13 March 2022, NIICE Commentary 7696
Asanga Abeyagoonasekera & Alexandra Moore
Russia, just like in its ancient empire, the Russification of Russia’s periphery by the Tsar is continued by President Putin. The invasion of Ukraine will differ from previous Russification attempts through a unique feature: information warfare. Unlike during the cold war, we live in a wired world of massive information overload, trying to discern the truth from the deceptive, sorting through misinformation and disinformation. Thomas Friedman rightly assesses it is a “World War Wired,” and the West has dropped an “economic nuclear bomb” on Russia, thus crashing its currency and causing multiple economic impacts from Russia to spill over to many geographies.
“Information warfare,” as defined by futurist and executive director of The Millennium Project, Jerome Glenn, is different than cyber warfare that attacks computers, software, and command control systems as it focuses on manipulating information trusted by targets without their awareness, so that the targets will make decisions against their interest and in the interest of the one conducting information warfare. Information warfare differs from misinformation and disinformation because misinformation refers to false information presented as a fact. However, there is often not an inherent desire to deceive. Disinformation, on the other hand, also presents incorrect information as factual but is intended to mislead others. Disinformation relies on the same idea of intended deception as information warfare, but the main difference between these two concepts is that information warfare specifically utilizes false information from a trusted source, so that you are unaware you are being manipulated.
Information warfare, additionally, is often confused with the term propaganda. However, propaganda is something that one is aware of and acknowledges, but with information warfare, one is often unaware it is occuring. When propaganda is used in war, the main goal is to demoralize the enemy and convince them that their skills are lesser than their opponents through the use of tools such as rumors, deception, and false arguments. The main objective of information warfare is similar as it revolves around misleading others and influencing opinion, but different because it is solely focused on gaining, destroying, or changing information. In other words, the goal is information superiority as a means of holding it over others and using it for nefarious purposes.
According to Brookings Fellow Jessica Brandt, information warfare is ‘right out in the open on Russian state media, and Kremlin-backed accounts online. We also know that Moscow planned to fabricate a justification for an intervention by filming a gruesome video of purported war crimes, hiring Russian-speaking actors to play the part of mourners, and sending saboteurs into Eastern Ukraine to carry out a false flag operation.’, may sound like propaganda. In addition, there are multiple censorships, and downrankings already imposed from online platforms such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Bing, and Twitter on Russian Sputnik and RT content to counter misinformation.
When information warfare is coupled with cyber warfare and traditional tactics, it can have devastating effects on civilians and infrastructure. Ukraine’s long been a testing ground for Russian cyber-attacks and Ukraine has experience in dealing with information warfare. Russia wages a horrifying mix of psychological, cyber, and traditional war against the country. This is considered ‘hybrid warfare’ – where non-traditional force multipliers such as cyber and social media intelligence attacks are employed. The use of network infiltration, denial of information and internet services, and other advanced persistent threats (APTs) to achieve strategic political and military effects are carried out in the hybrid warfare environment. Russia’s usage of information warfare in Ukraine results from a few factors. First, the initial attack on 22 February 2022, came in swiftly. Within minutes of launching his “special military operation” to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country, several explosions were reported near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. By not allowing the media much time to properly analyze the situation, Putin left the door open for rumors and assumptions to run rampant. Second, Putin’s rhetoric in his address, specifically mentioning his intentions to “denazify” the country, set the tone for this war. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish and had family who died in the Holocaust, but if the average person is not aware of this information, they might assume that Russia had a just cause for attacking the country. Third, Eastern Ukraine (also known as the Donbas region) has been controlled by pro-Russian, anti-government separatists since the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine. Having a pro-Russian region has made it significantly easier for Putin to utilize the Ukrainians in that region to promote propaganda and other acts of psychological warfare against the Ukrainian government, military, and pro-government citizens.
