The term Information Warfare may not be the best one to use. It is largely a product of the military and of a military mindset. There is a danger that in using their language and their conceptual frameworks, critical work will adopt their way of thinking as a paradigm. Unfortunately, as there have not been many critical analyses of Information Warfare, there are not many critical or oppositional terms that have been suggested instead. Until a better term appears, Information Warfare will remain. Postmodern Warfare has been suggested as an alternative, but this still may not represent the subject. (Gray forthcoming)

A common theme that runs through the Information Warfare literature is that there are no standardized defining characteristics. John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists stated in an interview that Information Warfare definitions vary depending on the perspectives of people looking at the issue. (Pike 1996) Information Warfare interests the military, the intelligence community, business, and the computer industry, but in different ways. Top brass at the Pentagon, for example, may be inclined to conceive of Information Warfare in terms of electronic battlefield management. While America’s corporate executives will place more emphasis on survivability of data and the threat posed by hackers to financial assets. The London Times reported that “cyber terrorists” had amassed 400 million pounds from financial institutions in London as ransom to prevent hacking into their computer systems. (London Times 1996)

A point of agreement among developers of Information Warfare doctrine is that it has both offensive and defensive properties, meaning that a nation, a corporation, a public institution, or even an individual can engage in Information Warfare from a defensive guarded posture or from an offensive platform of attack. (Evers 1996) The United States’ “war” against Iraq in 1991 is an example of a nation adopting an offensive Information Warfare position. (Campen 1992) While an individual scanning a disk for viruses is an example of a defensive stance.

These two examples illustrate the range of possibilities that fall under this broad category of Information Warfare. On one end of the spectrum is the Gulf War, an extremely complex form of Information Warfare with significant global consequences still felt today, such as illnesses attributed to the Gulf War syndrome. On the other end of spectrum is a simple, almost routine, computer task. The offensive act involves the manipulation of information systems – in the case of the Gulf War, satellites, computers, telecommunication infrastructures, and guided weapons – to gain dominance over an adversary. The defensive act in this example involves the use of computer software to prevent the corruption of files, to prevent the invasion of ones cyber territory.

Information Warfare is concerned with both attaining and maintaining dominance over an adversary and with resisting and fighting against the advances of an enemy. The common factor linking both offensive and defensive Information Warfare is the dependence on microprocessor-based communication and information systems.

This polarity of offensive and defensive Information Warfare is similar to the notion of the dialectic of control raised in the last chapter. The difference is that the conceptualization of defensive and offensive Information Warfare has been made by people with military and corporate points-of-view. While the conceptualization of the dialectic of control has been made by critical scholars and radicals. From military corporate viewpoints, surveillance of international email communication is defensive Information Warfare. (Swett 1995) It can be construed, for example, as part of the State’s ongoing quest against international terrorism. But from the critical perspective of this thesis, this type of monitoring is offensive Information Warfare against people’s freedom to communicate, a form of domination and control through technical means.

It is around this question of who is friend and who is foe, around what is defensive versus what is offensive, that the disjuncture between military corporate conceptions of Information Warfare and critical perspectives on Information Warfare becomes apparent. This disjuncture is a good example why it is dangerous to adopt military corporate terminology and definitions. In the case of Mexico, the United States may believe that it is defending Mexican national security interests when it helps that government militarily against guerrilla groups or drug traffickers. But from the perspective of the Zapatistas, U.S. technological military assistance is an offensive move on the part of the United States and Mexico. What is perceived by one group as defensive Information Warfare is perceived as offensive by another. Those who are called terrorists by some are called freedom fighters by others. This is where Information Warfare is exposed for its ideological dimensions. Who is friend or foe? Who is ally or enemy? Who is a worthy or an unworthy victim? The understandings of friend, ally, and worthy victim in this country are bound up in the ideology of the ruling elites, as has been discussed in Manufacturing Consent. (Herman and Chomsky 1988) The developers of Information Warfare doctrine clearly represent this ruling elite ideology and as such their conceptions about defensive and offensive Information Warfare will be designed to serve and protect status quo elite interests. The point of mentioning all this is to affirm the necessity of not getting confused or thrown off track by military and corporate perspectives embedded in the dominant discourse around Information Warfare.

The next section is a overview of the antecedents to Information Warfare. This is followed by a section that surveys varied definitions of Information Warfare. After this is a brief description of key technologies that enable Information Warfare capability. Finally, the last section returns to critical approaches to Information Warfare.

