The general approach to method in this thesis is critical, multiperspectival, synthetic, non-objective (subjective), qualitative, bottom-up and hermeneutical (interpretive). It is critical both in the more straightforward sense of emerging from critical media theory, but also in being critical of method, of epistemology, or more precisely of the western modern tradition of achieving knowledge through the application of scientific methods of inquiry and the pursuit of truth with a capital “T.”

The approach to method is multiperspectival and synthetic in that it chooses from several paths and merges them to suit the purposes of this project. This approach has been called the case-study method or it can be called investigative journalism or it simply can be known as the process of gathering, processing, and distributing information.

The approach is not objective. A subjective position is clear throughout this project. The approach is political. A political perspective and stance toward the content, toward the work should ring throughout. It is not objective not only because it wants to be, but because it believes there is no other way. Objectivity is an illusion. (Herman and Chomsky 1988) Rather than hide behind it, it is better to acknowledge this limitation and pursue a reasoned position.

Tired of the dichotomous quality:quantity mode of thinking, but nevertheless needing to assert a view, this approach is qualitative. Numbers shall not prove certainty. Numbers may emerge, but as they will, not out of an obedience to codify all reality with numerals.

It comes from below. The approach is bottom-up. It is anti-elite and anti-State. Where there is the dialectic of control, the pendulum swinging between the extremes of control and resistance, this thesis sides with the dominated, not the dominators. This project moves through text and territory primarily in the domain of the progenitors of social control. The point is to capture their “knowledge” and twist it back.

Hermeneutical, or simply interpretive, this thesis believes in the individual’s ability to make sense of the world. Passing judgment, attributing meaning, seeing between the lines, these are the characteristics of critical consciousness. To interpret is to see. This thesis sees a dangerous situation in Mexico and a corporate government in the United States that wants to make sure order is maintained.

Taken together these approaches paint an irreverent picture of method. But it is one that feels right and it works. On a more cautious note here is a positive critique of a method employed by a fellow researcher at the University of Texas also working in the areas of the U.S. military and Mexico.

Tim Dunn’s recent book The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border 1978-1992: Low Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home is similar to this thesis in that it examines the U.S. military in relation to Mexico. (Dunn 1996) Dunn focuses on this militarization in terms of two phenomena: the war on drugs and the war against immigrants. But his book also provides useful commentary on methodology that relates to the method used in this work. In his appendix, "Theoretical and Methodological Considerations”, Dunn admits that the focus of his research is "unconventional" and that therefore there are no "overarching theoretical or methodological frameworks" that address his topic. Consequently, Dunn chooses an “eclectic” methodological approach. Method in this thesis is also eclectic.

Dunn's "general methodological framework" is the case study. He borrows Orum, Feagin, and Sjoberg's definition for the case study: "an in-depth, multi-faceted investigation, using qualitative research methods, of a single social phenomenon.” (Orum, Feagin, and Sjoberg 1991) This conception of method is suited to this thesis that deals with communication and information technologies, war and conflict, and contemporary Mexico. A multi-perspectival research topic warrants a multi-faceted investigation.

Dunn writes that the case study method allows the researcher to "deal with the reality behind appearances" and to investigate "many vital features of powerful bureaucracies." The case study method "was particularly helpful in gaining a greater understanding of the complex research issues here, which are largely centered in bureaucratic policies and practices, and also in constructing a critical analysis of those practices and policies." This applies to this work. Much of what is written about Information Warfare doctrine, the Drug War in Latin America, or U.S. military policy toward Mexico comes from bureaucratic policy and practice.

Appealing is Dunn's interpretation that the case study method has as its "primary goal" the idea of contributing "to the extension and refinement of public debate in a democratic social order." It is very similar to the primary goal of investigative journalism, which is another way to describe this method.

Dunn's notion of the case study method as a vehicle for engaging public debate in a democratic society derives from Sjoberg et al in "The Case Study Approach in Social Research: Basic Methodological Issues.” (Sjoberg, Williams, Vaughan, and Sjoberg 1991) In a footnote, Dunn writes that "these authors propose the stimulation of public debate as a standard for assessing social theory, which they view as inherently embedded in methodological approaches of all types." It is the hope that this thesis, or work that derives from it, will help contribute to public debate over the way in which the United States is assisting Mexico militarily.

As mentioned already, Dunn's "main research focus" is on bureaucracies, mainly U.S. government agencies. He asserts as a premise that the "policies and practices" of bureaucracies aimed at controlling the border "deserve substantial critical attention." Here too, in this thesis, much of the focus is on the written products of bureaucracies.

Dunn points, though, to difficulties in researching bureaucracies stemming from the fact that bureaucracies quite often do not want to divulge all information about their practice and policies. Because of this, Dunn says "unfortunately, it was possible only to suggest and initially probe the complex relationships between the bureaucratic power structures examined here." The limitations imposed by reliance on bureaucracies as sources and the necessity to have to infer or suggest are true for this thesis. One example is the role of U.S. Special Forces in Mexico. The U.S. Department of Defense’s 1995 annual report stated that the Special Forces have been deployed to numerous Latin American countries as part of the Pentagon’s hemispheric counternarcotics efforts. But the report doesn’t list the specific countries. (U.S. Department of Defense 1995) Other evidence, both government reports and independent research, shows that the Pentagon and U.S law enforcement agencies are deeply involved in anti-drug activity in Mexico. (Doyle 1993; U.S. Department of State 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997) But even though the U.S. role in the Drug War in Mexico is significant, it is difficult or even impossible to find a government report stating the Special Forces have been deployed in Mexico, or to find a secondary source that has been able to deduce this. Lumsdaine’s (1995) discussion on U.S. military assistance to Mexico is the only reference this research has discovered that eludes to the involvement of the Special Forces. If there were actual proof that Special Forces had been deployed to Mexico under the guise of the Drug War, this knowledge would be detrimental for the governments of the United States and Mexico. Publicity of U.S. troops active on the ground in Mexico, in whatever capacity, would fuel anti-American nationalism in Mexico and anti-interventionism in the United States.

