This 29 page report, obtained by Armen Victorian, was prepared for the US Department of Defense (DoD) by the OASD (Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense) in March 1995. It describes the internet and its potential as a tool for the DoD, both for gathering and disseminating information, for psy-ops and support of unconventional warfare.
Intelligence source
‘The internet is a potentially lucrative source of intelligence useful to DoD’; e.g. information about the plans and operations of politically active groups. It can also serve counter-intelligence purposes, but ‘if it became widely known that DoD was monitoring internet traffic for intelligence or counterintelligence purposes, individuals with personal agendas or political purposes in mind, or who enjoy playing pranks, would deliberately enter false or misleading messages’.
Offensive uses of the internet:
‘Politically active groups using the internet could be vulnerable to deceptive messages introduced by hostile persons or groups. Far-right groups and far-left groups tend to watch each other, and it is likely that “moles” will obtain access to the other camps’ networks for the purpose of disrupting their operations’. It will be possible to ’employ the internet as an additional medium for Psychological Operations (Psyops) campaigns. E-mail conveying the US perspective on issues and events could be efficiently and rapidly disseminated to a very wide audience’.
Further, ‘the US might be able to employ the internet offensively to help achieve unconventional warfare objectives. Information could be transmitted over the internet to sympathetic groups operating in areas of concern that allows them to conduct operations themselves that we might otherwise have to send our own special forces to accomplish…. limiting the direct political involvement of the United States’.
International crises and conflicts
‘The internet can play an important positive role during future international crises and conflicts’. It ‘might be one of the few means of communication present’ and its uses could include ‘cultivating political and even operational support for the US side and opposition to the other side’.
Domestic role
It discusses the role played by the internet in US politics, at Federal, State and local level. For example, the Clinton administration uses the internet as a means of direct communication with the electorate. E-mail sent to the President at is read and recorded to help assess the relative importance of issues to the public.
Role in international politics
The report discusses the increasingly important role played by the internet in international politics and its ability to ‘circumvent the informational controls imposed by authoritarian regimes on their citizens……… for example, the Chinese students in Tiananmen Square and the Russian democrats during the Moscow coup used computer networks to communicate with kindred spirits around the world’. It notes that it played an important role in recent conflicts. Citizens of Sarajevo could e-mail messages out, and during the December 1991 attack on parliament in Moscow, where a left-wing dissident was beaten up and jailed by the police with others, a message for help on the internet resulted in many phone calls asking for their release; they were released and received an apology, and the man said the internet saved his life.
Protest groups and activists
The report discusses the use of the internet by international protest groups and activists, e.g. by neo-nazi groups in Germany and the Zapatistas in Mexico. It claims that the largest and most active political groups using it appear to be the San Fransisco-based IGC (Institute for Global Communications) and APC (Association for Progressive Communications). These networks, including PeaceNet, EcoNet, ConflictNet and LaborNet, comprise the world’s only computer system devoted solely to environmental preservation, peace, and human rights. But ‘without actually joining the IGC and reading its message traffic it is difficult to assess the nature and extent of its members’ actual real-world activities’. The report also discusses overseas ‘alternative news sources’, such as networks operated by the IGC.
Predictions
They include the emergence of new political parties operating through the internet, the erosion of the monopoly of the traditional mass media, that the internet will play an increasingly significant role in international conflict, and will be used as a tool of statecraft by national governments.
Recommendations
- Individual analysts in DoD intelligence agencies should routinely monitor internet traffic related to their responsibilities.
- DoD intelligence agencies should investigate the role of the internet in helping co-ordinate the operations of political activists and paramilitary groups in regions of interest.
- An early warning capability should be established that uses internet messages to help identify developing situations overseas that could lead to security threats.
- Officials planning and conducting DoD civil affairs programs overseas should be informed about any activists working in their vicinity who use the internet.
- The DoD should continue to monitor the evolution of the internet and its role in national security.
- The internet should be incorporated in Psyops planning as an additional medium.
- Means of employing the internet offensively in support of unconventional warfare objectives should be explored.
- Senior DoD officials should be kept aware of domestic US political developments on the internet that relate to DoD interests.