Global Knowledge Warfare: Using Strategic Imagination to Harness Uncertainty and Fear

The year 2020 will remain in history to remind us—among many other things—about global threats from biological agents. Ignoring physical borders and defying national policies, the coronavirus threatened the stability of the global international system.  Yet along with the unfolding bio threats, an informational chaos emerged. Official government updates about the pandemic followed by an avalanche of manufactured news, rumors, panicky forecasts, and conspiracy theories. At times the situation looked like a global informational anarchy—a modern kind of “war of all against all”, to refer to the words of 17^th century’s English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Psychologists show that fear heightens people’s attention to uncertainty. In reverse, the sense of uncertainty becomes an emotional “Petri dish” to cultivate new anxieties that urgently push public officials “to do something”. Their tactical mistakes under pressure then lead to overreactions and blunders in policy, both domestic and foreign.

Pandemics remind us also about the threats of biological weapons: viruses can be weaponized. Knowledge too can be weaponized and used by states to project their power. In fact, disinformation has been a tool in foreign policy for centuries.  The German Reich intentionally fabricated facts about Polish hostilities to excuse the invasion of Poland in 1939.  The Soviet Union—in order to maintain the good international image of the Communist Party and its leadership—deliberately lied about the existence of a secret agreement between Stalin and Hitler that was signed before World War II. The 2003 Iraqi invasion was influenced to a great extent by misinformation from multiple sources about Iraqi’s weapons of mass destruction. In 2020, Russian president Vladimir Putin stated that the Soviet occupation and annexation of the Baltic states in 1940 was done on a “contractual” basis. Similar examples are plentiful. The study of the Oxford Internet Institute found that at least 48 countries have been involved in social media manipulation in order to influence domestic or international public opinion. If governments in the past could manufacture and manipulate information, they obviously can do the same in the future. What do they specifically do, how do they do it, and in which areas are they most active?

To answer these questions, not only do we need to rely on what we know about information warfare in the past; we also need to take a step further and outline the ways in which this warfare can emerge tomorrow. We should think strategically.

Strategic imagination is the method of creative and critical assessment of possible scenarios involving threats to security. This method allows security experts from different fields to think about the future, consider “what if” situations, and creatively assess the probability of emerging threats, even those that appear as improbable to some. Educated forecasting—based on historical facts, today’s developments, and strategic imagination—is an important component in building successful security strategies and supportive public policies.

Complacency often leads to preparing to be “fighting the last war”, which is basically using the lessons learned from the last conflict in the hopes of winning the future one. Failure of imagination leads to serious security failures and was mentioned in government reports in the United States as one of the reasons for the intelligence failures prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  Successful strategic imagination should lead to more comprehensive and effective security measures and policies. Let’s apply some principles of strategic imagination referring to modern warfare in the realm of knowledge.

Global Knowledge Warfare

As we teach our students, security strategies depend on the type threats that countries expect to face. For centuries, states used strategies to prepare for conventional conflict involving regular armies that clash in pitched battles usually along recognizable frontlines. Then came weapons of mass destruction, which brought a different capability and different strategies to use it. Still, the key elements of traditional understanding of warfare remained: they were based on conflicts between identifiable international actors (i.e. states, alliances, coalitions).

The vast spread of transnational communication networks in recent years has created a favorable platform for starting and advancing cyber warfare—the deliberate targeting of computers and networks of sovereign states and organizations. It requires the use of cyber weapons—tools and methods that can disrupt and weaken government institutions and private enterprises. As part of cyber warfare, Global Knowledge Warfare (GKW) is the purposeful use and the management of knowledge in pursuit of a competitive advantage over foreign opponents. Knowledge is information that has a purpose or use and requires the awareness or a form of understanding of the subject. Knowledge warfare is about what people know, how they interpret this knowledge, and how they use it in their actions.

Governments are rapidly advancing their strategies in GKW. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army introduced the Strategic Support Force for many new kinds of warfare including the information domain. The United Front Work Department, a unit in China’s Communist Party, among other functions, deliberately targets ethnic Chinese overseas to generate support for China’s domestic and foreign policy objectives. In Russia, the Russian military intelligence (GRU) and other units act as components of “information operations force”, as they call it in Moscow. Such units include trolling companies to launch disinformation and organize campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms. Moscow and Beijing are constantly trying new tools of communication for achieving their strategic goals. Technological resources for such warfare are unprecedented and are being used in a global, strategic fight for individual minds. Governments do not have to spend tens of billions of dollars on such projects, like they do to build fighter jets or aircraft carriers. They can achieve their goals with a reasonable price tag. 

