Hacking its Way to Victory? China Stresses on Information Warfare

In an effort to coordinate the defence of Pentagon computer networks and improve offensive capabilities in cyber warfare, the US military has set up a new ‘cyberspace command’, as announced by the Pentagon in June 2009. This is the first such formation that would operate initially under the US Strategic Command. Reported breaches of the US electricity grid and of networks used by aerospace contractors building the F-35 fighter jet have further highlighted concerns over cyber security.

Washington has long stressed that China has built up a sophisticated cyber warfare programme and that a spate of intrusions in the US and elsewhere can be traced back to Chinese sources. US authorities are still investigating whether PRC officials secretly copied contents of a US Government laptop during a visit to China by the US Commerce Secretary and used the information to try to penetrate into US Department of Commerce computers.

China has been openly engaging in cyber war against the US and India on a regular basis. In March 2009, then Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon admitted that there had been attempts at hacking into the computers of Indian embassies, in response to media reports of a vast cyber network controlled from China that targeted governments and private computers in 103 countries, including those of the Indian embassy in Washington.

These incidents are just one in many similar occurrences. In May 2008, the Ministry of External Affairs’ internal communication network was allegedly broken into by Chinese hackers. Subsequently, the Belgian Government warned that e-mail attacks, aimed at compromising government computers, appeared to be coming from China.

According to a 2009 Department of Defense’s Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, “Although these intrusions focused on exfiltrating information, the accesses and skills required for these intrusions are similar to those necessary to conduct computer network attacks. It remains unclear if these intrusions were conducted by, or with the endorsement of, the PLA or other elements of the PRC Government. However, developing capabilities for cyber warfare is consistent with authoritative PLA military writings on the subject.”

The connotations of warfare are fast changing in the information age with the boundaries between soldiers and civilians being broken down, and the chasm between warfare and non-warfare nearly bridged. In their account of China’s concept of unrestricted warfare, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui advocate that future wars will be conducted in non-war spheres. Citing cyber war as a newest domain of fighting, Qiao and Wang stated, “Today, the independent use of individual technologies is now becoming more and more imaginable. The emergence of information technology has presented endless possibilities for match-ups involving old and new technologies and among new and advanced technologies.”

Chinese analyst Wei Jincheng has gone far so as to dub information war as a new form of ‘People’s War.’ Wei is of the view that the technological revolution provided only a stage for confrontations and it only when this revolution gets married with military operations could it take on the characteristics of confrontation.

According to the 2008 Chinese White Paper on National Defence, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has shifted the focus of ‘informationisation’ from specific areas to trans-area systems integration. Currently, aiming at integration, the PLA is persisting in combining breakthroughs in key sectors with comprehensive development, technological innovation with structural reform, and the development and building of new systems with the modification of existing ones to tap their potentials; enhancing systems integration; stepping up efforts to develop and utilise information resources; and gradually developing and improving the capability of fighting based on information systems.

Besides, the PLA is placing high priority on building command information systems. The Chinese integrated military information network came into operation in 2006, resulting in the further improvement of the information infrastructure, basic information support and information security assurance. Thereafter, progress has been made in the building of command and control systems for integrated joint operations, significantly enhancing the capability of battlefield information support. Besides, IT-based training methods have undergone considerable development; surveying and mapping, navigation, weather forecasting, hydrological observation and space environment support systems have been further optimised; and a number of information systems for logistical and equipment support have been successfully developed and deployed; and full-scale efforts in building “digital campuses” have begun in PLA educational institutions.

Senior Chinese Colonels Wang Baocun and Li Fei opine that the essential substance of information warfare in the narrow sense is made up of five major elements and two general areas. The five elements include:
 
• Substantive Destruction – the use of hard weapons to destroy enemy headquarters, command posts and command and control (C2) information centres.
• Electronic Warfare – the use of electronic means of jamming or the use of anti-radiation (electromagnetic) weapons to attack enemy information and intelligence collection systems such as communications and radar.
• Military Deception – the use of operations such as tactical feints (simulated attacks) to shield or deceive enemy intelligence collection systems.
• Operational secrecy – the use of all means to maintain secrecy and keep the enemy from collecting intelligence on our operations.
• Psychological Warfare – the use of TV, radio and leaflets to undermine the enemy’s military morale.

In addition, Wang and Li further explain the two general areas including information protection (defence) and information attack (offense). Information defence means preventing the destruction of one’s own information systems, ensuring that these systems can perform their normal functions. In future wars, key information and information systems will become “combat priorities,” the key targets of enemy attack. The key targets of information offense are the enemy’s combat command, control and coordination, intelligence and global information systems. Successful information offensive requires three prerequisites:
• The capability to understand the enemy’s information systems, and the establishment of a corresponding database system;
• Diverse and effective means of attack; and
• The capability to make battle damage assessments (BDA) of attacked targets.

In 2002, the PLA’s Information Warfare (IW) General Staff proponent, General Dai Qingmin, listed six forms of IW in the Chinese Journal, China Military Science that included: operational security, deception, computer network attack, electronic warfare, intelligence and physical destruction. Dai has also analysed China’s concept of “integrated network-electronic warfare (INEW),” which is quite similar in content to the US concept of network-centric warfare. The concept refers to a series of combat operation actions with the integrated use of Electronic Warfare and Computer Network Warfare measures on the informationised battlefield. The actions are designed to disrupt the normal operations of the enemy’s battlefield network information systems and protect one’s own. The objective of INEW is to seize battlefield information superiority, according to Dai.

Undoubtedly, IW is playing a serious role in the transformation of the PLA from a mechanised to an informationised force. An instance of this transition was visible when on August 6, 2003, Defence Minister, Cao Gangchuan told a meeting of municipal government personnel, the PLA General Staff, and the Beijing Military Region staff that the defence build-up was aimed at gaining victory at IW. President Jiang Zemin also reflected this sentiment in the November 2003 statement when he urged the armed forces “to build IW units to win in IW with new types of soldiers and military theories needed to do this.”

Timothy L. Thomas accepts this by emphasising that success in IW will undoubtedly prompt China to play an important strategic deterrent role in the Asia-Pacific region in the future. China sees a strategic opportunity to leap frog the age of mechanisation and transcend into the information age. As the Chinese say, “Borrow a ladder to climb the tree”—thus reaffirming their belief that losers in IW will not just be those with backward technology; they will also be those who lack command thinking and the ability to apply strategies.
 

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).