>https://wolftype.com/ucsb/io_cola.pdf

Theoretical Goal of IO

From Libicki:

Quoting Ryan Henry and C. Edward Peartree "Military Theory and Information Warfare" Parameters, 1998:"The more radical of the theorists predict that information warfare will not only provide dominant awareness of the battlespace;

it will also allow us to manipulate, exploit, or disable enemy information systems electronically. The intent here evidently is to knock an enemy senseless - literally - and leave him at the mercy not only of conventional kinetic attack, but of psychological operations

aimed at controlling his perceptions and decision-making abilities. Public opinion is to be shaped, leaders will be cut off from citizens, and the mind of the enemy will be directly penetrated and his strategy defeated. In the ideal case, all this will occur bloodlessly, fulfilling Sun Tzu's goal of victory without battle. At least that's the theory."(p38)

Even before the CIA there was PSYOPS:

Alfred H. Paddock, Jr., "U.S Army Special Warfare: It's Origins" National Defense University Press, 1982:

On the man behind the WWII Office of Strategic Services (precursor to the CIA) -("WILD" Bill Donovan)

"Donovan's concept of psychological warfare was all-encompassing. The first stage would be 'intelligence penetration,' with the results processed by R&A [Research and Analysis], available for strategic planning and propaganda.

What is PSYOPS?

Paddock Elaborates (in the 80's):

"may be defined broadly as the planned use of communications to influence human attitudes and behavior. It consists of political, military, and ideological actions conducted to create in target groups behavior, emotions,

and attitudes that support the attainment of national objectives. If used properly, PSYOP will normally precede, accompany, and follow all applications of force. This will be carried out under the broader umbrella of US national policy, and the military component of the overall psychological operations effort should be coordinated fully and carefully with other agencies of government."

Barry Zorthian: "We obviously have a semantic problem that's never been solved. We're not always in agreement on

the meaning terms such as psywar, communications, psychological operations, media relations, political operations. They cover a vast amount of ground. If we put aside combat psychological operations and look at the rest of it as the political dimension - the communications dimension - of a national effort, whether in a context of conventional or low-intensity combat or even in 'violent peacetime,' then perhaps we can all get together and be talking about the same thing.” (PWPO p73)

Barry Zorthian: "You cannot compartmentalize communication. Communication with the media has to be

consistent with communication to the enemy, to third parties, to the rest of the world. PSYOP and communication with the media are part of the same whole."p74

Codevilla: "our policymakers have not been competent at making foreign policy and military strategy."

Abram Shulsky : "One can't have, as Dr. Codevilla says, a two-track policy, one track secret and one public, without there being a real strategy somewhere in the background relating the two." (PWPO p106)

An OBSERVATION from Codevilla:

"Soon it will be possible to beam, not broadcast, radio and television signals anhywhere in the world. In other words, it will be possible for one people to take part in another's domestic political discussion. But what messages do we wish to send? And to what end?"p99

PROBLEMS with IO

UNPREDICTABILITY:

“It is very difficult to prepare strategically – unlike chess, Nth order decisions are made on an ever-changing board. IO addresses the very ability to make decisions.”

-To understand vulnerabilities of a system, "One would need to know how humans would react to failures in their machines = what trust would they put in them, what measures would they take in the fact of induced doubt, how redundant would machines be made, how quickly can they learn that something is wrong, and so on. There is almost no empirical data on act of information warfare in wartime, and only scattered information on braoder systemic relationships between computer-based information and the decisions they inform."(p92)

-WHAT will be attacked is something we have overlooked – a faulty detail. We simply don't know how the system will respond.

-System Architecture can change "in between moves"