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A Theory of Information Warfare: Preparing for 2020
by Colonel Richard Szafranski
A Theory of Information Warfare
Preparing For 2020
by Colonel Richard Szafranski, USAF
The profession of arms in a democracy is not exempt from oversight
or from consideration of just conduct, even in warfare. Where the will
of the people, the moral high ground, and the technological high
ground are the same, the profession will remain a useful and lofty
one. If, however, the moral high ground is lost, a domino effect
occurs: public support is lost, the technological high ground is lost,
and the armed forces are lost. It is within this framework that this
article postulates a theory of information warfare1 within the larger
context of warfare and proposes ways to wage information warfare at
the strategic and operational levels. The tools to wage information
warfare are at hand, and because information weapons are such
powerful weapons, both combatants and noncombatants need to be
protected against them. The vulnerability to information warfare is
universal. The decisions to pursue the development of information
weapons or to prosecute information warfare are governmental
decisions. These decisions need to be made consciously and
deliberately and with an understanding of the moral and ethical risks
of information warfare. After assessing all the risks and deciding to
create information weapons or engage in information warfare, the
decision makers should first have an understanding of these weapons
and a weapon employment theory before such warfare starts rather
than after the weapons are deployed or have already been employed.
Information
Information as used here means the "content or meaning of a
message."2 An aim of warfare always has been to affect the enemy's
information systems. In the broadest sense, information systems
encompass every means by which an adversary arrives at knowledge
or beliefs. A narrower view maintains that information systems are the
means by which an adversary exercises control over, and direction of,
fielded forces. Taken together, information systems are a
comprehensive set of the knowledge, beliefs, and the decisionmaking
processes and systems of the adversary. The outcome sought by
information attacks at every level is for the enemy to receive sufficient
messages that convince him to stop fighting.
Why would an adversary stop fighting? There are a number of
possibilities: an inability to control fielded forces, demoralization,
the knowledge or belief that combat power has been annihilated, or
an awareness that the prospects of not fighting are superior to the
prospects of continuing the fight. These "stopfighting" messages
might be as varied in content or meaning as "Cannae has ruined you,"
or "Submit to the Tartar or die," or "Your counterattack has failed," or
even "Your own people do not support you in warfare that kills
babies." Although the methods of communicating the stopfighting
message have changed over the years, the meaning of the message
itself remains fairly constant: stop fighting.
As social institutions evolved from firstwave agrarian societies to
secondwave industrial states, information systems evolved and
decisionmaking processes became more complex. Mercantile
organizations arose within or alongside the dominant political
structures, adding elements of greater complexity as the scope of their
activities enlarged. Knowledge networks of knowledge workers, the
newest form of institutional structure, emerged and their numbers
increased in tandem with the availability of the tools of information
technology. As information technology advanced, information
systems allowed knowledge, or knowhow, to make all the other
institutional forms more effective.3
As societal institutions evolved, the ways in which societies fought
evolved also. The terrorizing drums, banners, and gongs of Sun Tzu's
warfare, aided by information technology, became the sophisticated
psychological operations of modern warfare. The aim of warfare
moved from, or could move from, exhaustion to annihilation to
control, according to John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt.4 Information
technology may now have evolved to the point where "control" can be
imposed with little physical violence or bloodshed. On the surface
this appears to be a good thing. At its center, it may be a dangerous
thing. Closer scrutiny should reveal which of these is the case.
What Warfare Is
Warfare is the set of all lethal and nonlethal activities undertaken to
subdue the hostile will of an adversary or enemy. In this sense,
warfare is not synonymous with "war."5 Warfare does not require a
declaration of war, nor does it require existence of a condition widely
recognized as "a state of war." Warfare can be undertaken by or
against statecontrolled, statesponsored, or nonstate groups. Warfare is
hostile activity directed against an adversary or enemy. The aim of
warfare is not necessarily to kill the enemy. The aim of warfare is to
merely subdue the enemy. In fact, the "acme of skill" is to subdue an
adversary without killing him.6 The adversary is subdued when he
behaves in ways that are coincident with the ways in which we--the
aggressor or the defender--intend for him to behave.7 In aiming to
subdue hostile will, we must have a clear understanding of the
specific nonhostile behaviors we intend to compel, or the hostile ones
we want to prevent.
