Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Another article on infowar

INFORMATION WARFARE
Prof George J. Stein, Air War College, USAF
Airpower Journal - Spring 1995

http://www.iwar.org.uk/iwar/resources/airchronicles/stein.htm

Is there a way we could use information, like current theories of airpower, to create an "information campaign" that engages an opponent simultaneously in time, space, and depth across the full range of his strategic structures so that the result is strategic paralysis (he is deaf, dumb, and blind to anything except that which we permit him to hear, say, or see)?19 Not that we just blind him, but that he sees what we wish him to see without realizing that it's "our" reality, not his. Can we envision that kind of strategic information warfare? And, as was the case with airpower, technology will follow strategic vision. It's OK if we can't insert computer viruses by direct satellite broadcast-today; fry every air defense radar with an electromagnetic burst from a remote unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-today; transfer all the dictator's Swiss bank accounts to the internal revenue service (IRS)-today; project holographic images, complete with proper electronic signatures, of 15 squadrons coming in from the north when we're coming in the back door-today; or beam the Forrest Gump interview with "El Supremo" into every radio and television in banditland-today. Develop the strategic theory of information warfare, and the technology will come.


Thanks to Killtown, who posted this article here:

http://killtown.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-they-didnt-use-planes-to-hit-wtc.html

Here's what Killtown excerpted, which is also interesting, and talks about technologies the author already considered available in 1995:

Let us take just one example of how current technologies could be used for strategic-level information warfare. If, say, the capabilities of already well-known Hollywood technologies to simulate reality were added to our arsenal, a genuinely revolutionary new form of warfare would become possible. Today, the techniques of combining live actors with computer-generated video graphics can easily create a "virtual" news conference, summit meeting, or perhaps even a battle that would exist in "effect" though not in physical fact. Stored video images can be recombined or "morphed" endlessly to produce any effect chosen. This moves well beyond traditional military deception, and now, perhaps, "pictures" will be worth a thousand tanks. Imagine the effect of a nationwide broadcast in banditland of the meeting between the "digitized" maximum leader and a "digitized" Jimmy Carter in which all loyal soldiers are told to cease fighting and return to their homes. The targets of information warfare, remember, are the decisions in the opponent's mind, and the battlespace of the human mind is also the zone of illusion.