Sea changes are occurring in how information is collected, stored, processed, communicated and presented, and in how organizations are designed to take advantage of increased information. Information is becoming a strategic resource that may prove as valuable and influential in the postindustrial era as capital and labor have been in the industrial age.
The information revolution sets in motion forces that challenge the design of many institutions. It disrupts and erodes the hierarchies around which institutions are normally designed. It diffuses and redistributes power, often to the benefit of weaker, smaller actors. It crosses borders, redraws the boundaries of offices and responsibilities, and generally compels closed systems to open up.
What Is Netwar?
Netwar refers to information-related conflict at a grand level between nations or societies. It means trying to disrupt or damage what a target population knows or thinks it knows about itself and the world around it. A netwar may focus on public or elite opinion, or both. It may involve diplomacy, 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.
Netwar represents a new entry on the spectrum of conflict that spans economic, political, and social, as well as military forms of "war." In contrast to economic wars that target the production and distribution of goods, and political wars that aim at the leadership and institutions of a government, netwars would be distinguished by their targeting of information and communications.
Netwars will take various forms. Some may occur between the governments of rival nation-states. Other kinds of netwar may arise between governments and nonstate actors. For example, netwar may be waged by governments against illicit groups involved in terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or drug smuggling. Or it may be waged against the policies of specific governments by advocacy groups--involving, for example, environmental, human-rights or religious issues. The nonstate actors may or may not be associated with nations, and in some cases they may be organized into vast transnational coalitions.
Some netwars will involve military issues, such as nuclear proliferation, drug smuggling and antiterrorism, because of the potential threats they pose to international order and national security.
Netwars are not real wars, traditionally defined. But netwar might be developed into an instrument for trying, early on, to prevent a real war from arising. Deterrence in a chaotic world may become as much a function of one's cyber posture and presence as of one's force posture and presence.
What Is Cyberwar?
Cyberwar refers to conducting military operations according to information-related principles. It means disrupting or destroying information and communications systems. It means trying to know everything about an adversary while keeping the adversary from knowing much about oneself. It means turning the "balance of information and knowledge" in one's favor, especially if the balance of forces is not. It means using knowledge so that less capital and labor may have to be expended.
This form of warfare may involve diverse technologies, notably for command and control, for intelligence collection, processing and distribution, for tactical communications, positioning, identifying friend-or-foe, and for "smart" weapons systems, to give but a few examples. It may also involve electronically blinding, jamming, deceiving, overloading and intruding into an adversary's information and communications circuits.
Cyberwar has broad ramifications for military organization and doctrine. Moving to networked structures may require some decentralization of command and control. But decentralization is only part of the picture: The new technology may also provide greater "topsight," a central understanding of the big picture that enhances the management of complexity. This pairing of decentralization with topsight brings the real gains.
Cyberwar may also imply developing new doctrines about the kinds of forces needed, where and how to deploy them, and how to strike the enemy. How and where to position what kinds of computers, sensors, networks and databases may become as important as the question once was for the deployment of bombers and their support functions.
As an innovation in warfare, cyberwar may be to the 21st century what blitzkrieg was to the 20th century. At a minimum, cyberwar represents an extension of the traditional importance of obtaining information in war: having superior command, control, communication and intelligence and trying to locate, read, surprise and deceive the enemy before he does the same to you.
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