During the war in Iraq (the Spanish civil war of post-modern conflict), corporations became prime targets of the open source insurgency. This was because they had become essential cogs in the nation-state war machine (due to the extensive outsourcing we see in post-modern warfare). This targeting was effective. Here's some background on the theory behind these offensives:
Infowar vs. Corporations
As we move forward in this epochal many to many global conflict, and given many early examples from wide variety of hacking attacks and conflicts, we are likely to see global guerrillas come to routinely use information warfare against corporations. These information offensives will use network leverage to isolate corporations morally, mentally, and physically (John Boyd's troika of connectivity). Network leverage comes in three forms:
- Highly accurate lists of targets from hacking "black" marketplaces. These lists include all corporate employee e-mail addresses and phone numbers -- both at work and at home. ~<$0.25 a dossier (for accurate lists).
- Low cost e-mail spam. Messages can be range from informational to phishing attacks. <$0.1 a message.
- Low cost phone spam. Use the same voice-text messaging systems and call centers that can blanket target lists with perpetual calls. Pennies a call.
How an Infowar Campaign Against a Corporation Works
In short, the same mechanisms that make spamming/direct marketing so easy and inexpensive to accomplish, can be used to bring the conflict directly to the employees of a target corporation or its partner companies (in the supply chain). Executives and employees that are typically divorced/removed from the full range of their corporation's activities would find themselves immediately enmeshed in the conflict. The objective of this infowar would be to increase (again, John Boyd):
- Uncertainty. An inability to be certain about future outcomes. If they can do this, what's next? For example: a false/troll e-mail or phone campaign from the CEO that informs employees at work and at home that it will divest from the target area or admits to heinous crimes.
- Menace. An increase personal/familial risk. The very act of connecting to directly to employee generates menace. The questions it should evoke: should I stay employed here given the potential threat?
- Mistrust. A mistrust of the corporations moral and legal status. For example: The dissemination of information on a corporations actions, particularly if they are morally egregious or criminal in nature, through a NGO charity fund raising drive.
With an increase in uncertainty, menace, and mistrust within the target corporation's ranks and across the supply chain partner companies, the target's connectivity (moral, physical, and mental) is likely to suffer a precipitous fall. This reduction in connectivity has the potential to create non-cooperative centers of gravity within the targets as cohesion fails. Some of these centers of gravity would opt to leave the problem (quit or annul contractual relationships) and some would fight internally to divest themselves of this problem.
NOTE: This technique also works relatively well within low intensity (non-kinetic or "bloodless") disruption campaigns.