Putin’s aggressive usage of information warfare reinforces the belief that he aspires to use information warfare as an easily accessible, long-range, universal weapon to try and make his mark on the international community. By using propaganda and psychological warfare, Putin is trying to further isolate Ukraine by creating chaos in the rest of the world and Ukraine. Unfortunately for Ukraine, Putin’s timing aligns well with recent developments. Moscow has developed innovative new information and cyber tools to wage a long-term psychological war by combining its traditional use of state media, overt and covert propaganda, and active measures alongside modern communications systems like social media. Slovak Republic-based ESET and California-based Broadcom’s Symantec cyber-security companies noted a new type of malware that wipes data was used against Ukraine in the 23 February attacks. The malware was novel because it attacks the master boot record (MBR) of computers. Natalia Tkachuk, head of the Information Security and Cyber Security Service of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, stressed at a joint briefing that there was “a significant change in the purpose and mechanisms of the most recent cyber-attacks since there was a clear pivot away from obtaining intelligence information and personal data, to attempting to destabilize, discredit, and manipulate the country.” As seen in figure, cyber-attacks began to have severe destabilizing effects on 15 February 2022, when internet providers reported massive interruptions in internet connectivity. The graph notes a particularly sharp decline at 14:00 hours, the same time the Ukrainian defense section went offline from the distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDOS). Putin’s usage of new cyber warfare tools is crucial to reinforce the efficacy of the psychological warfare aspect of the ongoing information war, because he is using it to create a war centered around distrust and betrayal. By combining psychological, electric, and physical warfare (three of the six components of information warfare), Putin is constructing a hybrid war where only he controls the flow of information in Ukraine. If he can control the media by usurping communication centers and spreading propaganda via social media, he has the power to manage what the people of Ukraine – and the world – hear and see and, ultimately, how they react to it.
Now the big question: how can other countries help fight the war on information warfare and prevent such forms of hybrid warfare from reoccurring? Partnership and collaboration are key to generating a multi-jurisdictional and multipronged approach to combat information warfare. Michael Rühle and Clare Roberts from NATO Security Challenges Division observe ‘Building close ties with like-minded nations across the globe is in itself a deterrent to would-be hybrid aggressors’. Dr. James Curtis, Professor of Information Technology at Webster University in St. Louis, recommends that the “Defense Department should partner with other agencies to fund and support a government-wide commitment to a cybersecurity education program for all Americans as early as the first days of school and continuing throughout adulthood.” Cybersecurity education programs will teach children how to protect themselves in cyberspace, as well as promote a life-long interest, which can lead to increased employment and research in the field down the line. Additionally, “private military contractors and academic communities should team with the government via public-private partnerships to develop technical processes which identify and counter attacks such as deep fakes and other emerging digital social engineering methods.” Public-private partnerships, particularly with the IW Executive Board (a committee created in 1995 to “facilitate “the development and achievement of national information warfare goals”) could prove useful for educating the average citizen on the social engineering methods of the subject matter, as these are concepts the everyday person is often not aware of until they become a victim of such innovation.
Regarding the current situation in Ukraine, a multilateral defense effort is necessary to protect the Ukrainian people. Cybersecurity education, censorships, and downranking targeted media channels contributed to fighting the current information war. The pro-active measure in early February to declassify documents pertaining to Russian intelligence by United States President Joseph Biden proved to be a decisive action that caught Putin off guard and impacted the Russian narrative of information warfare. The action won the general public and exposed the hidden intention of the Russian leader. This initiative was both defensive and offensive as it prevented Putin from dragging the United States into the mud, but it also provided factual, authoritative answers for the rest of the world. As the information is now publicly available to the Ukrainian government, they can better defend themselves from physical and potential cyber-attacks. Other countries could follow a similar strategy to prevent further manipulation of Russian and Ukrainian information, thereby assisting Ukraine in preventing information warfare and propaganda from spiraling out of control.
Asanga Abeyagoonasekera is a Senior Fellow and Alexandra Moore is a Research Assistant at The Millennium Project in Washington DC.