Knowledge Warfare Clusters

It has been attributed to the Ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Zi that, "… a hundred wins out of a hundred battles is not the best. Forcing another army to surrender without a battle is the best." This would be a perfect goal for Global Knowledge Warfare—if you affect the minds of the people in a foreign country, the country should become a weakened opponent. GKW has two closely interconnected clusters: ideological and psychological.

Ideological warfare is a clash of fundamental ideas or principles referring to economy, government, politics, lifestyle, or life in general. For example, social conflict ideologies, like Marxism, focus on capitalism and inequality. Neo-Marxists often focus on race and colonialism. Political ideologies, like conservatism and liberalism, and make judgement calls about economic, social, and political order. Nationalism calls attention to nation-centered models of development—American, French, Russian, or Chinese. Civilizational ideologies are rooted in deep seated cultural principles, such as Western, Muslim, Hindu, Confucian, etc.

Ideological warfare is generally about what strategy is better for countries. In the early 2000s a debate emerged—in books and essays of well-known leaders and scholars from East Asia—about the advantages of “Asian values” vis-a-vis Western values.  Many Russian ideologists today promote the idea of the “Eurasian civilization” of Russians, which President Putin has vowed to protect by all means. Experts discuss the “worlds” according to Merkel, Putin, Trump, or Xi—in term of ideological and economic models of their governments suitable or not for the world of the future. By weaponizing ideologies, intelligence agencies can actively promote their countries’ national interests. But information alone is useless until it becomes knowledge: there should be a perceiving audience and the use of methods to persuade it.

Psychological warfare is the deliberate manipulation of information to influence emotions, judgement, and subsequent behavior of individuals or groups to fulfill particular political goals. These actions, of course, are not rooted in some pseudo-scientific concepts such as, “sixth sense”, “mental telepathy”, “subconscious influences” and similar bogus ideas from sci-fi movies or comedies. Today’s psychological warfare is likely to be based on science. Samantha Bradshaw and Philipp Powers from Oxford University explain modern computational propaganda—the use of algorithms, automation, and big data to shape public opinion. They argue that a handful of sophisticated state actors, including Russia, China, Iran, India, and Venezuela, have specifically been using computational propaganda for their foreign influence operations.

What are the goals of these actions even though governments almost never acknowledge that they conduct ideological or psychological warfare against other states?

Key Goals of Knowledge Warfare

First, on the ideological arena, global knowledge warriors pursue the goal of undermining the individual’s beliefs in liberal democratic values and principles governing domestic and foreign policy. Among these principles are political, economic, and individual liberties, the rule of law, transparency and accountability of public officials, among others. The strategic narrative communicated by Iran, China, or Russia, for example, is that that liberal democracy has failed and the principles of liberty on which democratic governments were built, is fundamentally flawed.

The second goal of the knowledge warriors is to persuade people that today’s liberal democratic governments are decadent, inefficient, hostile, racist, discriminatory, and corrupt.  Further, the third goal is to discredit western international alliances and institutions. The goal of the attacks is to portray these institutions as either useless (like NATO) or discriminatory and intrusive (like the EU). The focus of China and Russia, as well as a few other governments, has been to destroy the post-Cold War US hegemony in the international system and to build an alternative multipolar system, where anti-Western cooperation initiatives (i.e. BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) become competitive and eventually dominate what they call Western neo-liberalism.

Global knowledge warriors do not use physical force. Their ultimate goal is to influence the minds and, ultimately, the behavior of targeted groups. In the domain of psychological warfare, global information warriors pursue three types of public sentiments: a culture of uncertainty, a culture of fear, and a culture of irrational responses.  Fear and uncertainty in people’s minds—described by Thomas Hobbes in the 17^th century—can thrive in today’s informational environment.

A culture of uncertainty is a prevailing state of ambiguity, confusion, and doubt. It leads to helplessness and irritation in large groups of people.  Helplessness is tied to the breach of trust between the government and the governed: here people start to realize that nobody is helping them. Being uncertain, people tend to turn to random media narratives, often false ones, or to the convenient echo chambers of social networks. In this culture, populist leaders thrive and win elections. Maintaining uncertainty in democratic states is the goal of the adversarial international actors.

