A Warfare Domain Approach to the Disinformation Problem

Abstract

Land and sea were the original warfighting domains; at the turn of the 20th-century air was recognized, and roughly fifty years later, space became the fourth warfighting domain. Humanity is in the Information Age, and cyberspace is recognized as the fifth warfighting domain. Much debate surrounds this distinction. The complete lack of doctrine specifying what is required to be a domain serves to exacerbate an already contentious topic further. Many have proffered suggestions on what these requirements ought to be. For example, the literature suggests six requirements for a warfare domain, but a more accurate description of what was presented is six characteristics. If one of the six requirements were removed, any of the four physical domains would still exist as a domain. The notion of the warfare domain changed with the doctrinal codification of cyberspace. Previously, the warfare domains -land, sea, air, and space- were exclusively physical; the advent of cyberspace represents the first man-made warfare domain. While the physical, information and cognitive dimensions are accounted for in the doctrine associated with the physical domains, the same cannot be said for cyberspace. Representation of the three dimensions renders the means and ways of attacking and defending readily discernable. There are unique challenges related to cyberspace such as attribution, cyber personas, and cascading effects that make determining appropriate retaliation complex. In this context, the most prominent and difficult to defend threat vector is disinformation. In this paper, we discuss disinformation from the warfighting domain perspective. We offer a new conceptualization of cyberspace as a warfare domain. In doing so, the paper proposes recognition of the cognitive dimension in cyberspace as a solution to the problems associated with the fundamental problem in the complex information ecosystem, disinformation.