Global and national take on state information warfare

摘要

Information power has a crucial effect on success and because today information is mostly stored in digital form, attempts to establish information supremacy have logically migrated into cyberspace. Information warfare, which first developed in the military and political sphere, has become, due to recent technological developments, extremely aggressive and widespread, and is now used as a tool to achieve goals in all societal spheres. Leading countries even integrate this technique into their national policies and strategies for achieving their political goals. Transference of information warfare into cyberspace has led to the combining of two of the most dangerous and least investigated forms of criminality - cybercrime and organized crime - so the dilemma how to protect ourselves from them is now even greater. The international community has been avoiding this issue and information warfare is totally neglected. The absence of legislation and the will to bring order to this area has created a situation in which anyone can use cybercrime techniques to gain information power. This paper presents the authors' opinion on the nature of information warfare, its steady migration into cyberspace and its exponential growth. The analysis of the current normative acts at national and international levels and our overview of the developments in leading countries illuminate the present state of affairs in this field.