# Presentation: 011878

## Wanted: a National Information Strategy for the Interconnected Age

- Dr Dan Kuehl “kuehld@ndu.edu”
- Information Resources Management College
- National Defense University
- “My Opinions...not the USG/DOD/NDU”

## Thesis #1“the battlespace”

- Information
- Weapon - Tool - Process – Target ?
- more than aid to “Blast - Heat - Fragmentation”
- LTG Mike Hayden, DirNSA
- Synergy
- human factors **+** information technology
- Information is now...
- element of national power
- operational environment/”battlespace”

## Thesis #2“the threat”

- Modern societies are increasingly vulnerable
- Technologically/Economically
- Infrastructures
-  telecommunications, energy, transportation, etc
- Socially/Politically
- Perception management, politics
- “CNN Effect”, “strategic influence”, Al Jazeera, etc
- Employment/Protection requires BOTH technological capability AND political will

## Thesis #3“the partnership”

- The Department of Defense (or MOD), Federal Government, and the private sector _share_
- Roles
- Responsibilities
- Capabilities
- 	In protecting, leveraging, exploiting:
- 	“national cyberspace” & information power

## 4 Fundamental ChangesNew Geostrategic Context

- Cyberspace: new operational realm/battlespace
- Dominant in business, politics, warfare
- Convergence
- Digital: 1110101110001010 = lingua franca
- Information mediums (radio, TV, phone, etc)
- Global Omnilinking
- Electronic digital connectivity of people, organizations, governments..._globally & instantly_
- Critical Infrastructure Protection
- Opportunity....and vulnerability
- Critical to advanced societies, but public/private links poorly understood
- Roles and missions; what does “interagency” mean?

## What it Adds Up To

- Global Economy
- Dependent on interlinked networks
- Information as critical as energy and capital
- Global Audience
- Real-time 24-hour cycle
- Waning controllability of information
- Global Society
- Contact anyone, anywhere, anytime
- Strategic Impact: Diplomatic, Economic, Military

## Information & National Power

- The information component
- “Use of information _content and technology_ as _strategic instruments_ to shape fundamental political, economic, military and cultural forces on a long-term basis to affect the _global behavior_ of governments, supra-governmental organizations, and societies to _support national security_”
- Drs Dan Kuehl/Bob Neilson, Georgetown’s *NSSQ* 1999
- President Ronald Reagan:
- NSDD 130 (1984)
- National Security Strategy (1987)

**Notes:**
I did not invent this, although I and a colleague from my college published it two years ago, in Georgetown University’s journal National Security Studies Quarterly, which you can access on the World Wide Web at their website.

This is based on US strategic policy and national security directives from the 1980s, from the administration of President Reagan.

Key points:
Information content as well as technology are strategic instruments, used globally, to improve our national security.

## Information Environment

- Physical: “Ether”/Cyberspace/”eSpace”
- Realm of electronic connectivity
- Physical space
- Future: increasingly dominant
- business/economics, politics, warfare
- Contextual: “influence/perception space”
- “Cognitive Space”
- analogy: “political/economic environments”
- Example: Serbian TV vs NATO cohesion 1999
- If you lose the battle here, winning the other may not matter: see Mogadishu, 1993

**Notes:**
The Information environment is both a physical place and a context.

The physical place is cyberspace.  I define cyberspace as the electronic realm in which global connectivity exists, and in which computer networks function.  For those of us who are soldiers or airmen, its also where electronic warfare is waged.  It is becoming increasingly dominant in business, economics, politics, and warfare.

The information environment is also context, in HOW humans use and are affected by information.  Does anyone not understand the question “what’s the political environment?”  You cannot locate it physically, but it’s real!  How do human beings use what I call the “wetware”...we have hardware, software, and “wetware”...that’s the part between our ears...  how do we apply meaning to the information?

