-
based theories.
If the new rhetoric of the security environment in the twenty first century started to admit the
emergence of trans-national actors and revolutionary impact of technology, the evaluation of

1.3. Cyberterrorism

42
„Know the types of cyber threats”, Massachusetts Gov, https://www.mass.gov/service-details/know-the-types-of-
cyber-threats (accessed on May 30, 2018).
43
George Cristian Maior, “Incertitudine.”: 21.
44
Charles Kegley and Eugene Wittkopf, “World Politics: Trends and Transformation”, 10th Edition, Ohio:
Wadsworth, 2005: 503
45
George Cristian Maior, “Incertitudine.”: 23-24.

18
 The Internet, through its unique architecture interconnects people from all around the
world. Thanks to that impressive interconnectivity that it created, a doctor from New Delhi can
interpret the radiography of his patient who is right now in a trip in California; a teenager from
Bucharest can play League of Legends with other teenagers from Buenos Aires; a coffee farmer
from Bali can watch the same video with information about the harvest as another from Cali. But
in spite of the global forum in which people can exchange ideas and opinions that it created, the
Internet has also shape unparalleled opportunities for the proliferation cyberspace threats,
characterized by asymmetry, dynamism and a global character, what makes difficult for the
specialized bodies to counterattack them through efficient measures. Disinformation, propaganda
and the spread of fear via social media are only some of the most fashion tools used by cyber-
terrorists.

But what does cyberterrorism mean and which are those actors who perform it? After
making a research into security and defense literature I was surprised to see that this term is still
very controversial and its definition varies from author to author. However, I tried to choose
some meanings which I found relevant for the objective of this part of the paper.

The concept of cyberterrorism was coined for the first time in the mid-1980s by Barry
Collin, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Security and Intelligence (ISI) in California,
by combining two mainstream but disputed terms: “cyber”, whose origins we have already
discovered in the previous subchapter; and “terrorism”, which comes from the Latin “terrere” (to
frighten) and which originated during the French Revolution (1789 – 1799), in the late 18th
century46, and which was become popular during Ronald Reagan Presidency (1981 – 1989) after
the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings. In 1991, National Academy of Sciences began a report on
computer security with the words, “We are at risk. Increasingly, America depends on
computers…Tomorrow’s terrorist may be able to do more damage with a keyboard than with a
bomb47”, which raised high concern for American citizens.

46
According to Oxford English Dictionary, (Gloucestershire: Clarendon Press, 1989), terrorism is a term which
dates frm 1794 and refers to„an adherent or supporter of the Jacobins, who advocated and practiced methods of
partisan repression and bloodshed in the propagation of the principles of democracy and equality”.
47
„Computers at Risk: Safe Computing in the Information Age”, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
(CSTB), National Research Council, Washington: National Academy Press, 1991: 7.

19
 In defense literature, the term was used for the first time in the reports of the U.S. Army
War College, in 199848. NATO defines cyberterrorism as “a cyberattack using or exploiting
computer or communication networks to cause sufficient destruction or disruption to generate
fear or to intimidate a society into an ideological goal.” According with the “Romanian Strategy
of Cyber-security” cyberterrorism represent actions taken in the cyberspace by persons, groups
or organizations politically, ideologically or religiously motivated, which can lead to material
losses or victims or only to install panic or terror within society49. Professor Jonathan Matusitz
which describes cyberterrorism as „the intentional use of threatening and disruptive actions
against computers, networks, and the Internet”50 in an article he wrote for the „American Foreign
Policy Interests” Journal. In the same paper, Matusitz stated that technological evolution has
reshaped terrorism in the same way it changed our daily lives, having serious implications for
American Foreign Policy.51

Maybe one of the best definitions owes to Tinka Veldhuis and Jorgen Staun, two
researchers from the Dutch Institute of International Relations „Glingendael”, who state that this
phenomenon includes “behaviors and ideological manifestations, including incitation,
distribution of radical materials, which pose a serious threat to social security”. (VELDHUIS,
Tinka, STAUN, Jorgen, „Islamist radicalisation. A root cause model”, Institutul Olandez de
Relaţii Internaţionale, 2009, p.11).

