How to Lose the Information War

How to Lose the Information War
Author: Nina Jankowicz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2020-06-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1838607692

Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia, who flood social media with disinformation, and circulate false and misleading information to fuel fake narratives and make the case for illegal warfare. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? Central and Eastern European states, including Ukraine and Poland, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading. How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.

The Russian Understanding of War

The Russian Understanding of War
Author: Oscar Jonsson
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2019-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1626167346

This book analyzes the evolution of Russian military thought and how Russia's current thinking about war is reflected in recent crises. While other books describe current Russian practice, Oscar Jonsson provides the long view to show how Russian military strategic thinking has developed from the Bolshevik Revolution to the present. He closely examines Russian primary sources including security doctrines and the writings and statements of Russian military theorists and political elites. What Jonsson reveals is that Russia's conception of the very nature of war is now changing, as Russian elites see information warfare and political subversion as the most important ways to conduct contemporary war. Since information warfare and political subversion are below the traditional threshold of armed violence, this has blurred the boundaries between war and peace. Jonsson also finds that Russian leaders have, particularly since 2011/12, considered themselves to be at war with the United States and its allies, albeit with non-violent means. This book provides much needed context and analysis to be able to understand recent Russian interventions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, how to deter Russia on the eastern borders of NATO, and how the West must also learn to avoid inadvertent escalation.

The Russian Federation in Global Knowledge Warfare

The Russian Federation in Global Knowledge Warfare
Author: Holger Mölder
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2021-07-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030739554

This book examines Russian influence operations globally, in Europe, and in Russia’s neighboring countries, and provides a comprehensive overview of the latest technologies and forms of strategic communication employed in hybrid warfare. Given the growing importance of comprehensive information warfare as a new and rapidly advancing type of international conflict in which knowledge is a primary target, the book examines Russia’s role in Global Knowledge Warfare. The content is divided into three parts, the first of which addresses conceptual issues such as the logic of information warfare, the role of synthetic media, and Russia’s foreign policy concepts, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on influence operations. The second part analyzes technological, legal and strategic challenges in modern hybrid warfare, while the third focuses on textual, cultural and historical patterns in information warfare, also from various regional (e.g. the Western Balkans, Romania, Ukraine, and the Baltic) perspectives. The book is primarily intended for scholars in the fields of international relations, security and the military sciences who are interested in Russian foreign policy and influence operations, but also their impact on the global security environment.

Russian Cyber Operations

Russian Cyber Operations
Author: Scott Jasper
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2022-09-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1647123348

Russia has deployed cyber operations to interfere in foreign elections, launch disinformation campaigns, and cripple neighboring states—all while maintaining a thin veneer of deniability and avoiding strikes that cross the line into acts of war. How should a targeted nation respond? In Russian Cyber Operations, Scott Jasper dives into the legal and technical maneuvers of Russian cyber strategies, proposing that nations develop solutions for resilience to withstand future attacks. Jasper examines the place of cyber operations within Russia’s asymmetric arsenal and its use of hybrid and information warfare, considering examples from French and US presidential elections and the 2017 NotPetya mock ransomware attack, among others. A new preface to the paperback edition puts events since 2020 into context. Jasper shows that the international effort to counter these operations through sanctions and indictments has done little to alter Moscow’s behavior. Jasper instead proposes that nations use data correlation technologies in an integrated security platform to establish a more resilient defense. Russian Cyber Operations provides a critical framework for determining whether Russian cyber campaigns and incidents rise to the level of armed conflict or operate at a lower level as a component of competition. Jasper’s work offers the national security community a robust plan of action critical to effectively mounting a durable defense against Russian cyber campaigns.

Tyrants on Twitter

Tyrants on Twitter
Author: David L. Sloss
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2022-04-12
Genre: Law
ISBN: 150363115X

A look inside the weaponization of social media, and an innovative proposal for protecting Western democracies from information warfare. When Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram were first introduced to the public, their mission was simple: they were designed to help people become more connected to each other. Social media became a thriving digital space by giving its users the freedom to share whatever they wanted with their friends and followers. Unfortunately, these same digital tools are also easy to manipulate. As exemplified by Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, authoritarian states can exploit social media to interfere with democratic governance in open societies. Tyrants on Twitter is the first detailed analysis of how Chinese and Russian agents weaponize Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to subvert the liberal international order. In addition to examining the 2016 U.S. election, David L. Sloss explores Russia's use of foreign influence operations to threaten democracies in Europe, as well as China's use of social media and other digital tools to meddle in Western democracies and buttress autocratic rulers around the world. Sloss calls for cooperation among democratic governments to create a new transnational system for regulating social media to protect Western democracies from information warfare. Drawing on his professional experience as an arms control negotiator, he outlines a novel system of transnational governance that Western democracies can enforce by harmonizing their domestic regulations. And drawing on his academic expertise in constitutional law, he explains why that system—if implemented by legislation in the United States—would be constitutionally defensible, despite likely First Amendment objections. With its critical examination of information warfare and its proposal for practical legislative solutions to fight back, this book is essential reading in a time when disinformation campaigns threaten to undermine democracy.

