Information Operations Roadmap
United State's infowar strategy in the war on terror
The Department of Defense in the United States has developed a strategy for waging war through information, offensive network attacks, and multi-media campaigns.
The U.S. Department of Defense’s Information Operations Roadmap was declassified in January 2006. It outlined the department’s informational tactics in the war of terror.
In the forward, Donald Rumsfeld said the IO Roadmap establishes “the goal of information operations as a core military competency”. To meet this goal, network defenses, psychological operations (PSYOP), and electro-magnetic weapons capabilities will be restructured.
The 10 recommendations in the IO roadmap have a budget of $383 million for fall 2004 through 2009. Aside from this funding, an additional $48 million per year is provided to “contract commercial sources for enhanced product development.” Products in this case are “multi-media campaigns” using satellite radio, television, cell phones, and the Internet.
Another of the recommendations is more inter-departmental information sharing in the form of the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. A system which is currently based on "inconsistent" data at best.
The report assumes, “the ability to rapidly disseminate persuasive information to diverse audiences in order to directly influence their decision-making is an increasingly powerful means of deterring aggression.”
Much of the 75-page report focuses on the restructuring of PSYOPs in conflict “to deter, discourage, and dissuade an adversary by disrupting his unity of command while preserving ours.” One issue with current methods of PSYOPs is the “impact of the global village. The increasing ability of people in most parts of the world to access international sources makes targeting particular audiences more difficult.”
Another issue is current methods of targeting remote populations such as “leaflets, handbills, and AM radio” are limited and costly.
PSYOP forces are to be trained “to conduct sophisticated, targeted audience analysis and modify behavior with multi-media campaigns”. The focus of PSYOP will be “on aggressive behavior modification at the operational and tactical level of war.”
The report continues, “info intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vise-versa”. Because of this problem, “strict ground rules for media embedded with military forces” have been implemented.
Aside from the changes in PSYOP policy, the report outlines guidelines for offensive Computer Network Attacks (CNA). The report recommends to create policy to agree upon whether CNA will “constitute the use of force” and what a “CNA battlefield” should be defined as. Aside from computer viruses, data-mining, or software attacks, CNA can also be accomplished with the use of electro-magnetic weapons, electronic war (EW), to disrupt electronic circuits in enemy establishments. Much of the section on the development of EW has been censored.
The third major goal the report outlines is “We Must Fight the Net”. This section outlines the numerous breaches in information security and ways in which to improve the security of our information against hackers. It also outlined a way to make the Department of Defense “an information-centric force” and places the gathering and processing of information as the Department’sgreatest asset.