Additionally, he proposed some general ways of strengthening the American Foreign

Policy in the Information Age and surviving to its new threats, which are: a new diplomacy
which will involve trained intelligence agents about cyberterrorism, engagement in multilateral
policymaking processes, strong cooperation with foreign governments, better reliance on
scientific and technological innovation and more emphasis on culture52. Gabriel Weinman
identified eight ways terrorist use the Internet, ranging from psychological warfare and
48
Kenneth C. White, „Cyber-terrorism: Modern mayhem”, U.S. Army War College, 1998.
49
„Hotărârea nr. 271/2013 pentru aprobarea Strategiei de securitate cibernetică a României ş i a Planului de acţ iune
la nivel naţional privind implementarea Sistemului naţional de securitate cibernetică”, Guvernul Romaniei,
published in the Official Monitor on May 23, 2013, accessed on May 29, 2018,
https://www.enisa.europa.eu/topics/national-cyber-security-strategies/ncss-
map/StrategiaDeSecuritateCiberneticaARomaniei.pdf.
50
Jonathan Matusitz, “Cyberterrorism: How Can American Foreign Policy Be Strengthened in the Information
Age?”, American Foreign Policy Interests, No. 27, 2005: 137.
51
Ibidem: 139.
52
Ibidem: 141-144.

20
propaganda to highly instrumental uses such as fundraising, recruitment, data mining, and
coordination of actions53.

Maybe ono of the most common examples of example of cyberterrorism nowadays is

related with the

Cyberspace became a notorious spot of radicalization and Jihadist propaganda; and even
an instrument of recruiting people for organizations such as Daesh or al-Qaeda54.
Some experts in counterterrorism has labelled the Internet as the “university of terrorists”, a
place where terrorists

1.4. Facepaganda, Tweetpaganda

In only few years, we shifted from relying on Google as a browser where you can look for
needed information, to bank on it for bagging maps to get to a certain place, to search for and
confirm dates for events, movies and other entertainment activity. Then, we made further steps
and we started to look at Facebook as a place where we can stock our memories, even the most
intimate ones and details about our hobbies, preferences, relatives or friends. We started to
download and experience hundreds of applications in order to carry out everyday tasks, using
them for managing our bank accounts, preparing our dishes, making fitness or storing each and
every personal data55.

From all those opportunities that the digital era brought to us, social media platforms
such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn has completely transformed cyberspace in a Brownian
environment by wining people’s hearts through its stirring capacity of fulfilling their needs 56.
Those platforms endowed individuals with power of building a book of faces or public profile as

53
Gabriel Weimann, op.cit.: 5-10.
54
Nicolae Iancu „Securitate și putere în spațiul cibernetic”, in George-Cristian Maior (coord.), “Un Război al
Minții: Intelligence, servicii de informații și cunoaștere strategică în sec. XXI”, București: RAO, 2010: 231-234.
55
Marc Goodman, „Future Crimes: Inside the Digital Underground and the Battle for Our Connected World”, [“X-
cyber: Viitorul începe astăzi”] Trans. Graal Soft SRL, București: Editura RAO, 2009: 21.
56
Bogdan-Ion Cîrstea, „Opportunities and Challenges to Intelligence Analysis Emerged from
Social Media Phenomenon”, in “Romanian Intelligence Studies Review”, No.15 (2016): 103-104.

21
they would have ever been craving for in real life. Additionally, they give people the opportunity
to tie new contacts and keep them alive by the possibility of sharing photos, videos and other
pieces of self; becoming an opportune place to promote an initiative, project or idea.

However, in spite of all their socializing and interconnectivity functions, online platforms
such those mentioned above, started being taped for illicit or propagandistic objectives. The
process is simple: people join the online hub for free; then they began to sketch their virtual
profile by uploading information about their academic path, family, hobbies and passions. All
that data is comprised in a digital handout that can serve at profiling the society and categorizing
it by certain criteria.