When the security forces of a state engage an enemy state in warfare,
the government determines the specific nonhostile behaviors sought
from the adversary. When other groups--guerrillas, gangs, clans--
engage in warfare, the group leader decides the specific nonhostile
behaviors sought. In both state and nonstate warfare forms, the
decisions made by group leaders define the aims, the methods, and
the desired postconflict conditions of the warfare. Even so, it is a
fiction, albeit a common and convenient one, to assert that "states" or
"groups" wage warfare. The decision to engage in warfare, including
the decision to terminate warfare, is made by leaders in the state or
group. Likewise, it is the hostile will of enemy leaders that must be
subdued to be successful in warfare.8 Group members, or the citizens
of states, may influence the leaders' decisions, but it is the hostile will
of leadership that must be subdued. If the "mandate of heaven" passes
from the leader to other group members--successor leaders or the
population at large--the hostile will of these new leaders must be
subdued. Information warfare can help withdraw the mandate of
heaven from the hands of adversary leaders.
The great discovery that launched the information age was awareness
that everything in the external world could be reduced to
combinations of zeroes and ones. These combinations could be
transmitted electronically as data and recombined upon receipt to
form the basis of information. According to the seminal work on
control warfare by Arquilla and Ronfeldt, information is more than
the content or meaning of a message. Rather, information is "any
difference that makes a difference."9 Information warfare is a form of
conflict that attacks information systems directly as a means to attack
adversary knowledge or beliefs. Information warfare can be
prosecuted as a component of a larger and more comprehensive set of
hostile activities--a netwar or cyberwar--or it can be undertaken as the
sole form of hostile activity.10 Most weapons--a word used to
describe the lethal and nonlethal tools of warfare--only have high
utility --against external adversaries. While most often employed
against external adversaries, many of the weapons of information
warfare are equally well suited for employment against internal
constituencies. For example, a state or group would not normally use
guns and bombs against its own members; however, the weapons of
information warfare can be used, have been used, and very likely will
be used against both external and internal adversaries. Information
warfare in the Third Reich, for example, was omnifrontal.
Information warfare is hostile activity directed against any part of the
knowledge and belief systems of an adversary. The "adversary" is
anyone uncooperative with the aims of the leader. Externally, this is
the agreedupon "enemy," or the "not us." Internally, the adversary
might be the traitor, the faint of heart, or the fellow traveler--anyone
who opposes or is insufficiently cooperative with the leader who
controls the means of information warfare. If the internal members of
a group are insufficiently supportive of the aims of the leader during
warfare, internal information warfare (including such things as
propaganda, deception, character assassination, rumors, and lies) can
be used in attempts to make them more supportive of the aims of
leadership.
Warfare and Its Relation to What We Know or Believe
Whether directly employed against an external adversary or internal
constituencies, information warfare has the ultimate aim of using
information weapons to affect (influence, manipulate, attack) the
knowledge and belief systems of some external adversary. It is useful
in warfare, for example, for an external adversary to know, or at least
believe, that the opposing state or group is united against him or her.
Information warfare, simultaneously employed to make internal
constituencies cooperative and external adversaries believe its enemy
is a united front, is used to help seat that awareness in the knowledge
and beliefs residing in the mind of adversary leadership.
