Rebuilding Strategy: Leveraging Resources for Information Superiority (Man, Train, and Equip revised)

In the ever-evolving landscape of strategic competition, the Army finds itself in the thick of it, grappling with the persistent risk of cyber-enabled information operations on critical information systems. This risk is a stark reality that the Army must acknowledge, as information operations form part of adversaries' strategic efforts to obfuscate, deceive, and sabotage the US military, with the ultimate goal of degrading US power over time.

The next conflict is expected to include an information component, and the US military will need to contribute to perception and information management in the cognitive dimension as a core element of future battles. To be prepared, the Army must revise its approach to training forces to account for the information environment, assessing the information environment before, during, and after exercises.

The Army's primary manpower responsibilities are attracting high-quality recruits and retaining experienced and capable servicemembers. However, the Army needs to understand and predict how and what our competitors and adversaries are going to say, and be ready to deploy solutions ahead of, and in response to, competing and malicious narratives. This understanding is crucial to ensuring that external narratives do not influence the supply of ready and able recruits and the retention of its experienced soldiers.

The manipulation of the information environment and the cognitive impact of malign influence campaigns are now widely known, especially after Russia's information and cyber operations targeting democratic elections and China's government-sponsored disinformation about COVID-19. Autocratic rulers are taking advantage of their populations' reliance on the internet and the information environment during unrest and upheaval by shutting off access.

The Army has pivoted away from information warfare towards achieving information advantage, recognizing the information environment's moral and cognitive aspects and its relevance to military readiness. This shift is a step in the right direction, but the Army needs to consider the effect of malign influence operations on all critical nodes—information and physical—to ensure relevant populations are receptive to a massive inflow of US military equipment and that the adversary will not be able to target local sentiments against US forces.

The Army training cycle requires its forces to focus on high-intensity conflict, with emphasis on operating in dense urban terrain, electronically degraded environments, and under constant surveillance. However, disinformation about US military training exercises could be applied throughout the world, wherever and whenever the US military trains with partners and allies, making training with partners and allies all but impossible if disinformation about the US military and its role in an ongoing conflict are effective and result in undue political pressure being applied to a host nation's government.

This series, part of the Competition in Cyberspace Project (C2P), a joint initiative by the Army Cyber Institute and the Army Cyber Institute's website, aims to shed light on these issues and provide insights into US competitive strategy and irregular warfare with peer and near-peer competitors in the physical, cyber, and information spaces. The series is focused on understanding how threats posed by human interactions within and use of the information environment impact the Army's legal warfighting responsibilities and the Department of Defense more broadly.

The Army needs to understand how the information environment is pervasive to modern strategic competition. For instance, the manipulation of the information environment and the cognitive impact of malign influence campaigns could potentially lead to model poisoning and contamination attacks, generating confusing and inaccurate predictions.

In conclusion, the Army's success in the 21st century will depend on its ability to navigate the complexities of the information environment. The Army must devise better messaging and marketing tactics that account for and address the underlying issues and social cleavages that our adversaries exploit. The secretary of the Army has acknowledged that we will be contested from "fort to port," identifying how logistics, and the Army's ability to swiftly mobilize and deploy personnel and equipment around the world, is at risk. The Army's future battles will be fought in the information environment as much as they will be fought on the battlefield, and it is crucial that the Army is prepared for this reality.

Rebuilding Strategy: Leveraging Resources for Information Superiority (Man, Train, and Equip revised)