Infowar and Disinformation: From the Pentagon to the Net
In 1967, a satire was published under the title “Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace.” This analysis soberly reflected, in think-tank style, on the importance to society of waging war. Leonard Lewin, who pretended that the secret report was leaked and did not claim authorship until five years later, argued forcefully that war provides a type of social and psychological glue, without which society cannot function.
“Roughly speaking,” Lewin writes, “the presumed power of the 'enemy' sufficient to warrant an individual sense of allegiance to a society must be proportionate to the size and complexity of the society. Today, of course, that power must be one of unprecedented magnitude and frightfulness.”[1] Lewin's tongue-in- cheek premise is that before peace breaks out, it becomes urgent to find substitutes for war.
They say that life imitates art. Almost 30 years later, Lewin's claim of authorship is lost amid the general enthusiasm over the manuscript. Dog-eared copies of “Report from Iron Mountain”