ABSTRACT
This essay explores how the expansion of information technology may affect two defining features of democracy: how power and accountability are structured at the apex of the political system, and how government and governed interact. Offensive information warfare may carry consequences for democracy at two levels. First, by rendering ambiguous the very definition of warfare, it makes it harder to ensure democratic controls over its conduct. Second, tools of offensive information warfare may seek to influence an adversary's will and capacity to fight through "perception management". As this often means manipulating the adversary's perceptions with a view to distorting his view of reality, it may convey the distortions to a domestic audience, undermining the public's ability to form an autonomous judgment of government actions and to hold it accountable for these actions. Defensive information warfare poses a different threat, that of civil liberties. Government's efforts to ferret out threats to critical information infrastructures may involve a level of monitoring and surveillance that threatens Fourth Amendment protections and other norms limiting governmental intrusiveness into the lives of its citizens. The broad concerns crystallize into the following three problems: (1) the implications of information warfare for decisions to initiate war, (2) its potential to distort judgments that are at the roots of public control of its leaders, and (3) the possibility that the requisites of defensive information warfare may lead to excessive government intrusiveness into the lives of its citizens.
