Doctrinal Confusion and Cultural Dysfunction in the Pentagon Over Information and Cyber Operations

Herb Lin of Stanford University sees “doctrinal and conceptual confusions” in Defense Department policy regarding the concepts of “information warfare,” “information operations,” “psychological operations,” and “influence operations.” He suggests that even within the Department of Defense, the terms have had elastic, imprecise, and ambiguous meaning, and are often used interchangeably to describe activities that are divergent in nature.