Information Wars

Information Wars

Author: Richard Stengel

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 0802147992

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A “well-told” insider account of the State Department’s twenty-first-century struggle to defend America against malicious propaganda and disinformation (The Washington Post). Disinformation is nothing new. When Satan told Eve nothing would happen if she bit the apple, that was disinformation. But today, social media has made disinformation even more pervasive and pernicious. In a disturbing turn of events, authoritarian governments are increasingly using it to create their own false narratives, and democracies are proving not to be very good at fighting it. During the final three years of the Obama administration, Richard Stengel, former editor of Time, was an Under Secretary of State on the front lines of this new global information war—tasked with unpacking, disproving, and combating both ISIS’s messaging and Russian disinformation. Then, during the 2016 election, Stengel watched as Donald Trump used disinformation himself. In fact, Stengel quickly came to see how all three had used the same playbook: ISIS sought to make Islam great again; Putin tried to make Russia great again; and we know the rest. In Information Wars, Stengel moves through Russia and Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and introduces characters from Putin to Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Mohamed bin Salman, to show how disinformation is impacting our global society. He illustrates how ISIS terrorized the world using social media, and how the Russians launched a tsunami of disinformation around the annexation of Crimea—a scheme that would became a model for future endeavors. An urgent book for our times, now with a new preface from the author, Information Wars challenges us to combat this ever-growing threat to democracy. “[A] refreshingly frank account . . . revealing.” —Kirkus Reviews “This sobering book is indeed needed to help individuals better understand how information can be massaged to produce any sort of message desired.” —Library Journal


How to Lose the Information War

How to Lose the Information War

Author: Nina Jankowicz

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-06-11

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1838607692

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia, who flood social media with disinformation, and circulate false and misleading information to fuel fake narratives and make the case for illegal warfare. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? Central and Eastern European states, including Ukraine and Poland, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading. How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.


Information Warfare and Security

Information Warfare and Security

Author: Dorothy Elizabeth Robling Denning

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What individuals, corporations, and governments need to know about information-related attacks and defenses! Every day, we hear reports of hackers who have penetrated computer networks, vandalized Web pages, and accessed sensitive information. We hear how they have tampered with medical records, disrupted emergency 911 systems, and siphoned money from bank accounts. Could information terrorists, using nothing more than a personal computer, cause planes to crash, widespread power blackouts, or financial chaos? Such real and imaginary scenarios, and our defense against them, are the stuff of information warfare-operations that target or exploit information media to win some objective over an adversary. Dorothy E. Denning, a pioneer in computer security, provides in this book a framework for understanding and dealing with information-based threats: computer break-ins, fraud, sabotage, espionage, piracy, identity theft, invasions of privacy, and electronic warfare. She describes these attacks with astonishing, real examples, as in her analysis of information warfare operations during the Gulf War. Then, offering sound advice for security practices and policies, she explains countermeasures that are both possible and necessary. You will find in this book: A comprehensive and coherent treatment of offensive and defensive information warfare, identifying the key actors, targets, methods, technologies, outcomes, policies, and laws; A theory of information warfare that explains and integrates within a single framework operations involving diverse actors and media; An accurate picture of the threats, illuminated by actual incidents; A description of information warfare technologies and their limitations, particularly the limitations of defensive technologies. Whatever your interest or role in the emerging field of information warfare, this book will give you the background you need to make informed judgments about potential threats and our defenses against them. 0201433036B04062001


Information War

Information War

Author: Tom Stefanick

Publisher: Chatham House Insights Series

Published: 2021-07-20

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9780815738824

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The struggle to control information will be at the heart of a U.S-China military competition Much of the talk about intensifying confrontation between the United States and China has ignored the question of how modern technology will be wielded in a rising conflict. This ground-breaking book by an expert in technology and national security argues that the two contemporary superpowers will base their security competition primarily on the fight to dominate information and perception. One of the crucial questions facing each country is how it will attack the adversary's information architecture while protecting its own. How each country chooses to employ information countermeasures will, in large measure, determine the amount of friction and uncertainty in the conflict between them. Artificial intelligence will lie at the heart of this information-based war. But the adaptation of AI algorithms into operational systems will take time, and of course will be subject to countermeasures developed by a very sophisticated adversary using disruption and deception. To determine how China will approach the conflict, this book reviews recent Chinese research into sensing, communications, and artificial intelligence. Chinese officials and experts carefully studied U.S. dominance of the information field during and after the cold war with the Soviet Union and are now employing the lessons they learned into their own county's mounting challenge to United States. This book will interest military officials, defense industry managers, policy experts in academic think tanks, and students of national security. It provides a sober view of how artificial intelligence will be turned against itself in the new information war.


The World Information War

The World Information War

Author: Timothy Clack

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-10

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1000385639

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book outlines the threats from information warfare faced by the West and analyses the ways it can defend itself. Existing on a spectrum from communication to indoctrination, information can be used to undermine trust, amplify emotional resonance, and reformulate identities. The West is currently experiencing an information war, and major setbacks have included: ‘fake news’; disinformation campaigns; the manipulation of users of social media; the dissonance of hybrid warfare; and even accusations of ‘state capture’. Nevertheless, the West has begun to comprehend the reality of what is happening, and it is now in a position defend itself. In this volume, scholars, information practitioners, and military professionals define this new war and analyse its shape, scope, and direction. Collectively, they indicate how media policies, including social media, represent a form of information strategy, how information has become the ‘centre of gravity’ of operations, and why the further exploitation of data (by scale and content) by adversaries can be anticipated. For the West, being first with the truth, being skilled in cyber defence, and demonstrating virtuosity in information management are central to resilience and success. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, information warfare, propaganda studies, cyber-security, and International Relations.


