By William Church
From Defense News
June 14, 1999
Category: Inside View, page 42
NATO’s actions in Kosovo have set the stage for an urgently needed, in-depth discussion on the use of information operations (IO).
The Kosovo action allowed NATO to use a full arsenal of IO weapons. It used graphite bombs against the infrastructure to deprive the civilian population of electricity and, therefore, put political pressure on the Yugoslav government. Senior U.S. Air Force officials have described extensive covert intrusions into the Yugoslav air defense systems to degrade their response capabilities.
Both sides conducted an extensive psychological campaign that ranged from traditional leaflets targeted at Yugoslav civilians warning about a bogus ground attack to hacking World Wide Web pages that had minimum strategic value.
The Kosovo action has pushed significant international relations issues to the surface. Questions of sovereignty and the role of multilateral organizations are prime concerns, but it is also important to examine the broader concerns of non-lethal technology weapons and methods to disrupt a nation’s decision-making process without due process in an international arena.
Ironically, Russia has been at the jagged edge of both of these issues. In November, the Russian government requested the United Nations to establish a working group to raise the issue of information warfare, and the United Nations has agreed to start exploring these weapons for a possible IO treaty.
Working toward this process, there are technological and strategic issues that must be examined. First and foremost, the real danger of IO must be discussed and understood.
IO weapons include non-nuclear electronic magnetic pulse weapons that fry any electronic or computer infrastructure within range. This category of weapon can render most military land and aircraft useless and, therefore, vulnerable to attack by conventional weapons and forces.
This type of weapon also can be used against the civilian infrastructure for a number of reasons: First, it disrupts water and electric systems that support war production, and second, it can inflame any festering civil unrest.
So-called soft bombs or graphite bombs also fall into the category of IO weapons. They are graphite strips that fall onto electric lines, causing a systemic failure in the distribution system but not the production system. In addition, electronic intrusion, or hacking, of those same systems allows for control of the infrastructure.
For example, these methods could be used to control the water flow systems of dams or the cooling towers of nuclear power plants. A nation’s financial system could be targeted by disrupting the transfer of money in and out of a country to adversely affect industrial production, or it could take the form of an electronic trading program that systematically attacks a nation’s currency.
In another approach, a country could be strangled by depriving it of Internet and other network connections, thus effectively controlling the flow of information.
In addition, IO weapons have the capability of upsetting the traditional offense-defense balance, which has been leaning in the favor of the defense for the last 20 years, thanks to nuclear weapons.
All of the above reasons dovetail with another more sobering truth: Conventional weapons, including air power, have failed to achieve an overwhelming victory in virtually any conflict of the last 40 years.
It is for these reasons, and others, that IO weapons and strategies will blossom in the next decade. IO weapons may be new, but in one regard they are reminiscent of the development of air power in the first part of this century. Like the first combat aircraft, IO weapons extend the battlespace.
H.G. Wells correctly forecasted in “The War in the Air” this battlespace transition:
“With flying machines war alters its character; it ceases to be an affair of fronts and becomes an affair of areas; neither side, victor or loser, remains immune from the gravest injuries and while there is a vast increase in the destructiveness of war there is also increased indecisiveness.”
Some 14 years after Wells made that observation the Hague Aerial Bombardment Rules were drafted on 11 December 1922 and Article 22 may be most applicable:
“Aerial bombardment for the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population of destroying or damaging private property not of a military character, of injuring non-combatants is prohibited.”
With the rising national dependence on electronic and information infrastructure, it may be reasonably argued that terrorizing the civilian population could include depriving them of vital life support services such as electric and telecommunications facilities. This might be especially true when considering the advances of medicine today and their increased dependence on information systems to deliver the most basic level of services.
This principle was extended by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. The recent IO attacks in Yugoslavia are dangerously close to a violation of these protocols because of the developing nature of the world infrastructure.
Today, a nation’s infrastructure is significantly interlocked and dependent. A good example of this might be the December 1998 electricity black-out in the San Francisco Bay Area. A minor problem at a switching station caused millions of people to be without power for up to 12 hours because it cascaded through the entire system.
With nuclear power plants, dams, water control systems and other infrastructure components highly dependent on electronic systems, it might be argued that IO weapons should be restricted because of the fear of a significant, systemic event triggered by soft bombs or hacking targeted at electric systems.
Psychological warfare aspects of IO also should be reviewed because of the Kosovo situation. The growing concern is that the advancing global communications infrastructure is an enabling factor.
Psychological warfare on the Internet could be devastating to already potentially explosive situations such as in Indonesia and Malaysia. In terms of financial systems and the role of modern communications, there has been more than one Asian government that pointed to the 1997 financial meltdown as being a hostile effort to disrupt their political system.
For the above reasons, the development of an IO treaty must be explored in an appropriate forum. The period between the world wars failed to address the issue of the uses of air power, and countless civilians — from the air raid bunkers of Dresden to the napalmed civilians of Vietnam — have suffered.
The United Nations immediately must address an IO treaty because of the human rights ramifications, and because it is the only organization that has the structure to represent the international community.
William Church is managing director of the think tank Centre for Infrastructural Warfare Studies, San Francisco. and a director of the Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping Center (South America). Can be reached by e-mail: “William Church” <iwar@iwar.org>
© Defence News 1999
