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Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt, eds. In Athena's Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age. Santa Monica, Calif: RAND, 1998. 501pp. $20
THIS LIVELY AND HIGHLY READABLE SURVEY of trends in information warfare provides an excellent overview of an expanding field in military science. The editors, John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School and David Ronfeldt of the RAND Corporation, are well versed in the complex theories of information warfare, and they render the subject highly approachable to those not fully engaged in the debate.
The central theme of the work is that today we are in the midst of a shift from traditional approaches to conflict-where power is based on material strength and information-to a new paradigm in which "information becomes physical and power immaterial." The more traditional approach is embodied in Mars, the ancient Roman god of war, while the new construct is represented by Athena, the cerebral goddess of warrior wisdom-hence the title. This fundamental theme is repeated by a wide variety of contributors in nearly twenty essays.
Interestingly, Arquilla and Ronfeldt believe this shift is not completely a product of the late-twentieth-century technology explosion. They point...