To understand how vast is this “book of faces”, the German portal of statistics, market research
and business intelligences, “Statista”, published a chart regarding the evolution of monthly active
Facebook users around the world. In the first quarter of 2018, Facebook had reached 2.19 billion
monthly active users (Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 1st quarter
2018 (in millions), Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-
active-facebook-users-worldwide/, accesed on June 6, 2018.)
Risks of manipulation became vert high

The emotional craters of individuals using on a daily basis social media platforms and the
lack of a higher authority to brood over virtual activities, become opportunistic elements for
different terrorist groups for elongating their global influence. Jihadist groups use social media
both for radicalizing and spreading terror on the masses but also for recruiting adherents and
enlarging, this way, their cobweb. See for example, the confessions of Hussain Osman, one of
that group planning the 2005 bomb-attack in London, that says that he was very influenced by
videos available on the Internet showing British and American troops killing Iraqi women and
children, before taking the decision to organize the Londoner strike.57

57
„Confession lifts lid on London bomb plot”, The Scotsman, 2005, accessed on May 19, 2018,
https://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/confession-lifts-lid-on-london-bomb-plot-1-1402704.

22
 On the Jihadist cyber-influence issue, several cases in which Twitter represented a pivotal
instrument of spreading terrorist messages. Terrorist organizations utilize this platform to post
links of websites where detailed radical content is displayed58. For example, in 2013, Al Qaeda
launched a Twitter account which raised more than 5500 followers on only one month

Another face of social media, nowadays, is its monumental aptitude of inciting and
coordinating social movements such as protests.

People join together and organize marches to support their common vision shared in the
virtual environment. In the so-called “Arab Spring”, social media played a pivotal role in the
mobilization and spread of the rebellious spirit. A heartfelt image with showing the young
Egyptian Khaled Mohamed Said supposedly disfigured, when in police custody in Sidi Gaber, by
the security forces, together with the touching message of “People’s strength is bigger than that
of those in power” had definitely stolen people’s heart and made them gather into massive and
well-organized protests that took even the police at advantage. In only three months, the
Facebook account created by an executive Google member, Wael Ghonim, in order to spread the
content mentioned before, rose up to 250 000 users, which joint together and amass even more
people for a common cause, materialized by the Tahrir Square of Cairo rally.

The above cases are only some examples of the colossal impact that social media can
have on national security mechanisms. Propagandistic actions conducted through this 2.0 Web
facilities can become grave vectors against strategic security.

As Eric Larson describes it, influence operations represents “communication-related and

informational activities that aim to affect cognitive, psychological, motivational, ideational,

58
Bogdan-Ion Cîrstea, „Opportunities and Challenges”: 105.

23
ideological and moral characteristics of a target audience”59. Figure 1 portrays a model of
understanding how the influence operation of a message transmitted through mass media, which
can be applied also on the particular case approached in this section, respectively the impact of
social media. The first step is the sending of a message through social media

“Organized persuasion”60 as DeVito described it, represents one of the principal

instruments of social manipulation and shaping certain perceptions; it represents the “engine of

mental corruption,” which operated by “suppression, distortion, as well as misrepresentation and

direct falsehood”.61 In this fragile conjuncture, the propagandist ordinarily uses all kind of tools

available to reach its target and shape required perceptions, among which mass media, personal

contacts, international conferences, Youtube talks etc. As Jacques Ellul explains in his article,

“The characteristics of propaganda”, the main goal of these instruments is to achieve

acknowledgement on a particular idea and, if necessary, to “win over the adversary and at least

use him by integrating him into its own frame of reference.” In many cases, the “enemy” may

59
Eric V. Larson, et al., „Foundations of Effective Influence Operations: A Framework for Enhancing Army
Capabilities”, Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2009: 3-4.

