Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 5, Number 1, Spring / Summer 2020 | Page 23

The Case for the Sixth Domain of War: Psychological Warfare in the Age of Advanced Technology
can be undertaken to accomplish missions—these
actions have existed since
the beginning of humanity and have
exponentially increased along with the
expansion of technology. Third, it is a
sphere that may include the presence of
an opponent—adversaries are increasingly
using information operations to
gain an advantage within the human
mind. Lastly, it is a sphere in which
control can be exercised over an opponent,
as information warfare tactics
aim to deceive, manipulate, and control
an opponent’s decisions or lack thereof.
In the second component, the
psychological and cyber domains are
intertwined, making their distinction
difficult. This is because the activities,
functions, and operations undertaken
to influence the human mind in the
psychological domain are occurring
through cyberspace in the modern information
environment (refer to the
social layer of cyberspace in Appendix
1). This may be difficult to understand
in the traditional sense, since the classical
domains of warfare tend to lend
themselves to easy delineation. For example,
tanks conduct ground warfare,
ships belong in the ocean, and planes
fly in the air; however, even these relatively
straightforward examples demand
some scrutiny. All domains have
entry and exit points into other domains
at some point. Aircraft land on
the ground or at sea, and ships dock
at land-based ports. Warheads enter
space before making their reentry to
hit their land-based targets. This differentiation
becomes more important
as we move away from traditional warfare
and towards the more convoluted,
virtual spheres of influence. The sphere
of influence where the effects actually
take place and the end objective are always
more important when assigning
an operation to a domain of war than
whatever activities are necessary to
achieve it.
Information can be defined in
two ways: facts provided or learned
about something or someone and what
is conveyed or represented by a particular
arrangement or sequence of things
(in computing, this is data as processed,
stored, or transmitted by a computer).
In fact, in Late Middle English, information
was known as the “formation of
the mind” (Oxford Online Dictionary,
s.v. “information,” https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/information).
As stated previously, the information
environment is a sphere in which all
domains operate. Figure 1 illustrates
our proposed model of how information,
whether delivered through virtual
or non-virtual methods, can be transported
and have psychological effects.
This manner of visualizing our theory
is two-fold. First, it allows cyber-enabled
psychological operations to be
carried out within its own domain and
its effects to have a home. Second, it
demonstrates that without a human
to cognitively observe and infer what
is happening (a cognitive maneuver),
none of the other domains matter, and
arguably, without people writ large applying
their cognition, those domains
arguably do not exist. This illustrates
that targeting the psychological domain
can impact all actions in the other
domains downstream.
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