The article is devoted to the analysis of problems related to ensuring information and cybersecurity in Asian countries. In the digital age, the geopolitical space of Asia is becoming a field of large-scale information confrontation and cyberwarfare between the United States and new Asian centers of global influence. Leading Asian states are actively involved in the process of forming an international information security regime. The study used an interdisciplinary approach. A comparative analysis of the positions of Russian and foreign expert communities in the field of Oriental studies, information technologies, international relations and security is carried out.

Keywords: Asia, China, Middle East, USA, information security, cybersecurity, threats, information warfare.

The rapid development of information and telecommunications technologies (ICTs) creates many problems in the field of international and national security. Information confrontation is becoming an important component of world politics. Asian states are becoming increasingly involved in the transformation of the system of international relations and the formation of a new safe environment, and despite the costs of "catching up" development, they are forming new global centers of power that can challenge the United States, including in the field of global information superiority. Accordingly, the geopolitical space of Asia, while maintaining its status as one of the world's main hotbeds of international and domestic political conflicts, becomes a field of large-scale information clashes.

Information security issues appeared on the international political and academic agenda after the end of the Cold War as a result of the changing geopolitical situation and the information revolution. Initially, the term "information security" was used to refer to problems caused by computer networks. Subsequently, it acquired a broader meaning that goes beyond the purely technological sphere. To date, a single conceptual framework in the field of international information security has not yet been developed due to differences in the approaches of individual States to defining threats in the field of ICT that are subject to settlement at the international level.

The Western (US and EU countries) approach actually reduces information security issues to technical problems of control and compliance with law and order in the telecommunications sector (protection against unauthorized access, hacking of computer networks and websites, computer viruses and malware, etc.). However, the predominant use of the prefix "cyber" takes out of brackets, for example, problems of calling for terrorism and extremism in the content of content. Russian and Asian researchers and diplomats adhere to

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an expanded approach, qualifying information security in accordance with the types of threats as information technology (cybersecurity) or information social. For example, countering the spread of the ideology of terrorism through the Internet is not included in technical threats, but is included in the concept of information and social security, which involves protecting the psychological state of society and the state from negative information impact.

The Russian approach to considering the problems of international information security in the context of the so-called triad of threats (terrorist, military, and criminal) largely echoes the position of UN experts, who distinguish three types of threats: cybercrime, cyberterrorism, and the use of the information space for military and political purposes [Karasev, 2012; Zinovieva, 2013, p. 218]. information security, 2013, pp. 196-201].

There is also no consensus in the global expert community in defining the term "information war", which generally refers to strategic interstate confrontation in the information space, in particular in the form of information and intelligence, electronic, hacker, cybernetic and psychological warfare [Korsakov, 2012, pp. 41-43; Libicki, 2009].

American experts distinguish two types of strategic information wars - the first and second generation. A first-generation war (in fact, cyberwar) is understood as a complex information impact on the enemy's state and military management system, while ensuring reliable protection of its own national information infrastructure. A tool for waging such a war is cyberweapons - a set of the latest ICTs and tools that allow unauthorized access to information and the ability to purposefully modify it (distort, block, copy, destroy), hack security systems, restrict access to legitimate users, carry out disinformation, interfere with the functioning of information carriers, technical means, computer systems and information and communication technologies.communication networks. Like nuclear weapons, information weapons can serve as political pressure and deterrence, providing a political and military-strategic advantage over States that do not have them. According to 2005 data, more than 120 countries were engaged in the development of information weapons [Korsakov, 2012, p. 41-43; Zinovieva, 2013, pp. 218-219; Libicki, 2009].

According to the US administration, the greatest threat to the national information space and information infrastructure of the United States is China, which, according to most world experts, leads by an impressive margin in the list of countries that carry out hacker attacks, cyber espionage and malware distribution [Ibragimova, 2013, p.169; Strany..., 2013]. For example, the unprecedented cascade of power outages in the northwestern United States in 2003, which covered the states of Ohio, New York, Michigan and some parts of Canada, was caused by a hacker attack. US intelligence agencies are confident that Beijing was behind this action, testing the capabilities of its cyber units specializing in cyber warfare and capable of disabling many US information infrastructure facilities if necessary.

