This book narrates the development of science, sci/tech, and intelligence information systems and technologies in the United States from the beginning of World War II to the second decade of our century. The story ranges from a description of the information systems and machines of the 1940s created at Wild Bill Donovan’s predecessors of the Central Intelligence Agency, to the rise of a huge international science information industry, and to the 1990’s Open Access-Open Culture reformers’ reactions to the commercialization of science information. Necessarily, there is much about the people, cultures, and politics that shaped the methods, systems, machines and protests. The reason for that is simple: The histories of technologies and methods are human histories. Science information’s many lives were shaped by idiosyncrasies and chance, as well as by social, economic, political and technical ‘forces’. The varied motives, personalities and beliefs of unique and extraordinary people fashioned science information’s past. The important players ranged from a gentleman scholar who led the Office of Strategic Services’ information work, to an ill-fated Hollywood movie director, to life-mavericks like the science information legend Eugene Garfield, to international financial wheeler-dealers such as Robert Maxwell, and to youthful ultra-liberal ideologically-driven Silicon Valley internet millionaires. However, although there are no determining laws of information history, social, political, legal and economic factors were important. After 1940, science information’s tools and policies, as well as America’s universities, were being molded by the nation’s wealth, its role in international affairs, the stand-off between left and right politics, and by the intensifying conflict between Soviet and Western interests.

During the final three years of the Obama administration, Richard Stengel, the former editor of Time magazine and an Under Secretary of State, was on the front lines of the new global information war. At the time, he was the single person in government tasked with unpacking, disproving and combating both ISIS's messaging and Russian disinformation. Then, in 2016, as the presidential election unfolded, Stengel watched as Donald Trump used disinformation himself, weaponizing the grievances of Americans who felt overlooked. In fact, Stengel quickly came to see how all three players had used the same playbook: ISIS sought to make Islam great again; Putin tried to make Russia great again; and we all know about Trump. In a narrative that is by turns dramatic and eye-opening, Information Wars walks readers through of this often frustrating battle. Stengel moves through Russia and Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and introduces characters from Putin to Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Mohamed bin Salman to show how disinformation is impacting our global society. He illustrates how ISIS terrorized the world using social media, and how the Russians launched a tsunami of disinformation around the annexation of Crimea - a scheme that became the model for their interference with the 2016 presidential election. An urgent book for our times, Information Wars stresses that we must find a way to combat this ever growing threat to democracy.

In recent times, physicists have come to appreciate information’s central role in the universe’s grand plan. That and the fact that an explicit understanding of the informational relationships involved may well be key to unlocking many of the universe’s deepest secrets. That makes the birth of both Computer and Information Science not only essential to the explosion of modern technological success, but also to our understanding of reality itself. In recognizing that, what unfolds is a story not only about Alan Turing and his pioneering colleagues, but also great thinkers like Albert Einstein, Michael Faraday, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others. It therefore pulls in much of modern history and touches on seminal events like the birth of the atomic bomb. It also hints at the reasons behind the various social and political divides we see in the world today. So, in many ways, the story of how we became more informed about information is also the story of the modern age. What you will read of here is the role that information plays in that ongoing saga and many of the twists and turns that have brought us to where we are with information today. In it you will learn that, unbeknown to Turing and others, their work would not only help overthrow the Nazis and thaw the chilling atmosphere of the Cold War to come, but also echo down the ages to remain relevant in a conflict still raging today. That sees the Computer and Information Scientists at loggerheads as they fight to find a right and justifiable place for meaning in information’s definition. About The Open Group Press The Open Group Press is an imprint of The Open Group for advancing knowledge of information technology by publishing works from individual authors within The Open Group membership that are relevant to advancing The Open Group mission of Boundaryless Information FlowTM. The key focus of The Open Group Press is to publish high-quality monographs, as well as introductory technology books intended for the general public, and act as a complement to The Open Group standards, guides, and white papers. The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the consensus position of The Open Group members or staff.

