Information warfare is not new; it dates back to antiquity, when Alexander, Greek city states, and Romans used spies, whispering campaigns, and misinformation, but what is new is the use of social media, big data, AI, and high-performance computing to identify target populations, develop messages, test them, and assess their impact at unprecedented speed and scale.

The merger of old and new technologies (tanks, artillery, radios, EW merged with data sciences, autonomous systems) is an ongoing challenge; we do not yet know if current mergers represent the optimal integration or merely initial attempts.

Speed matters in warfare, but more important is the ability to govern tempo—sometimes you want to slow things down; humans have limited capacity and we are not going to hand off everything to machines.

China prefers to incorporate Taiwan without an invasion and would rather win without fighting, but this does not mean invasion is off the table—it remains a live option that Xi has told the PLA to prepare for.

Ubiquitous uncrewed systems have exploded since the Russian large-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, expanding from the aerial domain into the maritime domain, with Ukrainians leading the world in developing a broad range of uncrewed maritime strike systems proven effective against Russian naval vessels.

A near-peer or peer conflict between military superpowers (e.g., US-China over Taiwan) would resemble World War II but with the unprecedented factor that we have never seen a major war between two nuclear powers, creating a significant strategic unknown.

Both the Chinese and Americans have conducted large-scale experimentation with ground-based autonomous systems (lethal and non-lethal) and are rolling them out; within a few years, given battlefield imperative and continued development, autonomous ground vehicles capable of lethal force could be fielded in a Taiwan war scenario by 2028.

The closing of the time between target detection and destruction has been reduced to a couple of minutes in Ukraine, a dramatic decrease from the beginning of the war, representing a practical manifestation of the convergence of sensor networks.

Front-line Ukrainian soldiers now use civilian intelligence reports and daily reports from institutions like the Institute for the Study of War alongside military intelligence sources, demonstrating practical integration of open-source and military intelligence.

Both Ukrainian and Russian forces now face severe problems in massing troops and creating meaningful tactical or operational breakthroughs on the battlefield because the enemy picks up any force concentration quickly, making it almost impossible to generate battlefield surprise.

Currently, warfare heavily favors defense over offense because ubiquitous sensors make force concentration suicidal, but this is not permanent; historically, new technologies outpace existing organizational and doctrinal constructs, and eventually new warfighting approaches emerge that restore offensive advantage.

Military institutions engage in a constant internal battle between old and new ideas even in peacetime; the difference between peace and war is that if you get it wrong in peace you waste money, but if you get it wrong in war you waste lives.

The Russian Army of 2024 is not the same as the Russian Army that existed in 2022; in long wars, the army you start with is not the army you win with, requiring adaptation and evolution based on interactions and fighting.

There is no historical evidence for 'wonder weapons' or silver bullet solutions; over-relying on single systems is both intellectually lazy and morally perilous; success comes from integration of many technologies with many ideas and organizations led by well-trained, educated humans.

Falsehoods and lies spread more quickly through the internet and social media than truth, according to MIT research, and authoritarian governments can spread misinformation freely while democratic governments that tell the truth face a structural disadvantage in information space.

Tom Rid argues in his recent book on Russian misinformation that 'misinformation and democracy can't coexist,' presenting a fundamental incompatibility between democratic governance and the success of disinformation campaigns.

The solution for democracies facing information warfare is to bring transparency to what both friendly and enemy actors are doing, shining light on all aspects of behavior so people can make informed judgments about truth claims.

The advantage of democracies over autocracies in information space lies in their ability to listen to and leverage all voices and ideas from society, something Putin or Xi cannot allow without threatening regime survival.

Despite risk aversion in democracies regarding military operations, people remain the foundation of every military organization; investing in training, educating, and building people who can learn and adapt at all levels faster than an adversary are critical strategic advantages in the 21st century.

Authoritarian leaders explicitly tell us their intentions (Putin regarding Ukraine, Baltic states, Finland, Sweden, Poland; Xi regarding Taiwan); we don't have to speculate about future intentions because they publicly announce them.