No Smoking Gun: Cyber Weapons and Drug Traffickers

Abstract

Drug trafficking is a criminal threat of billion-dollar proportions. Drug traffickers exercise international influence and Australian policymakers therefore need to reconsider the framework on which current policy rests. If the so-called war-on-drugs is couched in those terms, then it makes sense to explore a war-like approach—the use of information warfare to defeat drug traffickers’ information processes that are vital to supporting their worldwide financial networks as well as their command and control arrangements. This chapter promotes discussion about a drugs policy that focuses on attacking the source of the illicit drug problem using cyber weapons.