A culture of fear. Helplessness further contributes to alarm, anxiety, and fears. If fear becomes part of society’s daily life, this gives birth to a culture of fear. A frightened individual becomes even more vulnerable to manipulation. In 2007, Zbigniew Brzezinski argued that the culture of fear "obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue”. Adversarial international actors today manipulate information to cultivate a culture of fear in other countries to purse specific purposes.

A culture of irrational responses. Long-lasting uncertainty and fear can lead to irrational demands. Officials—being under pressure of fear and uncertainty—make policy mistakes, which further leads to irrational reactions by the governed. Ridiculous ideas often find support among emotionally charged audiences.

These three interconnected cultures inevitably affect politics. Efforts, resources and money to address fears and uncertainties are often wasted, generating futile responses. All of these cultures affected the global response during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, in which governments instead of developing comprehensive international cooperation to manage the consequences of the virus, often plunged into costly partisan debates.

Key Methods of Knowledge Warfare

Knowledge warfare requires writers and educated and trained professionals. Retweeting or reposting provocative opinions and false reports is very easy and inexpensive. Social bots and trolls, when instructed to do so, can generate thousands of retweets and postings. In both cases, fake news or retweeted stories create false narratives that become knowledge to serve specific political goals. Russian commentators have actively disseminated conspiracy theories related to secret plots behind the creation of the European Union (the fictional Kalergi plan), vaccination causing autism and other chronic illnesses, Marxist plots to penetrate America, and many other conspiracy theories. During the 2020 pandemic, sources in China and Russia turned to conspiracy theories about Washington’s role in biological warfare research and a massive coverup in the United States that followed. Similar narratives about deliberate government foul play have been spread in the past in relation to HIV and the outbreak of Ebola. Such false narratives—like those spread by Russian media channels—also serve the role of reinforcing an enemy image and consolidating domestic public opinion. Online battles with a clear pro-Chinese bias intensified in Southeast Asia after the coronavirus crisis. The term, Milk Tea Alliance, emerged to describe an online loose democratic movement in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to counter China’s propaganda campaign related to the virus (China is the country where tea tends to be consumed without milk). Iran has been involved in social media manipulation for years using reposting and methods to promote government agendas.

What would knowledge warriors undertake in the near future to influence the minds and behavior of people?

Looking Ahead

In light of our discussion of Global Knowledge Warfare, we predict that the following methods will be actively used to affect domestic and foreign policy in democratic countries.

Targeting democratic elections. The first and expected method is electoral interference by means of supporting a candidate or creating a culture of confusion. Russia has effectively used trolls, bots, fake accounts and cybercrime to support and oppose certain candidates, to fabricate news, to make strategic political comments, or to launch character attacks against political figures.  Russia is believed to have interfered in the elections in key Western states, including the United States in 2016 and France in 2017.  Russia was also involved in the crisis in Catalonia spreading false messages about the government in Madrid and any political movement or political party in the European Union that supports a weakened European community will find support in the Kremlin. China is likely to focus on widening the political divisions in the U.S. by promoting extreme narratives on both sides of the ideological spectrum.

Targeting public opinion. Knowledge about a particularly divisive political and social issue can be manipulated too.  At least two outcomes are most desirable for GKW warriors. One is to deepen the divisions in a targeted country. The other is to advance foreign policy goals. Russia constantly appeals to the Russian-speaking populations in the post-Soviet space, keeping in mind that not just ethnic Russians, but many other people in those regions, understand the Russian language making them ideal targets for knowledge warfare. For example, Kremlin strategists promote and are very likely to advance the belief that the West is unreliable. Russia effectively uses the advantage of market-oriented journalism, where less credible news outlets publish information about popular issues without verifying that information, which incites and fuels rumors, misperceptions and confusion and makes efforts to destabilize much easier.

Using strategic imagination, it is easy to see that Russia is likely to portray itself as a defender of traditional conservative values and China, in a similar fashion, will continue portraying itself as a defender of common sense and global stability. In these contexts, both countries appearing to be “rescuing” the world from the shackles of liberal ideology. Russia's influence operations are often tailored to target various anti-establishment groups; Eurosceptics, anti-American, anti-immigration and anti-globalization movements, and many others on the extreme right or left side of the political spectrum.

