INFORMATION WARFARE: FALLACIES IN THE ANALYSIS OF AN ASYMMETRIC STRATEGIC THREAT

by Richard F. Forno, Director of Security, Network Solutions

INTRODUCTION

Information warfare or "IW" is now very much in fashion, but as with so many other fads in American history. it is focused almost exclusively on developing enormously complex (electronic) architectures. and on conducting offensive attacks against others (many of whom do not have significant electronic infrastructures susceptible to electronic attack). Futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler have eloquently articulated the importance of information as a substitute for time, space, capital, and labor-and as a potential proxy for violence. However, the current Planning Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS) trend still focuses on the Hard Kill versus the Soft Kill, and the starlit whiz-bang portrayal of precision-guided (information-driven) weapons or tactics. Hard kills are easy - one uses satellites and spies to find an enemy's physical location on the ground and proceeds to bomb that location into the Stone Age with a safe assumption that nothing operational has survived. This is the application of high-tech weapon enhancements in a traditional military operation on a battlefield. Soft kills, by contrast, require an intimate understanding of the system software, to include precise file names, low-level architectural knowledge of magnetic media, electronics, and the security protocols and vulnerabilities of a variety of information systems.
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