Protectors without Prerogative: The Challenge of Military Defense against Information Warfare

Abstract

This article considers the unique threat of information warfare and the challenges posed to defense establishments in democratic states that are typically legally limited in their ability to operate in domestic affairs. This author argues that military strategy on information warfare must be informed by understanding the systems of social and political function being targeted by foreign adversaries. Looking to theories of political communication, the author locates such understanding in describing democracies as information systems whose functionality resides in the countervailing operation of key social forces. Defense establishments would do well to develop greater analytic capacity for prediction of attack based on such societal—rather than strategic—factors and incorporate these predictions into efforts to shape adversary behavior in cyberspace, the primary medium via which information warfare is prosecuted today.