The importance of communication to success in warfare probably can be traced back to early pre-agrarian conflicts in which information about the physical location and size of an adversarial force was transmitted by a system of scouts and runners. This non-real-time type of communication persisted in a variety of forms until the invention of the telegraph in 1840. Until then, news from a military front had to reach a military command post via foot, horse, or boat. Commands and directives returning to the front had to be transmitted in the same way. Table 2 lists a chronology of the development of U.S. military communication that begins shortly before the invention of the telegraph and continues through the inventions of the telephone, radio, sonar, radar, and satellite.

The telegraph is an important milestone in the history of communication and war. From that moment forth the time required for communication between command centers and battlefields was greatly reduced. As the telegraph transmitted a coded message along wire, the limitations were proscribed by how far the wires went in to the battlefield and the capabilities of intermediaries who interpreted the code. The telegraph became an important communication tool during the U.S.-Mexico war (1846-1848) and U.S. Civil War. The invention of the telephone in 1875, thirty five years after the telegraph, made direct voice-to-voice communication possible. Again the limitation was the extent of the wired infrastructure, one that was susceptible to attack and destruction. Telegraph and telephone systems were used by the U.S. military during the Spanish-American war beginning in 1898.

After the telegraph and telephone, the use of radio in warfare was the next big event in the history of communication and war. The first wireless communication occurred just outside of Bologna, Italy in 1895. Soon after that the U.S. Navy began installing radios on its warships and along coastal areas. Radio eliminated the need for wired lines and meant that communication could be much more dispersed. But also it meant that anyone with a receiver could intercept the transmissions. Encryption was needed; information security became important. Both wired and wireless communication systems were used during World War I. In the inter-war period between the First and Second World Wars both sonar and radar were developed. Sonar was used by the Navy in 1922 and in 1937 the Navy began installing radar systems on their warships.

a. WIN means World Wide Military Command and Control System Intercomputer Network and MILNET means Military Network known as the Defense Data Network.
Source: (Young 1994)

A military historian, Van Creveld (1985), wrote that “during the decades after 1945, several factors came together and caused the American armed forces to undergo an unprecedented process of centralization.” One was “the revolutionary explosion of electronic communication and automatic data processing equipment.” The other was “the preoccupation during the 1950s with the need for failproof positive control systems to prevent an accidental outbreak of nuclear war.”

The first satellite was launched by the Soviets in 1957. The United States soon followed with its own satellites. In 1960 the Defense Communications Agency formed to manage U.S. military satellite communications. In the 1960s satellites became central to military intelligence surveillance and communications. The nuclear arms race set the stage for the integration of the most sophisticated communication and information technology with the entire nuclear weapons system. By the time the Reagan administration was pumping millions of dollars into the STARWARS initiative in the early 1980s, computers, satellites, and telecommunications systems had become integral and vital to warfare capability. When the Cold War ended, the U.S. military needed to do something with all the technology it had amassed. The invasion of Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, and the Gulf War in 1991 were opportunities to test the sophisticated communications technology that had been developed during the Cold War. At the same time, each of these military ventures fostered greater military control over the press, an industry which alos depends upon electronic information gathering and distribution.

As noted increased centralization of U.S. military organization after World War II was driven by the electronic revolution and by a perceived nuclear threat during the Cold War. Computers became essential tools, a necessity for both military and corporate hierarchies. Information processing became fundamental to all aspects of society, what some called an information society. But computers were developed chiefly in a military environment. Military technology and information technology have had a co-dependent, parallel and symbiotic relationship. Information technology has become vital to nearly all aspects of military activity. Conversely, military technology has been the driving force behind the vast majority of information technologies. Massive government, military, and intelligence expenditures have subsidized university and corporate research, development, and innovation in communication and information technologies, thus making these institutions important arms for military technological development. Taken together, these institutions form what can be called the military-informational-complex.

In Who Knows: Information in the Age of the Fortune 500, Schiller (1981) defined the information society, that which has given rise to the military-informational-complex, in terms of a system that serves and meets the needs of super-corporations and the military establishment.