Dunn's sources included government documents, "especially congressional hearing testimony," and "mainstream and alternative press reports, military journals and selected documents, critical analyses of U.S. military doctrines and practices in Latin America." This thesis uses similar sources as Dunn's work. Much of the material gathered for parts of this thesis consists of government documents, press reports, journal articles, and notes from interviews.

A systematic method that Dunn uses requiring inordinate amounts of time is an "investigative strategy" of "pouring over" written bureaucratic records. This process involves comparing the text of "official positions" of various bureaucracies with texts from other government documents and other sources. Dunn states that the purpose of this technique is to produce inconsistencies and contradictions that can "provide greater insight into particular bureaucratic practices and policies." One of Dunn's conclusions from his research and investigation using these methods was that "vital information is also deliberately withheld from public view, especially regarding the U.S. military's support of drug enforcement efforts." As this thesis is also concerned, in part, with the U.S. military connection to drug enforcement efforts in Mexico, there are no illusions that the full story appears in government reports on the subject.

A more thorough elaboration of the concepts and definitions of Information Warfare is necessary so as to provide more accurate understandings when speaking of new communication and information technologies that are integral to Information Warfare doctrine and strategy.

There are several truths about Information Warfare doctrine and strategy that ought to be considered in developing a method for continued research in this area. First, the vast majority of the literature on the subject of Information Warfare is written from the perspective of the military establishment. There are very few analyses on the subject drawn from a critical perspective. Second, a significant portion of the literature on Information Warfare can be found on web sites on the Net. Most of the material located on web sites are reproductions of articles or reports written by scholars at RAND, the National Defense University, branches of the Department of Defense, and other defense related agencies. (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1993; Berkowitz 1995; Garigue 1996; Libicki 1996; Swett 1995) Some of the literature on the Net is produced by independent scholars and journalists. (Brandt 1995; Corn 1996; Haeni 1995; Magsig 1995) Thirdly, because of the emergent nature Information Warfare, because it is a relatively new field, there is not widespread agreement or standardization of key concepts and components. (Evers 1996)

It is fairly easy to locate military establishment web sites containing documents, analyses, and reports on Information Warfare, but it is more difficult to ascertain the common discourse or thread that runs through this literature. Some analysts define two primary categories of Information Warfare – cyberwar and netwar – (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1993) while others identify a multitude of categories. (Libicki 1995) A conceptual problem is to distill from the contrasting literature on Information Warfare a working set of definitions. (Pike 1996)

It is instructive to turn to the technologies utilized by the U.S. military establishment and its allies in the assault on Iraq during the Gulf War, referred to by some as the first information war. (Campen 1992) During this ‘war’, military surveillance, navigation, and weapon deployment were heavily reliant on computers, telecommunication systems, satellites, global positioning systems, and night vision. (Bogard 1996) A further examination of the technologies used in the Gulf War and the technologies described in the literature on Information Warfare establishes more clearly the types of communication and information technologies essential for attaining Information Warfare capability.

A caveat should be noted here. Information Warfare capability in the broad sense – that which goes outside strictly military considerations – is not solely a function of growth in sophisticated information-based military technologies. Information Warfare is a fusion of military capability and other capabilities developed in the non-military private and public sectors. (Nichiporuk and Builder 1995) For example, Netwar, the application of the Net, or the Internet, to purposes of political communication by resistant anti-State actors is an activity that has been developed outside the military establishment. (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1996) This capability is a function of the densities of the telephone system and the penetration of computers. In rural Mexico phone density is low and most people don’t have computers. Nevertheless, the Zapatistas in Chiapas and their supporters have been able to exploit the Net to their own advantage.

The general focus of this thesis is to ascertain the extent to which the United States, under the umbrella of the Drug War, is aiding the Mexican government in developing its Information Warfare capabilities. In order to address this problem, this thesis will try to accomplish the following:

1) identify technologies that enable Information Warfare
2) identify sources and types of military assistance to Mexico
3) show which types of military assistance are IW technologies

Because the Drug War has replaced the war on communism as the primary ideological rationale for continued U.S. military intervention in Latin America and Mexico (Castañeda, J. 1993; Johns 1992; Ross 1995), it is logical to presume that the Drug War serves as a means for the greatest amount of military assistance. On a hemispheric level this has been the case. (Mabry 1988, 1990, 1994, 1996) This thesis identifies primary and secondary sources that point to the hemispheric Drug War as the instrument for expansion of computer-based communication and information technologies that are key technologies of Information Warfare. It makes sense that the greatest expansion of Information Warfare technologies in Mexico has occurred vis a vis the expansion of the Drug War. The extent of these technologies along the U.S.-Mexico border is a predictor, or model, for similar kinds of technologies found in the interior of Mexico. (Dunn 1996) While the U.S. armed forces are important to the militarization of the Drug War, both in Mexico and on a hemispheric level, other U.S. agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the State Department, play an important role in the Drug War and in the transference of technology and technological knowledge to Mexico. (Doyle 1993; U.S. Department of State 1997)

By concentrating on the Drug War as the route for technological military assistance this thesis encompasses more than the U.S. armed forces and includes a variety of interconnected federal agencies as both subjects and sources of information. Therefore, the concept of military assistance in this thesis is not narrowly restricted to military assistance coming from the Pentagon.

