Part of Information Warfare is Electronic Warfare and I ran across an article this week that describes some of that with some graphics that were familiar. Several years ago, I was briefing the Director of Ballistic Missile Defense on an exercise we had run that looked at the complexities of trying to secure and defend a multi-nation combat force. Like this article, I showed the aircraft, space assets, ships, missiles systems, commercial support, and all the little things that get involved in communications across a global battlespace. The General looked at this description for a minute or two and he smiled. "I get your point," he said. Then he paused and added, "...but don't ever show me that slide again."
The whole room laughed, including me. It is overwhelming and too much for a person to absorb without building up to it. Yet, it is not complicated enough to describe Information War.
There are no simple ways to describe all the aspects that overlap and involve aspects which are not traditional defense. How do we characterize the countering of propaganda feeds from state-controlled media, software manipulation in the telecommunications infrastructure, or political influence campaigns like the ones Russia ran during the Presidential and mid-term elections in the United States? Most defensive strategies do not take this kind of strategy into consideration. Maybe, as our Director of National Intelligence pointed out, that is why the Russians, Chinese and Iranians found it so advantageous
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