The Fragility of Knowledge and Beliefs
Knowledge systems are those systems organized and operated to
sense or observe verifiable phenomenological indicators or
designators, translate these indicators into perceived realities, and use
these perceptions to make decisions and direct actions.11 Sensing
that the plate is hot, one releases it. Observing that one's expenditures
exceed income, one curbs spending. Our sensing and observing
systems allow us to know. We decide and act based on our
knowledge, but not on knowledge alone. Knowledge systems are
organized according to scientific principles and sustained by the
scientific method. That is, knowledge systems are organized to collect
empirical data by sensing or observation to formulate hypotheses, to
conduct tests that validate or invalidate the hypotheses, and to use
these findings as the basis for further action. Belief systems are those
implicit or explicit orientations both to empirical data in the form of
verifiable perceptions and to other data or awareness (nightmares,
phobias, psychoses, neuroses, and all the other creatures living in the
fertile swamp of the subconscious, the collective unconscious, or
Jung's "unconscious psyche"12) that are not verifiable or, at least, are
less easily verifiable.13 According to John Boyd, the process or act of
orientation (what Boyd calls "the Big O" in the OODA [observation-
orientation-decision-action] loop) also is influenced by genetic
heritage and cultural traditions.14 Thus, the orientation of American
leaders is different than the orientation of, say, Japanese or Chinese
leaders. The orientation of capitalists and their leaders is different
than the orientation of socialists and their leaders.
Unlike knowledge systems, belief systems are highly individualized.
Why? They include the stuff of the unconscious and subconscious,
powerful elements of which others and even the bearer may be
unaware. Even though the target of information warfare is the mind of
enemy leadership, it is glib reductionism to think of the enemy as
being of "one mind." The enemy is really many individual enemies,
many minds. This only complicates the problem slightly. For
example, if the enemy is dispersed, separate minds can be attacked
separately, using the fact of isolation to the attacker's advantage. If the
enemy is concentrated (and over half the people on the planet will live
in metropolitan complexes by the year 2020 and will be accessible in
large numbers by way of information technology), the attack can be
prosecuted against large groups. Even so, the aim of warfare is to
subdue the hostile will of leaders and decision makers. This can be
done directly by attacks aimed at influencing or manipulating the
leader's knowledge or beliefs or indirectly by attacking the knowledge
or beliefs of those upon whom the leader depends for action. Leaders
and decision makers usually are not difficult to identify in any
organization hierarchy. When an organization applies power or force,
that organization most often assumes hierarchical characteristics.
Thus, the knowledge and beliefs of decision makers are the Achilles'
heel of hierarchies.
Knowledge systems, because they are more scientific, are less
influenced by culture and by irrational or nonverifiable factors than
are belief systems, yet both knowledge systems and belief systems are
components present in every human decisionmaking system.15 What
is known, including the methods by which it came to be known, can
be tested by its relation to something else and determined to be valid
or invalid, true or false, real or unreal. What is believed is not subject
to all the same tests. Even so, beliefs are no less compelling than
empirically derived knowledge. Both knowledge and beliefs affect
human decision making. Since the aim of warfare is to influence
adversary behavior by influencing adversary decisions, information
warfare actions must be directed against both the adversary's
knowledge systems and belief systems. If an adversary is organized as
a coalition of multiple and cooperative centers of gravity, many
culturally conditioned belief systems may exist within the coalition.
These may be engaged and defeated in detail. The coalition need not
be separate states or groups working as an alliance. The coalition can
be the constituencies within a state or within groups. Clausewitz was
correct in asserting the potential liabilities associated with allies and
coalitions.16 Moreover, leaders and decision makers of the coalition
provide the most fertile targets for direct or indirect attacks.
Targeting Epistemology
The target system of information warfare can include every element in
the epistemology of an adversary. Epistemology means the entire
"organization, structure, methods, and validity of knowledge."17 In
layperson's terms, it means everything a human organism--an
individual or a group--holds to be true or real, no matter whether that
which is held as true or real was acquired as knowledge or as a belief.
At the strategic level, the aim of a "perfect" information warfare
campaign is to influence adversary choices, and hence adversary
behavior, without the adversary's awareness that choices and behavior
are being influenced. Even though this aim is difficult to attain, it
remains the goal of a perfect information warfare campaign at the
strategic level. A successful, although not necessarily perfect,
information warfare campaign waged at the strategic level will result
in adversary decisions (and hence actions) that consistently mismatch
or fail to support the intentions or aims of the adversary leader.
