Information is now the seventh joint function. Its efficacy depends upon the ability to transition practical concepts into fundamental underlying logic. Joint Publication 3-13, Information Operations, defines information operations as the “integrated employment, during military operations, of information-related capabilities in concert with other lines of operation to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision making of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own.”[1] As U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis has pointed out, the addition of information as a joint function recognizes its power to support military operations, particularly in the wake of modern technology and social media.[2] As a joint function, information will garner additional advocacy and proponency among the joint force, and greater incorporation into plans and operations.

Information is both a resource and a weapon. The battlefield of tomorrow is compressed in time and space. When enemy actors are simultaneously operating in space, cyberspace, and across the electromagnetic spectrum, reacting in real time will become a challenge on an interconnected battlefield. As historian Christopher Rein has pointed out, the addition of space and cyberspace as warfighting domains “has expanded exponentially and greatly complicated” information operations.[3]

The application of information as an instrument of war is not new, but the American military struggles with information operations. Information is ubiquitous, yet frustrates American military planners and practitioners. Information operations range from deception and cyber activities to public affairs, but traditional American military strength often relies upon overwhelming air power, fire, and maneuver. The so-called American way of warfare is characterized by the application of joint fires within a highly integrated command and control network to rapidly destroy enemy formations and command and control nodes.[4] The American way of warfare has a successful track record in battle, but also belies a persistent inability to ruthlessly exploit the information environment at the strategic, operational, and tactical level.

U.S. military campaign strategy is not comfortable with maneuver in the information space. The U.S. military has a penchant “to find it easier—from a capabilities, policies, and authorities perspective—to drop ordnance on a target rather than generating other less-lethal, less-irreversible, and less-transparent effects.”[5] Yet, as the Secretary Mattis remarked in 2009, “Capturing the perceptions of foreign audiences will replace seizing terrain as the new high ground for the future joint force.”[6] Discomfort in the realm of information operations is a challenge that must be overcome.

U.S. military discomfort with information operations extends beyond tactics and operations. For example, the U.S. State Department is only mentioned twice in Joint Publication 3-13. This heightens the perception of “a persistent bifurcation in American strategic thinking… in which military professionals concentrate on winning battles and campaigns, while policymakers focus on the diplomatic struggles that precede and influence, or are influenced by, the actual fighting.”[7] The limited reference to the diplomatic instrument of national power belies the need for close cooperation. Given the power of modern communications to shape the information environment, even tactical information operations can create strategic effects.

Thus, as the U.S. military begins to consider information as a distinct warfighting function, it cannot neglect the critical linkage to grand strategy and the other instruments of national power. If war is driven by policy, which is in turn influenced by information, the military should anticipate and address underlying assumptions regarding U.S. civil-military relations.[8] For instance, the video and imagery showing the devastation on the Iraqi highway of death by the media during the first Gulf War is considered a significant factor in the cessation of coalition attacks.[9] In other words, while the military develops its capacity for information operations, senior leaders must contend with the need to ensure plans and operations support and complement national objectives.

Exploitation of the information environment has occurred throughout the history of warfare. The First World War featured the extensive use of information operations, including the first use of electronic warfare through the interception of wireless communications.[10] When the war began, Great Britain, then the hub of global communications, cut telegraph cables to Germany. This led to a communications blackout for the Germans. German telegraphs had to be routed through British-controlled lines, leading to the discovery of the Zimmerman telegram.[11]

During the First World War, the Germans also leveraged information in novel ways. In April of 1917, Germany accelerated the fall of the Russian monarchy by loading a train bound for Petrograd with human malware; a virus of sorts in the form of Vladimir Lenin. As the German army fought the Russians along the eastern front, Lenin hastened the collapse of a Russian monarchy already reeling from inept leadership and repeated military defeat.[12] The German use of Lenin as a weapon to influence Russian behavior appears almost quaint by the scale of later efforts.

During the Second World War, Operation Bodyguard used extensive physical and electronic deception to conceal the location of the Allied landings at Normandy. As Christopher Rein points out, allied deception operations during the Second World War were significantly more complicated, requiring extensive coordination between “military and political instruments of national power” in “multiple domains simultaneously.”[13]

In the first Gulf War, the U.S.-led coalition made a concerted effort to control and influence Iraqi decision making through information operations. U.S. Marine Corps forces afloat created a strategic distraction for the Iraqis, while the U.S. ensured France’s Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre (SPOT) system was unable to provide satellite imagery to Saddam Hussein, blinding his ability to observe coalition activities.[14] More recently, the Russians have employed so-called hybrid warfare in their conflicts in Ukraine.[15] Russia seized Crimea without firing a shot due in part to a successful information campaign. Since it annexed Crimea, Russia has continued its information operations, evidenced by the establishment of Russian-filtered internet service via underwater cable.[16] Indeed, the so-called Gerasimov doctrine claims the “role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force or weapons in their effectiveness.”[17]

Generally, the U.S. military gravitates towards the use of information to support kinetic solutions. The emergence of the so-called information revolution in military affairs in the 1990s led the services to use information to strike targets faster and more accurately through concepts such as net-centric warfare and effects-based operations through networking, sensors, computers, and satellites.[18] The American military is less inclined to leverage information with cunning and guile before or during operations. Many have characterized the use of deception, for example, as ad hoc at best.[19] This indicates the tenets of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Boyd are not fully accepted.

In the information realm, the U.S. often operates at a disadvantage. American combat arms traditionally dominate warfare and war planning, while non-lethal and diplomatic integration is challenged. American military culture is also averse to deceit and falsehoods, favoring standard operating procedure over imaginative psychological means. While adversaries comfortably blend political and military operations, the American military tradition studiously avoids political considerations in campaigns. Military success is presumed to lead inexorably to a favorable political outcome overseas. Hence some have concluded “power and diplomacy to occupy separate spheres.”[20]

…it is conceivable information operations may surpass fire and maneuver in importance…

Used to its full potential, information operations can prepare the battlefield and set the conditions for victory. Information can soften the enemy’s will to fight, deceive, and pollute his or her decision making cycle. Given the variety of media capable of using information to influence, coerce, or deceive, it is conceivable information operations may surpass fire and maneuver in importance at times. Yet influencing a foreign audience cannot be accomplished ad hoc without study and preparation of culture, history, and language. New institutional arrangements may be in order to fully resource requirements for successful information operations.[21]