WARFARE IN THE INFORMATION AGE

By Bruce Berkowitz[17]

Pentagon officials and defense analysts have a new topic to add to their list of post-Cold War concerns: information warfare, or IW, in the usual manner of military-speak. The term refers to the use of information systems computers, communications networks, databases for military advantage, either by the United States or by a variety of unfriendly parties. IW is drawing increasing attention for at least two reasons. First, the United States is potentially vulnerable to IW attack. The United States, in civilian________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. Attacking these systems could be easier, less expensive, and certainly less risky than, say, sabotage, assassination, hijacking, or hostage-taking, and a quick cost-effectiveness calculation may make IW an aggressor’s strategy of choice. Indeed, many of the problems____dealing with IW are linked to the nature of information technology itself. The most important feature may simply be the falling cost of information processing; since the 1950s, costs have declined at a rate of about 90 percent every 5 years, and most experts expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future. One result ____that information technology and, with it, the ability to play in the IW game is constantly becoming more available, and quite rapidly. Unlike nuclear weapons technology or aerospace weapons technology, which have been spreading steadily but slowly, the diffusion of IW technology is likely to accelerate. If a party cannot afford some form of information technology and IW capability today, it probably will be able to afford the technology tomorrow. This is evidenced in the spread of dedicated military electronic systems, but even more in the availability of commercial information technology such as computer networks, satellite and fiber-optic communications, cellular telephone systems, and so on. All of these can be used for hostile purposes, and all can be attacked by a hostile power. A second feature of information technology that affects IW is that as the technology becomes cheaper and cheaper, it becomes less and less efficient to control information from a central authority. Indeed, one reason for the current increasing pressure in sosiety to decentralize government, corporations, and other organisations is that low cost information technology makes it affordable and feasible to decentralize. The demand and incentives for decentralization are following the technological opportunity.