## IO RoadmapSecDef 30 October 2003

- IO as a core military competency, on par with air-ground-maritime-special ops
- We must dominate the information spectrum
- Core capabilities
- EW, CNO, Psyop, Military Deception, Opsec
- Why these five?
- Immediate operational impact
- Interdependent and require integration
- Organize-Train-Equip implications
- Supporting/Related functions
- Physical attack and security, IA, Counter-Intel, Public Affairs, Civil-Military Ops

## Paradigm Kuehl

**National Information Power**
**-- Broadest range of military, governmental **_**and civilian**_** capabilities; exploit the global information environment & dominate strategic context**

**Paradigm K****uehl**

**Information Operations**
**-- Wide range of military **_**and governmental**_** operations to protect and/or exploit the environment**

**Information Warfare**
**-- **_**Military**_** offensive & defensive actions to control/exploit the environment**

**C2W (information tech in war)**
**       ****- - blast, heat, fragmentation**

**Dan Kuehl, “Joint Information Warfare” **
**NDU Press Strategic Forum #105 www.ndu.edu/inss**

## National Security Strategy Last Clinton NSS, December 2000

- 3 Key pillars
- Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP)
- Vital national interest, use force to defend
- “Partnership” of public-private sectors
- Information Warfare/Operations (IW/IO)
- Lead to Network Centric Ops -- Transformation?
- Public Diplomacy/International Public Information (PD/IPI).....”Softpower”, “Information Engagement”
- “increasingly vital....transmit [our] message to people around the world” to “counter misinformation/incitement...mitigate conflict”

## National Security Strategy First Bush NSS, October 2002

- “Infrastructure”, “Information Ops”
- 1 reference to each
- “Public Diplomacy/Information”
- 3 references
- No sense of information as power or environment: no sense of its impact
- No coordination of Administration efforts
- Diplomatically, militarily, economically
- Kuehl/Neilson ”No Strategy for an Info Age” _*USNIP*_ Sept 2003

## Information Power...Who’s in Charge?

- Diplomatic and Military...
- Centralized and Hierarchical

- Economic and Information...
- Diffused and Shared

## What’s Lacking

- Who and Where do we go for the COGs of Information Power?
- National Information Council?
- Who would be on it?
- What do need from them? What are we lacking?
- National Information Strategy
- Why don’t we have one?
- We need a strategic and conceptual foundation for how we can employ Information Power to support national security

- 861.00/2 - 2246: Telegram
*The Charge in the Soviet Union (*
*Kennan) to the Secretary of State*
- SECRET
- Moscow, February 22, 1946--9 p.m. [Received February 22--3: 52 p.m.]
- 511. Answer to Dept's 284, Feb 3 [13] involves questions so intricate, so delicate, so strange to our form of thought, and so important to analysis of our international environment that I cannot compress answers into single brief message without yielding to what I feel would be dangerous degree of over-simplification. I hope, therefore, Dept will bear with me if I submit in answer to this question five parts, subjects of which will be roughly as follows:
- (1) Basic features of post-war Soviet outlook.
- (2) Background of this outlook
- (3) Its projection in practical policy on official level.
- (4) Its projection on unofficial level.
- (5) Practical deductions from standpoint of US policy.

- The “Long
- Telegram”

## National Information Strategy (Suggested) Build on ‘99/’00 National Security Strategies

- Partnerships
- Need to build on PDD-63/HSPD-7 efforts...globally
- Information Superiority
- New American Way of War; JV2010/2020
- Cyberspace and Information Operations...Net Centric Ops
- The Economy
- IT’s decisive and dominant role...globally
- Influence
- Internet and TV in “global cognitive battlespace”
- Essential operational medium for “War of Ideas”
- Dr Dan Kuehl, “Information Power & the National Security Strategy”, _**Cyberwar 3.0**_

## What’s Needed

- Information-age corollary to the “Long Telegram”
- New strategy is not “Containment”...it’s **CONNECTIVITY**!
- Free flows of information can enhance
- Democracy
- Human rights
- Economic development
- Peace

## Conclusion

- The information environment and element of power: critical to current/future military & national security strategy
- Learn how to exploit and defend the information environment...or be defeated via it
- National security in the _Interconnected Age_  requires new alliances and partnerships
- In Defense, in the Government, in the World
- At least the future won’t be dull and boring!

## Q & A