The Changing Role of Information in Warfare.

TLDR

Information and communications technology is rapidly transforming warfare, with new developments affecting how wars are fought, started, ended, and who participates, while the Department of Defense has limited influence over the pace of this commercial‑driven revolution. The volume concludes that information advances reshape not only combat tactics but also the very nature of war—its causes, duration, participants, and power dynamics—creating both new vulnerabilities and opportunities, and requiring a balanced assessment rather than a binary good‑bad view.

Abstract

Abstract : This effort to assess how the role of information in warfare is changing seeks to understand many of the remarkable developments under way in information and communications technology, and their potential effects on warfare. Indeed, this volume reveals several important lessons that can be gleaned from the very different and distinct perspectives contained in it: Information advances will affect more than just how we fight wars. The nature and purpose of war itself may change. How wars start, how they end, their length, and the nature of the participants may change as shifts in the relative power of states and nonstate entities occur. New technologies cut both ways in terms of their effects on national security. Together, the chapters make clear that advances create new vulnerabilities; new threats create new opportunities. We should resist the temptation to see the changes documented here either as wholly bad or wholly good. Rather, we need to understand that profound technological changes are inevitably two sided. The Department of Defense (DoD) has little control over the pace and direction of the information revolution. Although in the past DoD played an important role in developing, refining, and implementing new information technologies, today the technological envelope is being pushed largely by the commercial sector.