User:ArrowHead117

About Me
Greetings! I'm Steven Modzelewski. I'm a college student currently attending Everett Community College in Washington State. I'm a California native by blood, born in Palm Springs, California. I lived there for about nine years or so, before moving with family to Maui, specifically a little place there called Haiku. Haiku is less than a mile from Jaws, which is in Peahi. Waves there can exceed 80 feet in height during the right seasons. Me and my family visit frequently, calling it a home away from home- between Palm Springs and Peahi, I think it's clear that I'm a fan of warm weather and warmer water. We've lived here in Washington for the last ten or so years now. I'm someone with a broad range of life experiences, I'd like to think. I've had a fair few jobs now- working everywhere from Bed Bath & Beyond to Signature Flight Support at Boeing Field, as a Line Service Technician, fueling and directing private aircraft and helicopters ranging in size from Cessna-172's to Boeing 737 MAX's, the occasional F/A-18, and various helicopters, mostly Huey' s. Currently, I'm employed at Best Buy, as a Sales Associate. I have a variety of hobbies. I'm currently learning to play the Electric Guitar, I play video-games- (mostly ARMA 3 and Animal Crossing: New Horizons at the moment.) and I am politically active, labeling myself as 'Right Wing' though not subscribing to one particular label, eg Independant or Republican.

My Wikipedia Interests
I don't plan on doing much in the long term here, being completely honest- mostly just the assignments required of me. Despite that, while I am here, I intend on doing the most I can to improve the quality of the site and it's contents while I am here.

Article Evaluation
Modern day warfare is ever evolving, and with constant advancements in everything from cybersecurity to unmanned weaponry, the need to understand information warfare as a concept and it's relevancy is higher than ever. With this in mind, I decided to give the Information Warfare page on Wikipedia a look over, and have found three aspects worth commenting on: Structure and Completeness, Age, and Voice.

Structure and Completeness
While one could sit and nitpick the fact that this article is almost completely US-Centric in it's discussion of information warfare, I think an even larger and more glaring issue is the total lack of any section dedicated to the history of Information Warfare. It's sprinkled in odd places throughout, and even in the overview, it speaks of how "The US Airforce has had information Warfare squadrons since the 1980's." Why isn't there a section dedicated to it, then? One could also point out the complete irrelevancy of the third paragraph, of dutch hackers in the gulf war. There's also a mention of Non-attribution, which would be an article in it's own right. The structure here is a total mess, with only three main sections, one being a US-Centric overview of the topic. The 'See also' section also links to some pages that simply do not exist, so how they managed that one is a mystery.

Age
The age of this article is also an issue. I won't even touch the bibliography, which suggests some books as old as 1997. Everything needs a revamp, including the references, which also seem to use sources dating back to 2015. Sources on a subject like this need to be updated as consistently as possible, because the global understanding of the battle-space has, and does, change drastically in a span of even just six years. Some tech goes completely outdated in that time, not to mention how academia can change the accepted school of thought, regarding things like the legal and ethical concerns.

Voice
Speaking of, this article is all over the place. It reads to me more like an essay written by a high-school student, and I would suggest looking over 'New Battlespace' as an example. There isn't a good reason to specifically link the X-47B and imply it's a drone being currently used on the battlefield, only two have been constructed. I also don't see a good reason to include any statistics on drone pilot health, especially a study done by the US Government, when discussing the concept of information warfare. It reads like a blurb from an argumentative essay. One solution I might suggest to this would be either to rewrite the page, or simply relabel it something like 'Information Warfare in the US Armed Forces' and then many of the listed problems wouldn't become relevant.

This is without delving into the 'Legal and Ethical Concerns' section, which itself hosts a whole litany of issues. Not only are they making claims where they shouldn't be, but they're essentially using it to write an argument essay on why Just War Theory doesn't apply to traditional warfare. Not only that, but under the third bullet point, they speak exclusively about US-Centric issues again. The right to privacy is an issue that many countries face, especially with Information Warfare. What about Mi6 or any of the issues that the UK faces? Europe as a whole faces these issues too, and that's not even touching China and their information lock-down on everything that goes in or comes out of that country.

Summary
In total, I'd give this page a very low rating. While it serves to give a basic definition of the concept, it doesn't delve nearly as deep enough and the tone throughout the article is off base. It cites sources that are out of date, for a topic that is constantly evolving. The structure is of the greatest concern, with some the article in some places needing a near complete rewrite, with certain links leading you to pages that aren't even stubs. There are entire important sections of information that aren't even mentioned, and it is far too centered on the US Armed Forces. Because I don't like nitpicking without providing solutions, I'd suggest either renaming the page to something like 'Information Warfare in the US Armed Forces', or removing many things and almost starting from scratch, being sure to keep a global emphasis with consistent updates to citations when relevant.