English

DTIC ADA367662: What Is Information Warfare?

This essay examines that line of thinking and indicates several fundamental flaws while arguing the following points: Information warfare, as a separate technique of waging war, does not exist. There are, instead, several distinct forms of information warfare, each laying claim to the larger concept. Seven forms of information warfare-conflicts that involve the protection, manipulation, degradation, and denial of information-can be distinguished: (1) command-and-control warfare (which strikes against the enemy's head and neck), (2) intelligence-based warfare (which consists of the design, protection, and denial of systems that seek sufficient knowledge to dominate the battlespace), (3) electronic warfare (radio-electronic or cryptographic techniques), (4) psychological warfare (in which information is used to change the minds of friends, neutrals, and foes), (5) "hacker" warfare (in which computer systems are attacked), (6) economic information warfare (blocking information or channeling it to pursue economic dominance), and (7) cyberwarfare (a grab bag of futuristic scenarios). All these forms are weakly related. The concept of information warfare has as much analytic coherence as

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