The initial method used to discover the extent of U.S. military assistance to Mexico was a survey of U.S. and Mexican secondary sources in English and Spanish including newspapers, magazines, journals, theses, dissertations, and books, found in libraries at the University of Texas, in Mexico City, on web sites and email listservs. Interviews and discussions with academics, activists, and journalists in Mexico helped form an approach and frame the understandings. Primary sources consulted include government reports from the General Accounting Office, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of State. Direct interviews with government officials at these agencies might have be useful. However, this was beyond the scope of this master’s thesis.

As mentioned in relation to Dunn, because of the nature of bureaucracies – to facilitate and to serve the purposes of the system in which it is embedded – reliance on governmental bureaucracies as sources perhaps may only reveal knowledge already in the public domain. Nevertheless, sufficient knowledge exists as to what constitutes Information Warfare technology and as to what sorts of technology the United States provides to Mexico so as to make a basic argument regarding the extent of U.S. assistance in shaping Mexico's Information Warfare trajectory.

By comparing a list of technologies, technological know-how, funding, and support that comes under the broad category of U.S. military assistance to Mexico – not just from the Pentagon – against a list of technologies that comprise those necessary for Information Warfare capacity it is possible to judge whether none, few, some, many, or all U.S. assistance is in the realm of Information Warfare.

Theory in this thesis serves as an intellectual guide. It is not the intention that this thesis will prove or disprove any particular theory. Rather theory here informs and directs some of the overarching perspectives and approaches. There are numerous theories which this thesis implicitly entertains, yet only some of the more central theories that deal with issues of technology, social control, and domination are evident. (Dandeker 1990; Horkheimer and Adorno 1996; Foucault 1995; Giddens 1995; Lyon and Zureik 1996; Marcuse 1991; Marx 1976; Poster 1990; Rule 1974; Webster and Robins 1986)

As eluded to above, by suggesting a plurality of perspectives, theory in this thesis is multiperspectival. The mulitperspectival theory approach is advanced by Kellner (1995, 1997) There is no adherence to any one particular school of thought and even certain theoretical traditions at odds with one another are included. For example, the Frankfurt School’s critical theorists and Post Modern theorists have had antagonistic relations, yet both are seen as having value. (Kellner 1997) Synthetic multiperspectival approaches used herein are inclusive of antagonistic theories and provide a dialectic through which research material is examined.

There is unity in the theoretical perspectives presented below in the sense that they are all critical of the status quo. Moreover, they provide the basis for much of what is radical social theory today. The multiperspectival approach of this thesis is entirely critical. This includes the approach to method, to epistemology, and to the substantive content presented in this thesis, that of the military-informational-complex and just a few of its offshoots: the Drug War and Information Warfare.

An important perspective of this thesis proposes that theory can be employed as a weapon for change. (Kellner 1995; Kellner 1997) A corollary of this is that if theory has no use-value as a social weapon, then it is a non-applicable intellectual construct – stagnant theory. It is hoped that the finished product of this thesis will not end up on a dusty shelf in a library, but rather will contribute to discourse and action by individuals and organizations opposed to U.S. military intervention in Mexico or related projects.

Another underlying belief in this thesis is the concept of self-theory. A pamphlet titled Revolutionary Self-Theory defined it as “the body of critical thought you construct for your own use. You construct it and use it when you make an analysis of why your life is the way it is, why the world is the way it is.” (Spectacular Times 1992) Before becoming familiar with particular named theories, I drew on my own body of critical self-theory. This next section adds to the body of critical perspectives which I have attained outside the academy. These are an important selection of theories of social domination and control. They serve as guides; points from which to launch into Information Warfare.

Among the primary theoretical perspectives running throughout this thesis, implicitly and explicitly, are those that help to explain the role that technology has in maintaining social control. Technology is central to Information Warfare. Information Warfare is at its core about maintaining dominance of one social group over another. It is therefore logical to pursue the critical thinking that attempts to explain and theorize the way in which technology serves as such an instrument. As of yet there are few critical theoretical works on the subject of Information Warfare. The body of literature on Information Warfare, which we will see in more detail later, is almost entirely written from the perspectives of adherents to the military-informational-complex. It is necessary, therefore, to look to relevant theoretical approaches that say nothing about Information Warfare per se, but from which perspectives can be extrapolated to begin a critical interrogation of the subject. The summary below surveys theories on capitalism and control, technology and domination, surveillance, simulation, and hegemony.

Marx’s Capital (1976) remains the most incisive analysis and dissection of capitalism, the overarching system of social control, the system that imposes work. Capitalism has manifested itself as a system in which people dominate nature and in which capital dominates people. Through industry, science, technology, and labor, people coerce nature to take the form of products and commodities.

Labour is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. (Marx 1976, 283)

All directly social or communal labor on a large scale requires, to a greater or lesser degree, a directing authority, in order to secure the harmonious co-operation or the activities of individuals, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the motion of the total productive organism, as distinguished from the motion of its separate organs. (Marx 1976, 448)

As capitalism developed, the worker began to be replaced by the tool, by the machine, by technology. Whereas before, technology was subservient to the worker, the worker became subservient to technology. Marx saw that, through the process of the industrial revolution, workers became dependent on an assembly line driven by machines.