What is called the 'information society' is, in fact, the production, processing, and transmission of a very large amount of data about all sorts of matters - individual and national, social and commercial, economic and military. Most of the data are produced to meet very specific needs of super-corporations, national governmental bureaucracies, and the military establishments of the advanced industrial state. (Schiller 1981, 25)

Computer communications and the transborder data flows they facilitate are now indispensable to the operation and maintenance of a world economy dominated by TNCs. Yet the ability of American companies to operate on a global scale and enjoy the benefits of worldwide resources and market exploitation would be unimaginable without the full backup of a concentrated military power, ready for instantaneous deployment and intervention. The alert system for this infrastructure of intervention relies on ‘27 major U.S. military command posts around the world. The computers at these posts are the brains that tie together the Pentagon's $15 billion network of satellites, radar stations, sensors, and warning systems.’ (Schiller 1981, 106)

The vital contribution of electronics and computer communications to U.S. military strength is generally recognized. Less attention has been paid to the very active role the military has played in developing new communications technologies. The National Security Agency (NSA), the military unit engaged in a wide variety of unpublicized electronics operations inside and outside the country, has been identified as a hidden 'angel' of modern communication research and development. (Schiller 1981, 106)

This military-informational-complex or military information society has not been limited to the developed north. Mattlelart and Schmucler described how in Latin America in the 1980s computers and communications technologies for systems of control were beginning to be used extensively by the armed forces and police.

And still, indications of the use of computers in systems of control and repression are increasing. Police patrol cars in Chile and Argentina are equipped with computer terminals. Under the military junta, anyone questioned in the street in Buenos Aires, had to produce a magnetic identity card which gave instantaneous information of that person's past history. (Mattlelart and Schmucler 1985, 101)

Military requirements generally headed the list of government communication and information priorities. Military expansion required, as much or even more than transnational business, the creation of sophisticated information and intelligence gathering and rapid, efficient, and secret communications networks worldwide. Waging war, whether to stop indigenous revolutions or to prevail in a nuclear confrontation requires complex computer/communication technologies and networks. (Mosco 1989, 44)

The influence of the military on the design, dissemination and management of technology counters the myth that technology is a product of private marketplace development. This applies particularly to communication and information technology. These technologies are in large measure the product of direct military intervention in the private marketplace. This intervention has taken many forms including research and development by the military as well as Pentagon contracts with private companies. (Mosco 1989, 134)

When one takes into account the technological history, funding, research, development, and applications of advanced communication and information technology, it is not difficult to draw the conclusion that we are moving toward the creation of a military information society, including the militarization of outer space. (Mosco 1989, 170)

Though hardly qualifying for inclusion in any humane definition of 'society', the military has been, from the outset, the largest sponsor and user of information technology. The computers developed in the Second World War, and the first communication satellites, were military projects. (Schiller and Miege 1990, 162)

Just as living organisms grow according to the environment in which they are raised, so a technology can be understood as a response to the surroundings in which it develops. For computer technology, these surroundings have been, and still are, dominated by the military. An examination of the early history of computing reveals that the first electronic computers built in the late 1940s and early 1950s were, almost without exception, destined for military applications. Just about every breakthrough in the field of computing occurred within a military environment. (Beardon 1990, 233)

Significant research into the automation of combat situations is being funded by the DARPA Strategic Computing Initiative, which is developing the hardware and software to support an autonomous land vehicle, a fighter pilot's assistant and a battle management system for an aircraft carrier. The perspective for the future is the fully automated battlefield in which data from remote sensors is analyzed by computers, appropriate weapons are selected and aimed by computers, the weapons are fired by computers, and damage assessment is done by computers. (Beardon 1990, 234)

Computers are required in all areas of military intelligence — from keeping track of the location of personnel and supplies, to collating evidence of enemy ship and troop movements. Whilst the US military have some of the largest data processing systems in the world for inventory control and similar applications, the security organizations, like the National Security Agency and the CIA, operate massive computer databases, some of which are in foreign countries. The National Security Agency, in particular, has been described as the largest concentration of computer equipment in the world. (Beardon 1990, 235)

The integration of intelligence, surveillance, warning, decision making and response systems is a massive task that requires sophisticated computer and communication technology. In the case of the US this integration is the responsibility of the World Wide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS), which is a network of computer systems around the globe. (Beardon 1990, 235)

