Ask the cyber-insurgent: are information operations a decisive form of operational warfare?

Army Communicator, Wntr, 2008 by Jan C. Norris

This approval process would need to carefully avoid compromising U.S. intelligence gathering techniques. Once a site is targeted, follow on assessment efforts would be made to revisit ISPs with a history of known or unknown insurgent hosting to track any recurring patterns. Links would also be made when possible to collect and target individual webmasters who are building and creating such sites.

Though the scope of targeting such individuals goes beyond the capabilities of the JCST cell being proposed here, the information collected would be passed on to appropriate state department, law enforcement or military officials for action. International support is an essential factor for denying service and particularly in developing countries with known cyberspace terrorist activity and weak governments.

Government and military agency personnel may quickly refute the idea of JCST as double work from what the Joint Functional Component Command-Network Warfare at NSA and other DoD CNO teams are already providing, however, few if any such cells exist that would have the necessary mix of military and Interagency expertise co-located.

Having the cell forward on the ground in a theater of combat operations may also seem pointless with current communications reach capability, yet is vital. With a forward point of presence in the combat theater, speed of decision is optimized for establishing linkages from cyber-insurgent planning, training, and recruiting activities to insurgent activities and attacks on the ground.

Forward presence also allows direct 'face-to-face' access to the theater commander (i.e. MNF-I commander) and joint/coalition staff.

Further, targeting cell personnel can gain a much better situational understanding of insurgent operations by being forward in the culture and language to get a better perspective on what is motivating the insurgent and having host nation personnel available to translate both cultural and linguistic aspects of content found on web sites. Additional JCST cells could be positioned in different countries in a given theater where languages and cultures vary and regionally specific cultural linguists/specialists staffing is appropriate.

With proven quantitative measures of effectiveness over time, 'cyberspace targeting' could even become tracked by the theater commander and staff as a line of operation contributing to defeat of the enemy center of gravity or protect coalition and missions.

The power of the Internet as a means for global information sharing, communication and creation of virtual communities is considered among the most important innovations of the past century.

Yet this same interconnected network of worldwide computers, switches and servers and the cyberspace contained within have equal potential as tools for enabling terrorism and death. As enemies of the U.S. continue to overtly attack its military technological strengths through asymmetric and insurgent warfare, they will also continue to exploit the power of the Internet to extol their ideology and kill Americans.