Another example is a major scandal in 2009, which broke out after Chinese hackers hacked the accounts of hundreds of users, including high-ranking US officials and Google's Gmail service [Ibragimova, 2013, p. 169, 176; Yurchenko, 2012].

Targets of cyber espionage and hacker attacks from the territory of the PRC are not only Beijing's opponents in the West, but also competing countries in the East Asian region, and often the initiative comes from non-state actors.

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They played a key role in organizing the first cyber war against Indonesia in 1997-1998. The reason was the anti-Chinese pogroms that broke out due to the fact that after the Asian financial and economic crisis, people from China (Huaqiao) living in Indonesia almost completely took control of the distribution of food in most of the country. Jakarta accused the Chinese authorities of organizing cyber attacks on Indonesian government websites, which peaked on the national holiday of Indonesia-Independence Day (August 17) [Ibragimova, 2013, p. 177]. It is noteworthy that Indonesia itself firmly ranks second after China in the world in terms of the number of cyber attacks conducted from its territory. Turkey, India, and Taiwan appear in the top ten of such countries [Strany..., 2013].

It should be noted that China itself is very modest about its own achievements in cyberspace, emphasizing that the country's cybersecurity is significantly inferior to the information security of the world's leading powers. Indeed, in the world Cybercrime Index 2010-2011. China ranked only 13th, and only 36th in the ranking of countries with the most developed ICT sector [Ibragimova, 2013, p. 169]. The weak link in China's cyber strategy is the inability to create new technologies independently, and China's traditional practice of copying and refining foreign technologies, in fact, keeps the country within the" catch-up " development model. Therefore, in the last decade, the implementation of its own ICT projects has become a priority for China's innovative development, and Chinese developments, due to their relative cheapness, are confidently conquering the world market, which allows experts to talk about China's high potential in conducting operations in cyberspace [Ibragimova, 2013, pp. 169-170; Yurchenko, 2012]. It is for this reason that Washington considers the constant increase in imports of Chinese microchips to the United States a serious threat to national security and seeks to tighten control over the supply of high-tech products from abroad, primarily from China [Korsakov, 2012, p. 53; Yurchenko, 2012].

Cyberwarfare has also become relevant for the Middle East. In the summer of 2010, the Stuxnet computer virus was discovered, which disabled about 1 thousand centrifuges at the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz (Iran). By the end of 2010, there were already about 100 thousand people in the world. computers infected with this virus, and mainly in Asian countries-Iran (58.3%), Indonesia (17.8%), India (10%), Pakistan and the Philippines [Simonenko, 2013, p.234].

Stuxnet is a cyberweapon with colossal destructive power, theoretically comparable to weapons of mass destruction. Some experts compare the effect of Stuxnet to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the first nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, to date, the question of who and for what purposes it was created remains open. Theoretically, the motives and opportunities for creating such a virus were not only government organizations (among the possible customers-the United States, Israel, and even China), but also private companies (primarily competitors of Siemens in the supply of software equipment for nuclear power plant control systems), as well as non-governmental organizations (for example, Greenpeace).

In other words, there is no consensus in the global expert community on whether the Stuxnet cyberattack was part of cyberwarfare, cyberterrorism, cybercrime, or cyber vandalism. At the same time, the discovery of the Stuxnet virus has caused serious concern among the world community about the possibility of repeating such incidents at nuclear and industrial facilities and has put the issue of their cyber defense on the international agenda [Piskunova, 2014; Simonenko, 2013, pp. 233-239].

In May 2012 Iran has once again been the target of a cyberattack, presumably by the US and Israeli intelligence agencies, which experts attribute authorship to the creation of the sophisticated Flame malware. It is assumed that

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The virus was aimed at stealing industrial information from government computers in Iran and a number of other Middle Eastern countries [High-profile cases of cyber attacks, 2014].