The new military defense and weapons systems are truly artificially intelligent by the standards of the past. Computers and communications systems dominate every aspect of the new battlefield management environment. They are essential components of the new tanks, bombers, cruise missiles, stealth bombers, and helicopter gun-ships. Stealth bombers, for example, are able to navigate their way into the war theater undetected by conventional radar systems and consequently do not need the support of the dozens of protective aircraft that are usually required. This translates into vastly improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness of military expenditures. Computers and telecommunications networks are also critical elements of battlefield simulation and management systems and in navigation systems. Computerized Airborne Warning and Central Systems (AWACS), for example, and global satellite positioning systems such as those used during Operation Desert Storm provide the essential means of navigation and coordinating much of the activity. (Estabrooks 1995)

Military technologists and leading companies in the defense industry are now working to create a totally electronic and intelligent military battlefield system to monitor and manage the entire world. Air, sea, and ground surveillance, defense and combat systems will become completely integrated and coordinated with one another in the future. Supersmart military surveillance, communications, and control systems will be capable of automatically identifying likely targets for destruction, then coordinating the launching and guidance of hundreds and thousands or smart weapons from the sea, air, and ground into the battle theater all with minimum human intervention. The only role that airmen, soldiers, navy crewmen, and military officers will play in the electronic battlefield of the future will be as observers, and technical experts stationed in front of their computer screens in hidden, protected bunkers in locations far removed from the real battle field and the real action. (Estabrooks 1995, 181)
The Revolution in Military Affairs

For almost a decade American defense planners have foreseen an impending revolution in military affairs, sometimes described as the military-technical revolution. Such a transformation would open the way for a fundamental reordering of American defense posture. (Cohen 1996)

. . . virtually all DoD activities depend upon reliable telecommunication and computing support. However, growing DoD dependence on an unprotected information infrastructure to provide this support creates vulnerabilities and operation readiness risks. (U.S. Department of Defense 1995)

In The Future of “Military Affairs”: Revolution or Evolution?, Ritcheson (1996) stated:

The Persian Gulf War of 1991 is considered by some to represent an impending RMA. The pervasive and effective use of stand-off deep-strike systems, precise conventional munitions, and space-based target-acquisition systems provided, in the view of some, a glimpse of new high-technology warfare. (Ritcheson 1996)

Nearly all the individual soldier modernization activities now under way – from high-resolution helmet-mounted displays to close-in mine detection and night-fighting capabilities – are aimed at fielding a fighting force in which no soldier is an isolated element. Thanks to electronic linkages, all members of a fighting force will share a common picture of battlefield events as they unfold. At the most basic level, soldiers will be transformed from reactive information receivers to proactive battlefield sensors. (Roos 1995)

Information Warfare is part of a technical evolution and transformation that has recent roots, but that is also part of a longer continuum of the application of communication and information technologies to warfare.

The term “Information Warfare” has only been coined in the past few years. 1995 was the year when the phrase made it into popular usage. In Onward Cyber Soldier, TIME journalist Waller (1995) concluded that Information Warfare is “now the hottest concept in the halls of the Pentagon” and said that since the Gulf War Information Warfare strategies and techniques have increased in usage:

In the first day of the Persian Gulf War, Air Force stealth planes armed with precision-guided munitions blinded Saddam by knocking out his communications network and electrical power in Baghdad. The Pentagon launched a sophisticated psy-ops campaign against Haiti's military regime to restore deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Using market-research surveys, the Army's 4th Psychological Operations Group divided Haiti's population into 20 target groups and bombarded them with hundreds of thousands of pro-Aristide leaflets appealing to their particular affinities. Before U.S. intervention, the CIA made anonymous phone calls to Haitian soldiers, urging them to surrender, and sent ominous E-mail messages to some members of Haiti's oligarchy who had personal computers. (Waller 1995)

It has even been suggested that Information Warfare was practiced during World War II. In the Information and Intelligence Revolution, Riccardelli (1995), a U.S. Army Colonel, referred to an allied invasion of France during World War II, Operation Overlord, as “a classic case study for information warfare campaign employment” and asserted that Information Warfare is not a new concept.

