![]() Information operations are a critical component of modern warfare. In recent years, Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine has encompassed both cyber attacks and manipulation of information. 3 And more narrowly, in battlefield situations in Iraq or in the campaign against ISIS, information was an important tool. The United States and the Soviet Union both used broadcasts, covert organizations, and funds to interfere in foreign elections during the Cold War. ![]() Britain manipulated information to move American opinion in the direction of war with Germany both in 19. The use of information as an instrument of conflict and manipulation in international politics has a long history. Information Warfare: What’s New and What’s Not Any policy to defend against cyber information war must start with the Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm. And while rule of law, trust, truth, and openness make democracies asymmetrically vulnerable, they are also critical values to defend. Along with big data and artificial intelligence, technology has made the problem of defending democracy from information warfare far more complicated than foreseen two decades ago. Citizens voluntarily carry Big Brother and his relatives in their pockets. Ironically, one cause of the vulnerabilities has been the rise of social media and mobile devices in which American companies have been the global leaders. Autocracies are able to protect themselves by controlling information flows, while the openness of democracies creates vulnerabilities that autocracies can exploit via information warfare. ![]() The expected asymmetries seem to have been reversed. Today, in the face of successful Chinese control of what citizens can see and say on the Internet and Russian use of the Internet to interfere in the 2016 American election, the United States (and allied democracies) find themselves on the defensive. ![]() President Clinton believed that China would liberalize and that Communist Party efforts to control the Internet were like trying to “nail jello to the wall.” 2 The Bush and Obama administrations shared this optimism and promoted an Internet Freedom Agenda that included subsidies and technologies to assist dissidents in authoritarian states to communicate. 1 Information would be widely available and undercut the monopolies of authoritarian governments. The early years of the Internet were marked by a libertarian optimism about its decentralizing and democratizing effects. ![]()
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