The machine, which is the starting-point of the industrial revolution, replaces the worker, who handles a single tool, by a mechanism operating with a number of similar tools and set in motion by a single motive power, whatever the form of that power. (Marx 1976, 497)

An organized system of machines to which motion is communicated by the transmitting mechanism from an automatic centre is the most developed form of production by machinery. Here we have, in place of the isolated machine, a mechanical monster whose body fills whole factories, and whose demonic power, at first hidden by the slow and measured motion of it gigantic members, finally bursts forth in the fast and feverish whirl of its countless working organs. (Marx 1976, 503)

. . . the revolution in the modes of production of industry and agriculture made necessary a revolution in the general conditions of the social process of production, i.e. in the means of communication and transportation. . . the means of communication and transport gradually adapted themselves to the mode of production of large-scale industry by means of a system of river steamers, railways, ocean steamers, and telegraphs. (Marx 1976, 505, 506)

In The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society, Beniger (1986) noted that the information revolution and the “so-called Information Society” are part of a larger Control Revolution which he defined as:

a complex of rapid changes in the technological and economic arrangements by which information is collected, stored, processed, and communicated, and through which formal or programmed decisions might effect societal control. From its origins in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Control Revolution has continued unabated, and recently it has been accelerated by the development of microprocessing technologies. In terms of the magnitude and pervasiveness of its impact upon society, intellectual and cultural no less than material, the Control Revolution already appears to be as important to the history of this century as the Industrial Revolution was to the last. (Beniger 1986)

The Information Society, I have concluded, is not so much the result of any recent social change as of increases begun more than a century ago in the speed of material processing. Microprocessor and computer technologies, contrary to currently fashionable opinion, are not new forces only recently unleashed upon an unprepared society, but merely the latest installment in the continuing development of the Control Revolution. (Beniger 1986)

Because both the activities of information processing and communication are inseparable components of the control function, a society's ability to maintain control - at all levels from interpersonal to international relations - will be directly proportional to the development of its information technologies. (Beniger 1986)

Even the logistics of nineteenth century armies, then the most difficult problem in processing and control, came to be dwarfed in complexity by the material economy. . . (Beniger 1986, 120)

The rapid development of rationalization and bureaucracy in the middle and late nineteenth century led to a succession of dramatic new information-processing and communication technologies. These innovations served to contain the control crisis of industrial society in what can be treated as three distinct areas of economic activity: production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. (Beniger 1986, 16)

Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1996) is the first major work coming from the left, from a radical perspective, to critique the Enlightenment and modernism. (Kellner 1997) They wrote this piece in the dark days of World War II, when it was still unclear whether Hitler and Fascism would win or lose. The basic premise of this work is that the Enlightenment had inverted and turned in on itself. The notion that through the application of science and technology society would progress forward for the good of all became its opposite; science and technology became tools for social control and subjugation.

The dilemma that faced us in our work proved to be the first phenomena of investigation: the self-destruction of the Enlightenment. We are wholly convinced – and therein lies our petitio principii – that social freedom is inseparable from Enlightenment thought. Nevertheless, we believe that we have just as clearly recognized that the notion of this very way of thinking, no less than the actual historic forms – the social institutions – with which it is interwoven, already contains the seed of the reversal universally apparent today. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1996, xiii)

In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1996, 3)

This technological political dominance, according to Horkheimer and Adorno, was rooted in the economic grip that elites held over the rest of society.

No mention is made of the fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest. A technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1996, 121)

Marcuse also mirrored a rather bleak perspective of Adorno and Horkheimer that resistance under this technological regime is near impossible, as evidenced in his statement that, “In the medium of technology, culture, politics, and the economy merge into an omnipresent system which swallows up or repulses all alternatives.” (Marcuse 1991, xlviii)

Marcuse believed that with technology at its base “contemporary society tends to be totalitarian.” (Marcuse 1991, 3) Marcuse argued that the State, via the acquisition and application of science and technology, is indebted to technology for enabling it to remain powerful and in control. Technology has been imperative to modern governments’ existence.

Today political power asserts itself through its power over the machine process and over the technical organization of the apparatus. The government of advanced and advancing industrial societies can maintain and secure itself only when it succeeds in mobilizing, organizing, and exploiting the technical, scientific, and mechanical productivity available to industrial civilization. (Marcuse 1991, 3)

The industrial society which makes technology and science its own is organized for the ever-more-effective domination of man and nature, for the ever-more-effective utilization of its resources. (Marcuse 1991, 17)

Today, domination perpetuates and extends itself not only through technology but as technology, and the latter provides the great legitimation of the expanding political power, which absorbs all spheres of culture. (Marcuse 1991, 158)

. . .those who have control over the workings of a particular technology accumulate power and inevitably form a kind of conspiracy against those who have no access to the specialized knowledge made available by the technology. (Postman 1993, 9)

The relationship between information and the mechanisms for its control is fairly simple to describe: Technology increases the available supply of information. As the supply is increased, control mechanisms are strained. Additional control mechanisms are needed to cope with new information. (Postman 1993, 72)

A more fundamental argument of Postman’s suggests that we, as humans, through the development of computer technology have become more like machines. We are becoming nothing more that some form of cyborgian information processors and the nature which we manipulate is our raw information.

it is the dominant metaphor of our age; it defines our age by suggesting a new relationship to information, to work, to power, and to nature itself. That relationship can best be described by saying that the computer redefines humans as “information processors” and nature itself as information to be processed. The fundamental metaphorical message of the computer, in short, is that we are machines – thinking machines, to be sure, but machines nonetheless. It is for this reason that the computer is the quintessential, incomparable, near-perfect machine for Technopoly. (Postman 1993, 111)

On the one hand, novel media technologies provide more diversity of choice, more possibility of autonomy over culture, and more openings for the intervention of alternative culture and ideas. Yet the new computer technologies also provide new forms of surveillance and control, with electronic eyes and systems in the workplace providing a contemporary incarnation of Big Brother. The new media technologies also provide powerful forms of social control through more efficient, subtly concealed techniques of indoctrination and manipulation. (Kellner 1995, 16)

In one of the first works on surveillance that addresses computer technology, Private Lives and Public Surveillance, Rule (1973) introduced the concepts of powers of control, systems of control, and systems of surveillance. These “systems of mass surveillance and control” rely “heavily upon documentation” (Rule, p. 29), of which Rule claimed computer technology plays a significant role, but not a determining one. Rule completed this work in the early 1970s prior to the emergence of the so-called information revolution. He did not place as much emphasis on the computer in systems of control and domination as he might have done today, stating that the computer is only one of several factors, that “the growth of mass surveillance thrives on a variety of increased efficiencies in operations, of which the computer is only one.” (Rule 1973, 277)

One thing mentioned in Rule’s work, which is at the root of later thoughts on the dialectics of control and resistance, is the idea that technology can be used for both social control as well as evasion.