In World War II, development of radar, advances in radio communication, the beginnings of cybernetics and the deciphering of intercepted German (Ultra) and Japanese (Magic) messages were incredible, creative, innovative accomplishments in the history and paradigm shift toward information warfare. (Riccardelli 1995)

A “working definition” of Information Warfare recognized in 1993 by the Information Resources Management College stated:

Information-based Warfare is an approach to armed conflict focusing on the management and use of information in all its forms and at all levels to achieve a decisive military advantage especially in the joint and combined environment. Information-based Warfare is both offensive and defensive in nature – ranging from measures that prohibit the enemy from exploiting information to corresponding measures to assure the integrity, availability, and interoperability of friendly information assets. (National Defense University 1993)

In Cyberwar is Coming!, Arquilla and Ronfeldt (1993), military scholars at RAND,  introduced two concepts central to Information Warfare theory – cyberwar and netwar. Their work is often cited in the literature of Information Warfare proponents and in the work of the few critics (Brandt, 1995; Cleaver, 1995; Hobo, 1995; Wehling, 1995). Cyberwar “refers to conducting, and preparing to conduct, military operations according to information-related principles” and “trying to know everything about an adversary while keeping the adversary from knowing much about oneself” and “using knowledge so that less capital and labor may have to be expended.” Netwar in their definition is “information-related conflict at a grand level between nations or societies.” Arquilla and Ronfeldt believe netwar “may involve public diplomacy measures, propaganda and psychological campaigns, political and cultural subversion, deception of or interference with local media, infiltration of computer networks and databases, and efforts to promote dissident or opposition movements across computer networks.” (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1993)

Schwartau (1994), another early figure in the field, in a book called Information Warfare: Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway offered this explanation that places U.S. economic interests as central to U.S. national security:

Information Warfare is an integral component of the new economic and political world order. Economic battles are being fought and will continue to be fought, ultimately affecting every American citizen and company as well as the national security of the United States. (Schwartau 1994)

In Warfare in the Information Age, Berkowitz (1996), a former CIA analyst, explained the vulnerabilities of an information based economy and the potential target areas in an informational conflict. Berkowitz wrote that:

. . . the United States, in civilian as well as military matters, is more dependent on electronic information systems than is anyone else in the world. In addition to the possibility that computer and communications systems might prove to be a vulnerable weak link for military forces, there is also a danger that hostile parties - countries, terrorist groups, religious sects, multinational corporations, and so on - could attack civilian information systems directly. (Berkowitz 1996)

The United States may be able to develop new military strategies using IW that are perfectly tailored to world conditions following the Cold War. Information technology is a U.S. strong suit, and military forces could use this know-how to improve our defense capabilities, perhaps dramatically, against hostile attack and to defeat any aggressors - and to accomplish both missions at the lowest possible cost. (Berkowitz 1996)

1) command-and-control warfare (C2W)
2) intelligence-based warfare (IBW)
3) electronic warfare (EW)
4) psychological operations (PSYOPS)
5) hacker-software-based attacks on information systems
6) information economic warfare (IEW) — war via the control of information
7) cyberwar (combat in the virtual realm)
(Libicki 1995)

In A Theory of Information Warfare: Preparing for 2020, Szafranski (1995), a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, defined Information Warfare more in terms of an epistemological attack on an adversaries basic belief structures.

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. (Szafranski 1995)

Information warfare, in its largest sense, is simply the use of information to achieve our national objectives. Like diplomacy, economic competition, or the use of military force, information in itself is a key aspect of national power and, more importantly, is becoming an increasingly vital national resource that supports diplomacy, economic competition, and the effective employment of military forces. Information warfare in this sense can be seen as societal-level or nation-to-nation conflict waged, in part, through the worldwide internetted and interconnected means of information and communication. What this means is that information warfare, in its most fundamental sense, is the emerging ‘theater’ in which future nation-against-nation conflict at the strategic level is most likely to occur. (Stein 1995)

In a research paper at George Washington University, An Introduction to Information Warfare, Haeni (1995) emphasized the lack of standardized definitions. However, Haeni saw the usefulness of Arquilla and Ronfeldt’s two main conceptions, the categories of cyberwar and netwar. As well, from a selection of possible definitions of Information Warfare, Haeni preferred this one:

Actions taken to achieve information superiority by affecting adversary information, information based processes, and information systems, while defending ones own information, information based processes and information systems. (Haeni 1995)

Information Warfare - Actions taken to achieve information superiority in support of national military strategy by affecting adversary information and information systems while leveraging and defending our information and systems. (Haeni 1995)

In Information Warfare: Developing a Conceptual Framework, Garigue (1996) offered a more sweeping explanation of Information Warfare than those put forth by defense agencies. With his definition, corporate espionage or political propaganda may be included. It is not purely a military conception.

