You have highlighted a long-standing issue that has yet to be addressed with any level of effort as far as I know: IO tends to be what you want it to mean based on your discipline. Spend time in cyber-centric shops and they will tell you they do IO; same goes for PSYOP orgs or shops full of head shrinkers. Do they all do _aspects_ of IO? Sure. Who does IO writ-large? No one and that's always been our problem. Doctrine we have, organization, not so much. Find me any other military discipline that does not have a single proponent or "parent."

One could argue that since discrete parts of IO can be used in a lot of places in a lot of ways that it makes sense to roll your own as you go along. The problem with that is self evident with the duplication, repetition and sometimes cross-purposes we've been running into over the past decade-plus. There is nothing like standing up in front of an allied audience explaining US IO doctrine and then not having a decent answer to the obvious questions: "So is this how you are organized?" and "Where is your national IO office?"

There was a time when I knew personally or by reputation most if not all the major players in the IO space (IW back in the day). Just a few years later that was not the case. Is that good or bad? It's good in the sense that people recognize the value and we achieved critical mass; bad in that it is in essence a Hydra we can't get our hands around.