Information Warfare: An Emerging and Preferred Tool of the People’s Republic of China
by Dr. William G. Perry
In 1991, the U.S. devastated the armed forces of Saddam Hussein with a joint air, land, and sea assault that was unprecedented in ferocity and effectiveness. This victory, coming as it did on the heels of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, was a powerful statement to the world about American military supremacy. U.S. aircraft, aided by commandos on the ground, disabled Saddam’s vaunted air-defense systems and destroyed his communications infrastructure, thereby severing the command-and-control links to his forces on the ground, which were then destroyed piecemeal. The result was one of the most rapid and decisive military victories in modern history.
The consequences of this triumph were widely felt, perhaps nowhere more keenly than in Beijing. Since the end of the Cold War, PRC strategists have been contemplating how best to challenge U.S. predominance in Asia, a region that China considers its own. Thinkers in the People’s Liberation Army, having observed the Desert Storm campaign, realized that it was not feasible for them to directly challenge the U.S. military – to do so would be to invite certain defeat. However, America’s reliance on satellite and information technology to mount its joint assaults presented them with an opportunity for an asymmetric advantage – if the U.S. networks could be corrupted, damaged, or destroyed, then the PLA would stand a fighting chance of winning a so-called “local war under high-tech conditions.” This paradigm of exploiting a powerful adversary’s weaknesses to counteract his strengths comports perfectly with a long military tradition in China of “defeating the superior with the inferior.”
This paper purposes to analyze the evolving doctrine and practice of Chinese information warfare (IW) – the tool that Beijing is seeking to use to circumvent the U.S.’s conventional military might. First, a suitable definition of information warfare in the Chinese context shall be set forth. Second, we will discuss how China is amassing an IW infrastructure with the intention of infiltrating and debilitating U.S. military information networks. Third, it shall be demonstrated that these technical and human resources are directed both at American forces in the Pacific, and even more worryingly, at U.S. domestic IT infrastructure. We will conclude by offering concrete policy recommendations on how the U.S. can deter and defeat Chinese information warfare.
Before moving on, it should be noted that this paper will not address the related but distinct issue of electronic espionage. Even though the implements and ends are the same, it is a separate concept that deserves its own treatment.
Chinese information warfare: background
To enable a detailed discussion about information warfare, it is useful to set forth both a context that will allow for an appropriate understanding of the subject at hand. First, a word about the modern information environment. The increasing digitization of military operations, economic and financial infrastructure, as well as all modern communication networks carries with it a great risk. According to a private industry report, “a combination of global connectivity, employee mobility and rapid technological change [exposes] the [information] infrastructure to a myriad of risks in the form of fraud, theft, pirating, industrial espionage and business disruption.”1 This statement deals only with civilian affairs, but given the internetted nature of Pentagon C4ISR, such systems are obviously at high risk if they are not adequately defended.
Second, it is worth addressing the fundamentals of Chinese thinking on the subject. In the relevant literature, there are a great variety of definitions and descriptions of information warfare, some broad, some more narrow, and varying by author. The most apt is that set forth by Toshi Yoshihara, who claims in his Chinese Information Warfare: Phantom Menace or Emerging Threat? that Chinese IW “seeks to disrupt the enemy’s decision-making process by interfering with the adversary’s ability to obtain, process, transmit, and use information.”2 This strategy closely mirrors that pursued by the U.S. in the already-mentioned Desert Storm campaign, when Iraqi leaders were deprived of the information and communications systems crucial to effective warfighting. Thus, information warfare in the Chinese context is a nonconventional weapon designed to impede an adversary’s decision-making with the aim delaying or even deterring conflict. If the use of force is unavoidable, the Chinese would use IW to “shape the battlespace” in a manner that increases their chances of victory.
