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Gertz: America Is at War, But Most Americans Don't Know It

January 11, 2017

Washington Free Beacon senior editor Bill Gertz discussed his new book, iWar: War and Peace in the Information Age, on Tuesday night with Janet Parshall during her show "In the Market."

"You have made the statement that America is at war but most Americans don't know it, and I think it's because, for many of us, we think of traditional warfare," Parshall said to Gertz. "But what you're saying is that this digital battlefield is perhaps one of the most intense battlefields Americans have ever found themselves on. How bad is it out there?"

Gertz responded that this kind of warfare is a "new age problem" that the United States is facing because "we live in an information age."

"And yet, our understanding of information warfare has been completely denigrated," he said. "We do not have a clear understanding of this."

Gertz said the Obama administration is partly to blame for this lack of understanding but the media and culture share the blame as well. He explained this is because the culture does not focus on "threats to our society, our nation, and threats around the world."

"It came to me very clearly about probably two years ago, [when] things were changing," Gertz said. "Just as terrorism dominated the 2000s, information and information warfare were dominating the 2010s, our current decade, and yet, I find that we're getting killed in the information space. Foreign states like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, the Islamic State, they figured out that information can be used as a weapon."

"Social media can be weaponized," he added.

Parshall then wanted to know why America is at risk from information attacks and what can be done to address the issue.

"So why aren't we doing more?" she asked.

"Part of the problem, not the total reason, but part of the problem is that we've been inundated with what I call a 'liberal left political narrative' that says that we're living in a new age of globalization," Gertz responded. "It's often been referred to as the postmodern world and this false view, this false worldview, posits the idea that the concept of nationhood, of national interest, is secondary, that we're really moving away from nationhood, we're moving towards globalization, we're moving towards a world of cooperation and togetherness."

"Unfortunately, our enemies do not share that view," he said.

The full hour can be found here.