Defense and intelligence officials believe that enemy nations, terrorists and criminal groups either already have thecapability to mount information warfare strikes or soon will. Criminals are quickly progressing beyond the vandalism andpetty theft associated with teenage hackers and into robbery and extortion schemes ranging up to millions of dollars,corporate executives and private investigators say. But I believe we will find ways tocope with these attacks, adjust and shake them off, just as we do to natural disasters like hurricanes.''Experts on both sides of the debate do agree that the growing reliance on computer networks and telecommunications ismaking the nation increasingly vulnerable to ''cyber attacks'' on military war rooms, power plants, telephone networks, airtraffic control centers and banks. Deutch warned, ''is the ultimate precision-guided weapon.''President Clinton last July created a Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection to craft a coordinated policy to dealwith the threat. Special units establishedWithin the government, information warfare tactics and intelligence are highly classified issues.
Information warfare is a catchall term.
The military, for example, often refers to information warfare broadly to includetime-tested techniques and tools like disinformation, cryptography, radio jamming and bombing communications centers. But it is high-tech information warfare that has been getting most of the attention and funding lately. In his Senate testimony, Deutch said the CIA had determinedthat cyber attacks are now ''likely to be within the capabilities of a number of terrorist groups,'' including the Hezbollah in theMiddle East. The weapons of information warfare are mostly computer software, like destructive logic bombs and eavesdropping sniffers,or advanced electronic hardware, like a high-energy radio frequency device, known as a HERF gun. In theory, at least, these weapons could cripple the computer systems that control everything from the electronic fundstransfer systems of banks to electric utilities to battlefield tanks.