NCJ Number
191429
Date Published
2000
Length
7 pages
Annotation
This essay discusses Critical Infrastructure and the human target in Information Operations.
Abstract
The real target in modern conflict increasingly will be the human being. Information Operations and Information Warfare are about targeting what people value and what sustains them within a societal context. Critical Infrastructure sectors include telecommunication systems and networks, transportation systems and networks, energy generation, banking and finance, water and sewerage systems, essential government services, and emergency services. In considering Critical Infrastructure Protection, there are four sorts of threat issues: synergistic risk, asymmetric threat, asynchronous threat, and crisis-of-confidence. In theory, a minor and less sophisticated power could do serious damage to a more robust nation, given the reliance of the more sophisticated power on the health of its critical infrastructures. The problem in dealing with the Critical Infrastructure Protection challenge is that in economically advanced democratic societies, the public and private sectors are only semi-compatible ones. The key challenges to close cooperation among these sectors are based on three sets of issues: information sharing; legal issues, strictures, and considerations; and technical and business challenges. One particularly contentious issue besetting the prospects of public-private cooperation is the issue of powerful private encryption. The government argues that it must have ready access to communications through electronic eavesdropping in pursuit of international terrorists, criminals, and spies. The private sector argues that the security of its transnational business and commercial communications is as imperative as is its domestic communications.