Talk:Information warfare/Archive 1

This article is wholly U.S. in its slant, dismissing Britain's long history of IW (at times directed against the citizens of the United States) while treating information warfare as a uniquely American invention. Some sources of British information warfare are:

Nicholas John Cull's "Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign Against American 'Neutrality' in World War II", Oxford UP, 1995.

David Ignatius's "Britain's War in America: How Churchill's Agents Secretly Manipulated the U.S. Before Pearl Harbor" in the Washington Post (section C), 17 Sep 1989, pp 1-2.

Philip M. Taylor's "If War Should Come: Preparing the Fifth Arm for Total War, 1935-1939" in the Journal of Contemporary History 16 (1981): 27-51.


 * Note - the URL given above is no longer valid, but the original still exists at Cornerstones of information warfare.  howch e  ng   {chat} 00:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Totally US centric POV
The article is totally US centric, because it is a version of a document produced by the United States Air Force.

Re: Totally US centric POV
Big deal. Why don't you add your piece about Britain to the article and stop complaining.


 * That's not a helpful solution. What we would have then would be a totally US- and UK- centric POV. Information Warfare isn't a new creation, it's just that this article only deals with the implications of it now that it is an explicit and modern application of old ideas.

Really Needs Work
Much of the end of this entry dosn't even read like an encyclopedia entry. It reads like a military handout or something, which it is. It also seems to be badly organized, confused, propagandized, and poorly linked. All in all, while some parts are informative, the article needs a major reworking. Top down from the ToC. But I'm not gonna step up and do it :P

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Why don't you add your piece about Britain to the article and stop complaining
We're not talking about the US or Britain here. I'm from Germany and I must say this article is totally useless for any outside-US reader. What does "control the air while protecting our forces from enemy action" mean to the international wikipedia reader community? What is meant by the word "our"? The citizens of Rio de Janeiro/Brasil? The residents of the island of Samoa/South Seas? Yes, it's hard to believe, but there are intelligent lifeforms outside the US...

Information warfare is probably more applicable to civil society now.
The information warfare is no more in Military domain, it is a very potent warfare style which can affect public and governance systems, causing much more harm than to the military systems.

As more of the governing functions become electronic (e-governance), the information warfare can move from declared battles and wars (the military domain) to life of citizens. Countries, which have more IT in their governance systems (developed nations), are more likely to suffer than developing countries; because they have more at stake.

The civil scenario is bad, because there is very little understanding about security and use of secure software. A simple virus can ( only for Microsoft based sytems ) is capable of bringing down the network and services. More sophisticated attacks can manipulate information and damage the governanace infrastructure. AND this can all be done without declaring a war.

The cyber terrorism of this kind, will be far worse than what we have seen in the past.

The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_warfare is purely military view of information warfare.

a review of the contemporary Chinese POV on IW
http://www.iwar.org.uk/iwar/resources/china/iw/chinaiw.htm

long, not very well written, and basically a summary of collected info by a guy who can't read Chinese. But still relevant to the IW topic. And notably, not a purely military view of the topic.

Favorite passage: ''“How to think” may be more important than how to do something. Shen, for example, believes that the losers in future war will be those lacking command thinking rather than backward technology.''

Seriously, this article needs work
It is a US Air Force primer on information warfare. Why does that redirect from Ontological Warfare? It is _Not_ the same thing. A new article needs to be created for ontological warfare and this article needs to be generalised and made fit to be used in an encyclopedia rather than a military briefing. Much of the later sections are about specific Air Force procedures during conflicts, which is not relevant to the article.

Wikipedia is a world wide community
This article needs work -- please de-bias the US viewpoints and limit reference to the US.

I aggree
The artical does seem to explore some of the basic fundamental aspects of IW, the fact that it uses examples from the USAF shouldent change the meening of this document. Its written this way to make it easier to relate to the Air Force. Seems like pretty basic stuff to me, instead of planes it could be tanks or buisnesses. Pick your poison, the terms are all applicable. In the most basic since, Protect information assets, exploit apposing factions information assets.