Friday, 27 January 2006

By Adam Brookes BBC Pentagon correspondent

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" — from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks. Bloggers beware.

As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.

From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.

The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap".

It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.

Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003.

The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans. "Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on. The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how. "In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States — even though they were directed abroad," says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive. Credibility problem

Public awareness of the US military's information operations is low, but it's growing — thanks to some operational clumsiness.

Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers.

The stories — all supportive of US policy — were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.

And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.

But the true extent of the Pentagon's information operations, how they work, who they're aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.

The roadmap, however, gives a flavour of what the US military is up to — and the grand scale on which it's thinking.

It reveals that Psyops personnel "support" the American government's international broadcasting. It singles out TV Marti - a station which broadcasts to Cuba - as receiving such support. It recommends that a global website be established that supports America's strategic objectives. But no American diplomats here, thank you. The website would use content from "third parties with greater credibility to foreign audiences than US officials". It also recommends that Psyops personnel should consider a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned aerial vehicles, "miniaturized, scatterable public address systems", wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet. 'Fight the net'

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.

It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.

"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads.

The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap.

The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for intelligence.

"Networks are growing faster than we can defend them... Attack sophistication is increasing... Number of events is increasing."

US digital ambition

And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".

US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".

Consider that for a moment.

The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.

Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?

The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.

And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it.

Published on Saturday, March 19, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Two years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon has formally included in key strategic plans provisions for launching preemptive strikes against nations thought to pose a threat to the United States.

The doctrine also now stipulates that the U.S. will use "active deterrence" in concert with its allies "if we can" but could act unilaterally otherwise, Defense officials said.

The changes codify the more assertive defense policy adopted by the Bush administration since the Sept. 11 attacks and are included in a "National Military Strategy" and "National Defense Strategy," reports that are part of a comprehensive review of military strategy conducted every four years.

"The president has the obligation to protect the country," said Douglas J. Feith, the Defense Department's undersecretary for policy.  "And I don't think that there's anything in our Constitution that says that the president should not protect the country unless he gets some non-American's participation or approval of that."

Pentagon managers use the strategic plan to guide such decisions as where to place bases, which bases to eliminate, what weapons to buy and where to position them.  The heads of the United States' regional commands across the globe, in turn, use the strategy to prioritize spending and form strategies for eliminating threats in their regions.

"The potentially catastrophic impact of an attack against the United States, its allies and its interests may necessitate actions in self-defense to preempt adversaries before they can attack," the National Military Strategy states.  A previous version, compiled in 1997, did not include plans for preemptive attacks.

However, Feith said that the United States would for the first time invite close allies such as the United Kingdom to review classified portions of U.S. defense strategy as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review, a four-year military policy and spending plan.

But the new strategy document further shifts the nation from the Cold War strategy of containing Eastern Europe to a global strategy of taking on enemies that emerge unexpectedly — as the administration argues Afghanistan did after the Sept. 11 attacks — and even terrorist organizations within friendly nations.

It appears to move the nation further from reliance on such international coalitions as NATO and more toward what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has called "coalitions of the willing" under clear American leadership, analysts said.

"NATO is kind of missing in action now in their strategy," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute, a public policy group in Arlington, Va.  "During the Clinton years coalition warfare with the other members of NATO was a centerpiece to our strategy, and now the administration is expecting almost nothing from the Europeans."

In some cases, respected global organizations seem to be viewed with suspicion.  In describing the vulnerabilities of the United States, the document uses strong language to list international bodies — such as the International Court of Justice, created under a treaty that the United States has declined to sign — alongside terrorists.

"Our strength as a nation-state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international [forums], judicial processes and terrorism," the document states.

The concern, Feith explained, was that some nations would try to criminalize American foreign policy by challenging it in international courts.

During the Cold War, the United States used the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance in an effort to build world consensus against anticipated threats from the Chinese and the now dissolved Soviet bloc.  The new strategy highlights the United States' increasing inability to predict where the next conflict will occur, Feith said.

"I don't think that the world gives us the luxury of picking areas," Feith said.  "We have interests all over the world.  I dare say that if anybody before September 11, 2001, was listing places that we would want to focus on as a matter of priority, Afghanistan would have been rather low on the list."