What is Information Operations

Information Operations (IO) are activities conducted in or via the information environment with the intent to affect and protect cognition, cognitive processes, information, and the connectivity and processing systems necessary to create and exchange information. IO uses any or all means, in integrated and coordinated means, to create cognitive effects. IO span the full range of activities in human interaction from person to person through complex, multi-state, intercultural, and international communications.

The focus of IO is to affect human beliefs, expectations, decision making and behavior; whether individuals or groups. As a US DoD-originated term, the general intent of conducting IO has been to affect the outcome of military operations; whether to head off combat altogether, undermine the ability of potential opponents to muster effective combat forces, enable the defeat of an opponent, or to ease the stand down from combat operations and transition to peace. The field is not limited to military applications however and the increasing focus of inter-agency efforts has been on inform, persuade, and influence (IPI) activities supporting nation building and strategic communication beyond the edges of typical military operations.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty in IO is identifying the measures of effectiveness for desired outcomes because the means used to achieve them can vary considerably depending on whether the application occurs during peacetime, crisis, pre-hostilities, battle, or transition to peace. An additional significant problem is developing measures of effectiveness that enable evaluation of the efficacy of IO on the perceptions of foreign leaders or groups in crisis.

Whatever the situation, IO is critically dependent on and a voracious consumer of intelligence and technical information. The ability to affect decision makers appropriately, precisely, and legally may require, depending upon the specific effect desired, considerable background information about topics as diverse as the cultural mores of a leader, the internal processing algorithms of radar receivers, telecommunications system protocols, images trusted by various cultures, the extent of foreign intelligence penetration of friendly
diplomatic communications, or nearly any other topic describing what someone knows, how they found it out, how reliable they think the information is, and how information is processed.

The trade-craft and expertise of IO continues to evolve through a number of doctrinal and intellectual approaches. Modern IO began with the command and control warfare (C2W) concepts employed during Desert Shield/Storm integrating operations security, electronic warfare, military deception, psychological operations, and kinetic operations. The original C2W term was eventually replaced by information warfare and now IO. The list of disciplines and missions has swelled and contracted over time; sometimes including
concepts as diverse as counterintelligence, strategic communication, perception management, and information assurance. The more recent additions to the panoply of IO-associated disciplines are anything using the term “cyber” and the various disciplines involved in inter-agency IPI.

The debate about the scope of IO and what is ”˜in’ or ”˜out’ has sometimes been referred to by
participants as the Definition War. The existence of such vigorous debate is indicative of the importance that modern military and political theorists place on the evolving ability of governments, NGOs, and individuals to effect decision makers at all levels of competition. DoD is once again internally debating a change in the definition intended to reflect the evolving maturity of real world IO and the increasing importance of the integrated application of multiple capabilities to achieve desired soft power outcomes.