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The progress of modern information technologies makes any society very vulnerable. Each breakthrough of mankind into the future fails to release it from the weight of past mistakes and unresolved problems. When economic wars due to the integration of national economies become too dangerous and unprofitable, global military conflict is capable of leading to the extinction of all life on the planet. The war gets new directions and qualities: information warfare with a great thirst for comfort in it. Today information resources have become the wealth of the country like its minerals, production and human resources. Considering that economic potential is increasingly defined by the level of development of the information structure, the potential vulnerability of economy from information influences grows in proportion (Libicki, 1996).
Turning information into a commodity has led to a sharp aggravation in international competition for possessing the information markets, technologies and resources. Information has become a global, inexhaustible resource and mankind has entered a new era of civilization - the era of serious exploitation of this resource. This is no longer the world where the material base was the subject of fierce rivalry. Now the key to success will be in the proper management of information capacity, i.e., strategic planning. Information is truly the foundation of life!
Nowadays, the human world under the reign of Internet, mass media and advertising is the world managed by information, i.e. the world operated by shows. The theater of information hostilities stretches from a secret office to a personal computer and is operated on various fronts (Waltz, 1998). The amount of information warfare (IW) financing demonstrates that leadership in this sphere is considered as one of the main ways to achieve national strategies. Information itself has truly become like pure air for the inhabitants of the earth, and it can be both the purpose and the weapon!
Information warfare is not some hazy futurology sector but a real ‘discipline’, which is being studied and developed, gaining more and more secretive, deeper forms. Modern information technologies are changing not only the usual lifestyle, but the concept about good and evil, justice and victim; in the end they do change the human being himself. You can’t turn the Information warfare off! We are approaching such a step of development when no one is a soldier, but all of us are participants in military actions. Information Warfare Is Everybody’s Battle!
Today’s reality with its telecommunication computing systems and psycho technologies is dramatically changing the surroundings. Separate tiny information brooks have formed a solid stream. If previously it was possible to ‘pool’ definite information channels, today all surrounding barriers have been destroyed. The time for information interaction between the most distant points has been reduced to nearly zero (Libicki, 2009). After several months, even general five year plans become outdated. We live in a world where information spreads quickly; today it is the infrastructure. Information warfare is the war of decisions and control, the war of knowledge and intelligence. The purpose of this warfare is slowly but surely changing from “saving oneself and destroying the opponent” to “saving oneself and managing the opponent”. The aim is not directly to achieve information superiority, but to manipulate the enemy (or one’s own population) with false or adapted information; the resultant damage may not be immediately visible or detectable to the untrained eye.
Modern wars are becoming more and more psychological, like a massive PR-campaign, the actual military operations gradually relegated to the background and play a limited role in the overall scenario of the military campaign. Nowadays military has to solve unusual problems. Technologies of psychological warfare can cause damage no less than the means of armed attack. Moreover information warfare that is built on the basis of psychological warfare technologies has a much greater lethality, electivity and penetrating abilities.
Information warfare, conducted in different spheres, has become total and multi-leveled. Now the decision-making system of the opposite side is the primary target and the main task is to organize the manipulation of their decision-making process. It is like an umbrella term for multi-faceted, interdisciplinary strategies that blend physical and virtual events.