A successful information warfare campaign waged at the operational
level will support strategic objectives by influencing the adversary's
ability to make decisions in a timely or effective manner. Said another
way, the aim of information warfare activities at the operational level
is to so complicate or confound the adversary's decision making
process that the adversary cannot act or behave in a coordinated or
effective way. In information warfare, the goal is to harmonize the
activities taken at the operational level with those taken at the
strategic level so that, taken altogether, the adversary makes decisions
that result in actions that consistently support our aims by
consistently failing to support the adversary's aims.
At the strategic level, the leaders contemplating an information
warfare campaign need to know the answers to at least three
questions. First, what is the relationship of the information warfare
campaign to the larger aims of the campaign? Second, what is it we
wish the adversary leaders to know or believe when the information
warfare campaign is concluded? That is, what is the desired
epistemological endstate and consequently the success criterion?
Third, what are the best information warfare tools to employ in order
to meet the established success criteria? That is, how will "means" be
related to "ends"?
At the operational level, the leaders responsible for prosecuting the
"grand tactics" also need the answers to some questions. Will there be
any withheld targets or prohibited weapons in the information warfare
attacks? Is the epistemological endstate to be reached all at once,
everywhere, or are there interim states that need to be reached in
specific geographical areas, in a specific sequence, or in specific
sectors of information activity? The questions of "command and
signal" also need to be addressed. Specifically, leaders at the
operational level need to know when attacks will be terminated and
the means by which the termination order will be communicated.
These are important questions because information weapons,
depending on the weapons used, may cause collateral damage to the
attacker's knowledge and belief systems.18 In the worst case, the
adversary's response could include counterattacks against "friendly"
information systems that are somehow indistinguishable from
collateral damage caused by the information analog of "friendly fire."
This thought requires some elaboration.
Warfare is a human social activity.19 The workplace of warriors is
society, the societies of those engaged in combat and the societies of
active and passive spectator groups. Because it is a human activity--
and one dependent on human action, reaction, and interaction--the
outcomes of some warfare activities may be unpredictable. As Grant
Hammond notes in "Paradoxes of War," if the outcomes of a war
could be known in advance, there would be scant reasons for the loser
to fight in the first place.20 Moreover, there may be lag times between
action and response; some outcomes take longer to develop than
others. Thus, the notion that World War II was the outcome of World
War I (or the peace treaty that terminated combat) may very well be
true. The unpredictability, however, is not confined to the
consequences of war termination. Specific actions in warfare can have
specific and unpredictable reactions.
Information attacks--attacks aimed at the knowledge or belief systems
of adversaries--can have consequences that are as unpredictable as
attacks aimed at the physical destruction of property or combat
equipment or those aimed at killing human beings. Suffice it to say
that information attacks have stochastic effects and that unless these
are considered and evaluated in advance, an information attack may
not have the effect ultimately desired. Worse, it may have
consequences that are so undesirable that the attacker will rue that an
attack was made in the first place. The notion of stochastic effects,
like the notion of collateral damage, needs to be considered at both
the strategic and operational levels of information warfare.
The Target Sets of Information Warfare
The more dependent the adversary is on information systems for
decision making, the more vulnerable he is to hostile manipulation of
those systems. Software viruses only hurt those dependent on
software. Radioelectronic combat only works against forces reliant on
radios or electronics. Electromagnetic pulse generators--unless the
generator is a nuclear weapon--do not affect human couriers and
runners. While this suggests that only postindustrial states or groups
are highly vulnerable to information warfare, the opposite may be the
case for two reasons. First, preindustrial or agrarian societies still
have vulnerable epistemological systems. Because information
warfare can be prosecuted against the adversary's entire epistemology-
-both knowledge systems and belief systems--even preindustrial
agrarian or primitive societies are vulnerable to information warfare.
