Introduction

Cyber warfare and information warfare are different beasts. Unfortunately, as with all buzzwords, the word “cyber,” though certainly sexy, quickly lost whatever meaning it may have once had after it got attached to everything. The rise of the cyber age in the latter years of the 20th century, in fact, led many observers to believe that fundamental concepts of strategy and conflict would have to be rethought, in much the same way that the nuclear revolution affected strategic thinking in the 1950s and 1960s. Cyber actions taken to enable espionage – most often differentiated as computer network exploitations – often go hand-in-hand with intrusions aimed at disruption or degradation. Information warfare is also partly more prospectively impactful and diffuse in its shape due – at least where the two things intersect – to the inherent unpredictability and potential for collateral damage associated with cyber operations. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.