For approximately thirty years, China has been modernizing with a competitive strategy focused on capabilities tailored to attack key vulnerabilities of the US military: targeting aircraft carriers, satellites, forward air bases, and command-and-control nodes to deter or prevent its ability to intervene in a potential regional conflict. The strategy has yielded an array of kinetic and nonkinetic counterspace systems, missiles, air and naval assets with multilayered ranges and effects, and cyber capabilities—supported by an exponential increase in satellites that can detect US forces and an arsenal of at least six hundred operational nuclear warheads, projected to grow to one thousand within five years. This unprecedented pace of modernization will continue as the People’s Liberation Army matures its multidomain precision warfare concept to leverage artificial intelligence and big data to rapidly identify and launch precision strikes against US vulnerabilities.
The US military’s ability to project traditional military power across the Pacific is seriously threatened by these capabilities. But seeking to compete by developing systems that can overcome them requires expenditures that, while potentially beneficial if they become politically feasible, are not sustainable. The United States faces an enduring challenge because of the difficulty and expense of projecting power over such vast distances while China fights from home. Beijing can therefore respond to US investments with less time and expense, fueled by an industrial base that is outpacing the United States and a political system that can deliver military resources with greater consistency and long-term focus.
There is a better way, one that does not accept China’s chosen framework for this competition but instead expands the way information warfare is conceptualized and leverages space-based internet connectivity.
Regaining the Initiative
For the United States to regain competitive initiative, it must attack China’s vulnerabilities rather than just reacting to its military modernization with an unsustainable cycle of spending. The US military’s Joint Concept for Competing encourages this mindset and recognizes the military’s role outside of armed conflict. It recommends “actions designed to shift the focus of strategic competition into areas that favor U.S. interests or undermine an adversary’s interests.” While the concept does not identify specific ways to do this, it hints at possibilities, including, “the opportunity to subvert an adversary’s government, economic system, or civil society.” It further suggests that the weaponization of information can “trigger a chain of events in an adversary’s society that gradually degrades its domestic unity, undermines societal trust in its government and institutions, and diminishes its international stature.”
Emerging and maturing information technologies are creating an opportunity for the United States to expand the scope of information warfare in ways that can create competitive leverage against authoritarian competitors. Historically, internet connectivity was provided through internet service providers connected by a network of wired connections. Access to this network was then distributed to end users through a combination of wired networks and cell towers, with a small market for internet reception from geostationary satellites. This architecture has allowed authoritarian governments the ability to censor and control information flow through their sovereign control of internet service providers and the underlying physical infrastructure. Subsequent technological upgrades, such as fiber-optic cable and 5G, did not significantly alter the architecture of internet delivery, but space-based internet is ushering in a revolutionary change.
Current technology now allows internet connectivity through proliferated low-Earth orbit (pLEO) satellites to portable, personal terminals of increasingly smaller size and cost. This technology is evolving toward handheld devices with direct space-based internet connectivity that can be provided outside the control of authoritarian governments. The technological capability to deliver internet access from space, beyond the control of domestic governments, is becoming relatively inexpensive and ubiquitous. As a consequence, the ability to censor and control information will become increasingly costly. The United States must exploit this changing technological landscape and seize the strategic initiative by providing space-based, uncensored internet access to populations under authoritarian regimes of US competitors.
These regimes already expend considerable effort and resources to censor and control information within their own borders, and are more sensitive to US deterrent efforts that focus on information tools than military ones. This demonstrates the massive and even existential vulnerability to authoritarian regimes posed by the free flow of information. For this reason, there are an increasing range of policy options for the United States government to impose costs on China and “undermine [Beijing’s] information and communication controls.”
