U.S. Plans to ‘Fight the Net’
January 31st, 2007Oh what a difference a decade makes. A little less that that, in this case.
In 1995, when I first suggested to a professor that net centric warfare would become a core military competency, right along with rockets, rifles and bombs, I got a bit of a laugh. He let me write my paper anyway. I got an “A” on the thing, but he asked me if he could keep it, because he wanted to show it to “some people.”
My experience pretty much sums up the “old guard” response to information warfare (they seem to be calling it full spectrum information operations now). You have a bunch of crusty old drunks who think the world works the way it did for the last fifty years. But lay it all out for them, and it’s like a good slap in the face. Information warfare was the stuff of think tank backwaters in the mid 1990s. Not anymore. They get it.
The DoD Information Operations Roadmap is definitely worth reading for those of you are interested in this topic. As usual, most of the operational information is heavily redacted. I used to be interested in the strategic nature of infrastructure, especially electricity and data networks. In the DoD document under “Computer Network Defense” you will find this sentence: “Unprotected networks surrender asymmetric advantage.” If you want to get a feel for what that means, my 2002 cyberwar essay sums it up. The situation I described in that essay hadn’t changed since I realized it back in the 1990s. The situation is the same now. My guess is that many of the redacted bits are related to physical infrastructure. That topic is off limits for public discussion. It always has been. It’s the stuff of nightmares for Them.
Via: BBC:
A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military’s plans for “information operations” – from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.
Bloggers beware.
As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.
From influencing public opinion through new media to designing “computer network attack” weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.
The declassified document is called “Information Operations Roadmap”. It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.
Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.
[…] U.S. Plans to ‘Fight the Net’ Posted in False Flag Operations, War | Trackback | Top Of […]
[…] U.S. Plans to ‘Fight the Net’ Posted in Perception Management, War, Resistance | Trackback | Top Of […]