60
Joseph A. DeVito, “The communication handbook: A dictionary”, New York: Harper & Row, 1986: 239.
61
Robert Herrick, „The paper war”, The Dial, vol. 66 (1919), accessed on May 15, 2018,
https://archive.org/stream/dialjournallitcrit66chicrich/dialjournallitcrit66chicrich_djvu.txt.

24
refer to a “supporter of the regime,” which would inevitably help to “avert [potential] threats” to

its “stability or existence”62.

News published on a Blog or a Facebook or Twitter account that has thousands or even billions

of followers can have, in only few hours, an astonishing engagement rate. Take the example of

www.beppegrillo.it blog of the Italian Movimiento 5 stelle founder, the ex-comedian Bepp

Grillo, which became, from 2005 to 2008, the ninth most influential blog in the worlds,

according to “The Guardian”63. He depicted in his posts many reflections of Italian young people

engaged in temporary and poor-paid jobs (which he later assembled them in his book “Schiavi

Moderni”, 2007). He has also criticized “the political caste”, under the slogan “Clean up

Parliament!”, for its inability to adjust their policies to the real needs and interests of the people.

Chapter II – The knowledge society

In the past, knowledge was a premium luxury which only a tight circle of people afforded
it. The Enlightenment with the increasing demands of the masses for democracy, public
openness, freedoms and equality, enhanced the forums of knowledge by including more and
more individuals, without many of the past restrictions. The current spread of new technologies
and the Internet emergence as a public network, enhanced the opportunities for a large part of the
society to accede the knowledge forum. As depicted in the 2005 UNESCO World Report,

62
Ellul, J., „The characteristics of propaganda”, In Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell (eds.), Readings in
propaganda and persuasion: New and classic essay, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006: 10 -20.
63
“The world’s 50 most powerful blogs”, The Guardian, May 9, 2008,
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs (accessed on May 29, 2018).

25
intituled “Towards Knowledge Societies”64, knowledge society is a society nurtured by diversity
and umpteen capacities thanks to the assets offered by the technological Big Bang.
As Reding Viviane, member of the European Commission for Education and Culture stated
in her speech at the Luxemburg Academic Symposium of the European Federation of National
Engineering Associations (FEANI), nowadays real wealth does not come from the exploitation
of resources and the production of goods, but by the generating of knowledge (through research),
deliverance of knowledge (through education) and the exploitation of knowledge (through
innovation and sustainable solutions).65 Thus, starting from this premise, this chapter will
attempt to depict how can knowledge be exploited in order to heal present vulnerabilities which
can develop into critical risks for national security. The first subchapter will define the syntagma
of “knowledge society” and will delineate its historical and contextual evolution; the second one,
will portray an alternative knowledge building theory that can be used when formulating future
public policies or national security policies; and the third one, will approach the role of
intelligence in a knowledge society and a possible model of facing current challenges.

3.1. From an information society to a knowledge society

Societies are metamorphosing and dynamic organisms. Taking a retrospectively view at the
evolution of society on a larger span of time, Alvin Toffler outlined three axial historical waves
which unequivocally marked human civilizations: the first wave represented by the agrarian
civilization (which began after the Neolithic Revolution, which replaced hunter-gatherer
cultures); the second one represented by the industrial civilization (which began in Europe with
the Industrial Revolution, and subsequently spread across the globe); and the third represented by
post-industrial or informational civilization (that began in the 50s)66, which Toffler also called
“information society”.
At the beginning of the 70s the predominant syntagma within social studies which were
analyzing the evolution of society was “information society”, being replaced in the last decade of

64
“UNESCO World Report – Towards Knowledge Society”, United Nations, UNESCO, 2005, available at
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001418/141843e.pdf (accessed on 19th of May of 2018), 17.
65
Viviane Reding, “Education, training and research in the knowledge society”, Speech at the Academic
Symposium of the European Federation of National Engineering Associations (FEANI), Luxemburg, September 27,
2001.
66
See Alvin Toffler, “The Third Wave”, London: Pan Books Ltd, 1981.