This volume examines intelligence services since 1945 in their role as knowledge producers. Intelligence agencies are producers and providers of arcane information. However, little is known about the social, cultural and material dimensions of their knowledge production, processing and distribution. This volume starts from the assumption that during the Cold War, these core activities of information services underwent decisive changes, of which scientization and computerisation are essential. With a focus on the emerging alliances between intelligence agencies, science and (computer) technology, the chapters empirically explore these transformations and are characterised by innovative combinations of intelligence history with theoretical considerations from the history of science and technology and the history of knowledge. At the same time, the book challenges the bipolarity of Cold War history in general and of intelligence history in particular in favour of comparative and transnational perspectives. The focus is not only the Soviet Union and the United States, but also Poland, Turkey, the two German states and Brazil. This approach reveals surprising commonalities across systems: time and again, the expansion and use of intelligence knowledge came up against the limits that resulted from intelligence culture itself. The book enriches our global understanding of knowledge of the state and contributes to a historical framework for the past decade of debates about the societal consequences of intelligence data processing. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, science and technology studies, security studies and International Relations.

This book explores how the social sciences became entangled with the global Cold War. While duly recognizing the realities of nation states, national power, and national aspirations, the studies gathered here open up new lines of transnational investigation. Considering developments in a wide array of fields – anthropology, development studies, economics, education, political science, psychology, science studies, and sociology – that involved the movement of people, projects, funding, and ideas across diverse national contexts, this volume pushes scholars to rethink certain fundamental points about how we should understand – and thus how we should study – Cold War social science itself.

This book is a comprehensive study of the Iraq Wars in the context of the revolution in military affairs debate.

This edited volume, featuring accomplished scholars, is about the information wars in the Baltic states, a battle that pits Russia against the West with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as sites of contention for great power politics. Chapters address responses from titular populations, local Russian speakers, national governments, activists, journalists, and NATO, as well as the impact of Russian foreign policy on media.

This volume presents the key informational, communication, and socio-political drivers of the Ukrainian state's national security. Since the beginning of the third millennium, there has been an aggravation of global inter-civilizational confrontations, which in 2022 has already resulted in an open military aggression against Ukraine. The hybrid wars against the world of democracy have put ensuring the national security of states on the front pages of world and national agendas. Using the example of Ukraine, the book demonstrates how, in order to achieve their geopolitical interests, authoritarian regimes incite information wars as a prerequisite for the transition to an armed "hot" war. It further shows how these processes actualize the formation of a fundamentally new state policy to ensure information and, more broadly, national security. The book identifies the main threats to national security in modern states and identifies ways of protecting Ukraine's national interests. The book will appeal to scholars, students, and researchers of political science, international relations, social sciences, and neighboring disciplines, as well as practitioners and policy-makers interested in a better understanding of national security drivers and protecting national interests.

This is a study of how Donald J. Trump, his populist credentials notwithstanding, borrows without acknowledgment and stubbornly refuses to come to terms with his indebtedness. Taken together with mobility and conviviality, the principle of incompleteness enables us to distinguish between inclusionary and exclusionary forms of populism, and when it is fuelled by ambitions of superiority and zero-sum games of conquest. Nyamnjoh challenges the reader to reflect on how stifling frameworks of citizenship and belonging predicated upon hierarchies of humanity and mobility, and driven by a burning but elusive quest for completeness, can be constructively transcended by humility and conviviality inspired by taking incompleteness seriously. Nyamnjoh argues that the logic and practice of incompleteness is a healthy antidote to name-calling and scapegoating others as undesirable outsiders, depending on the brand of populism at play. Recognising incompleteness also helps to question sterile and problematic binaries such as those between elites and the impoverished masses among whom populists go to fish for political visibility, prominence and success.

The relationship between information and power is a relevant subject for all times. Today’s perceived ‘information revolution’ has caused information to become a separate object of study during the last two decades for several disciplines. As the contemporary perspective is dominant, information history as a discipline of its own has not yet crystallized. In bringing together studies around a new research agenda on the relationship between information and power across time and space, presenting various governance regimes, media, materials, and modes of communication, this book forces us to rethink the prospects and challenges for such a new discipline.