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With wars increasingly fought among the people, information is now an element of combat power as important as lethal action in determining a conflict's eventual outcome, said an Army officer who heads the services computer warfare efforts.

The battle for a population's state of mind demands a sophisticated information operations campaign that responds more rapidly than terrorists and insurgent groups to exploit the virtual battlefield. "There was a day when we were operating at foot speed," said Army Col. Wayne Parks, who directs the service's Computer Network Operations and Electronic Warfare at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. "Now we're moving at cyber speed."

Digitization has dramatically increased the pace at which information moves about the battlefield, he said. Unlike the air and space domains, the Army operates on the ground, which means among the people, Parks said in a conference call with reporters. America's enemies influence a populations' mind-set by using Web sites and chat rooms to spread propaganda that casts the U.S. military in a bad light.

"We have to pick up the pace, ... respond, react, be proactive enough to stay out ahead of the speed of megabytes," he said.

The Army has turned to academia for expertise in the humanities and social sciences to better understand foreign cultures and how to influence societies with information operations.

The service now must find a way to "maneuver around" a potential enemy's information campaign, Parks said. Being proactive, rather than simply reacting to an enemy's misinformation, is of utmost importance, he said, because members of the public often believe the first thing they hear, even if it's not true. In addition, the military also hacks into jihadi Web sites to try to stop the spread of enemy propaganda.

Recent surveys conducted by the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan found that the service's training and officers' past combat experience left them "ill-prepared" for the "interactive complexity" of information operations. Operating with the speed and agility that the 21st century information age demands is "not part of their DNA," and the Army "continues to grope for a staff process" to best leverage the power of information, according to a discussion paper e-mailed to reporters.

Rather than the ad hoc approach to information operations the Army has pursued, the paper designated specific staff responsibilities for everything from informing and educating the public (delegated to the public affairs and psychological operations staff) to hacking into enemy computer networks (a task for intelligence officers). The service is recruiting a younger generation of hackers, Parks said, for, as the Army puts it, "computer network attack and computer network defend."

The United States finds itself more often fighting small, distributed terrorist and insurgent cells that are able to communicate and coordinate attacks using cell phones and that can share on Web sites lessons on the best way to attack U.S. forces. The challenge is finding weaknesses in the enemy's computer network that can be exploited, Parks said.

COMMENTS

• With regards to Alfred Molison's statement, "Let's stop this thing before they destroy what few shreds of a free press we still have in America." You've missed the point completely. The Colonel is not talking about destroying free press. And it did not say anywhere that he is a commander, he's in charge of a study center. Very often upper-management in any commercial company are not the experts with technical skills of an industry. But he has experts working for him. Second, if you know anything about media at all, the author input a broken-up quote. Many times, they summarize the quote and it's possible that the author took bits and pieces from the quote and the "megabyte" word was pasted in the end. Regardless, the point the Colonel was trying to make was that the enemies are transmitting, exploiting, intercepting and jamming US information at a faster pace today. It seems the US is hampered by regulations and laws (such as publishing any type of lie or deception) that the US may be having trouble keeping pace because of the reasons mentioned. His statement is more of a "wake-up" we need to get on board to counter their moves. Oh and by the way, liar is spelled "l-i-a-r" not "l-i-e-r". Commenters should take time to comprehend the context of the article before jumping in to make a comment out of emotion and irrational nonsense. Ann Stephan Posted April 10, 2008 3:26 AM
• “The battle for a population's state of mind demands a sophisticated information operations campaign that responds more rapidly than terrorists and insurgent groups to exploit the virtual battlefield.” Well, I’m thinking we’ve got a great head start here. ‘"maneuver around" a potential enemy's information campaign’, isn’t that like putting the “proper spin” on information? Between the expertise of the current administration’s Spinmeisters and the Large-Scale Agent Model at the Brookings Institution’s Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, we should be able to develop a plan to say … get the bad guys to just turn themselves in; perhaps even pay for their incarceration themselves. Oh, that’s what they’re already doing to the federal employees with the new FEHBP drug screening benefit program we’re paying for. Now if only we can get the insurgents of the WMD “war” to be as accommodating. Name withheld due to paranoia. Posted April 9, 2008 3:21 PM
• Does Col. Wayne Parks know that a megabyte is a unit of information storage, rather than transmission speed? The given nonsensical quote "We have to pick up the pace, ... respond, react, be proactive enough to stay out ahead of the speed of megabytes..." gives me doubt about him being a qualified director of our Army's Computer Network Operations and Electronic Warfare. Matt Gentner Posted April 9, 2008 1:06 PM