Information Warfare in the Age of Cyber Conflict

Information Warfare in the Age of Cyber Conflict
Author: Christopher Whyte
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2020-07-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0429893922

This book examines the shape, sources and dangers of information warfare (IW) as it pertains to military, diplomatic and civilian stakeholders. Cyber warfare and information warfare are different beasts. Both concern information, but where the former does so exclusively in its digitized and operationalized form, the latter does so in a much broader sense: with IW, information itself is the weapon. The present work aims to help scholars, analysts and policymakers understand IW within the context of cyber conflict. Specifically, the chapters in the volume address the shape of influence campaigns waged across digital infrastructure and in the psychology of democratic populations in recent years by belligerent state actors, from the Russian Federation to the Islamic Republic of Iran. In marshalling evidence on the shape and evolution of IW as a broad-scoped phenomenon aimed at societies writ large, the authors in this book present timely empirical investigations into the global landscape of influence operations, legal and strategic analyses of their role in international politics, and insightful examinations of the potential for democratic process to overcome pervasive foreign manipulation. This book will be of much interest to students of cybersecurity, national security, strategic studies, defence studies and International Relations in general.

Hybrid Conflicts and Information Warfare

Hybrid Conflicts and Information Warfare
Author: Ofer Fridman
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2018-10-31
Genre: Hybrid warfare
ISBN: 9781626377516

"What is hybrid warfare? And what role does information play in today's conflicts? In the context of the technological/information revolution of the last two decades—which has greatly amplified the danger posed by nonmilitary means of political struggle—Hybrid Conflicts and Information Warfare addresses these questions from the perspectives of both Western and Russian experts. Incorporating both theory and contemporary realities, including the case of the Islamic State, the authors offer a unique dialogue on the nature of conflict in the second decade of the twenty-first century."--Publisher's description.

Threatcasting

Threatcasting
Author: Brian David Johnson
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2022-06-01
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 303102575X

Impending technological advances will widen an adversary’s attack plane over the next decade. Visualizing what the future will hold, and what new threat vectors could emerge, is a task that traditional planning mechanisms struggle to accomplish given the wide range of potential issues. Understanding and preparing for the future operating environment is the basis of an analytical method known as Threatcasting. It is a method that gives researchers a structured way to envision and plan for risks ten years in the future. Threatcasting uses input from social science, technical research, cultural history, economics, trends, expert interviews, and even a little science fiction to recognize future threats and design potential futures. During this human-centric process, participants brainstorm what actions can be taken to identify, track, disrupt, mitigate, and recover from the possible threats. Specifically, groups explore how to transform the future they desire into reality while avoiding an undesired future. The Threatcasting method also exposes what events could happen that indicate the progression toward an increasingly possible threat landscape. This book begins with an overview of the Threatcasting method with examples and case studies to enhance the academic foundation. Along with end-of-chapter exercises to enhance the reader’s understanding of the concepts, there is also a full project where the reader can conduct a mock Threatcasting on the topic of “the next biological public health crisis.” The second half of the book is designed as a practitioner’s handbook. It has three separate chapters (based on the general size of the Threatcasting group) that walk the reader through how to apply the knowledge from Part I to conduct an actual Threatcasting activity. This book will be useful for a wide audience (from student to practitioner) and will hopefully promote new dialogues across communities and novel developments in the area.

The World Information War

The World Information War
Author: Timothy Clack
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2021-05-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000385639

This book outlines the threats from information warfare faced by the West and analyses the ways it can defend itself. Existing on a spectrum from communication to indoctrination, information can be used to undermine trust, amplify emotional resonance, and reformulate identities. The West is currently experiencing an information war, and major setbacks have included: ‘fake news’; disinformation campaigns; the manipulation of users of social media; the dissonance of hybrid warfare; and even accusations of ‘state capture’. Nevertheless, the West has begun to comprehend the reality of what is happening, and it is now in a position defend itself. In this volume, scholars, information practitioners, and military professionals define this new war and analyse its shape, scope, and direction. Collectively, they indicate how media policies, including social media, represent a form of information strategy, how information has become the ‘centre of gravity’ of operations, and why the further exploitation of data (by scale and content) by adversaries can be anticipated. For the West, being first with the truth, being skilled in cyber defence, and demonstrating virtuosity in information management are central to resilience and success. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, information warfare, propaganda studies, cyber-security, and International Relations.

Russian "Hybrid Warfare"

Russian
Author: Ofer Fridman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2018-08-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190934735

During the last decade, 'Hybrid Warfare' has become a novel yet controversial term in academic, political and professional military lexicons, intended to suggest some sort of mix between different military and non-military means and methods of confrontation. Enthusiastic discussion of the notion has been undermined by conceptual vagueness and political manipulation, particularly since the onset of the Ukrainian Crisis in early 2014, as ideas about Hybrid Warfare engulf Russia and the West, especially in the media. Western defense and political specialists analyzing Russian responses to the crisis have been quick to confirm that Hybrid Warfare is the Kremlin's main strategy in the twenty-first century. But many respected Russian strategists and political observers contend that it is the West that has been waging Hybrid War, Gibridnaya Voyna, since the end of the Cold War. In this highly topical book, Ofer Fridman offers a clear delineation of the conceptual debates about Hybrid Warfare. What leads Russian experts to say that the West is conducting a Gibridnaya Voyna against Russia, and what do they mean by it? Why do Western observers claim that the Kremlin engages in Hybrid Warfare? And, beyond terminology, is this something genuinely new?