Cyberspace operations can be used to achieve strategic Information Warfare (IW) goals; an offensive cyberattack, for example, may be used to create psychological effects in a target population. A foreign country may likewise use cyberattacks to influence decisionmaking and change behaviors.
These operations may be overt, such as a government’s production and dissemination of materials intended to convey democratic values. In this case, the government sponsorship of such activity is known. Covert operations are those in which government sponsorship is denied if exposed. The anonymity afforded by cyberspace presents an ideal battlespace to conduct covert operations.
In 2018, DOD issued a Joint Concept for Operations in the Information Environment. According to this document, the IE comprises and aggregates numerous social, cultural, cognitive, technical, and physical attributes that act upon and affect knowledge, understanding, beliefs, world views, and,ultimately, actions of an individual, group, system, community, or organization.
Corresponding DOD policy defined OIE as actions taken to generate, preserve, and apply informational power against a relevant actor in order to increase or protect competitive advantage or combat power potential within all domains of the operating environment. OIE span the competition continuum (cooperation, competition short of armed conflict, and warfighting). This definition of the continuum aligned with the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which emphasized information warfare as competition short of open warfare.
SOURCE: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10771 CRS Report R45142, Information Warfare: Issues for Congress, by Catherine A. Theohary. December 14, 2023
