Information Warfare and The Future of Conflict

THE FUTURE OF C O N F L I CT

In the coming decade, the scope, scale, and speed of Information Warfare (IW) will expand, radically transforming the future of conflict. IW attacks will sow disorder, mistrust, and radicalization to sway the sentiment of the public and the fighting force, at times compelling them to violence against institutions, organizations, and each other. The U.S. Army recognizes this trend in information-age warfare and seeks to address the phenomenon in its latest concept manual, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028.

This emerging information warfare attack plane stretches across three domains: digital, cognitive, and physical. Conflict will move swiftly, freely, and simultaneously between the three domains. Future attacks will utilize new technologies in novel ways and employ algorithm-on-algorithm conflict beyond the scope of human observation. These emerging factors will fundamentally change our understanding of conflict and require a new model to comprehend and operationalize the changing character of war. The information warfare framework (IWF) explained in this report is intended to assist military leaders and staff members with understanding, visualizing, describing, and directing operations on the 21st-century battlefield.

In the 20th century, the U.S. military viewed the state of conflict as a binary matter. We were either at war or peace. Conversely, in the 21st century, the global population’s exponential adoption of powerful information technologies is causing cognitive effects that force military thinkers to approach conflict using a quantum perspective in which multiple states of conflict exist simultaneously from interactions across the digital, cognitive, and physical domains. To comprehend the future of conflict, it is necessary to move from a binary or Newtonian way of thinking and adopt Quantum state approaches where the nation can be both at war and at peace at the same time. The state of war or peace depends upon the observer, the circumstances, and the context under which observations are made.

In the future, the definition of battlefields, combatants, and adversaries will need to be remapped in ways that contradict and challenge existing procedures and doctrine. In the era of great power competition, commanders on future battlefields will need to converge all capabilities, both traditional and emerging information-related capabilities in novel ways across the competition, conflict, and return to competition phases of multi-domain operations. This report provides examples of future threats intended to assist commanders in envisioning what conflict could plausibly look like in 2028. It is a strategic foresight tool intended to encourage further analysis and study of future information warfare threats. The report does not capture all possible threats, but it does present a number of plausible threats and actions the military can take to disrupt, mitigate, recover, and defeat future information attacks.

Future Information Warfare Threats:

• Alternative Facts become Alternative Realities

• Psychological Targeting • Emotional Hacking in Underlying Systems / Cultural Exploitation

• Individual Psycho-Targeting for Military Gain

• Psycho-Targeting of Country Cultures to Enable Disorganization

• Increased Divisiveness Creates Political Localism

• Domestic Strife Leads to International Vulnerabilities • Breaking the Bio/Digital Divide

New Threat Actors:

• Information Oligarchs and Information Capitalism

• Elected Vigilantes

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by Technical Report by Brian David Johnson, Alida Draudt, Jason C. Brown, Lieutenant Colonel Robert J. Ross, Ph.D. From 2019 Threatcasting Workshop hosted at Arizona State University produced by Cyndi Coon.