# Information Warfare Information warfare treats information and the systems that produce, move, authenticate, interpret, and preserve it as an operational terrain. Relevant resources include attention, trust, access, identity, provenance, visibility, narrative legitimacy, and behavioral response. Operations may seek to deceive, suppress, amplify, exhaust, impersonate, fragment, or redirect. Defensive practice therefore spans technical security and human interpretation: accounts and channels must remain trustworthy, but populations must also be able to recognize manipulation and recover shared evidentiary ground. The concept should not be used to label ordinary disagreement as warfare. Attribution requires evidence, and defensive measures should preserve lawful expression and cognitive agency. Related: [[wiki/Cognitive Security|Cognitive Security]], [[wiki/Computational Propaganda|Computational Propaganda]], [[wiki/Narrative Defense|Narrative Defense]], [[wiki/Influence Operations|Influence Operations]]. ## Relationships - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “With the rapid proliferation of online social networks as a main forum for emotion expression, we know too that emotion contagion can occur without direct interaction between people or when nonverbal emotional cues in the face and body are altogether absent. Importantly, too, this type of contagion itself spreads across a variety of other psychological phenomenon that indirectly or directly involves emotions ranging from kindness, health-related eating behaviors, and even the darker side of human behaviors including violence and racism. Emotion contagion matters, for better and for worse.” > **— June Gruber**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC TERM OR CONCEPT OUGHT TO BE MORE WIDELY KNOWN?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Emotion Contagion Spreads Through Online Networks Without Direct Contact by June Gruber|Emotion Contagion Spreads Through Online Networks Without Direct Contact by June Gruber]] > “We have taught our machines to conduct propaganda. Web sites and other media are designed to be "sticky," using any means necessary to maintain our attention. Computers are programmed to stimulate Pavlovian responses from human beings, using techniques like one-to-one marketing, collaborative filtering, and hypnotic information architecture. Computers then record our responses in order to refine these techniques, automatically and without the need for human intervention. The only metrics used to measure the success of banner ads and web sites is the amount of economic activity - consumption and production - they are able to stimulate in their human user/subjects. As a result, the future content and structure of media will be designed by machines with no priority other than to induce spending.” > **— Douglas Rushkoff**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Machines Will Design Media to Induce Human Spending by Douglas Rushkoff|Machines Will Design Media to Induce Human Spending by Douglas Rushkoff]] > “There is a technological answer to the hijacking problem of course. The problem is that the technological answer comes with a price. It is quite feasible to create a national identity card and have that be used to check in at the airport. From that point, no silly security questions need be asked. Computer programs can be created that establish exactly the patterns and likely actions of any passenger and determine what questions if any should be asked by the airline personnel and whether the passenger is a risk of any sort. Airlines could refuse to allow on board people who don't fit their safety profiles. This is easy to do, but it would require installation of foolproof identity software (such as retinal scans) and make available to the government the complete whereabouts and intentions of every citizen. We may not be willing to give up the anonymity that many of us cherish. On the other hand we may have to.” > **— Roger Schank**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT NOW?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Predictive Security Could Make Every Citizen's Whereabouts and Intentions Legible by Roger Schank|Predictive Security Could Make Every Citizen's Whereabouts and Intentions Legible by Roger Schank]] > “By mathematically modeling the social learning and social pressure between people my colleagues and I have been able to accurately model and predict crowd phenomena such as this cascade of mortgage defaulting. Importantly, we have also found that it is possible to shape real-world crowd behaviors by using social network incentives that alter the connections between people, and that these social incentives are much more effective than standard individual economic incentives. In one particularly striking example we were able to use social network incentives to deflate a 'groupthink' bubble among foreign exchange traders and consequently double the return on investment of the individual traders.” > **— Alex "Sandy" Pentland**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Social Networks Can Be Engineered to Shape Crowd Behavior by Alex Sandy Pentland|Social Networks Can Be Engineered to Shape Crowd Behavior by Alex Sandy Pentland]] From [[wiki/Cognitive Warfare|Cognitive Warfare]]: The claim is an analytic characterization of this form of conflict rather than a report of a specific endless operation. > "Cognitive warfare is potentially endless since there can be no peace treaty or surrender for this type of conflict." > **— François du Cluzel**, *2020, Cognitive Warfare, Innovation Hub study, p. 7* [[reminders/Capture/Cognitive Warfare May Have No Peace Treaty by François du Cluzel|Cognitive Warfare May Have No Peace Treaty by François du Cluzel]]