The Information Age of Warfare Has Arrived

Information Warfare Is Not “Optional”

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Nations without information warfare capabilities in the 21st century are like nations without armies and navies in the 20th century. They are defenseless. ...

Russia’s relatively recent NGO laws forcing foreign-funded organizations to register as foreign agents undermines their legitimacy simply by demanding in reality the transparency these organizations often demand disingenuously as a means of attacking and undermining a targeted government.

By exposing the foreign-funded nature of their operations, effectively exposing the disingenuous intentions and financial motivations they harbor and making it difficult for them to operate while giving space to legitimate, indigenous and most importantly, constructive opposition, squeezes them out of a nation’s information space like a well planned garden crowds out weeds.

US/NATO "response" to hybrid warfare ... is hybrid warfare.

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The most plausible explanation for why NATO strategists continually project the machinations of their bloc’s own leader (the US) onto that of Russia is in large part due to their sincere belief in the ‘self-evident truths’ that they’ve been taught, namely that Russia is always “aggressive” and “wicked” and the US, NATO, and the West as a whole are always “defensive” and “virtuous”. The pervasive promulgation of this presumption into every facet of Western life is actively encouraged by all relevant stakeholders – the media, military, political, and educational classes – in order to craft a narrative that accords to the ‘politically correct’ precepts of “American Exceptionalism”.

Got that?

NATO’s Misguided Response to “Hybrid Threat”

Jens Stoltenberg, Sec-Gen. of NATO wrote:

“Today we also recognized cyberspace as a new operational domain, joining land, air and sea. This means better protection of our networks and our missions and operations with more focus on cyber training and cyber planning," the Secretary General clarified, adding that the allies plan to increase their own cyber security and exchange information between the member-states.

Skynet just went operational. Oh joy.

NATO missile defense goes live in Europe

Commentary: The world's best cyber army doesn’t belong to Russia

Given the lurid, unsubstantiated claims by the boot-licking MSM, you might be forgiven for not knowing that the US has been doing this for decades, even against its closest "allies". Makes you wonder what these shit-bags are doing in Canada.

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James Bamford @WashAuthor

My latest for Reuters re DNC & Hillary hack by Russia.  We've been bugging the elections of our friends for decades.

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National attention is focused on Russian eavesdroppers’ possible targeting of U.S. presidential candidates and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Yet, leaked top-secret National Security Agency documents show that the Obama administration has long been involved in major bugging operations against the election campaigns -- and the presidents -- of even its closest allies.

The United States is, by far, the world’s most aggressive nation when it comes to cyberspying and cyberwarfare. The National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on foreign cities, politicians, elections and entire countries since it first turned on its receivers in 1952. Just as other countries, including Russia, attempt to do to the United States. What is new is a country leaking the intercepts back to the public of the target nation through a middleperson.

a very good read.

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In 2014, for a cover story in Wired and a PBS documentary, I spent three days in Moscow with Snowden, whose last NSA job was as a contract cyberwarrior. I was also granted rare access to his archive of documents. “Cyber Command itself has always been branded in a sort of misleading way from its very inception,” Snowden told me. “It’s an attack agency. … It’s all about computer-network attack and computer-network exploitation at Cyber Command.” 

The idea is to turn the Internet from a worldwide web of information into a global battlefield for war. "The next major conflict will start in cyberspace," says one of the secret NSA documents. One key phrase within Cyber Command documents is “Information Dominance.”

The Cyber Navy, for example, calls itself the Information Dominance Corps. The Cyber Army is providing frontline troops with the option of requesting “cyberfire support” from Cyber Command, in much the same way it requests air and artillery support. And the Cyber Air Force is pledged to “dominate cyberspace” just as “today we dominate air and space.”

"cyberfire support" - just like air support, or artillery fire. Because freedom.

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In fact, the United States is the only country ever to launch an actual cyberwar -- when the Obama administration used a cyberattack to destroy thousands of centrifuges, used for nuclear enrichment, in Iran. This was an illegal act of war, according to the Defense Department’s own definition.

A Rare Window into US Military PSYOPs (Psychological Operations)

How Special Operators Trained for Psychological Warfare Before the Mosul Fight

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There are two battles occurring in Mosul today. One is in the streets, where  coalition forces are exchanging fire with ISIS remnants entrenched around Iraq’s second-largest city. The second is taking place on screens, on Twitter, and in the minds of residents and of fighters on both sides. Mosul is an information battlespace as much as it is physical location, and you can’t achieve victory on one battlefield without achieving it on the other.

So in the months leading up to the Mosul offensive, the Joint Staff hosted a highly unusual war game. The goal: train special operators to disrupt ISIS’s ability to command and control forces and “neutralize its ability to increase morale,” according to a Defense Department official.

Defense One obtained a writeup of the exercise, which provides a rare glimpse into psychological operations, or PSYOPS.

They practice neutralizing the ability of their enemy to increase morale. Any questions?