Moreover, innovations in the technology of control, so much emphasized by writers on these topics, have as their counterpart innovations in the technology of evasion. . . One would be wrong to assume that the growth of social scale and technology have favoured only one side if the struggle between evasion and control. (Rule 1973, 342)

Thus the growth of large-scale social structures not only subjects men to new forms of social control, but also provides them with new possibilities for misbehaviour. (Rule 1973, 343)

Foucault, on the other hand, while offering instructive insights and explanations of surveillance and power, persisted in this mode of thinking that sees little room for any kind of oppositional use of new technologies. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault (1977), primarily in the section titled Discipline, introduced his conception of surveillance which he illustrated with the model of the Panopticon, based on Bentham’s 19th century circular prison design. In this model, “inspection functions ceaselessly. The gaze is alert everywhere” (Foucault 1977, 195).

The word surveillance appears relentlessly in this work: “constant surveillance” (Foucault 1977, 199), “generalized surveillance” (209), “urban surveillance” (213), “permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance” (214), “the daily exercise of surveillance” (217), “total and detailed surveillance” (220), “hierarchical surveillance, continuous registration, perpetual assessment and classification” (220)

Foucault attributed the administration of control and domination to surveillance, through observation. This mechanism of observation induces power.

The exercise of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation; an apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see induce effects of power, and in which, conversely, the means of coercion make those on whom they are applied clearly visible. (Foucault 1977, 170, 171)

Side by side with the major technology of the telescope, the lens and the light beam, which were an integral part of the new physics and cosmology, there were the minor techniques of multiple and intersecting observation, of eyes that must see without being seen; using methods of supervision and methods of exploitation, and obscure art of light and the visible was secretly preparing a new knowledge of man. (Foucault 1977, 171)

The questions raised below in this paragraph from Discipline and Punish regarding how to establish a “network of communication” between the “observation machines” seem to have been answered with the application of networks of computer and telecommunication technologies.

The disciplinary institutions secreted a machinery of control that functioned like a microscope of conduct; the fine, analytical divisions that they created formed around men an apparatus of observation, recording and training. How was one to subdivide the gaze in these observation machines? How was one to establish a network of communication between them? How was one so to arrange things that a homogenous, continuous power would result from their calculated multiplicity? (Foucault 1977, 173)

. . . for although surveillance rests on individuals, its functioning is that of a network of relations from top to bottom, but also to a certain extent from bottom to top and laterally; this network ‘holds’ the whole together and traverses it in its entirety with effects of power that derive from one another: supervisors, perpetually supervised. (Foucault 1977, 177)

Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the greater abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization of knowledge; (Foucault 1977, 217)

In A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Giddens (1995) criticized Foucault’s theories on surveillance by stating that Foucault “links the expansion of surveillance with the rise of capitalism and the modern state” but in a very general way. (Giddens 1995, 171) He stated that Foucault “draws too close an association between prison and the factory” (Giddens 1995, 172) and that “in regarding the prison (in the form of Bentham’s plan for the Panopticon) as the exemplar of power as discipline, Foucault produces too negative a view of ‘bourgeois freedoms’, and of the liberal-reformist zeal they helped to inspire.” (Giddens 1995, 172)

Giddens put forth a simple two-part definition of surveillance.

By ‘surveillance’ I refer to two connected phenomena. First, to the accumulation of ‘information’ – symbolic materials that can be stored by an agency or collectivity. Second, to the supervision of the activities of subordinates by their superiors within any collectivity. (Giddens 1995, 169)

One might suppose that the arrival of the computer, the most extraordinary extension of the storage capacity of the human mind yet devised, is the most recent important development in the expansion of surveillance as information control. . . But the computer is not as disjunctive from the early history of industrial capitalism as one might imagine; and to see computerization alone as a new and quite distinct adjunct to surveillance is misleading. (Giddens 1995, 175)

These points are exceedingly important, because they run counter to a common view that a ‘post-industrial society’, based upon coding of information, has replaced, or is in the course of replacing, the old ‘industrial society’ associated with the sweat of the factory. But there is a much more integral and continuous connection between information control and processing and the rise of capitalist society than such a view would suggest. (Giddens 1995, 175)

In Information Technology: A Luddite Analysis, Webster and Robins (1986) incorporated Foucault’s Panopticism into an analysis of new computer-based information technologies. They believed that new communication and information technologies are supporting the lateral spread of power and control, but that unlike Foucault’s interpretation of Bentham’s Panopticon model, new technologies have transcended the physical constraints and have elevated Panopticism into the realm of cyberspace.

