The I-Bomb
The shift to third-wave information warfare is not just a question of plugging a computer into an existing weapon system, for example, or giving everybody a computer. What it is, ultimately, is a battle for control of the information flows of the world. In the Gulf War you saw classic examples of the use of propaganda and perception management, by both sides. In Washington, there was this stunning example of a traditional form of propaganda: the atrocity story. There you had a young woman appear before television cameras and talk about babies being ripped out of incubators in Kuwait, and this horror story, of course, struck everybodys heart. It later turned out that she was related to the Kuwaiti embassy and that she was really apparently following a script prepared by a public-relations agency, and that this was not necessarily true. On the other hand, at the very same time, there was Saddam holding hostages and patting the children on the head in front of the television camera to convey an avuncular image of himself, what a nice guy he is, to the rest of the world. In the era of information warfare, all of that is going to become far more important and be managed with far more sophistication.

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