Since the history of warfare began, military’s have sought to gain advantage over their opponents. This has been done through both physical and psychological attack. With the advent of the internet, opportunities for attack are infinite. Physically attacks (known as cyberattacks) can cripple a business or industry. But information wars are designed to destroy the psyche of a people in order to gain advantage. In an unclassified document of the U.S. army, information wars are said to be a low risk tool to destabilize your opponent. The military warned prior to 2016 that it would be easy for foreign governments, extremists, and criminal organizations to use information warfare more and more frequently.

An information war operation is used to gain advantage over an opponent by denying, exploiting, corrupting, or destroying information systems. It is the deliberate use and management of information and communication in pursuit of competitive advantage. The strategy is to manipulate trusted information and information sources of a “target” without the “target’s” awareness so that they will make decisions against their own interests. The targets themselves will begin to act and speak in the interests of the individuals conducting the information warfare.

A key strategy is virality. This tactic floods many sources at once to overwhelm information streams. Placing the same information in more than one location, creating a favorable algorithmic trend, seeding assurances that the information is valid, spreading disinformation, creating misinformation, and demoralizing or demonizing the opposition are all tools in the information war space. Operatives use these tools together to undermine factual information, create fictitious and favorable narratives, and to deny valid information to their opponents.

Attacks can come from many spaces at once, making it is hard to track or enforce penalties against bad actors. Once “targets” are compromised, they will begin to share and defend the seeded messages. Attempts to track and enforce are easily neutralized with claims of attack on right to privacy or free speech. The 0bama administration noted to members of the armed forces over 15 years ago that there was a mismatch between technical opportunities for information warfare and governmental laws and policies. This gap was a danger zone.

Information psyops use many strategies. The purpose is to deny (insist events in public record did not happen or deny access to known information), corrupt (introduce false data or altered data, degrade(delay access until the information is no longer useful or flood conflicting information so that it is hard to keep up or find a pattern) or destroy (eliminate information from the public space). Tactically, troll factories employ people to create fake profiles and post comments in line with the goals the combatant. Bots flood the social media streams with messages sent automatically to change algorithms. Fake news messages (both disinformation and misinformation) are created with the intent to mislead. Truth is not the goal. The goal is maintaining a position of power by controlling perception. It is in essence, cognitive warfare.

In this environment, speed is more important than truth. A constant barrage of deny, degrade, destroy, corrupt …leaves people exhausted. It undermines cohesion, leaving people bewildered. It turns old grievances into roiling unrest. It creates algorithms of “computational” propaganda that target segments of the population most drawn to the messages.

Journalists are often targets of the attacks, being sent information in hopes they spread the information to a broader audience. Journalists must diligently vet sources and corroborate information. Lazy or “friendly” journalists who report the latest “leads” without rigorous cross checking become tools or collaborators in the information war space. Winning in the information war space also relies on Big Tech to allow misinformation and disinformation or to remove content based guidelines and community standards from its platform.

Since the early days 2000’s, leaders warned against the targeting of civilian institutions instead of enemy combatants. As scary as that sounds, strategies have been studied and used by militaries and governments around the world with aggressive escalations in the last decade in the cyberspace arena.

In Ukraine (an emerging democracy) around 2010, oligarchs (many believe backed by Russia) used information war tactics to get lawfully elected. They then passed laws to benefit themselves, accused the legally elected head of state of corruption and triggered mass protests.

Russian used similar tactics to pave the way for the invasion of Ukraine. They used used their state news agency Pravda(Truth) to shape public thought to party objectives. A young Russian soldier was given a phone by Ukrainian townspeople to call his mother and let her know he was okay despite capture. He lamented that he was told that the Ukrainian people would be glad to see the Russian army because they were going to “liberate” Ukrainians who wanted to be Russian. He realized upon capture that popular perception is indeed sometimes not “Truth”.

The Taliban has conducted information wars since at least 2001. They target rural areas where they recruit young male members in mosques, using scripture and religious quotes to justify membership and action. They make targeted and disparaging comments about the opposition, claim to stamp out corruption, and take for themselves the moral high ground of protecting women’s rights.

Both Israel and Hamas have also engaged in the warfare for public opinion, using governmental, religious and student groups to carry out information wars. China aggressively engages in informational warfare both internally and externally, carefully curating narratives to suit political purpose. Both Russia and China have been cited for U.S. election interference. And of course North Korea is in its own league of information control.

So what are citizens to do when information warfare is at play within their own country? How do citizens cope when a government uses the strategy of deny, exploit, corrupt, or destroy to manipulate the perception of its own people?What to do when speed and popular opinion become more important to operatives than truth? How do people navigate the world of influencers and tech companies for hire? How do you react when people identify more with fake news than substantiated fact?

The populations most susceptible to information warfare are those who have the least experience (non-digital natives, youths, the isolated, and the uneducated). Unfortunately, we all must be alert in this brave new world of informational manipulation. As an act of citizenship promote digital literacy and commit to practicing digital literacy skills. Practice analytic thinking and cross check all sources outside usual algorithms (search stand out quotes and see where it is showing up). Break up algorithms to your news feeds by subscribing to many different sources and regularly share factual/balanced sources that may be different than those available on the feeds of others. As you notice information warfare tactics at play, ask yourself “who benefits?” and “what is the advantage of deny, corrupt, exploit, and destroy” strategies. Be a smart consumer of information to reduce your risk of becoming a “target” or unknowing “collaborator”. Finally, read up on information warfare and consider its connections to current events. Ask yourself, why would a group use such tactics on its own members?

* I used various documents from lectures and memos of the U.S. military branches and NATO as source material for this piece. Explanations and descriptions are simply a summary of training documents and educational prevention posts. All are publicly available from a simple search. Enter “information war” and read for yourself.