Second, industrial societies, and even some advanced industrial
societies, may acquire much of their telecommunications
infrastructure from more advanced or postindustrial societies or
groups.
By way of analogy, consider the case of the homeowner and the
architect. The homeowner may not be aware of flaws in his or her
residence, but the architect is aware. Likewise, the operator or
"owner" of a telecommunications system designed or built by others
may be unaware of important features of which only the designer or
manufacturer has knowledge. If the architect is not directly
subordinate or accountable to "the owner," then the potential exists
for the architect to exploit the hidden features to his own advantage.
In the warfare of business competition, the architect may have the
means, motive, and opportunity to exploit these features to meet the
objectives of the firm, whether or not the government or the state
approves of these actions.
In the case of advanced societies or groups, attacks against
telecommunications systems can wreak havoc with an adversary's
ability to make effective decisions in warfare. Yet, one should also
appreciate that an apparition in the sky, even a natural phenomenon
like a solar eclipse, can be used to attack the belief systems of a less
advanced group. Totems and taboos might function equally as well as
the targets or the tools of information warfare against a primitive
group. Thus, vulnerability to information warfare is nearly universal,
the differences being only a matter of degree.
An Illustration of Complexity
Information warfare is a complex notion. It is complex because the
weapons employed are and always have been as common as words,
pictures, and images, even though today these may be communicated
or manipulated in uncommon ways. It is complex because the attacks
are crafted by minds to affect minds. In addition, it is complex
because the attacks can be direct or indirect, aimed at internal or
external constituencies, the only constant being the effect sought. The
desired effect of information warfare is to influence and change what
the adversary believes or what the adversary knows.
The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857-58 provides an example of the
complexity. The mutiny reportedly was triggered by a rumor that the
British were coating rifle cartridges in animal fat.21 Contact with this
fat was taboo to the Hindu and Muslim sepoys (Indian natives in the
British army). Even though the cartridge coating was not animal fat
and could be subjected to scientific tests that would result in this
knowledge, the sepoy believed the substance was animal fat. This
belief was more compelling to the primitive sepoy than knowledge.
Thus, it was belief, not knowledge, that influenced sepoy behavior
and triggered a difficult struggle between the British and the Indians.
This case is also illustrative of the fact that even though the use of
this misinformation was directed against the British leadership, the
attack was indirect. It was the sepoy leaders who started the rumor,
and in so doing attacked the belief systems of both Hindu and
Muslim sepoys to spur them to rebel against their British masters.
Thus, information warfare can be waged both internally and
externally, by, against, or between societies or groups of varied
technomic capability (a combination of advances in technology and
the increase of economic wealth).22 When waged against internal
constituencies, its aim is to use those constituencies to meet the larger
aim of warfare: subduing the hostile will of an external adversary.
When information warfare is prosecuted externally, the object is to
subdue the hostile will of external adversary leaders.
Vulnerable Sophisticates?
In states or groups with high technomic capability, the target set for
information warfare at the strategic level is wonderfully rich:
telecommunications and telephony,23 spacebased sensors,
communications relay systems; automated aids to financial, banking,
and commercial transactions; supporting power production and
distribution systems; cultural systems of all kinds; and the whole
gamut of hardware and software that constitutes how the adversary
knows and what the adversary believes. Strategic information systems
in states with high technomic capability oftentimes are mirrored by
operationallevel ones of equal complexity. All are vulnerable to
attack.
Information warfare need not be deferred until hostility becomes
open. Adversary leadership will be less likely to fight if it believes
one or more of the following: that violence is bad, or that they will be
without allies, or that they will face harsh sanctions should fighting
erupt, or that their industrial base will not support prolonged warfare,
or that their armed forces are unready. Should actual fighting break
out, attacks at the operational level can harmonize with attacks at the
strategic level.
The target set at the operational level is equally lucrative when the
adversary has high technomic capability and relies on automated aids
to fight. Hierarchical systems are most vulnerable, but even networks
have control or relay nodes that are susceptible to attack. To function
effectively, networks have hierarchical elements or nodes. Often these
elements are invisible--embedded software protocols, filters, sort
instructions, and the like.24 That they are more difficult to attack may
not make them immune to attack.