Information warfare of the second generation is the manipulation of public consciousness and destabilization of relations between political movements in order to provoke conflicts on social, political, national and religious grounds; initiating strikes, mass riots and other actions of socio-economic protest to create political tension and chaos; discrediting public administration bodies in the eyes of the population; undermining the international authority of the state- the opponent and his cooperation with other countries; damage to his vital interests in various spheres. The main tools for conducting such operations are national and transnational mass media, as well as global information and communication networks, through which it is possible to influence the worldview, political views, legal awareness, mentality and values of an individual and society as a whole. One of the forms of waging second - generation information wars is "cultural expansion" under the slogan of spreading "Western democratic values", aimed at undermining the civic spirit, blurring national sovereignty, cultural and civilizational identity of opposing states [Korsakov, 2012, pp. 41-50; Libicki, 2009].

In 2010-2011. Washington announced the main directions of digital diplomacy and the US strategy in the global information space. Among the tasks outlined by the White House are discrediting ideological opponents of the United States and countering the information and foreign cultural policies of China and Iran carried out through the Internet and social networks. Priority funding is provided for projects aimed at creating and distributing new technologies that will allow circumventing censorship on the web, as well as supporting local opposition by deploying shadow Internet and independent mobile communication systems in third countries [Zinovieva, 2013, pp. 214-215; Information Strategy, 2011; IT Strategic Plan, 2010; Public Diplomacy, 2010; Rid, 2009].

Through information resources, the West has repeatedly managed to create an image of the PRC as an autocracy where human rights are severely restricted (the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989, in Tibet in 2008, in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in 2009). The incident with Google, when in the spring of 2010 the Internet search engine refused to comply with its obligations to Beijing, was indicative filter online requests from Chinese users, as provided for by the legislation of the People's Republic of China, in order to prevent the dissemination of information that can discredit the authorities. The White House came out in support of Google, accusing China of violating human rights, which complicated the already difficult relations between the two powers. The political background of the scandal allowed the United States to acquire powerful tools to curb Chinese exports (primarily ICT) to world markets, and Google Corporation acquired an impressive administrative resource in Washington [Ibragimova, 2013, p. 175]. In turn, China makes extensive use of ICT opportunities to create a positive image of the country in the international arena [Evdokimov, 2011; Ibragimova, 2013, pp. 178-180].

The Arab world became a field of large-scale information confrontation during the "Arab Spring" of 2010-2012. A coordinated propaganda campaign was launched in the American and local opposition-controlled media with unprecedented criticism of "bankrupt regimes", often aimed at their" beheading " by morally and politically discrediting the leader in the eyes of the local population and the world community (the most illustrative examples are Gaddafi in Libya and Bashar al-Assad in Syria). At the same time, the local population is insistent

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The idea was instilled that "changes are inevitable" and Washington is ready to provide financial and moral support to the opposition forces "following the path of democracy". A special role was played by the world's "independent" (in reality controlled by the United States) satellite and radio broadcasting channels. Their monopoly on coverage of events in the region, combined with the information blockade of the enemy, provided the protest movement with absolute information superiority [Korsakov, 2012, p.49-50]. Ironically, the Arab Al-Jazeera TV channel, which the White House has traditionally accused of inciting anti-American sentiment in the Middle East and of tendentious reporting on Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, took the side of the United States in this information war. Some experts believe that Al-Jazeera's position during the Arab Spring was due to some political background, in particular Qatar's exorbitantly increased regional ambitions [Lajmi, 2012].

The "Arab Awakening" in the Middle East and North Africa has raised the question of the effectiveness of using the potential of social networks in modern information wars. To describe and analyze the events of the "Arab Spring", the terms "Twitter revolution" and "movement "of Facebook's" youth"were originally used. Many observers interpreted the events as the machinations of the West, which supported anti-government protests in order to gain a foothold in a geopolitically important region of the world.

At the same time, the view of social network services as the main driving force of the Arab revolutions has attracted serious criticism from leading experts of the world's Oriental and IT community, including the American one. In fact, we are talking about the significant, but not primary or determining influence of Internet networks on the organization of mass protests in the Arab East [Naumkin, 2012]. But experts recognize that cyber technologies can have a destructive impact on international security if they are aimed at undermining authoritarian regimes [Demidov, 2013, pp. 67-74, 83; Zinovieva, 2013, pp. 216-217].

