REVIEW: Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It
by Richard Stengel
Reviewed by Cindy L. Otis
Cindy L. Otis served in the CIA as a military analyst, intelligence briefer, and manager in the Directorate of Intelligence. While at the CIA, she specialized in security issues in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Otis is also the author of a forthcoming book on disinformation entitled, True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Identifying and Fighting Fake News (#ad).
When the former editor of Time, Richard Stengel, became the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in 2014, he set two priorities—counter both the sophisticated propaganda on social media coming from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group and Russian disinformation. It was no small task, and in his new book Information Wars: How We Lost The Global Battle Against Disinformation & What We Can Do About It (#ad) he gives an insider’s account of the successes and failures of trying to do both in his position as the fifth most senior official in the Department of State.
In the introduction, Stengel sets the stage for the reader by laying out the stark reality of the highly complex, multi-front information war actors are waging every day to influence domestic and foreign events, confuse their enemies, destabilize democratic institutions, and weaken the truth. The book then moves into a memoir style with the first two chapters devoted to detailing the massive culture shock he faced, as most political appointees probably do, transitioning from a fast-paced media outlet to a slow bureaucratic monster that mostly balked against a government agency using social media before he came on board.
Stengel paints a vivid picture of a risk averse State Department grossly unprepared to meet the challenges of information warfare. From diplomatic fashion to packed meeting schedules that accomplished nothing, and policy ideas, Stengel explains the challenges of trying to push forward new ideas in an organization in which dozens of officers and offices had to sign off on each 240-character tweet. From these chapters, the reader is left no longer wondering how we lost the global information war as Stengel claims, or how our foreign policy apparatus functions at all.
Stengel does an excellent job documenting the slow and steady movement of his biggest success—building an anti-ISIL messaging capability—and the less successful attempt to combat Russian disinformation. In both cases, Stengel notes that State was unable to counter the sheer amount of false information on social media, having only small staffs and never enough people with relevant language capabilities available.
On ISIL, Stengel details his work building a coalition of Arab partners and creating a joint US-UAE communications hub called the Sawab Center to counter extremist propaganda and the thousands of digital jihadis using social media to recruit foreign fighters. He recounts a time in which an Intelligence briefer explained the effect of the thousands of digital jihadis promoting ISIL’s propaganda on social media, saying, “ISIS is a distributed network. Al-Qaeda is Yahoo. ISIS is Google.” Using the same metaphor, from previous chapters I could not help but think that State’s digital capability was a little like Infoseek.
On Russian disinformation, Stengel’s chronicling of trying to stand up a Ukraine Task Force, and then the Russia Information Group at State amid the Ukrainian Revolution in 2014 to counter Russian disinformation, is fascinating. As Russia was pushing out false information on social media through its troll farm - the Internet Research Agency - and its government-owned media outlets, Stengel was battling internal State Department turf wars and working to convince his counterparts internally that State should be conducting counter messaging at all.
Before Stengel left federal service, Obama released an Executive Order creating the Global Engagement Center to counter all forms of disinformation and, perhaps in sharp contrast to where Congress appears to be now in addressing the threat of disinformation, Congress approved the center’s funding. But the win feels temporary because of the most tragic part of Information Wars—the Postscript. In it, Stengel rapidly covers all that has transpired since he left government, including such significant developments as the Special Counsel’s investigation on Russia and revelations about Russia’s Internet Research Agency. That’s when the reader finds out what happened to his efforts under a new administration.
The most gripping parts of Information Wars come from Stengel’s recounting of personal conversations he had with political and military leaders, as well as his foreign counterparts. In one story, Stengel recounts receiving a surprise phone call from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who was concerned about the level of disinformation coming out of Russia. In another instance, Stengel talks about how he waited all day to meet with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammad bin Salman who had said that he wanted to get involved in extremist counter-messaging.
There is a lot Stengel does not say, or at least does not focus on, that makes Information Wars an even more interesting read. For example, as he documents the strategy that Russia employed to cover up their role in the downing of MH17 over eastern Ukraine and their disinformation playbook, the reader cannot help but see the parallels with President Trump’s approach as a candidate and president. Stengel does an excellent job explaining that playbook, which relies heavily on weaponizing grievances, re-writing history, and pushing alternative narratives to cause doubt.
As a former intelligence officer in government at that time, I hoped to get some answers for myself as to how and why President Obama made the decision not to inform the public about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. But Stengel addresses the issue in just a few sentences, explaining what most readers probably already knew—that the President did not want to give the appearance of meddling. As Stengel notes in the introduction, his book is not a view from the top and he was not the one conferring with Obama in the Oval Office on these issues. Still, readers may come away slightly disappointed on that front.
The shortest part of the book was the last full chapter which discussed possible solutions. While the author’s proposals are good ones—a mix of everything from regulating social media companies to transparency in policy advertising and increased digital media literacy education—they take only a few dozen pages of the more than 300 total. To this reader, it appeared to be because the issue is just that tough to solve rather than for stylistic or narrative reasons. And it is. Still, for those of us who work in this space, I suppose we all hope that if we are not coming up with the solution to all of this ourselves, someone else will.
Information Wars: How We Lost The Global Battle Against Disinformation & What We Can Do About It (#ad) earns a solid 3.5 out of 4 trench coats
Editorial Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, The Cipher Brief earns from qualifying purchases.
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