The higher its technomic capability and the greater the number of its
interactions with other groups (including internal groups) or states,
the greater the state or group's potential vulnerability to information
warfare. The vulnerability may increase as network size increases,
dependence on the information transacted increases, or the number or
volume of transactions increases. Consequently, a state or group
"engaged" worldwide may be exposed or vulnerable worldwide. (If the
objective of engagement is a strategic campaign aimed at affecting the
knowledge or beliefs of others, then those engaged are, of course,
similarly vulnerable.) Democracies are no less vulnerable than
totalitarian regimes, although democratic social systems, as groups,
may be somewhat more faulttolerant. By that is meant that
democracies promote diversity and diversity increases the tolerance
for difference. This willingness to accept diversity (and even the
bizarre), the routine coexistence of contradictory knowledge and
different beliefs among individuals and groups, and the constant
attempts at manipulation by marketing experts do not reduce the
vulnerability of a democracy, but they do mitigate the impact of
information warfare attacks. Said another way, many people in
democratic nations may be immune to attacks because their
knowledge may be limited, their belief systems may always be in flux,
and much information registers only as noise. Thus, images of
televised eroticism may have little effect on many in the United
States. Yet, the same images that almost are mundane in the United
States could have dramatic effects if televised in China, Iraq, or
Iran.25
Even though the democracy's social system may be faulttolerant, its
technomic control apparatus may be less so. Banking, finance, trade,
travel, and air traffic control are now and increasingly will become
more dependent on information technology systems. In 1992 the
United States invested over $210 billion on information technology
(about half the level of worldwide investment), and the amount
invested is expected to grow about 18 percent each year for the next
several years.26 As dependence on information systems grows,
warfare waged by nonstate groups--terrorists, religious extremists,
hostile businesses--against information systems constitutes a real
threat. The bombing of the World Trade Center, whatever other
general or specific objectives it might have had, apparently was
designed to inflict serious damage on the trading and banking
capability of the United States. The information warfare component
of some future strategic warfare campaign waged by terrorists
certainly will not fail to include the powerproduction facilities and
communications systems serving the principal target. Simultaneous
attacks against widely dispersed nodes could have a strategic effect.
That is, they could affect the knowledge, beliefs, and the will of
leaders.
A cautionary note: because an information warfare campaign at the
strategic level aims to subdue hostile will by affecting the knowledge
and beliefs of the adversary, it cannot discriminate between
combatants and noncombatants. Because the weapons of information
warfare systematically attack the adversary's knowledge and belief
systems (that which makes us different from other species), the likely
outcomes of information warfare need to be evaluated consciously
before information attacks are prosecuted. A successful information
warfare campaign interposes a false reality on the human target. At
the strategic level, these targets include both combatants and
noncombatants. The interposition of a false reality ultimately may be
as wrongful and inhumane as the wanton destruction of crops. To
unhinge a noncombatant from reality, especially when the effects
cannot be known or controlled, may be no less wrongful than to force
another into starvation or cannibalism. Said another way, the
principles of just war and just conduct in warfare need to be evaluated
whenever strategic information warfare is contemplated.
Deception and disinformation, radioelectronic combat, propaganda,
and the whole gamut of "psychological warfare" or command and
control warfare attacks against enemy combatants at the operational
level cannot be said to be wrongful. These aim to subdue without
fighting or to reduce the amount of violence required. Becoming
unhinged from reality in combat, like death or some other form of
suffering, is a risk of which combatants are aware and is a possibility
that combatants must accept. Thus, as long as information warfare
and weapons are restricted by norms or laws to the operational level
of warfare, it would appear that they are no more or any less evil than
any other weapon. The problem remains a twofold one: determining
the morality of an information warfare campaign waged at the
strategic level and restricting the use of information weapons to the
operational level.
