Carl Von Clausewitz described the purpose of war as “the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will.” Unlike conventional military conflicts of the past, war in the information age is more a battle of wills than artillery, and doesn’t necessarily end with decisive conclusions or clear winners. Cyber warfare between nations is conducted not only without the consent or participation of citizens but often without their knowledge, with little to see in the way of airstrikes and troop movements.
The weapons are information systems, intelligence, propaganda and the media. The combatants are governments, multinational corporations, hackers and whistleblowers. The battlefields are economies, command and control networks, election outcomes and the hearts and minds of populations. As with Russia’s bloodless 2014 annexation of the Crimea, the cyberwar is fought before the infantry arrives. Written by a United States intelligence community insider, this book describes the covert aspects of modern wars and the agencies who fund and fight them.

Dennis F. Poindexter is a former faculty member of the Defense Security Institute, a staff member at the United States House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and a member of the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee. He was invited to present testimony at the U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission in June 2015. He has been writing and speaking about national security and information warfare since 1980, and his work has appeared in ComputerWorld and The Office. He lives in Potomac Falls, Virginia.

Dennis F. Poindexter
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 228
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2015
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9843-7
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2061-9
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments vi

Introduction 1

1. A New Outcome for War 9

2. A Cloudy Day in Kiev 22

3. The Last Great War 40

4. The War Peeks Out 50

5. Cyberwar 67

6. Economic War 92

7. Economic Espionage 96

8. The Evolution of Command and Control Warfare 104

9. Psychological Warfare 110

10. Follow the Money 117

11. A Military Left Out 130

12. The Integration of Business and War 141

13. The Combatants 164

14. Fighting a Modern War 175

15. The New World War 188

Chapter Notes 193

Bibliography 206

Index 219

“Intriguing…This is a thought-provoking read that traces how cyberwar morphed from what it was in the 1980s to what it is today and what it is likely to become as technology advances in the future.”—Military Review