Thursday, February 20, 2020

World War III Is Information Warfare

Posted: 2/20/2020

Information warfare is probably at least as old as The Art of War (5th century BC) by Sun Tzu. However, it was only perfected since the end of World War II. Direct confrontation of kinetic forces (or heroic men against heroic men in an epic battle) is a paradigm of the past. Modern technologies and open societies afford many ways to achieve the defeat or crippling of an enemy without resorting to brute force. The threat of annihilation (or at least mass casualties) by nuclear weapons or chemical/biological weapons also suggests the use of lesser aggressive means to deal with opponents. 

Information Warfare has many great benefits:
  1. Can be sustained for very long periods (for decades) at fairly little monetary costs
  2. Has no or few casualties
  3. Can be easily adjusted, retargeted, and fine tuned
  4. Easy plausible deniability
  5. And much more

The former Soviet Union was a master at information warfare against Western countries, but China has been excelling the “evil empire” by far in this respect.

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