The decision to pursue information warfare or develop information
weapons is a leadership decision. It is a strategic decision in the
United States because it is the Congress, representing the entire
citizenry, that links means to ends. In the United States, such a
program (if done by the state) would be done with money
appropriated by the Congress. The Congress, or its oversight
committees, will evaluate the morality of information warfare. In the
wake of this evaluation, the Congress may confine these weapons and
their use to the operational level of warfare. The Congress may also
establish safeguards to prevent any such weapons so developed from
being used against internal constituencies. The legislative branch also
may make laws preventing the use of information weapons against
nonUS noncombatants and internal constituencies. As outsourcing
and contractingout initiatives increase, the Congress also can be
expected to act to prevent some commercial enterprise from
developing such weapons. (Have not news stories and "exposs"
produced by commercial news enterprises proven to be contrived,
aimed at influencing our knowledge and beliefs? Have not subliminal
messages been used in the past in attempts to influence our
purchasing behavior? Have not hackers entered and affected--or
infected--databases already? We need to consider that there may be
only a slim difference between a hacker and a terrorist in the
information age. This is especially so if the hacker can attack things
like finance, credit ratings, college transcripts, or other databases
upon which technomic institutions depend.) The political leaders in
the United States can be expected to consider the morality of
information weapons and information warfare, no matter which group
develops the weapons or engages in the warfare, and to regulate their
use accordingly. The Congress very likely will conclude that the
employment of information weapons at the operational level is useful
and necessary, but that employment against noncombatants, or their
employment at the strategic level is wrong.
The United States should expect that its information systems are
vulnerable to attack. It should further expect that attacks, when they
come, may come in advance of any formal declaration of hostile intent
by an adversary state. When they come, the attacks will be prosecuted
against both knowledge systems and belief systems, aimed at
influencing leadership choices. The knowledge and beliefs of leaders
will be attacked both directly and indirectly. Noncombatants, those
upon whom leaders depend for support and action, will be targets.
This is what we have to look forward to in 2020 or sooner.
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Notes
1. Information warfare sometimes is erroneously referred to as
command and control warfare, or C2W. The aim of C2W is to use
physical and radioelectronic combat attacks against enemy
information systems to separate enemy forces from enemy leadership.
In theory, information warfare actually is a much larger set of
activities aimed at the mind and will of the enemy.
2.Chris Mader, Information Systems: Technology, Economics,
Applications (Chicago: Science Research Associates, Inc., 1974), 3.
3.The "waves" of societies are described by Alvin Toffler in The Third
Wave (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1980). See
also Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and AntiWar: Survival at the Dawn
of the 21st Century (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993). A
seminal work on institutional forms is forthcoming from David
Ronfeldt.
4.John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, "Cyberwar is Coming!"
Comparative Strategy 2 (April-June 1993): 141-65.
5.Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: Free
Press, 1991), 196-205. Words like war and the lately contrived
warfighter confuse the warriors in a democracy by misuse. In the
United States, War (with a big W ) is declared by the Congress: the
people representing all the people. Executive War Powers are really
warfare powers. The days of Clausewitzian, trinitarian W ars may
very well be over, as van Creveld suggests. The days of warfare,
however, are not over.
6.Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1971), 77.
7. Richard Szafranski, "Toward a Theory of Neocortical Warfare:
Pursuing the Acme of Skill," Military Review, November 1994; and
idem, "When Waves Collide: Conflict in the Next Century," JFQ:
Joint Force Quarterly, Winter 1994-95.
8.Joseph A. Engelbrecht, "War Termination: Why Does a State
Decide to Stop Fighting?" (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1992).
Colonel Engelbrecht is a colleague at the Air University's Air War
College.
9.Arquilla and Ronfeldt, note 9, 162. According to this definition, a
message with no discernible "meaning" is still "information." This
definition is useful when contemplating the tactics of information
warfare.
10.Ibid.
