One of the modern characteristics of war is its inability to lead to a lasting conclusion that favors the winner. If we even thought about it at all, we must have wondered why. Victory is an illusion, partly created by leaders who understand war, and partly by militaries left out of it. We still kill people who are the youngest and strongest of our nations, but we aren't at war when we do it. These days, war is not a battle of artillery as much it is a battle of wills. We are hardly ever at war. War is a matter of winning the will of the protagonists, even if they don't know they are involved. Every country fights wars without the consent of their citizens, often without their participation, but these wars are different, because they are fought without their knowledge. In the old wars, soldiers donned uniforms; horses or tanks moved out in columns; airstrikes left visible marks on towns and villages. The new wars have little to see. One day we will wake to the war we missed, and it will be too late to do much about it. It will already be over.

Intelligence services, businesses and governments use a sinister methodology called an influence campaign to sway the core values of their own countries and others around the globe. This method is used by many different types of world governments (including the U.S.) and can pervade many different sectors of public life. Even seemingly powerful politicians are impacted by influence campaigns. While influence campaigns differ from political campaigns or corporate advertising, they share similar characteristics. Both influence behavior by manipulating beliefs to produce an outcome favorable to the campaign goal. This book explains the mechanisms of influence campaigns and how they affect policy making, often in surprising ways. Chapters detail examples of influence campaigns waged by various governments throughout the years and suggest how the public consciousness should deal with these strategies. As targets of these campaigns, citizens must understand how our leaders use them for their own benefit.

China's information war against the United States is technically clever, broadly applied and successful. The U.S. intelligence community has publicly stated this is a kind of war we do not know how to fight-yet the U.S. military developed and expanded the doctrine of information war. In fact, our military is at a disadvantage because it is part of a democratic, decentralized system of government that separates the state from commercial business. China's political systems are more easily adapted to this form of warfare, as their recent land seizures in the South China Sea demonstrate. We call this annexation, when it is a new form of conquest.

Secrets, whether they are the National Security kind, or the hidden relationships between married couples, are made to be kept. Expose them, and there will be consequences, some grave as the ability of spies to do their jobs; some, the justice of a wronged spouse. Applied to an individual, it is difficult to say which is more severe. Our inability to control our secrets, is a curious mix of policy, law and technology that is out of balance. Policies and law will never keep pace with technology, but there has been little effort to correct fundamental issues that pertain to the making and keeping of secrets. Policies are so complicated that government and business professionals don't know what should be protected. Laws are so convoluted that prosecuting someone for stealing something is like betting on a lottery. Technology helps people steal secrets in such large numbers that policies and laws have little effect on deterrence. At the top, the White House, which should lead in protecting our National Security, has leaked sensitive information. The military, which should be aware of the consequences, leaks at every level. Business leaders ignore the best interests of the company to protect trade and business secrets. The outcome produces harm to our National Security. We can do better by changing basic policies in ways the current administration seems unwilling to do.