Talk:Information warfare

Note: An early version of this article was taken from the public domain resource at http://www.af.mil/lib/corner.html

Archived
I've archived all talk content. Criticisms of the article were:


 * The article is a direct extract from a US Military document
 * The article is US centric and lacked an internationalised dimension
 * The article is military centric and fails to recognise the commercial applications of IW

I have started working through the article to remedy some of those issues however some of what I have to say I will not support with citations because some of my sources are not public domain, although not protectivly marked. I would appreciate anyone adding anything appropriate.ALR 11:49, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Can I just add another problem which doesn't seem to be covered. Searching for Ontological Warfare gets redirected here, the concepts are NOT the same - Briefly (and excuse the excessive simplification), information warfare can be thought of as primarily 1) spying 2) cutting off enemy communication 3) maintaining good communication and 4) some degree of propaganda. Ontological warfare is much more Orwellian, in fact the best example of it is Newspeak. The purpose of ontological warfare is to suppress alternative points of view by making their expression literally impossible. I don't contribute here enough to know how to do it all myself but what I'd propose is that Ontological Warfare either becomes a new article or redirects to Newspeak. Either of these would be more accurate than the present arrangement. Thanks. 59.167.172.115 17:54, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

This article is not a direct extract from any US military document. Information Warfare has now become an outdated term and has been replaced by the US military with the term "Information Operations". As for the definition neither is correct. Information Operations in their simplest form seeks to integrate the capabilities of Military Deception, Psychological Operations, Electronic Warfare, Operations Security and Computer Network Operations, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Deal99 (talk • contribs) 01:40, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Unencyclopedic text
It might be good to use some of the text from here, but I don't think it's a good idea to copy the entire piece wholesale. It's US-centric, full of jargon, and represents a particular group's theory of information warfare as if it were objective, universal truth. It would be neutral to say that "the U.S. military divides information warfare into 'own information' and 'hostile information', etc." but it's a bit silly to assume that it's done the same way everywhere and using the same terminology. --Mr. Billion 05:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

List of sources
FYI, a list of sources on this subject can be found here:. Cla68 (talk) 03:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Non Military?
Is there a point to having a non-military section to this article? Right now this section could describe practically anyone. Is normal, criminal hacking considered information warfare? Andrew Keenan Richardson 21:02, 20 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I would think information war would be more general, and the military aspects would come under propaganda. Arbitrations and mediations here on Wikipedia are a kind of small-scale information war, as well as are political campaigns, lawsuits, etc. Whoever shouts the loudest, does the most research, or pays the most people off or buys the most airtime wins. Getting people to listen to your information and not the other guy's is a part of it. Am I right? I'd like to see some better definition as well on this interesting subject. --DanielCD (talk) 03:26, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

What uncited rubbish!
For 4 years various people have been saying that this article is a pile of uncited biassed rubbish.

It is still a pile of uncited biassed rubbish.

Being an "inclusionist", I am loath to nominate it for speedy deletion, or even deletion, but does anyone have a better idea? Pdfpdf (talk) 13:16, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The lead paragraph is accurate, everything else can reasonably be culled.
 * ALR (talk) 13:20, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh dear. How sad. But I do not disagree!
 * Perhaps the article should be split into two? 1) US IW and 2) Rest-of-the-world IO?
 * As a matter of fact, the current article isn't too bad as a summary of US IW - it just needs to be a bit clearer that is not about anything else other than US IW!
 * Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 13:50, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * As I recall I culled a fair amount from this article a while ago and never really got round to trying to sort it out beyond there. There is a distinction between US IO, UK/ NATO IO and RoW IO.  The main source I have is a US manual on the topic, but it's at home and I'm not.  Another useful source would be the UK Handbook which is UNCLASS.
 * ALR (talk) 14:30, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

unclassified sources

 * "There is a distinction between US IO, UK/ NATO IO and RoW IO." - I agree.
 * "Another useful source would be the UK Handbook which is UNCLASS." - Yes, that would be useful. Do you have a URL to it? (The only UK documents I have are classified. The Oz doctrine is also classified.)
 * A few years back Ed Armistead wrote a book (which is unclass) that I recall seemed to have a broader approach, even though he's American and writing about American IO. I'll dig it out and see how accurate my memory is! FYI: Information Operations - Edwin L. Armistead Publisher: Brassey's US  ISBN:9781574886993  Release Date: 17/June/2004  Pages: 256
 * (There's a copy of a pre-publication version at http://www.jfsc.ndu.edu/schools_programs/jc2ios/io/io_textbook.pdf)
 * Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 15:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

New Information Warfare Site
In November this year a new website, dedicated to the Journal of Information Warfare ( www.jinfowar.com )was announced. The Journal, now in its tenth year of on-line publication, has a growing following. Mindsystems, the online publishers, are attempting to generate more comment and discussion in this arena. The Journal is a fully peer reviewed publication. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.142.149 (talk) 03:45, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

East/west terminology divide
It has been observed that Russian documents talk about "information" warfare while western (U.S., NATO, E.U.) texts more often mention "cyber" warfare, a divide in terminology similar to "motorised" (Russian) vs. "mechanised" (western) infantry, or "cosmonaut" vs. "astronaut". Reference: Ulrik Franke: "War by non-military means. Understanding Russian information warfare" (March 2015), FOI-R--4065--SE, section 1.1, page 10. --LA2 (talk) 07:11, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

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Alex Jones, Info Wars
Its very hard to keep any edits on Alex Jones, he has an internet army of followers who are reverting any edit on Alex Jones. Alex Jones is his NGO Info Wars (basically a life-long information terrorist), has to be on this article. ToddGrande (talk) 08:18, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

information warfare
current brief on information warfare of UK 81.130.235.78 (talk) 10:51, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Photo collage sources conspiracy theory site, quoting Russian propaganda
The "inexplicably identical" photo of "pamphlets distributed at the 2011 Egyptian revolution and the Revolution of Dignity that are inexplicably identical (2011; 2014)" is literally sourced from abovetopsecret.com - a conspiracy theory forum.

There it is sourced from a screenshot taken from a now defunct Ukrainian TV channel and media company, whose owner, Шкіря Ігор Миколайович, was a member and a parliamentary representative of the now banned pro-Russian Party of Regions up until 2014.

I.e. It is literally anti-western/Ukrainian Russian propaganda, spread and sourced by conspiracy theorists presented in a way a conspiracy theory would be - as a mystery about "inexplicably identical" instruction for protesters with a "clearly obvious" source, as the original post also contains a copy in English. "Clearly", both Maidan revolution and 2011 Egyptian revolution were secret operations by western/NATO/CIA/MI6/Bilderberg/etc.etc.

And they would have gotten away with it if not for their vanity, which made them make one tiny but fatal mistake. 109.175.107.123 (talk) 21:37, 1 October 2023 (UTC)