26
the twenty century by the “informational society” term, culminating with the concept of
“knowledge society” at the dawn of the third millennium, which comes to define a society where
people know how to value information and transform it into knowledge67. Whereas the concept
of information society refers to the technological breakthrough, knowledge society is a term that
includes more aspects such as social, ethnical, political and economic dimensions. However, a
knowledge society is deeply rooted on and cannot be separated from the information society, as
knowledge per se represents processed information which comes to acquire a meaning under a
specific context and cultural dimensions.
But what does a community need to become a knowledge society? According to analysis, in
any knowledge society there will be four pillars: usable content, human intellectual capacity, ICT
and interconnectivity, proper infrastructure68.

National security cannot be ensured individually by a sole state, the new challenges of the
security environment require effective and efficient collaboration within international
cooperation mechanisms and formats.

2.2 Towards a knowledge building theory for future public policies

The increasing connectedness of the world is one of the most striking phenomena of the
actual society. In adapting to synchronize them to the new form of interdependence or network
connectivity, governments have to reconsider their policies.69 As Mulgan Geoff depicted in his
“Connexity”, there are five focal aspects that governments around the world have to based their
upcoming strategies: transparency or incrementing the potential of displaying relevant
information to the people, from reports of national budget administration to different educational
opportunities or improving democratic behavior guides; holism or a vaster approach which
plainly understand interconnectivity; directness or facilitating the access of people to different

67
Viorel Mihăilă, From “Information Society” to “Knowledge Society”, Military Journal of Management and
Education, No. 1, (2006): 36.
68
Johannes Britz et al., “Africa as a knowledge society: a reality check”, International Information and Library
Review, Vol. 38 (2006): 25-40.
69
Geoff Mulgan, “Connexity revisited”, in McCarthy, Helen, Miller, Paul, Skidmore, Paul, “Network Logic: Who
Governs in an Interconnected World?”, London: Demos, 2004, 50-52.

27
facilities, without the need to getting what we need by always passing though the bureaucratic
octopus; multiple levels or the ability to regard at every issue and task thought various lenses
which includes both an environs and a global dimensions; leanness or the capacity of
Governments to offer more services per unit of investment.70.
The knowledge building theory (KB) was developed by Carl Bereiter and Marlene
Scarmalia, with the purpose of stating the stages that every scientist or scholar has to follow in
order to create knowledge. This theory was based on the arbitrary need of educating people for
the knowledge era, in which innovations is an unequivocal necessity71. In the so-called
knowledge society, the previously mentioned theory can represent an instrument of refashioning
education in such a way that it could initiate youth into a knowledge creating culture72.
The management of knowledge can lead to an improvement within the process of innovation and
to an increase in the competitive advantage73.

Education is a powerful instrument that serves at shaping behaviors in conformity with the
interests of the whole community and to enculturate individuals and help them find their place in
the society74.

2.3. The role of security culture in the knowledge society

According to Barry Buzan, “the individual represents the irreductible basic unit to which the
concept of security can be applied”75.

2.4. The role of intelligence services in the knowledge society

70
Ibidem, 55-58.
71
Carl Bereiter, Marlene Scardamalia, „Knowledge Building: Theory, Pedagogy, and Technology, in K. Sawyer
(Ed.)”, Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006: 97-118.
72
Idem.
73
Valis Krebs, “Knowledge Network: Mapping and Measuring Knowledge Creation, Re-Use, and Flor”, 1998,
accessed on May 21, 2018, http://orgnet.com/IHRIM.html
74
Carl Bereiter, Marlene Scardamalia, „Knowledge Building..”: 98.
75
Barry Buzan, “People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era”,
Colchester: ECPR Press, 2007:

28
 A colossal and diversified flux of digital information changes the way people and
organizations fulfill tasks. Taking into consideration that the main instrument of working of
intelligence services is represented by information, it is to claim that the previously presented
“knowledge era” had a gargantuan impact on the way they carry out their quotidian activity. The
non-linear data fluxes, the non-conventional and asymmetric types of threats and risk that
characterize this new age made imperative for the activity of intelligence organizations, which in
the past was characterized by compartmentalization, to be adapted to these realities.
After the atrocities of 9/11, researchers and institutions from the whole world coincided on
the need of strengthen and extend the intelligence domain, in order to configure a better
framework for analysts who perform in that area, who, consequently, will help at the
improvement of national security76.
Information represents the raw material used for entrenching concrete intelligence products; it
represents the cornerstone of that domain.
Etymologically speaking, intelligence has three main meanings: the first dimension of the
word refers to the actions and processes used in order to generate knowledge77; the second, to the
body of knowledge thereby produced78; the third, to the organizations that perform in responsible
for the collection, analysis and exploitation of information in support of national security
objectives. According to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated
Terms: “Intelligence is the product resulting from the collection, processing, integration,
evaluation, analysis, and interpretation of all available information concerning other nations or
areas in the world/ foreign nations hostile or potentially hostile forces or elements, or areas of
actual or potential operations”79. However, the most famous definition of the term remains that
given by the first Director of the CIA Office of National Estimates, Professor Sherman Kent,
also called “the father of intelligence analysis”, who states that “Intelligence is knowledge”80.

76
Hank Prunkun, Jan Goldman, Handbook of Scientific Methods of Inquiry for Intelligence Analysis, Scarecrow
Professional Intelligence Education Series, No. 11, UK, 2010: 4.
77
Hank Prunckun, „Scientific Methods of Inquiry for Intelligence Analysis”, 2nd edition. Lanham, (MD: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2015): 11.
78
Idem.
79
„DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (DOD Dictionary)”, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, last modified in
Aprin 2018, http://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/dictionary.pdf (accessed on May 30, 2018).
80
Sherman Kent, “Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy”, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949:
3.

29
 In the next paragraphs, we are going to use the term in causa to refer to the product of the
intelligence81 process where data is collected, processed, analyzed and presented for
governmental institutions in charge with public policies-making process and national security
strategy elaboration. Kristan Wheaton describes that process as the way of transforming
unstructured information from all exploited sources in relevant data designed to reduce the level
of uncertainty for the decision-making process in the field of national security.82
In his analysis regarding the transformations that took place in the security environment
of the twenty first century, Philip Bobbit locates certain “antinomies” of knowledge as an engine
for

The transnational nature of the majority of nowadays threats to national security and the
colossal tsunami of data circulating across the cyberspace made imperative the procreation of a
new model of intelligence, based on adaptive interpretations, which imply the continuous
procurement and assemblage of information for outlining a concrete image of the risk83.

Chapter 3 - Study case – Security Culture in Romania

3.1. The Vulnerabilities in the Romanian security system

As it was seen in the previous chapter, the volatility and complexity of the new security
environment made imperative for each and every state, the enactment of a new paradigm of
understanding and acting in the domain of national defense, in which the cyber and the
transnational dimensions are to be parts of it.
Beside the risk constituent, security may be affected by domestic vulnerabilities of the
national system, which can take be encountered under different forms, such as: poor resources

81
Intelligence refers here to the third mentioned meaning, which is that of the organization that perform the activity
of intelligence.
82
Kristan J. Wheaton, Michael T. Beerbower, “Towards a New Definition of Intelligence”, Stanford Law and Policy
Review, 2006: 329.
83
Cristina Posastiuc, “Repere ale intelligence-ului contemporan”, In George Cristian Maior, “Despre Intelligence”,
București: Editura RAO, 2004: 39.

30
allocated to the public security and defense institutions, social inequities, increased corruption, a
low level of information infrastructure84.
According to Vasile Sebastian Dancu, (Vasile Sebastian Dancu, “Razboiul cognitiv,
cultura de Securitate si perceptia riscurilor. Romania si ceilalti, in George Cristian Maior
(coord.),”Un razboi al mintii”, Bucuresti: Editura RAO, 2010: 115-116), a country which has
recently got out of Communism does not have a security culture, it is a country where rumors
substitute high-quality information.
A security culture does not suddenly appear, it represent a continuous process.
In Romania there is no national barometer of risk.
According to the “National Defense Strategy 2015 – 2019. A strong Romania within
Europe and the world”85,

2.Paradigm changes that occurred in the concept of country’s defense and national security,
related to the increasingly unpredictable dynamics of the security environment, inflict the need to
reanalyze the concept and, in the immediate prospect, to update the national legal framework.

