"Information Dominance"

Like a genie in a bottle or a humunculus risen from clay that turns to destroy its creator, our military techniques and strategies have been employed against us in the "Global War on Terror." As the massively documented article in today's Times makes clear, the Department of Defense has taken a strategy originally developed for use against the Soviet Union and other Cold War enemies (electronic warfare and its descendants, information warfare and information dominance) and deployed it against us.

Electronic warfare developed early in the 20th century. Essentially, it operates as a "force multiplier" for military operations by denying the enemy the ability to communicate and to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance. This is accomplished by jamming their radio frequencies with white noise so that their military units cannot share operational intelligence or commands from higher echelon units to junior units. Enemy radar sites are jammed, disrupted or attacked with "beam riding" missiles that home in on the radar stations emitting signals.

In later years, simply denying the enemy the ability to communicate evolved into planting false information within the enemies command and control communications network. Meaconing, for example, is the practice of placing false radio beacons to draw aircraft off course. RB-50 reconnaissance aircraft were drawn over the border in Turkey by Soviet meaconing and shot down for violating Soviet airspace. Spoofing is another technique, whereby fake radio transmissions mimic enemy units communication, sowing confusion and disinformation, or create the illusion of friendly forces in places where they are not located. In World War II, Allied forces in England created a diversion by spoofing a massive invasion force with fake communications that operated as a decoy for the Normandy invasion force. Psychological operations were conducted during the Vietnam war, broadcasting propaganda and dropping leaflets in order to destroy the enemy's morale and sow discontent.

In the 1990s, these many different techniques and strategies, electronic warfare, meaconing, spoofing, psyops, etc., were all gathered together under the doctrine of "information warfare" and, later, "information dominance." This doctrine was deployed in the Gulf War as a coordinated joint strategy by all branches of the military to deny Iraqi communications, create false data to confuse and misdirect Iraqi military units and to induce via propaganda individual soldiers into surrendering.

The latest revelations that the Department of Defense and cultivated and deployed retired military officers as "analysts" on Fox News, NBC, CNN and other news networks in order to spread talking points, false information and propaganda. This effort grew out of the doctrine described above:

Torie Clarke, the former public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information dominance.” In a spin-saturated news culture, she argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent.

And so even before Sept. 11, she built a system within the Pentagon to recruit “key influentials” — movers and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted on to generate support for Mr. Rumsfeld’s priorities.

(emphasis added)

This is reminiscent of the use of interrogation training techniques used on US military units that fly reconnaissance missions in international airspace near enemy territory, such as North Korea. Lessons learned in the POW camps of North Vietnam about how to resist interrogation, not just physical torture but also mental manipulations, were used on US military personnel in order to train them for the possibility of capture and interrogation by the enemy. These techniques included sleep deprivation, stress positions, political indoctrination, simulated burials and waterboarding. In the Global War on Terror, these techniques, which we borrowed from the worst of our enemies during the Cold War, were actually employed at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and in secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.

Now it appears that another Cold War military doctrine has been directed toward another application, except this time, instead of "enemy combatants" and "terrorists", the target is the American public.