Cyberwar and Information Warfare

Chapter 6

Riots in Xinjiang and Chinese Information Warfare ¹

Several times over the last few years, China has been accused of being at the origin of (meaning, guilty of) an incredible number of incidents regarding security reported over the world: intrusions into company and the State’s most sensitive information systems, intrusion attempts into SCADA systems, data theft, espionage, etc.

Are these actions the implementation of the Chinese information warfare doctrine [VEN 07]¹ (whose preliminary foundations were presented nearly 20 years ago by Wang Baocun, Wang Pufeng, Shen Weiguang, Qiao Liang, Wang Xiangsui, and closer to us, Dai Qingmin, or even Wang Houqing and Zhang Xingye in The Science of Campaigns [HOU 00], Peng Guangqiang and Yao Youzhi in The Science of Military Strategy [GUA 05])?

This chapter will keep in line with a context of ever-worsening cyberattacks (or simply an increased awareness of a phenomenon which has existed for many years already) or several studies, mainly American ones, which focus specifically on the strategy, doctrine and capabilities of information warfare, information operations and Chinese cyberwar.

In these publications we find, for instance, the report on the Capability of the People’s Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation [KRE 09], or Timothy L. Thomas’ contribution in the excellent work Cyberpower and National Security, published by the National Defense University [KRA 09].

Some important questions still ...