Propaganda and bias emerging from Modern Information Warfare
Propaganda and bias emerging from Modern Information Warfare
1. Compare and contrast the propaganda and bias emerging from Modern Information Warfare(Lei, 2019) and Vaccine Hesitancy in South Africa (Wiyeh, et al., 2019).
2. What arguments does El-Shamy (2019) make about social media and democracy?
3. After reading these articles, what recommendations would you make regarding the dissemination of propaganda through popular or social media?
4. Cite all claims and ideas using scholarly sources.
OVERVIEW
The United States has substantial information-based resources, including complex management systems and infrastructures involving the control of electric power, money flow, air traffic, oil and gas, and other information-dependent items. U.S. allies and potential coalition partners are similarly increasingly dependent on various information infrastructures. Conceptually, if and when potential adversaries attempt to damage these systems using IW techniques, information warfare inevitably takes on a strategic aspect.
Our exercise scenario highlighted from the start a fundamental aspect of strategic information warfare: There is no “front line.” Strategic targets in the United States may be just as vulnerable to attack as in-theater command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) targets. As a result, the attention of exercise participants quickly broadened beyond a single traditional regional theater of operations to four distinct separate theaters of operation as portrayed in Figure S.1: the battlefield per se; allied “Zones of Interior” (in our scenario, the sovereign territory of Saudi Arabia); the intercontinental zone of communication and deployment; and the U.S. Zone of Interior.
The Basic Features of Strategic Information Warfare
The exercises highlighted seven defining features of strategic information warfare:
- Low entry cost: Unlike traditional weapon technologies, development of information-based techniques does not require sizable financial resources or state sponsorship. Information systems expertise and access to important networks may be the only prerequisites.
- Blurred traditional boundaries: Traditional distinctions—public versus private interests, warlike versus criminal behavior—and geographic boundaries, such as those between nations as historically defined, are complicated by the growing interaction within the information infrastructure.
- Expanded role for perception management: New information-based techniques may substantially increase the power of deception and of image-manipulation activities, dramatically complicating government efforts to build political support for security-related initiatives.
- A new strategic intelligence challenge: Poorly understood strategic IW vulnerabilities and targets diminish the effectiveness of classical intelligence collection and analysis methods. A new field of analysis focused on strategic IW may have to be developed.
- Formidable tactical warning and attack assessment problems: There is currently no adequate tactical warning system for distinguishing between strategic IW attacks and other kinds of cyberspace activities, including espionage or accidents.
- Difficulty of building and sustaining coalitions: Reliance on coalitions is likely to increase the vulnerabilities of the security postures of all the partners to strategic IW attacks, giving opponents a disproportionate strategic advantage.
- Vulnerability of the U.S. homeland: Information-based techniques render geographical distance irrelevant; targets in the continental United States are just as vulnerable as in-theater targets. Given the increased reliance of the U.S. economy and society on a high-performance networked information infrastructure, a new set of lucrative strategic targets presents itself to potential IW-armed opponents.
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