We have spent so long on this presentation of Bentham’s Panopticon because we want to argue that Foucault is right in seeing it as a significant landmark in the history of the human mind. We want to suggest that the new communication and information technologies – particularly in the form of the electronic grid towards which they are moving – permit a massive extension of that same principle of mobilization to which Bentham aspired. What these technologies support, in fact, is the same dissemination of power and control, but freed from the architectural and geographical constraints of Bentham’s stone and brick prototype. On the basis of the information revolution, not just the prison or the factory, but the social totality, comes to be part of the hierarchical and disciplinary Panoptic machine. (Webster and Robins 1986, 346)

We are not suggesting that there is, or will be, a single omniscient and all-seeing inspective force in the wired society. The nodal points on the electronic grid will be multiple and differential, though concentrated in key corporate and state hands. But we are suggesting is that technologies have been constituted to watch and control, to control through watching. And I.T. extends this capacity. In it is perfected the ability to mobilize and control through watching and monitoring. (Webster and Robins 1986, 346)

One particular type of I.T. produced from the military-industrial-scientific complex is Command, Control, and Communications Systems – integrated control and surveillance systems that are the ‘sinews and nerves of military power’. Central to the maintenance of military superiority is the capacity to monitor, observe, and act upon enemy activities and resources. (Webster and Robins 1986, 339)

Warfare and military organizations have been at the leading edge of processes of bureaucratization in modern societies. Thus, one should resist the temptation to view bureaucratic surveillance largely in terms of the imperatives of capital accumulation and the dynamics of the capitalist business enterprise. (Dandeker 1990, viii)

The rise of the modern nation-state is marked by the development of specialized bureaucratic organizations concerned with the management of its emergent external and internal boundaries. With the process of modernization, the focus of the armed forces is increasingly on external matters while the populations within the boundaries of the nation-state become the subjects of police surveillance. (Dandeker 1990, 58)

Dandeker, as Webster and Robins did, pointed to C3I and the electronic battlefield. It seems this is one area where in the United States the armed forces has much greater experience than domestic police forces. Although it wouldn’t be surprising if some domestic policy makers are pushing for the idea of electronic battlefields in the heart of U.S. cities.

First, advances in technology have continued to transform the means of destruction and mobility: greater firepower, faster combat units, and more precision in delivery systems. Of particular interest for the present argument is the application of modern technology to the means of command and control, or in contemporary parlance C3I (command, control, communication and intelligence). This has produced what has been termed the ‘electronic battlefield’: an extensive network of near instantaneous communications between central authorities and lower echelons as well as between different sub-units within military organizations. Using such devices, ranging from personal radio to satellite technology, this C3I network gives senior commanders and political leaders scope for directing and monitoring military activities around the globe. (Dandeker 1990, 91, 92)

In the late twentieth century mankind is at a great crossroads. Until now the project of emancipation (or human progress) was based on the extension of (instrumental) reason to society. The human race advanced when it gained knowledge of its situation and applied that knowledge to life. The issue now is that this form of adaptive action itself has become non-adaptive, retrogressive, or a form of domination. (Poster 1990, 40)

In the late twentieth century technical conditions of surveillance have considerably advanced, though Foucault neglected to take notice of them. The population as a whole has long been affixed with numbers and the discipline of the norm has become a second nature. (Poster 1990, 91)

Today’s ‘circuits of communication’ and the databases they generate constitute a Superpanopticon, a system of surveillance without walls, windows, towers or guards. The quantitative advances in the technologies of surveillance result in a qualitative change in the microphysics of power. Technological change, however, is only part of the problem. The populace has been disciplined to surveillance and to participating in the process. (Poster 1990, 93)

Surveillance refers to the monitoring and supervision of populations for specific purposes. Of special interest are the ways in which new technologies are augmenting the power of surveillance in the late twentieth century, and thereby influencing the privacy debate. Three things should be noted about this. First, large-scale surveillance by bureaucratic organization is a product of modernity, not of new technologies. Second, this surveillance has two faces; advantages appear alongside serious disadvantages. Finally, the new technologies facilitate some major magnification of surveillance power; some even argue that they change its character qualitatively. (Lyon and Zureik 1996, 3)

Seeing the necessity and validity of a synthetic social theory of surveillance that combines these three traditions Lyon and Zureik noted Anthony Giddens who they said “as a sympathetic critic of all three theoretical traditions, has attempted to produce an intelligent synthesis of the best of each.” One concept they borrowed from Giddens that has relevance to this thesis is the “dialectic of control” which “exists in all such situations, giving subjects the chance to ‘answer back’ to their ‘surveillers’” (Lyon and Zureik 1996, 8) In the case of Information Warfare, it may not be so much a matter of answering back, but clearly there are both dominant and resistance uses of communication and information technologies. With respect to new technologies, there is a dialectic, or a pendulum, that swings back and forth between social control and social liberation. In some senses resistance groups have had the upper hand with their ability to use the Internet as an effective means of political communication.

Lyon and Zureik emphasized that surveillance is not solely a function of new information technology, but that these new technologies are surveillance enhancers.
Because surveillance is a central component of the modern state and the institutions of industrial capitalism, it is incorrect to think of it as a twentieth-century phenomenon made possible solely by the new information technology and the computerization of the so-called postindustrial society. To view surveillance in this light is to subscribe to technological determinism and to elevate technology above its place; it is to argue that control by means of information is associated with the decline of industrialism and the emergence of postindustrialism. (Lyon and Zureik 1996, 11)

In The Simulation of Surveillance, Bogard (1996), drew primarily on the “poststructuralist or postmodernist discourse” of Foucault and on the “philosophical-literary writings” of Baudrillard (Bogard 1996, 5) to make an argument that goes beyond more traditional notions of surveillance and moves to newer territory of simulation.

