Leading Issues in Information Warfare and Security Research place and allow forward progress in the development of information warfare strategy, tactics, doctrine and procedures. This missing link is the geopolitical context of the postulated struggle. It is possible that the existing regime of geopolity is changing. As it has evolved in the past, perhaps it is evolving now. The world in which information warfare must be waged is one that is characterized as transnational in nature, with highly intertwined interests caused and reinforced by the explosive growth of information technologies. While it is recognized conceptually that the global playing field has changed in both form and substance, this recognition is rarely evident yet in discussions of national security means and ends. And yet it is this fundamental change in form and substance that defines the future of our nation’s security and our way of life. Rather than laboriously assessing the implications of information in all its myriad forms applicable to a nation’s security needs, what must be assessed is the implication of information technology on the cooperative communal relationship that is currently instantiated as the nation-state. Certainly it is not without utility to study the application of the latest technologies to the protection and achievement of national goals and security. The history of warfare is, in one sense, a story of the evolution of technologies and their application to geopolitical struggles. The introductions of the longbow, the crossbow, the machine gun, and the thermonuclear bomb all changed the nature of warfare. The use of horses, tanks, airplanes, and spacecraft each had a fundamental impact not only on the tactics of battles, but on the very nature of the battlefield itself. The advent of telegraphy, radio, radar, and multispectral sensing revolutionized warfare. Now solid state electronics, computers, networks, and fibre optics enable new ways to project power. In 1994, the US Joint Security Commission stated: “Networks are already recognized as a battlefield of the future. Information weapons will attack and defend at electronic speeds using strategies and tactics yet to be perfected. This technology is capable of
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