11.Phenomenology can be defined as "the theory of the appearances
fundamental to all empirical knowledge." Dorion Cairns, in Dagobert
D. Runes, ed., Dictionary of Philosophy (Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield,
Adams & Co., Ltd., 1962), 231-34.
12. C. G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self (New York: The New
American Library, Mentor Book, 1958), 102.
13.Information warfare requires that philosophers, cultural
anthropologists, area specialists, linguists, and semanticists join the
"operations" staff. The days have passed when war colleges or staff
colleges could neglect these other disciplines.
14.John R. Boyd, briefing slides, subject: A Discourse On Winning
and Losing, August 1987. Maxwell AFB, Alabama.
15.Ibid.
16.Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and
Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), book 6,
chapter 6, 372-76.
17.Ledger Wood, in Runes, 94-96.
18.The effects to which I refer are more complicated than the inability
to prevent your own jamming from interfering with your own
communications systems. These unconfinable, spillover effects of
stray electrons can be modeled and some compensation can be made
for their effects. The weapons and effects of information warfare are
not so easily confinable or controllable. In warfare it is common to
both demonize and ridicule the enemy. Ridicule often takes the form
of jokes. If these jokes ridicule an enemy from a different ethnic
group, these jokes become officially sanctioned racist jokes. If the
ethnic group is part of our own citizenry, such attacks can cause
collateral damage. The collateral damage to the armed forces may
have effects as farreaching as the appearance of officially condoned
racism. If one accepts that weapons and attacks have stochastic
effects, then some consequences are unpredictable.
19.Van Creveld, 35.
20.Grant T. Hammond, "Paradoxes of War," JFQ: Joint Forces
Quarterly, Spring 1994. Dr Hammond is a colleague on Air
University's Air War College faculty.
21.George C. Kohn, Dictionary of Wars (New York: Facts On File
Publications, 1986), 214.
22.Technomic is a word coined by Col Joseph A. Engelbrecht. He
defines it to mean "of or relating to progress in the development of the
application of scientific principle (technology), and in the
development of wealth (economics), and in the interrelationship
between advances in science and the spread and increase of economic
wealth. Technomic vitality. Technomic proliferation."
23.Gerald R. Hurst, "Taking down Telecommunications" (Thesis,
School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University, Maxwell Air
Force Base, Ala., 28 May 1993).
24.Ibid.
25.Iran provides a good example. The Majles investigation into the
Iranian department of "Voice and Vision" illuminates Iran's sensitivity
to the content and meaning of pictorial messages. Consider these
comments from the investigation:
A basic criticism of the pictorial programs of the Voice and Vision is
lack of attention to full veiling of women, lack of attention to the
chador, and spreading of the culture of the "manteau" and scarves of
the immoral kind.
The grand leader on occasions has given opinions and directives to
the Voice and Vision organization or its director. Unfortunately, the
instructions and directives of his honor were not implemented. For
example: . . . . From 1368 [21 March 198920 March 1990] to 1370
[21 March 199020 March 1991], he made reminders to the Voice and
Vision on 14 occasions, the most important of which concern: A)
Misinformation. B) The low level of quality of the beyondtheborder
programs and failure to propagate and spread Islamic views in them.
C) The broadcast of blasphemous sentences concerning the Sire of
the Pious. . . . E) Showing actual persons in the role of the infallible
imams.
See "Majles Investigates Activities of Voice and Vision," 3, 4, 15
November 1993, 5-6, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service
Report: Near East and South Asia (FBISNES94016S), 25 January
1994, 6-8. I am grateful to Dr George Stein of the Air University's Air
War College faculty for pointing out this example of what
simultaneously might be internal information warfare and potential
vulnerability to external information warfare. Saudi Arabia recently
joined China as the most recent nation to outlaw satellite television
receivers. One can easily appreciate the effects that Music Television
(MTV) might have on such cultures.
26.A telecommunications executive speaking in an Air University
forum under the promise of nonattribution disclosed these estimated
figures.
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Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those
of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic
environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the US Government, Department of Defense, the United
States Air Force or the Air University
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