Through textually grounded "reverse engineering" of Sun Tzu’s ideas, this study challenges widely held assumptions. Sun Tzu is more straightforward, less "crafty," than often imagined. The concepts are more structural, less aphoristic. The fourteen themes approach provides a way of addressing Sun Tzu’s tendency to speak to multiple, often shifting, audiences at once ("multivocality"). It also sheds light on Sun Tzu’s limitations, including a pervasive zero-sum mentality; focus mostly on conventional warfare; a narrow view of human nature. Sun Tzu’s enduring value is best sought in the text’s extensive attention to warfare’s information aspects, where Sun Tzu made timeless contributions having implications for modern information warfare and especially its human aspects (e.g., algorithm sabotage by subverted insiders). The text points opportunities for small, agile twenty-first-century strategic actors to exploit cover provided by modern equivalents to Sun Tzu’s "complex terrain" (digital systems, social networks, complex organizations, and complex statutes) to run circles around large, sluggish, established institutional actors, reaping great profit from applying Sun Tzu’s insights.

At the heart of the versatility of Sun Tzu’s thinking – and a basic reason it is so extraordinarily conducive to digital age applications – stands its unswerving emphasis on the pivotal importance of information as a resource for strategic actors.

Through textually grounded "reverse engineering" of Sun Tzu’s ideas, this study challenges widely held assumptions. Sun Tzu is more straightforward, less "crafty," than often imagined. The concepts are more structural, less aphoristic. The fourteen themes approach provides a way of addressing Sun Tzu’s tendency to speak to multiple, often shifting, audiences at once ("multivocality"). It also sheds light on Sun Tzu’s limitations, including a pervasive zero-sum mentality; focus mostly on conventional warfare; a narrow view of human nature. Sun Tzu’s enduring value is best sought in the text’s extensive attention to warfare’s information aspects, where Sun Tzu made timeless contributions having implications for modern information warfare and especially its human aspects (e.g., algorithm sabotage by subverted insiders). The text points opportunities for small, agile twenty-first-century strategic actors to exploit cover provided by modern equivalents to Sun Tzu’s "complex terrain" (digital systems, social networks, complex organizations, and complex statutes) to run circles around large, sluggish, established institutional actors, reaping great profit from applying Sun Tzu’s insights.

The chapter examines the distinction between public and private cyberattacks and responses to them in domestic law (e.g. application of criminal law) and international law (e.g. self-defence and countermeasures). After describing the different purposes, nature, and effects of cyberattacks committed by public and private actors, it argues that the determination of whether a particular cyberattack is of a public or private nature should define how states respond to cybersecurity risks. It then argues that the existing domestic and international law frameworks regulating cyberattacks suffer from serious limitations and proposes a holistic approach for responding to cyberattacks, taking into account the difference between public and private cyberattacks.

The Coronavirus pandemic brought a lot of disruption to all aspects of modern society, including social, economic, political and international aspects. The resulting crisis presented various risks and hazards globally, but where there are threats for some actors, others sense opportunities for attaining their goals. Consequently, around the virus pandemic was an infodemic that tested individual, organisational and governmental responses to COVID-19.

The chapter seeks to lay out the conceptual and practical foundations of information warfare in the twenty-first century. Different concepts are identified and defined, together with how they affect and influence the information and cognitive realms of global audiences. The evolution and development of information warfare is identified and analysed. In addition to establishing why the problem of information warfare exists, and at this point in time, some proposals are explored as to how to set about addressing the problem.

There are different generations of information warfare that evolve with technological, (geo)political and economic changes occuring in society. They are a ’convenient’ means of covert and indirect engagement with another actor in international relations while exposing oneself to the minimum of risk and accountability. It is linked to the popularized international relations concept of hybrid warfare.

Chapter 5, “Information Wars,” is the opening case study of four intelligentsia-built resistance systems, which consider how the intelligentsia responded to Nazi persecution with projects bent on maintaining national traditions and rebuilding a Polish state. It examines the one that undergirds the rest: underground information creation and trafficking that kept the elite connected and funneled news into and out of the city. In response to the closure of Polish-language press, radio bookstores, and libraries, a number of educated Poles created an underground world of secret newsletters and journals to keep the city informed about occupier behavior and the circumstances of the wider war. This project involved entangled networks of individuals who were brutally punished if caught, and the work of writing, editing, couriering, and reading underground press initiated many Varsovians into anti-Nazi “conspiracies.” Information sourced in the occupied city was not merely for local consumption but was painstakingly smuggled out by a sprawling network of Polish and international couriers toting encrypted information to the states of the Grand Alliance. This chapter argues that the ability of Poles in Warsaw to counter Nazi propaganda narratives with their own information was essential to all later successful opposition.