a. Operational security.
b. Military deception.
c. Psychological operations.
d. Electronic warfare.
e. Physical destruction.
f. Manual support by intelligence.
g. Denying information to influence, degrade or destroy enemy C2 capabilities.
h. Protecting friendly C2 capabilities against such action.
9. In information doctrine psychological operations are aimed at influencing emotions, motives, objective reasoning and behaviour, thus offering the commander the potential to deliver KNOCKOUT PUNCH before outbreak of traditional hostilities.
10. All terms defined earlier lead us to a single focal point knowledge strategy which will be discussed in next chapter. Knowledge strategy is evolved through the information doctrine in conjunction with Cyberwar, C2 Warfare and other terms mercifully omitted here.
CHAPTER 4
KNOWLEDGE STRATEGY
11.What is Knowledge Strategy? Knowledge Strategy as outlined earlier is an offshoot of the information doctrine. Legitimate commanders needed to device a strategy to acquire and use this knowledge. Information is the crude form of data collected from various sources and processed to become real-time data as an entity. Such data is preserved, further processed to yield desired results and then communicated to relevant media or personnel for its judicious use. In knowledge form this data further requires to be guarded against theft and sabotage. This is the whole concept of knowledge strategy in plain words. Now to use technical jargon, let's go into mechanics of it's concept.
12. Key Functions17. Certain things are nevertheless clear. Any military, like any company or corporation, has to perform at least four key functions with respect to knowledge. It must acquire, process, distribute, and protect information, while selectively denying or distributing it to its adversaries and/or allies. If, therefore, we break each of these down into their components we can begin to construct a comprehensive framework for knowledge strategy, a key to many, if not most, of tomorrow's military victories.
a. Knowledge Acquisition18. Knowledge Acquisition means producing or purchasing the knowledge needed by military. To produce any such thing, the importance of research and development can never be denied. U.S. Army is spending a fortune on research and development and this is not to go waste, they are being handsomely paid for their efforts in kind. The saving of resources resultantly bestowed is justifiably great for expenditure on research and development. At the same time they are not ignorant or stubborn enough to shake off talent around the globe. Since Second World War, Americans have learnt to tap resources out of under-developed nations of the world. Such intellectuals are the knowledge Warriors hired and maintained by U.S. Government in Silicon Valley. Procurement of knowledge is done by armies in a number of ways to include following :-
(1) Media.
(2) Research and development.
(3) Intelligence.
(4) Culture.
(5) Other sources.
b. Knowledge Processing. The knowledge so acquired then has to be carefully stored, categorised and catalogued for future reference. Once secure in position, it can easily be used by a work-force of software soldiers to process this very knowledge in desired way and fashion. Advanced armies, like companies, have to store and process information in huge quantities, increasingly, as we know that requires an immense investment in information technology (IT). Military IT includes computer systems of diverse size and shape with a flexible nature of functionality differing one nation from other in advancement. Much of the work has already been done to rationalise, upgrade and improve these vast systems. Pieces of hardware became overnight STARS19 but actual kingpin was the software running on these hardware pieces which was the real STAR and those invisible hand working behind the scene to make it a success, these are the software soldiers, mostly civilian.
c. Knowledge Distribution. Once so many warriors and soldiers made it a success, this very knowledge is now to be dispersed logically to its destination, the field commander. The communication of these chunks of information to the lowest and the highest levels of relevantly legitimate command is thence the next key function of knowledge strategy. Communication networks play key role in this distribution process. Distribution process sufficiently encompasses the intelligence domain as far as security and safe disbursement of data is concerned. The unnecessary rigidity on communications network may rather cause it to halt prematurely. The communication amongst equivalent tiers of command are as much necessary as the communication up and down the pyramid of command. A Battalion Commander must have freedom to talk to another Battalion Commander and exchange information, an allied nation must then also be at equal level of strategic communication with another ally. If this freedom of communication is snatched, such systems are liable not to ever succeed. At the same time we must never forego the importance of security of such net. Stuart Slade, a London based information-scientist and mil analyst for Forecast International studied this problem in great detail and some of the extracts from his findings20 are listed below :-
(1) Not every army in the world is culturally or politically (let alone technologically) capable of using them.
(2) These systems depend on one thing - and that is the ability to exchange information, to swap data, and to promote a free flow of information around the network, so that people can assemble their tactical pictures, they can relate their stuff together. What we have actually got is a politically correct weapon system.
(3) Societies that freeze the flow of communications, the free flow of ideas and data, will not, by definition, be able to make much use of such systems like Iraqi System.
(4) There are quite a few countries including China and some countries in Africa, that would find such system politically dangerous.
(5) New communications networks favour democratic nations.
d. Knowledge Protection. Defence of one's own knowledge assets against enemy attack is the protection of knowledge. The knowledge is processed from and duly used after distribution is still of vital importance and must be kept protected from enemy as if not to be used by the enemy to annihilate own strategy. Neil Munro, 31 years old Dubliner settled in USA since 1984 did his Masters in War Studies and exercised his command of the subject in military strategic analysis at Ministry of Defence. In his book The Quick and the Dead he defines the term knowledge protection in plausible way. Few valuable extracts21 from his book are :-
(1) No nation in the world is more vulnerable to the loss of its knowledge assets. And no nation has more to lose.
