Dragon Bytes: Chinese Information-War Theory and Practice (Four Stars)

Information Warfare is a very real thing and the People's Republic of China are one of the biggest proponents of this type of military endeavor. Thomas has looked at the writings of the Chinese establishment available to the West and has provided an assessment of the way China intents to fight on the information battlefield... indeed, how they have already fought. The emphasis of Information Warfare as seen by the Chinese is different than the U.S. approach to this type of struggle. China sees IW not as a means of gaining information "superiority" or "supremacy" but as a means of gaining control... of making THEIR objectives the objectives of their enemies. Information Warfare to the Chinese means propaganda, network attacks, "information frontiers," and the development of special "information-based" weaponry. China takes IW seriously enough to adapt it to their concept of People's War and to create not just active IW units but a comparatively large reserve force as well.

Unfortunately, I believe that whoever laid out the book and edited it let the author down. I think they layout could have been done more efficiently to aid in the flow of the book and some editing might have made this a more readable product. Also, the book only looks at events up to 2004... a more up-to-date book could eliminate some of the issues with this one.