6. At global level, terrorism has acquired new dimensions, being far from a distant
phenomenon, but rather close to our space. Romanian citizens can be affected by the
consequences of terrorist acts. (p.5)

7.bRomania is crossing a period where multiple risks, threats and vulnerabilities sometimes
intersect and at times overlap, giving rise to unforeseeable effects not only a national or regional
level, but also at global level. (5-6)

The deterioration of the security situation at the international level, but especially at the regional
level, calls upon knowing the main threats, risks and vulnerabilities our country confronts with,
in the context of the occurrence and, possibly, development of a new form of influence and
constraint, as a result of a mixture of conventional and unconventional components. (14)

84
Fred Schreier, “Transforming Intelligence Services. Making them smarter, more agile, more effective and more
efficient”, Study Group Information, 2010: 39-46.
85
“National Defense Strategy 2015 – 2019. A strong Romania within Europe and the world”, The Presidential
Administration, Bucharest, 2015.

31
THREAT The cyber threats initiated by hostile entities, state or non‐state, upon informational
infrastructures posing strategic interest of the public institutions and companies, the cyber attacks
performed by cyber crime groups or the extremist cyber attacks initiated by hackers alter directly
Romania's national security.

THREAT Terrorism is a persistent threat, having forms of manifestation very difficult to

foresee and counter, including from the perspective of identification and de‐structuring the flows
of recruitment and financing those activities. The national contingencies which take part in
missions abroad are exposed to risks and threats generated by the actions of the terrorist forces,
organizations and groups. The increasing fundamentalist propaganda, especially virtually, favors
the appearance of new cases of radicalization or of implication in terrorist extremist actions.

THREAT The hostile informational actions, which trigger the development of some support
points on national territory, especially with an influential purpose, may impede Romania's
strategic projects and its decisions at the state level. (14)

LINES OF ACTION AND MAIN WAYS TO ENSURE ROMANIA’S NATIONAL

SECURITY Focusing on prevention and preventive mechanisms in the field of national
security and country’s defense, namely better anticipation, knowledge, and construction of an
integrated responsiveness, that should be balanced, flexible and supple. In the current context,
besides knowing the risks and threats, in all aspects – sources, ways of expression, means and
techniques – developing the anticipation capacity, based on knowledge and education, is
fundamental. To this end, developing appropriate systems for the early spotting of dangers, risks
and threats, with a view to preventing their occurrence, through a combined use of military
means and civil instruments, is mandatory; (ch IV, 17-18)

1. 9. Current challenges regarding Romania’s security call for the development of a creative
intellectual system, where education, healthcare and the social factor should prevail.

80. Lines of action in this field will primarily aim at:

o  drawing up a large‐scale national education project, aimed at ensuring

32
 planning mechanisms for curricula, projects and achievements;

o  motivating scientific research, in correspondence with the education system, as

a key process in comprehending the nature of current threats and challenges;
2. fostering the security culture, including through continuous education, aimed at
promoting values, norms, attitudes or actions allowing for the assimilation of the national
security concept;
3.  boosting the responsiveness of the public healthcare system in case of pandemics or
emergency situations;
4.  shaping the healthcare system by placing the patient/citizen at the center of this system;
5.  linking labor market policies to healthcare and education policies, in order to support
sustainable development processes;

adopting coherent measures aimed at reducing the degree of deterioration of

demographic situations and at scaling down development gaps at territorial level.

In this complex conjuncture, the most vulnerable component remains the individual.
Functional illiteracy refers to people who can read, but they are not able to really understand
what they have read.