(2) Information or Knowledge superiority may win wars. But that superiority is exceedingly fragile. In Information war, you can have a hundred-to-one superiority, but it can all turn on the fuse or on a lie or on your ability to protect your advantage from those who want to steal it.
(3) The key reason for this fragility is that knowledge, as a resource, differs from all the others. It is inexhaustible. It can be used by both sides simultaneously. And it is non-linear. That means that small inputs can cause disproportionate consequences. A small bit of the right information can provide an immense strategic or tactical advantage. The denial of a small bit of information can be catastrophic.
13. Crucial Components. There are certain components which are central to the idea of Knowledge Strategy and must be considered as such to proceed any further in its quest. These include the policies and use of IT in general and Software in particular. Software will later be discussed in Chapter 6 with emphasis on our local environments in Pakistan and development potential. Crucial components of Knowledge Strategy are policies that guide the development, use of Information Technology and software.
CHAPTER 5
KNOWLEDGE WARRIOR AND SOFTWARE SOLDIERS
14. Silicon Valley's Great Secret. Silicon Valley is an industrial region 20 miles (32 kms) long, between Palo Alto and San Jose in California, where many microchip manufacturing and design companies are located. The name derives from high purity silicon used in making these electronic devices.
One of Silicon Valley's great secrets is stealing human capital from the Third World. Maybe the natives (of the Valley) are leaving. That is more than up for Indians and Taiwanese coming in.22 _______ Tom Peters.
An Influential Management Theorist
a. Strategic Brain Drain. In acquisition of knowledge, where importance of espionage and intelligence cannot be marred, it can include things like organised, strategic brain drains. As quoted above, Silicon Valley has become the centre for gathering talent from third world.
b. Technology Transfer. Where super powers rely on third world for scientific brain power, third world is out for technology hunt and reverse engineering. The intelligent developing countries train their technical manpower in developed countries and transfer technology in slow and methodical manner.
15. Knowledge Warrior. The acquisition and collection of talented manpower to form policies and design technology is the prime requirement for knowledge procurement. This work force is termed as knowledge warriors and are the brains behind their knowledge framework.
a. Identification. The knowledge warriors are selectively chosen out of the student community which attains higher level of education in developed countries and is tested under stress conditions. The cream out of this community is carefully skimmed and offered high benefits to adopt living permanently in places like Silicon Valley.
b. Preservation. To keep the selected lot affiliated with their work force, they have to be offered such advantages as to link them with Silicon Valley for good or till they are needed. The people on highly classified jobs are kept under maximum security and sometimes have been eliminated after completion of some very classified assignments.
c. Relevancy. A person is relevant to the military research and development assignment till such time his knowledge is up to the mark of latest technological development assignment. This is maintained by further training the individuals in select group and using them precisely for related assignments.
16. Software Soldiers. This is the other work force of technical people who might not be the brain power of the military machinery but work horses who make things possible to happen behind the scene by operating the military hardware for storage, processing and distribution of information and knowledge.
a. Talent Hunt. There is definitely a requirement to have a select group of trained people to be used as software soldiers. These are usually software developers, programmers and mostly machine operators on pre-defined machinery. Such talent is picked up normally from the student community.
b. Education and Training. The hunted talent might not be well educated and therefore must be trained in the specific field of interest and thus employed accordingly.
c. Relevancy. Software soldiers are very much relevant to military system as long as they are properly trained and educated. They should first be carefully picked out of educational institutions and then groomed in selected fields of interest.
CHAPTER 6
DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) AND SOFTWARE IN
PAKISTAN
17. Information Technology23.
Information Technology (IT) is basically a non-military term widely in use since long in computing circles. The information is basically the raw data needed to be processed by computers to convert it into useful information which can be used later in various queries and decision making processes. If used correctly and economically, IT can yield miraculously stunning results and make the information maintenance and knowledge strategy implementation a reality.
18. Development of Information Technology. Lately electronic and information warfare has already taught us the importance of information if rightly processed and communicated to right people at right time, can save us time and money as well as benefit in gaining an upper hand over enemy. Latest development is the concept of knowledge strategy, to include acquisition or procurement of knowledge, it's storage and processing and finally it's distribution and protection. The term IT has now been enhanced to the concept of knowledge strategy and still requires to be refined with time.
19. Use of Information Technology. Use of information technology and computers in military hardware and software development has now been widely recognised. As we can see from efforts such as Force XXI, there are few officers today who think that computers don't have a place on the modern battlefield. If we can have our own military software base, we need not to rely upon technology transfer and only focus on talent hunt. The indigenous production of military software will make us self sufficient in information technology as well as reduce dependency on use of prototype commercial software available world-wide. The ultimate benefit will be secure and private software base for our own country.
20. Crucial Components of Military Software Base24. To develop military software indigenously, we must consider crucial components in development of such software base which are :-
a. Sophistication.
b. Flexibility.
c. Security.