Operationalizing Expanded Information Warfare
Current discussions of information warfare often narrowly focus either on countering disinformation in the public domain or the more technical aspects of command and control involving the management of targeting information during armed conflict. An expanded concept of information warfare would instead focus on broadening its three primary components: compelling narratives and messages (munitions), audience (targets), and the medium of delivery (platforms). Uncensored, space-based internet as a delivery platform has the potential to circumvent censorship and information controls currently enforced in authoritarian regimes, enabling the free flow of information within and across borders to a broader audience. Authoritarian rulers are particularly vulnerable to information and must adjust their behavior based on the beliefs and support of both elites within their regime and public sentiment—both of which can be deliberately influenced by foreign actors.
This expanded form of information warfare would give US policy makers a set of tools that can be calibrated to apply across the spectrum of competition and conflict. Consider these examples:
- Turning on or off uncensored internet access within a target country or audience, allowing that population’s members to disseminate and consume content of their own choosing.
- Delivering targeted messaging that counters adversary misinformation.
- Delivering consistent narratives that reinforce the mutual benefits of cooperation in the rules-based international order.
- Supporting a narrative of partnership between the American people and populations under authoritarian rule, potentially depicting unaccountable regimes as the obstacle to that cooperation.
- Providing content reinforcing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and highlighting authoritarian leaders’ violation of those rights, including “the right to freedom of opinion and expression” and to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (Article 19), “the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association” (Article 20), “the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” (Article 18), and “the right to take part in the government . . . directly or through freely chosen representatives” (Article 21).
- Providing evidence of authoritarian leaders’ actions in opposition to the interests of their populations.
- Delivering direct criticisms of authoritarian leaders and encouraging accountability.
- Delivering content encouraging or enabling peaceful protest and reform.
Utilizing these tools is unlikely to achieve immediate effect—no one should expect populations to suddenly change course and demand reform from authoritarian leaders. Many will also reject foreign messaging. However, authoritarian competitors will be forced to respond and expend resources to counter these flows of information. This will impose costs and shift the focus of competition to areas where authoritarian regimes have enduring vulnerability and weakness. Also, Chinese and Russian attempts to influence the American population demonstrate the threat and utility of the informational instrument of power, even on the margins of a population. While some may see democracies as more susceptible to informational attacks, authoritarian regimes expend massive effort to control information while democracies expend almost no resources to do so. Democracies are inundated with true and false information flowing freely and are thus effectively inoculated against major informational effects. Authoritarian regimes, however, see free-flowing information as a potentially existential threat, even if only a small portion of the population is affected. This is an enduring vulnerability that can be exploited.
Many netizens in authoritarian regimes can already bypass censorship through virtual private networks, though governments tend to reign in these tools if they show any sign of risk to the regime. Research demonstrates that while citizens behind firewalls are unlikely to seek out methods to bypass censorship, once they begin accessing uncensored information their demand for it is sustained and their attitudes toward their government change. Authoritarian regimes pay high costs to defend this vulnerability even though the United States is not yet directing the resources and technologies at its disposal to exploit it.
Authoritarian leaders are already in a technological race to keep information out of their own citizens’ hands, but this digital era favors the dissemination rather than suppression of information. This is a natural imbalance that the United States must exploit. Just as the Soviet Union could not keep up in a globalized world by centralizing economic planning, authoritarian regimes will not keep up in a digital world if they try to centralize information—they are fighting a losing battle. They are temporarily succeeding in their suppression of information only because no one is using the available technological tools to fight against them at mass. The United States can impose significant costs if it supports access to information beyond censorship faster than authoritarian leaders can censor it.
Implementation
Providing space-based, uncensored internet access is becoming technologically and economically feasible. It relies on two primary technical components. The first is a constellation of pLEO satellites. Initial investments in pLEO internet delivery from Starlink, AST Space Mobile, Amazon Kuiper, and the Pentagon range from $1 billion to $15 billion. The second component is a terminal or compatible device that can connect to the pLEO constellation. Distribution of these terminals or devices may be a significant challenge as authoritarian regimes resist, but the difficulty is likely to decrease over time for two reasons. First, gaining access to uncensored internet will incentivize private actors within and outside authoritarian regimes to facilitate the distribution of these terminals and devices, especially if they are supported by the United States and its democratic allies. Second, the portable or handheld size of these devices makes mass distribution and smuggling across borders feasible and policing by authoritarian regimes extremely difficult and costly. Iterative improvements in technologies and increase in popular demand will force authoritarian regimes to expend increasing resources over time to maintain control over information flows while eroding public support and legitimacy.