The global network can not only serve as an effective tool for democratization, but also contribute to strengthening authoritarian tendencies and restricting civil liberties, since Web 2.0 services provide new opportunities for both pro-Western groups and radical extremist organizations, as evidenced, in particular, by the appearance on the Internet of numerous sites of Islamist radical organizations calling for the creation of a new Internet environment. participation in the so-called world jihad.

The Iraq crisis of 2003, the Libyan campaign of 2011, the debate over the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, the current Syrian crisis, the long - standing information confrontation between the West and the Islamic world, etc. can serve as a clear example of second-generation information wars.

Washington assigns the Internet the role of a powerful strategic weapon and considers China and Russia to be its main rivals in controlling it. According to American experts, these two countries can take the path of fragmentation of the global information space, which obviously contradicts the interests of the United States in the field of national security [International Information Security, 2013, pp. 186-200; Knake, 2010]. China's rejection of the existing international Internet governance regime is due to the fact that the main functions of assigning names and addresses are assigned to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Addresses and Numbers (ICANN), which operates under the auspices of the United States. Chinese criticism of the corporation especially intensified after the domain was issued .tw to Taiwan, which is considered by Beijing to be an integral part of the PRC. Beijing calls for the dissolution of the corporation, which it believes is in the American interest, and the formation of a truly international organization for Internet governance under the auspices of the UN. In the absence of such an Ai-

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tai suggests creating alternative domain name systems-DNS extensions for an autonomous Internet operating within a single country, which will strengthen the control of states over local segments of the global network and mechanisms for global Internet governance. International platforms where China and Russia discuss such issues are the UN General Assembly and the SCO summits [Evdokimov, 2011; Ibragimova, 2013, pp. 177-178; Knake, 2010].

Heated discussions on this topic have raised the issue of respecting the principle of state sovereignty in the era of ICT in a new way. On the one hand, international law recognizes that interference in the internal affairs of any country is unacceptable. Therefore, no one disputes the legitimacy of the actions of States that, out of fear of interference in their internal affairs by certain countries or international organizations, including under humanitarian pretexts, impose certain restrictions on access to the Internet and the dissemination of information on the Internet within their territory. It is noteworthy that regular attempts to block access to Facebook, YouTube, and Blogspot services occur not only in predominantly authoritarian countries (China, Vietnam, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Myanmar, and North Korea), but also in such democratic states as Singapore [Zinovieva, 2013, p. 220 - 221; International Information Security, 2013, p. 204; Knake, 2010]. While remaining within the current international legal framework, large Internet corporations (Google, Yahoo! They cooperate with authoritarian regimes by providing local authorities with confidential information about their users and blocking certain types of search queries (Evdokimov, 2011; Zinovieva, 2013, p. 219). An example of a large-scale targeted shutdown of the Internet on the territory of a sovereign state was Egypt, where in the spring of 2011, at the urgent request of the government, companies disabled access to the global network from mobile devices [International Information Security, 2013, pp. 203-205].

On the other hand, in such a situation, there is a danger of disintegration of the global information space into several independent systems. The question of the validity of such concerns remains open, since, for example, Beijing manages to control the content of a large-scale Chinese segment of the global network (content censorship, traffic filtering, blocking foreign social web services Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal, etc.), while adhering to an open development model. Today, China consistently holds the first place in the world in terms of the total number and growth rate of Internet users [Evdokimov, 2011; Ibragimova, 2013, pp. 178-180].

It is obvious that in the context of globalization and the dynamic development of ICTs, no state can alone ensure the security of the national information space, but the mechanisms for preventing and countering such threats are still at the initial stage of formation. Asian states are actively involved in the global process of achieving information security. Their differences with the West in this area are due to different doctrinal and legal approaches, as well as the logic of the development of the modern world political process, which is characterized by competition for global and regional leadership, which is inevitable in the conditions of incomplete transformation of the system of international relations. Today, the opponents are already ready to cooperate in such areas as countering terrorism and criminal activity on the Internet, as well as in solving problems related to credit card fraud, child pornography, propaganda of violence and unhealthy lifestyles, etc. At the same time, it should be recognized that information confrontation in the geopolitical space of Asia increases the asymmetric component of modern conflicts and contributes to the growth of international tension.

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