by Maarten Van Horenbeeck

Information Operations is defined by the US Department of Defense as 'The integrated employment of the core capabilities of electronic warfare [EW], computer network operations [CNO], psychological operations [PSYOP], military deception, and operations security [OPSEC], with specified supporting and related capabilities to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own'. 

This definition has a very military connotation, but can easily be broken down to its components in order to clarify it.  Information Operations can be considered the employment of electronic, psychological and operations security to gain competitive advantage over an adversary.

One interesting question to ask is whether China or Russia have a similar view of this concept as the US military does. The US Department of Defense is one of the only organizations to have publicly studied the Chinese interpretation of Information Operations. Timothy L. Thomas, from the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth is one of the subject matter experts. He has published a number of books that review Chinese state of the art in information warfare.

One of these books, Dragon Bytes, deals with the change the Information Warfare (another term quite commonly used for the offensive aspects of Information Operations) concept has undergone since its inception in China. He discusses how as of the first Gulf war, Chinese strategists have been working on integrating the concept of Information war in Chinese military strategy. This started with a thorough study and discussion of the US methodology and framework, to be followed in 1997-1998 by a specific Chinese approach to the field.

Thomas quotes the well-known Chinese IW strategist Dr Shen Weiguang, who as of 1996 has described information warfare to be linked to control. Controlling the flows of information between all parties involved is as such of prime importance in gaining dominance. It may not be necessary to have direct decision power over a country or province if one can manipulate the information it is receiving and as such have it make the decisions one wants it to make through deception or selective information distribution.

In addition, his book attempts to highlight some of the differences in strategic thinking. One chapter explains the way stratagems influence strategic decision-making. Stratagems are small, practical tools of deception that can be used in an information warfare context. There are in total 36 stratagems, in popular press often referred to as the 36 strategies. Reviewing these in comparison to US documentation on deception shows a major difference in how these countries formalize their deception techniques: the US has significant guidelines and procedures on how to implement deception (these are quite similar to project management checklists) with less focus on the actual strategies, while China focuses on integrating ancient strategic thinking, making available less public information on the procedures surrounding them. This collaborates with the description of China as a high context culture assigned to it by many authors.

In his chapter on stratagems, Thomas makes an interesting inference. He links a claim by Dr Shen that “people have come up with 36 ways to disrupt the Internet and 36 ways to defend against such disruption” to the actual stratagems, and poses the question whether China may have translated these into the information age.

It does not require much theorization to assess the result of material implementation of the stratagems. The first of the 36 stratagems states that sometimes one should “fool the emperor to cross the sea”. This entails that one should perform ordinary activities (read: make a Powerpoint) and blend in with normal events (read: send it by e-mail) in order to lower our enemy’s guard (read: have them click).