The Pentagon claims there are 250,000 attempted intrusions into its computer networks every year. While the majority of them are unsuccessful and thus never reported in the news media, officials at the U.S. Space Command warn that as the military becomes more and more reliant on information it is increasingly vulnerable. What is commonly referred to as a strength its technological advancement now doubles as an American weakness. Adversaries developing warfare technologies and techniques This asymmetry of risk is why potential U.S. adversaries are developing their own information warfare technologies and techniques. But having access to the high-tech tools needed to wage cyber attack does not necessarily translate into strategic reliance on information technology.
China is a prime example.
Military battles during the 21st century will unfold around the use of information for military and political goals, a recent People s Liberation Army white paper concluded. However, as a whole, China is decades away from being the kind of information-intensive society as the United States. The mismatch raises questions about the cost-effectiveness of making information attack a key tenet of U.S. military strategy in the coming years. Whether or not the U.S. military fields a computer attack force, adversaries will because they don t stand to lose nearly as much as the United States does on the information battlefield.