Category Archives: InformationWarfare

Information Warfare – Cyber-Mobilization: The New LevÈe en Masse

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Parameters – The means and ends of mass mobilization are changing, bypassing the traditional state-centered approach that was the hallmark of the French Revolution and leaving advanced Western democracies merely to react to the results. Todayís dynamic social, economic, and political transitions are as important to war as were the changes at the end of the 18th century that Clausewitz observed. Most important is the 21st centuryís levÈe en masse, a mass networked mobilization that emerges from cyber-space with a direct impact on physical reality. Individually accessible, ordinary networked communications such as personal computers, DVDs, videotapes, and cell phones are altering the nature of human social interaction, thus also affecting the shape and outcome of domestic and international conflict.

Although still in its early stages, this development will not reverse itself and will increasingly influence the conduct of war. From the global spread of Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks, to the rapid evolution of insurgent tactics in Iraq, to the riots in France, and well beyond, the global, non-territorial nature of the information age is having a transformative effect on the broad evolution of conflict, and we are missing it. We are entering the cyber-mobilization era, but our current course consigns us merely to react to its effects.
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Information Warfare – Invasion of the Computer Snatchers

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Washington Post – Hackers are hijacking thousands of PCs to spy on users, shake down online businesses, steal identities and send millions of pieces of spam. If you think your computer is safe, think again.

Think of the military implications of this???the article documents the activities of civilian hackers???but there would be obvious military applications of these processes.
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Information Warfare – Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations

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Washington Post – al Qaeda has become the first guerrilla movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace. With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts and at neighborhood Internet cafes, young code-writing jihadists have sought to replicate the training, communication, planning and preaching facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on the Internet.
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Information Warfare – The War Inside the Arab Newsroom

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New York Times Magazine – A fascinating look behind the scenes of the Al Arabiya news channel, and how it compares and contrasts to Al Jazeera.
“Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed is trying to turn Al Arabiya into a new kind of Arab news channel, with fewer hostage tapes and more moderate voices. But that’s hard to do when his employees aren’t sure they want to change, American troops occasionally arrest his reporters and his anchors get personalized death threats from Iraqi insurgents.”
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