Information Warfare concerns itself with the control and manipulation of information and information flows. Specifically with acquisition, process, storage, distribution, and analysis of data and information. At a conceptual level, IW consists of all efforts to control, exploit, or deny an adversary’s capability to collect, process, store, display, and distribute information, while at the same time preventing the enemy from doing the same. The intent is to control, manipulate, deny information, influence decisions, and degrade or ultimately destroy adversary systems while guarding friendly systems against such action. (Garigue 1996)

The DoD believes that information warfare will cast a shadow on nearly every aspect of conventional warfare. Although US officials have still to come terms with a single IW definition, there is across-the-board agreement that it has at least two parts – defensive and offensive. (Evers 1996)

Simply put, offensive IW includes acts such as stealing or corrupting data, distributing misleading or completely false information, denying access to data, and physically destroying the disks, weapons platforms and buildings that are part of the storage and distribution of data. Defensive IW uses virus checks, detectors, encryption and network security systems to prevent offensive IW. (Evers 1996)

Information warfare (IW) represents a rapidly evolving and, as yet, imprecisely defined field of growing interest for defense planners and policymakers. The source of both the interest and the imprecision in this field is the so-called information revolution — led by the ongoing rapid evolution of cyberspace, microcomputers, and associated information technologies. The U.S. defense establishment, like U.S. society as a whole, is moving rapidly to take advantage of the new opportunities presented by these changes. At the same time, current and potential U.S. adversaries (and allies) are also looking to exploit the evolving global information infrastructure and associated technologies for military purposes. (Molander, Riddile, and Wilson 1996)
KEY INFORMATION WARFARE TECHNOLOGY

Results from research conducted for the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, that was “designed to probe the nature and acquisition impacts of information warfare,” were made available on the school’s web site in the summer of 1996. (Naval Postgraduate School 1996) The research consisted of obtaining commentary from leading figures in the field of Information Warfare on a number of issues ranging from the characteristics of Information Warfare to future technologies and directions for research. Participants in the Naval Postgraduate School’s research included: Al Campen, editor of The First Information War; James Dunnigan, author of Digital Soldiers; Dr. Fred Giessler, National Defense University Information Warfare Course Director; David Gust, US Army Program Executive Officer for Intelligence and Electronic Warfare; Ken King, Digital Equipment Corporation’s Director of External Research Group; Dr. Fred Levien, Chairperson of the Naval Postgraduate School’s Information Warfare Academic Group; Dr. Martin Libicki, National Defense University; Larry Merritt, Air Force Information Warfare Center Technical Director; Dr. David Probst, Concordia University Professor of Computer Science; Winn Schwartau, author of Information Warfare: Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway; Robert Steele, Open Source Solutions. Naval Postgraduate School researchers presented raw transcripts, on their web site, to the question: “What are the current key or enabling technologies of information warfare?” Table 3 is a distilled synthesis of their responses.

As noted already, there are few critical approaches to Information Warfare. In the overview of Information Warfare definitions earlier in this chapter, the bulk of the characterizations of Information Warfare were from a military or corporate perspective. This generally has been the case with the development of Information Warfare doctrine and strategy. Critical perspectives on Information Warfare need to be extrapolated from broader critiques of, for example, capitalism, technology, surveillance, or hegemony, as were mentioned in Chapter One. As capitalism is the overarching system of domination, it can be argued that Information Warfare doctrine simply provides capitalists with another strategy for retaining power. As some suggest, technology enables States and others with power to maintain social control and domination. An argument can be constructed that Information Warfare strategy is a logical extension of this technology as domination model. Surveillance systems grew out of capitalist needs for order and control in the factory and out of the needs of disciplinary institutions like prisons and the police. Some argue that now, with the introduction of tools like computers, electronic surveillance has moved us more in the direction of a surveillance society. Information Warfare can be viewed as a consequence or extension of this surveillance society. Finally, where hegemony refers to a State’s ability, through ideology and brute force, to maintain domestic control but also regional and global control, we can see how Information Warfare doctrine, with its emphasis on attaining information dominance over its adversaries, is an important asset in the hegemon’s toolkit.

Critical approaches discussed in Chapter One revealed an idea about a dialectic of control and resistance, with some of its attributes noted in Table 1. Although most of the critical literature showed how technology is central to forces of social control and domination, it was also shown that forces of resistance and liberation were also able to take advantage of technology. This thesis concurs with the perspective that even though technology enables a near totalitarian system of control and domination, this system is not yet seamless and there remain possibilities for resistance. Unlike the preponderance of the Information Warfare literature, written by and for the forces of domination and control, this thesis sees the need to interject the perspective of the forces of resistance and liberation in the overall equation.

