President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
Moscow’s falsehoods justifying imperial aggression and war crimes have penetrated cultural and geographic boundaries. It is only a matter of time before other authoritarian powers adopt similar tactics to excuse similar actions. To address this challenge, the United States and its allies should come to view truth decay as a multi-domain mechanism for shaping the operational environment to accommodate military aggression – a non-kinetic means to a kinetic end.
The proliferation of misinformation via social media continues to radicalize, alienate, or isolate American citizens across demographics, including specific targeting of military veterans. Misinformation-fed emotional and psychological effects can drive these individuals toward forming virtual and in-person communities of shared worldviews. The insurrection against the U.S. Congressional certification of the Electoral College results on January 6, 2021 demonstrated the power of misinformation to drive mass violence. Many of the insurrectionists were connected to the U.S. military, including retirees and veterans. The next National Security Strategy writers should attempt to answer: How does the United States counter misinformation within its military community?
Western governments and corporations will seek ways to counter mounting threats related to disinformation, but they cannot eradicate its existence, nor can they dictate how information is processed by its consumers. The fight against disinformation is a generational struggle that will only be won through education and long-term cultural shifts related to the manner in which populations seek, consume, and validate information.
Looking to Putin’s intelligence apparatus is not to witness the genesis of political information warfare. In fact, the United States was birthed in a stew of information, misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda projected by competing entities both internally and externally. Thus, instead of looking at the apparent success of Russian intelligence in the recent election as the perfected form of information warfare, it is worth considering colonial and revolutionary America to appreciate the historical precedent and perspective.