Information Warfare

Information Warfare

Author: Daniel Ventre

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-02-15

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1848216602

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Cyberspace is one of the major bases of the economic development of industrialized societies and developing. The dependence of modern society in this technological area is also one of its vulnerabilities. Cyberspace allows new power policy and strategy, broadens the scope of the actors of the conflict by offering to both state and non-state new weapons, new ways of offensive and defensive operations. This book deals with the concept of "information war", covering its development over the last two decades and seeks to answer the following questions: is the control of the information space really possible remains or she a utopia? What power would confer such control, what are the benefits?


New Dimensions of Information Warfare

New Dimensions of Information Warfare

Author: Roberto Di Pietro

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-12-03

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 303060618X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book revises the strategic objectives of Information Warfare, interpreting them according to the modern canons of information age, focusing on the fabric of society, the economy, and critical Infrastructures. The authors build plausible detailed real-world scenarios for each entity, showing the related possible threats from the Information Warfare point of view. In addition, the authors dive into the description of the still open problems, especially when it comes to critical infrastructures, and the countermeasures that can be implemented, possibly inspiring further research in the domain. This book intends to provide a conceptual framework and a methodological guide, enriched with vivid and compelling use cases for the readers (e.g. technologists, academicians, military, government) interested in what Information Warfare really means, when its lenses are applied to current technology. Without sacrificing accuracy, rigor and, most importantly, the big picture of Information Warfare, this book dives into several relevant and up-to-date critical domains. The authors illustrate how finance (an always green target of Information Warfare) is intertwined with Social Media, and how an opponent could exploit these latter ones to reach its objectives. Also, how cryptocurrencies are going to reshape the economy, and the risks involved by this paradigm shift. Even more compelling is how the very fabric of society is going to be reshaped by technology, for instance how our democratic elections are exposed to risks that are even greater than what appears in the current public discussions. Not to mention how our Critical Infrastructure is becoming exposed to a series of novel threats, ranging from state-supported malware to drones. A detailed discussion of possible countermeasures and what the open issues are for each of the highlighted threats complete this book. This book targets a widespread audience that includes researchers and advanced level students studying and working in computer science with a focus on security. Military officers, government officials and professionals working in this field will also find this book useful as a reference.


Information War

Information War

Author: Nancy Snow

Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Published: 2011-01-04

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1609802446

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Information War, former United States Information Agency employee Nancy Snow describes how U.S. propaganda efforts and covert operations are expanding more rapidly today than at any other time in U.S. history, as the Bush administration attempts to increase U.S. dominance by curbing dissent and controlling opinion. Snow lays out the propaganda techniques that the government uses to control dissent in the twenty-first century, spotlights the key players and their spinmeistering abilities in the information war, and describes memorable "leaks" in the Administration’s efforts to conduct stealth propaganda programs and control information at home. Ultimately she shows that dissent and true democracy are the early casualties of these policies.


The Russian Understanding of War

The Russian Understanding of War

Author: Oscar Jonsson

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2019-11-01

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1626167346

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book analyzes the evolution of Russian military thought and how Russia's current thinking about war is reflected in recent crises. While other books describe current Russian practice, Oscar Jonsson provides the long view to show how Russian military strategic thinking has developed from the Bolshevik Revolution to the present. He closely examines Russian primary sources including security doctrines and the writings and statements of Russian military theorists and political elites. What Jonsson reveals is that Russia's conception of the very nature of war is now changing, as Russian elites see information warfare and political subversion as the most important ways to conduct contemporary war. Since information warfare and political subversion are below the traditional threshold of armed violence, this has blurred the boundaries between war and peace. Jonsson also finds that Russian leaders have, particularly since 2011/12, considered themselves to be at war with the United States and its allies, albeit with non-violent means. This book provides much needed context and analysis to be able to understand recent Russian interventions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, how to deter Russia on the eastern borders of NATO, and how the West must also learn to avoid inadvertent escalation.


Information Technology and Military Power

Information Technology and Military Power

Author: Jon R. Lindsay

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2020-07-15

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1501749579

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age, and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy. Throughout this foray into networked technology in military operations, we see how information practice—the ways in which practitioners use technology in actual operations—shapes the effectiveness of military performance. The quality of information practice depends on the interaction between strategic problems and organizational solutions. Information Technology and Military Power explores information practice through a series of detailed historical cases and ethnographic studies of military organizations at war. Lindsay explains why the US military, despite all its technological advantages, has struggled for so long in unconventional conflicts against weaker adversaries. This same perspective suggests that the US retains important advantages against advanced competitors like China that are less prepared to cope with the complexity of information systems in wartime. Lindsay argues convincingly that a better understanding of how personnel actually use technology can inform the design of command and control, improve the net assessment of military power, and promote reforms to improve military performance. Warfighting problems and technical solutions keep on changing, but information practice is always stuck in between.