Bogard defined surveillance as:

Surveillance is a social technology of power – supervising, monitoring, and recording, its most common methods, are simply ways to control persons and their behavior – and we can certainly describe its uses, and effects in relatively straightforward, sociological terms. (Bogard 1996, 8)

It is simulation, however, that is the key to explaining the direction that surveillance societies are taking today, a movement that is more about the perfection and totalization of existing surveillance technologies than some kind of radical break in their historical development. (Bogard 1996, 9)

Simulation, we could say, is the panoptic imaginary. . . We are dealing first of all with a kind of hyperpanoptics – instead of architectures of control, walls and floors and viewing locations, we need to talk about cyberarchitectures, digital structures, and environments; instead of orderings of space and time, virtual space-times and the coding conventions for displaying them onscreen; instead of visibilities and temporal series, about virtual light, programmed images, and cyberloops. (Bogard 1996, 19)

At the end of this century, military control is rapidly becoming a paradigm of social control, as battlefield technology is ever more routinely and successfully adapted to between-war uses. (Bogard 1996, 83)

War today is as much a matter of simulation as it is of battlefield engagement. In the Persian Gulf War, conducted under the sign of the United State’s purge of the legacy of Vietnam, preparing for the war consumed far more time than its brief four-day execution. It was preceded by months of war-gaming, modeling, constructing combat scenarios, satellite targeting, training soldiers for a high-tech encounter that included the possible use of advanced chemical and biological weapons, probing the world political scene for support, and preparing the general public for the inevitability of the conflict. (Bogard 1996, 83)

Simulation simplifies and sorts out this virtual simultaneity, brings the chaos of modern war paradoxically back into “time,” not the real time of events, but the simulated, “timeless” time of their reproduction, their onscreen, computer-enhanced image. That is, it indeed supports the increasingly failing vision of the war-machine, but it does so on its own terms. In the long term, it may mean the elimination of the human soldier, the original ‘observation-machine’ in war, from the field of battle, as his functions are increasingly replaced and executed by computer simulations. For now and the near future, it means investment in and development of cyborg warriors, soldiers who for all practical purposes are man-made interfaces – prosthetic enhancements of the ocular-optical functions of the war apparatus – designed to operate fearlessly on the lightning fast, information-saturated, and increasingly uncertain terrain of combat. (Bogard 1996, 84)

Although not concerned with new technologies, this next section provides important theoretical underpinnings of this thesis. After all, it is regional hegemony throughout the Americas that the United States seeks to maintain. The Drug War may be viewed as a vehicle to transmit new Information Warfare technologies, but it is through this military technology that the United States has the means to act as regional hegemon.

Below are historical conceptions of hegemony. Perhaps the most useful interpretation of hegemony, for the purposes of examining the Drug War and Information Warfare in Mexico, is the last by Agnew and Corbridge because it deals with the subject on a more global or transnational level.

In Gramsci's Concept of 'Egemonia', Williams (1960) offered an early definition and understanding of hegemony, a concept developed by Gramsci beginning in his Prison Notebooks.

By 'hegemony' Gramsci seems to mean a sociopolitical situation, in his terminology a 'moment', in which the philosophy and practice of a society fuse or are in equilibrium; an order in which a certain way of life and thought is dominant, in which one concept of reality is diffused throughout society in all its institutional and private manifestations, informing with its spirit, all taste, morality, customs, religious and political principles, and al social relations, particularly in their intellectual and moral connotation. An element of direction and control, not necessarily conscious, is implied. (Williams 1960)

In Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci, Mouffe (1979) elaborated on the ideological component of hegemony, the way in which the ideas of the dominant classes become fused with the popular will.

In fact, for Gramsci — and it is this which constitutes his originality — hegemony is not to be found in a purely instrumental alliance between classes through which the class demands of the allied classes are articulated to those of the fundamental class, with each group maintaining its own individuality within the alliance as well as its own ideology. According to him hegemony involves the creation of a higher synthesis, so that all its elements fuse in a 'collective will' which becomes the new protagonist of political action during that hegemony's entire duration. It is through ideology that this collective will is formed since its very existence depends on the creation of ideological unity which will serve as the 'cement'. (Mouffe 1979)

As an 'organizing principle' hegemony structures our world view. Hegemonic ideology represents not simply a dominant view, but a world view that is seen as 'natural.' Our perceptions of the world and our ability to make sense of it or understand it are determined by, or at least shaped by, our vocabulary and our perceptual experiences. The tools we use to understand our world are provided for us within a social context. These tools serve to reinforce the stability of the social context. In this way the tools must be considered to be political in nature. Aspects of our life that are often considered nonpolitical, or civil, and independent of significance to the maintenance of state order, are, according to Gramsci, most important for an understanding of the apparent political consensus. Our socialization within a social order is not politically neutral but, instead, most fundamentally a political socialization. (Rachlin 1988)

This notion of hegemony or cultural-political order departs significantly from another usage of the term, when it is used simply to refer to the domination exercised by a single state over all other states or over a particular historical epoch. Particular states may well be agents of hegemony, as will be argued later, but there is no necessary requirement for a period of geopolitical order to be associated with domination by a single state. At the very least, global hegemony presupposes the establishment of a dominant historic bloc of elites in different states that accept fundamental premises about the nature of the world economy and inter-state relations. (Agnew and Corbridge 1995, 17)

We join with other commentators in linking a tentative globalization of modern life to the construction of overlapping sovereignties and networks of power that are in turn associated with a new form of hegemony: what we shall call transnational liberalism. (Agnew and Corbridge 1995, 164)

The globalization of the international political economy is based on a number of processes that we have documented already: the internationalization of production and finance, the new international division of labour, massive migration from poorer to richer countries and the internationalization of state activities. These changes have been accompanied by shifts in the nature of communication and informational technologies that collectively have been called the 'informational revolution'. The new technologies effectively tie together people in widely separated places. The pace and intensity of the movement of ideas, products and people have increased explosively since the 1960s with the development of jet passenger transportation, computer networking and electronic communications. (Agnew and Corbridge 1995, 214)

Capitalism is the fundamental system of social control and domination, the system within which other forms of social control and domination exist. Capitalist domination began with the domination of “man” over nature and continued with the direct control and supervision of workers functioning as machines in the process of production. Capitalism’s growth required hierarchical bureaucracies to administer and manage the increasing complexity of capitalist organizations. Communication and information technologies became inseparable from these bureaucratized institutions of capital. In addition to serving communication needs between and within different sectors of the economy, these technologies also began to aid the process of surveillance, supervision, and regulation that became necessary to control the workers in the production process.