As was mentioned earlier in this chapter, Information Warfare proponents have yet to agree on a common definition or characterization, but they do agree that key to an understanding of Information Warfare are its offensive and defensive properties. This is both understandable and perhaps even an obvious conclusion. When has there been a war in which both offensive and defensive considerations were not key? Nevertheless, this is a central thesis to emerging Information Warfare doctrine.

An example of the forces of domination and control engaged in defensive Information Warfare is surveillance of international email communication. Strategic Assessment: The Internet, an analysis produced by the Pentagon’s Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, referred specifically to pro Zapatista Internet usage and recommended monitoring domestic and international Internet traffic for “early warning of impending significant developments.” (Swett, 1995) Describing this document, an article in The Nation stated it “is not the first of its kind. Under the rubric of ‘information warfare,’ other Pentagon outfits and military contractors have studied how to use computer networks to collect public information, disseminate propaganda, politically destabilize other governments, and plant computer viruses into the information systems of foes.” (Corn, 1996) Although some might consider this sort of monitoring and surveillance an offensive move, the Pentagon categorizes this activity as defensive, since it is concerned with “defending” national security interests. This suggests a somewhat ambiguous distinction between offensive and defensive Information Warfare. But given that this distinction is one of the main points of agreement in emerging Information Warfare doctrine, it will not be disputed.

An example of the forces of resistance and liberation engaged in offensive Information Warfare is pro Zapatista netwar. The Advent of Netwar, yet another RAND publication on the subject, described this phenomena.

The netwar appears in the decentralized collaboration among the numerous, diverse Mexican and transnational (mostly U.S. and Canadian) activists who side with the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), and who aim to affect government policies on human rights, democracy, and other major reform issues. Mexico, which generated the first successful social revolution of the 20th century, is now the scene of a prototype for social netwar in the 21st Century. (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1996)

Finally, an example of the forces of resistance and liberation engaged in defensive Information Warfare is the use of encryption technology. To elude surveillance of international email, so-called perception managers or netwarriors will have to either restrict or customize their language so as to not signal the interest of monitoring agencies or they will have to resort to encryption techniques that make surveillance much more difficult if not impossible. There is disagreement about the desirablity of encryption technology.

Although difficult to substantiate conclusively, this thesis sees a relationship between the militarization of the Drug War in Mexico – the forces of control and domination engaging in offensive Information Warfare –  and the pro Zapatista use of the Net – the forces of resistance and liberation engaging in offensive Information Warfare. Perhaps this can even be described as a dialectical relationship. The logic of this understanding is as follows. The Zapatistas and their supporters have been very successful in utilizing Internet technology. This usage, because it has inspired global publicity and solidarity, has been critical to inhibiting the Mexican government in taking stronger military moves against Zapatista strongholds in Chiapas. The Mexican government, and its allies in the United States, realized that the Zapatistas had the upper hand in Information Warfare praxis. It realized that it needed to develop and strengthen its own Information Warfare capability in order to better combat and attain information dominance over its adversaries, the EZLN and their supporters in civil society. The Mexican government knew that it could rely on the United States for support in attaining greater Information Warfare capability, but also knew that public knowledge about U.S. military assistance directed against the Zapatistas would be disastrous. Since the Drug War had already been a vehicle for justifying greater militarization of Mexico, even before the emergence of the Zapatistas, the Drug War was an obvious route for further assistance and support from the United States. Obviously, it is easier to generate support for campaigns against horrid drug traffickers than it is for campaigns against poverty stricken peasants lead by a pipe smoking charming gentleman.

While this above scenario is hypothetical, perhaps it is not too far off from reality. The level of attention that drugs in Mexico has received in recent times has grown rapidly. An analysis of the New York Times might reveal a significant increase in the number articles on the Drug War parallels a tapering off of articles about the Zapatistas since the January 1, 1994 uprising. This thesis is not conducting such an analysis, but it is examining the role the Drug War has had in militarizing Mexico, and in specifically aiding Mexico in its Information Warfare capability. The next chapter will focus on this concern. It will look at what is illustrated in part of Table 4, the Drug War as an example of the forces of control and domination engaging in offensive Information Warfare.