Netwar is a concept introduced in the early 1990's by two researchers at the RAND corporation, a government-funded think tank which began under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force. The essence of netwar is the emerging forms of conflict in which one or more of the major participants consist of networks, rather than institutions. The central feature of informational conflicts is the struggle for understanding and knowledge, as opposed to more traditional conflicts which focus on controlling territories or resources.
Netwar conflicts are struggles for understanding and information.
The FBI fantasies of violent terrorists directing the protests blinded and disabled the police. Netwar is inherently less violent than other forms of conflict, particularly when it involves non-governmental organizations dedicated to human rights and peace causes. One of the first full-blown manifestations of netwar was the Zapatista conflict in Chiapas. The networked intervention of international groups placed very real limits on the use of violence by the Mexican government in supressing the insurrection. In the case of the Direct Action Network, the central prize consisted of the understanding that the WTO multi-lateral trade agreements are intensely corrosive to democracy, at least that form of democracy which entails a knowledgeable public participating in policy formation in meaningful ways.