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US military planning to fight the Internet
Posted on January 28, 2006

As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.

Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and posted on the Web, the 74-page "Information Operations Roadmap," a 30 October 2003 document approved personally by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, has been cited in the media several times but has not previously been released to the public.

The document calls on DoD to enhance its capabilities in five key Information Operations (IO) areas: Electronic Warfare (EW), Psychological Operations (PSYOP), Operations Security (OPSEC), Military Deception and Computer Network Operations (CNO). And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.

Sections of the document relating to computer network attack (CNA) and "offensive cyber operations" remain classified under black highlighting.

The Roadmap says that information is "critical to military success". Computer and telecommunications networks are of vital operational importance.

The Information Operations Roadmap "provides the Department with a plan to advance the goal of information operations as a core military competency" and "stands as an another example of the Department's commitment to transform our military capabilities to keep pace with emerging threats and to exploit new opportunities afforded by innovation and rapidly developing information technologies."

The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

The Roadmap, with the goal of expansion and central coordination of Pentagon PSYOP and public diplomacy operations, recognizes the legal conundrum presented by the use of overseas propaganda in the information age. But while the document recognizes the need for boundaries-referred to as "lanes"-between U.S. public diplomacy and foreign propaganda, it fails to provide any such limits.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.

"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.

"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department of Defense will 'fight the Net' as it would an enemy weapons system."

The Roadmap also recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".

US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".

"The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet," wrote Adam Brookes, BBC Pentagon correspondent.

Information Operations Roadmap (PDF)
SOURCE: National Security Archive at George Washington University; BBC