New microprocessor-based communication and information technologies aid both in the organization of capital and in the organization of the workforce needed to maintain capitalism. In the sense that the current organizational needs of capital and capitalism have their roots in the late 19th century crisis in control, the new technologies are not part of a new information revolution or third wave, but rather are part of a continuation of a Control Revolution. These new technologies do not enable fundamental changes in the way society and economies are organized. Instead they add to the ability of those in power to continue to maintain order and control in society.

That technology would serve the interests of social control and domination can be said to be an inherent feature of technology, science, reason, and knowledge. The society in which we live, out of which new microprocessor-based communication and information technology emerged, is, as a technological society, with eroding rights of privacy, a system of domination and control. Technology is not merely a vehicle for domination but is a form of domination in and of itself. Having grown out of capitalist social and economic relations, and out of a system of science that is embedded in capitalism, technology can not be value-free, but instead is laden with repressive characteristics. An even more critical perspective suggests that we, as humans, have let technology take over. No longer is technology a tool in the hands of humans, but conversely humans are becoming tools in the “hands” of technology.

Given these parameters of a totalitarian technological society in which technology not only serves as a vehicle of control and domination, but embodies social control and domination, it is difficult to account for possibilities of resistance. Nevertheless, some critical perspectives have opened up the discourse on technology to include the dialectic of control and resistance, to include a discussion of how new technologies, even given this bleak framework, offer the potential for resistance and opposition.

Arising out of the factory, but perhaps even more so out of the prison and other disciplinary institutions, such as the police or the military, has been the need to supervise, the need for surveillance. Critical perspectives on surveillance are appropriate to incorporate into to new critiques of communication and information technologies. It is through the application of these new microprocessor-based technologies that massive quantities of information concerning individuals can be collected, processed, and stored. Moreover, it is through these new technologies that individuals or other societies can be more accurately observed, monitored, and regulated.

A significant contribution that new microprocessor-based communication and information technologies have made to the field of surveillance is to have eliminated the physical constraints imposed by real walls and barriers. Within cyberarchitectures and virtual terrains surveillance can take on truly omnipotent forms. The permanent gaze of the watchful eye is no longer human, but of an electronic eye that can be as near as a video camera mounted inside an ATM machine or as far as a remote sensing satellite miles above the earth’s surface.

Moving from surveillance to simulation technologies we see more closely how microprocessor-based communication and information technology is applied to systems of control and domination that have direct military usefulness. It is in this brief examination of simulation, an offshoot of surveillance, that brings us closer to the conceptualizations of Information Warfare. Just as the theorist on simulation draws on the Gulf War for examples of the new methods of simulation used in war, so too do Information Warfare theorists hark back to the Gulf War as a significant milestone.

The purpose of the United States, and its proxy governments in Latin America and elsewhere, in acquiring Information Warfare capability in the form of new surveillance and simulation technologies, is to maintain its regional and global hegemony. In international relations, these new technologies are simply tools to enable the United States to maintain dominance and control.

While it is true that some of the critical perspectives presented in this chapter view technology as a totalitarian and seamless system in which resistance is near impossible, the perspectives that suggest a dialectic of control and resistance are more appealing. Table 1 outlines some of the binary concepts that come from looking beyond the totalitarian understandings of technology. Where there is control there will be resistance; where there are efforts to dominate there will be efforts to liberate; where there are institutions of hegemony there will be counter-hegemonic institutions; under the watchful eye of surveillance devices there will be those who become invisible.
 

The characteristics noted in the column to the left in Table 1 are key in the Information Warfare discourse. The chief proponents of this way of thinking exist within the military, centralized vertical hierarchies, in which uniformity and homogeneity are the norm. Through technology Information Warfare adherents seek to dominate, control, and maintain hegemony. The characteristics noted in the column to the right are represented in resistance movements, like the Zapatistas and the pro Zapatista groups around the world. These people are organized in decentralized, horizontal, self-regulating networks. They too use new technologies, such as the Internet, not for control, but for resistance and as tools for liberation.

In the next chapter differing views of Information Warfare are presented, followed by a description of some of the key technologies that enable Information Warfare capability. Although the focus of this thesis is more on how these technologies are being transmitted to Mexico under the guise of the Drug War, it is important to remember that one of the main reasons that Mexico is seeking to gain military prowess is that it faces serious internal threats to its security. Even though it is not the central purpose of this thesis to demonstrate that the build-up in the Mexican military is a response to armed guerrilla movements, it is worth noting that here. The reason being is that it illustrates this dialectic of control and resistance. It can be argued that through the propagandistic use of new microprocessor-based communication and information technology in the form of the Net that the Zapatista movement has been able to successfully ward off an outright invasion by the Mexican armed forces. Perhaps, in seeing the success the Zapatistas have had in exploiting Information Warfare technologies, the Mexican government, in close cooperation with the United States government, has decided to beef up its own Information Warfare capability. This is a speculative statement, but one that exemplifies this dialectic of control and resistance. When an adversary uses information technology to its advantage and achieves information dominance then the other party seeks measures to circumvent or reestablish dominance. It is unclear for how long Netwar actors in the pro Zapatista movement will be able to maintain the upper hand as the Mexican State develops its own Information Warfare capability. The pro Zapatista movement or movements that evolve from it in the future will then have to look to other technological means to exploit. In the mean time, we can take comfort in knowing that there still are avenues for resistance and that the developers of Information Warfare doctrine and strategy have yet to cast a seamless technological web.