3.2. A strategy for responding to security challenges in a knowledge society - security culture
in Romania

After having stated which are the actual threats and vulnerabilities to which Romania is
confronted nowadays and after seeing what is the role of intelligence in the elaboration of public
policies in the domain of national security in a knowledge society, in the previous part of the

33
paper, in this subchapter, we are going to formulate a possible strategy applied on the education
system.
Why do we have to apply the xxx (modelul pentadelor) on the education system?
According to the Article 32 of the Constitution of Romania, “The right to education is provided
by the compulsory general education, by education in high schools and vocational schools, by
higher education, as well as other forms of instruction and postgraduate improvement.”86

The diversification and complexity of the current menaces to national security made
imperative for actual societies to develop a strong security culture for their peoples which will
educate them in the spirit of the time.
Security, as it have been depicted, generally speaking, can be understand as a state of
being free from threats. Culture, on the other hand, represents a palette of norms, values,
convictions, habits, attitudes and practices of an individual or of an organizational group. Thus,
security culture can be defined as a set of norms, values, convictions, habits, attitudes and
practices, that prove the comprehension and acclimatization of the security concept. Security
culture also represents the active implication of the individual in the process of solving or
contributing within the process of preventing and countering threats to national security,
conducted by the state, as a consequence of the cognizance of his or her role in the respective
mechanism87. It implies critical thinking and a strong concern regarding the stability and
security of the whole nation88.
The Romanian Strategy of Cyber-security identify as one of the pivotal priorities for the
country to promote and consolidate its security culture though public awareness programs
destined to the vast population in order to make them discern the threats and risks of deliberately
navigating the cyberspace; educational programs for the youth attending a compulsory schooling,

86
Constitution of Romania, Title II, Chapter I, Article 32.
87
Nicoleta Ileana Giorgi, Rares Raicu, “Security culture.Prevention through education”, Revista de Intelligence SRI,
Accessed on May 29,2018, http://intelligence.sri.ro/cultura-de-securitate-prevenire-prin-educatie/.
88
Cristian Felea, “Cultura de Securitate, semnul unui spațiu al civilizației și democrației”, Contributors, 2018,
http://www.contributors.ro/cultura/cultura-de-securitate-semnul-unui-spațiu-al-civilizației-și-democrației/ (accessed
on May 29, 2018)

34
regarding safe modes of using the Internet; and an adequate professional formation of the people
who activate within the cyber-security domain89.

In Romania, rural communities are lacking adequate access to global knowledge due to
the poor infrastructural development and ITC resources.
Local communities needs proper education for understanding, analyzing and synthesizing global
knowledge which will be then, mixed with local knowledge in order to create new local patterns,

Conclusions
Ergo, starting from the premise that the twenty first society is facing new security
challenges which transcend borders and oppose classical paradigms of security studies, the
purpose of this paper was to propose an alternative solution to counter current threats and fix
vulnerabilities through a solid knowledge building theory based on exchange of knowledge
among organizations and individuals and among the individuals themselves. Thus, using as
instruments of research the xxxx and XXXX , this piece of work has proposed the application of
XXX on the Romanian education system
Insisting on the role that the intelligence services play within the Public Policy-making
process and stating the limitations and challenges that those organizations are facing in contrast
with the potential alternatives they can come up with, it has been emphasized how the mentioned
decisional process can be improved if both the consumers and the manufacturers of intelligence
come to clearly understand their papers and recognize their interdependence.
The novelty character of this paper stays in the fact that …

89
„Hotărârea nr. 271/2013 pentru aprobarea Strategiei de securitate cibernetică a României ş i a Planului de acţ iune
la nivel naţional privind implementarea Sistemului naţional de securitate cibernetică”, Guvernul Romaniei,
published in the Official Monitor on May 23, 2013, accessed on May 29, 2018,
https://www.enisa.europa.eu/topics/national-cyber-security-strategies/ncss-
map/StrategiaDeSecuritateCiberneticaARomaniei.pdf.

35
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Annexes

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on May 30, 2018).

40