Providing space-based internet access within authoritarian regimes could be accomplished by a number of actors, but the US military is currently best positioned to accomplish the task. There is no other US government entity tasked with developing the capabilities necessary to conduct information warfare, particularly with this expanded competition mindset. In addition, the likely cost is in the normal range of significant DoD programs, but well beyond what any other US government organization can fund.
An alternative course of action might be legislation to reestablish the US Information Agency with a budget and mission to develop and employ this capability, though there are challenges to this approach. Regardless of the bureaucratic tool employed, the authority, accountability, and resourcing for conducting information warfare across the whole of government in today’s technological landscape needs to be established. Unless and until significant legislative or administrative action makes this happen, the US military, in partnership with other agencies, is best suited to provide this national capability.
The concept of expanding information warfare by providing uncensored internet access would provide significant leverage against multiple authoritarian actors. Most importantly, the Chinese Communist Party has developed the most extensive and sophisticated censorship regime in history while also executing a competitive strategy that imposes significant costs on traditional US military approaches to warfighting. Expanded information warfare shifts the competition back to an area where China has enduring vulnerabilities. Authoritarian leaders in Russia, Iran, and North Korea also expend considerable resources to control information and free-flowing, uncensored information would create dilemmas, impose costs, and constrain their available options.
Normative Concerns and Risk
Employing this expanded concept of information warfare would deviate from existing norms in two important ways. First, it would require significant US military investment in a capability that does not directly achieve conventional warfighting objectives. However, US competitors have gained advantages by fusing military and nonmilitary capabilities to achieve national objectives, and the United States must do the same. Second, US efforts to circumvent censorship controls within authoritarian regimes will likely be perceived as a break from international norms of sovereignty. However, US competitors have already shattered these norms through intervention in democratic elections, intellectual property theft, cyberattacks, and covert and overt military intervention. The United States must find a way to respond to these violations of sovereignty for both practical and ideological reasons and can do so with the normative backing of the universal human right to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Expanding strategic competition also carries an inherent risk of escalation. Attacking competitor vulnerabilities and creating new threats is likely to solicit a strong response, especially where it threatens a regime’s sense of stability. However, this is the goal of competition—it provides leverage because it forces a response and shifts the focus of competition away from areas that are advantageous to competitors. This expanded concept of information warfare opens a new front in competition, forcing authoritarians to respond to informational threats as they simultaneously evaluate the use of traditional military force and economic coercion, but it also offers tools to manage escalation, create leverage, and force difficult tradeoffs for competitors.
Expanding the concept of information warfare by providing space-based, uncensored internet access to populations within authoritarian regimes is the most impactful investment the United States can make in the current strategic competition. America can restore its competitive initiative by seizing this opportunity created by a maturing revolution in information technology. Taking this step requires a significant change to traditional modes of thought and operation, but builds on the competitive mindset needed in this strategic environment.
Christopher Culver is a pilot in the United States Air Force currently serving as an analyst on the Headquarters Air Force staff. He previously served as a speechwriter for the secretary of the Air Force, faculty member at the United States Air Force Academy, and MQ-1B Predator instructor pilot. He has a PhD in political science from Pennsylvania State University and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University, and has authored multiple academic publications in the field of international political economy. He is a Truman Scholar and CSIS Strategy and Statecraft Fellow and is proficient in Mandarin Chinese.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, Department of the Air Force, or Department of Defense. The discussion of nonfederal entities, methods, products, or services and the appearance of hyperlinks do not imply any endorsement by any agency of the United States government.
Image credit: Airman 1st Class Sebastian Romawac, US Air Force