BATTLEFIELD OF THE FUTURE New tools and technologies for communication have created the potential for a new form of psychological warfare to a degree imagined only in science fiction. This new form of warfare is known as "information warfare ." When we come to know the Tao of such an invention as information warfare, we may find that we are ashamed to use it. The futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler have argued that the United States armed forces need to develop a "systematic, capstone concept of military knowledge strategy." Such a strategy would include clear doctrine, and a policy for how the armed forces will acquire, process, distribute, and project knowledge.
Quoting from the "Memorandum of Policy No. 30" (6 May 1993) of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Tofflers argue that the US military is expanding the concept of Information War to include psychological operations aimed at influencing the "emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior" of others. Such an expansion would mirror the evolution of traditional warfare toward Information War. It would also mirror the progressive steps of generating wealth from agriculture and natural resources in much earlier times, to the nineteenth and early twentieth century emphasis on industrial production, to the present emphasis on generating information products as a major new source of income. As "first wave" wars were fought for land and "second wave" wars were fought for control over productive capacity, the emerging "third wave" wars will be fought for control of knowledge. And, since "combat form" in any society follows the "wealth-creation form" of that society, wars of the future will be increasingly "information wars." [pg 153]
