China’s Information Warfare Plans?
Inside the Ring – Bill Gertz, Washington Times.
U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained a Chinese military book that will provide new insights into the Chinese military’s information-warfare plans. The book is being translated, but Inside the Ring obtained its table of contents, which reveals Beijing’s priorities for high-technology warfare using computers and electronic-warfare weapons. The 322-page book, “Information Warfare Theory,” was published in May 2007 and written by Wang Zhengde, president of the People’s Liberation Army Information Engineering University.
Like other military and Communist Party writings, such books are not often made public, and when they are, they provide U.S. intelligence and military specialist with valuable clues to the military thinking and plans of China’s secretive military. The book states that information warfare is the “core” of China’s high-tech military-reform efforts, which are referred to as “informationized” warfare – what the U.S. military has called the “revolution in military affairs.” It involves integrating various weapons and intelligence with advanced command-and-control systems and mobile, combined-arms forces…
More at The Washington Times.
Not trying to steal Bill’s thunder but if anyone is interested in Chinese information warfare/operations, an excellent introduction is ‘Decoding the Digital Dragon’ by LTCOL (Rtd) Timothy L Thomas USA and available from the Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Tim’s book quotes from eight Chinese works on the subject.
I myself translated a small article from Chinese into English titled ‘War on Information’ which was originally published in September 1987 titled Battle on Information. The article discussed command and control warfare, pre-emptive strikes, stealth, and hiding and camouflaging assets from the air.
This is a fascinating topic….China is far ahead of us in the ‘cyber force’ arena as well. Their efforts, which encompass military, civilian ‘free-lance’ hackers, and the industrial/ technological base, are incredibly sophisticated. I did an unclass research thesis on the topic; Tim Thomas has several good books on this subject.