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BATTLEFIELD OF THE FUTURE

Battlefield of the Future - Air University Press

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<strong>BATTLEFIELD</strong> <strong>OF</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>FUTURE</strong><br />

must develop a coherent national-level policy on the military<br />

and strategic use of new information warfare technologies . To<br />

facilitate this objective, the US armed forces are developing,<br />

under the rubric of command and control warfare, the<br />

technologies and systems that will provide the capability for<br />

"cyberwar ."<br />

It may be possible to control and exploit information so as to<br />

purposely generate stochastic chaos, though there are some<br />

doubts .24 Many of the same technologies and systems can be<br />

used to develop a national-level capability for strategic<br />

"netwar ." Here, however, there are genuine doubts . As<br />

Voegelin feared, it may not be possible to control and exploit<br />

information and information technologies to impose "a form<br />

on the remnants of societies no longer capable of selforganization"<br />

because their substantive universe of meaning<br />

has been destroyed or corrupted .25<br />

Few info-warriors would claim the ability to "reorient" the<br />

former Soviet Union into a liberal society, or to influence the<br />

far more ancient barbarism in that heart of darkness, Rwanda .<br />

Perhaps strategic-level information war is, indeed, like nuclear<br />

war: the capability is required for deterrence ; its employment,<br />

the folly of mutually assured destruction . But if the United<br />

States is to develop the capacity for information war, in the<br />

sure and certain knowledge that the technologies have already<br />

"proliferated" to both state and nonstate potential rivals, a<br />

realistic national consensus must be built.<br />

It is useless to pretend that the proliferation of these<br />

technologies will not provide capabilities that can do serious<br />

harm . It is useless to pretend that military-based command<br />

and control warfare capabilities will not be developed, and it is<br />

useless to pretend that cyberwar technologies could not be<br />

turned to netwar applications . It is almost universally agreed<br />

that these capabilities are essential on the contemporary<br />

battlefield .<br />

It is essential, then, that the president and the Congress<br />

give serious and sustained attention to cyberwar, netwar, and<br />

information war.<br />

168

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