Attacking the reputation of public figures.  Character assassination is a form of knowledge warfare that specifically targets the reputation of public figures. False allegations, exaggerations, bogus translations, scorning, and slander are among the most frequently use means of character attacks. There are “traditional” targets, like Hungarian-born American billionaire, investor and philanthropist George Soros, who has been accused of being responsible for organizing political unrest in Georgia, Ukraine, Russia, and other countries, which Russia considers to be within its sphere of influence.  And there have been new attacks on influential figures like Bill Gates who was accused by Russian public figures of advocating for sinister microchips to be implanted in human bodies by global scientists-conspirators in order to control human behavior. This could have been regarded as a delusion, if this belief weren’t so widespread in Russia. We do not claim that a foreign government has initiated and spread these bizarre rumors. Our examples are to suggest, using strategic imagination, how easy such attacks can be organized against key-decision makers and how quickly such attacks can become effective.

Creating chaos. By contributing to a culture of uncertainty, foreign adversarial powers target the disappointed, the discouraged, and the angry. One bizarre example that can be repeated in future campaigns is the so-called buckwheat crisis of 2010, which started in Russia, but rapidly spread over the post-Soviet space including the Baltic countries. The beliefs of a considerable part of the population can deliberately be manipulated by sharing a joint information space, which was proven when people in Russia began to panic buy and hoard buckwheat on ‘news’ about rising prices and possible buckwheat shortages that also spread across Estonia via Russian-language channels. The “buckwheat crisis” is a great prototype of a possible disinformation campaign, by which a social crisis can easily emerge from nothing. Confusing knowledge with bogus references to “scientists” or “authoritative sources” can spread via social networks to boost the trustworthiness of fake information.

Building historical myths.  Foreign adversarial powers are capable of creating false narratives in the form of historical myths. Among such myths are the powerful narratives that portray China as historical victims of injustice, for which the West and Japan, were exclusively responsible. Chinese narratives often refer to the “century of humiliation” from 1839 to 1949 when the Western powers and Japan actively interfered in Chinese affairs. Russia has also moved in the same direction by making constitutional amendments to protect a certain view of history and essentially justify Soviet dealings with Hitler before World War II. Other Russian historical myths scorn many Western courtiers as essentially pro-Nazi and pro-fascist before and even during World War II. We anticipate a new wave of historic revisions coming from various countries aiming at the West and especially its colonial past and imperialism. History is not what foreign knowledge warriors are interested in.  The goal is to enforce the culture of uncertainty and self-doubt and to undermine the moral foundations of liberal democracy.

Promoting leaders’ images. Unlike democratic states, authoritarian regimes have significant government resources to promote the positive image of their leaders for domestic and international consumption. The images of Putin and Xi as strongmen, the “giants” standing for security and order effectively compete with the images of Western leaders past and present (i.e. Bush, Obama, Macron, Merkel, Tusk, von der Leyen, and others) who have been described as weak, failing and inconsistent, and unable to manage multiple challenges we are facing in a new world. We anticipate a constant stream of images and commentary about the assertiveness and benevolence of Chinese and Russian leaders in sharp contrast with “weak” and “wavering” Western politicians.

Insulting Western liberal values. Russian strategic narratives harshly criticize Western liberalism as decadent and impractical. The harshest attacks are launched against feminism, LGBT rights, multiculturalism, and other policies of tolerance and inclusiveness. Russian-language postings in social media do not shy away from using racist and homophobic words facilitating hatred against many social, ethnic, and cultural groups. Although we believe that many of these postings are not generated by professional knowledge warriors, they essentially share the official position of the Kremlin regarding these issues.

The European migration crisis or riots in the United States in 2020 are examples of how the culture of fear can be reinforced through skillful manipulation of information. Portraying immigrants as rapists and racial minorities as vandals, foreign governments not only will try to consolidate public opinion at home (a big chunk of which share racist and anti-immigrant views) but will also widen the political and ideological divisions in Europe and the United States by appealing to far-right groups in the West.

Scorning key government policies. Information campaigns initiated by adversarial powers and promoted by their official media channels as well as on social media platforms provide various and sometimes bizarre conspiracy theories. Popular narratives spread in the background of the pandemic were about Russia and China saving the world by taking effective measures. On the contrary, the West, with all its advanced medicine, was incapable of stopping the virus. Stories disseminated in social media praising China, Russia and Cuba, and their leaders, for their international help to countries, such as Italy, during the early weeks of the pandemic. No matter which party or coalition is in charge of the government—it will be attacked by knowledge warriors.

Exaggerating difficulties.   Social and economic problems of the West have been favorite targets. Inequality, racism, unemployment, crime, and instability have been tirelessly discussed. The goal is two-fold: to create and promote a negative cultural climate of fear and uncertainty in the West and to consolidate some portion of public opinion at home. The Kremlin will try to promote voices and will even provide a forum for all alternative forces critical of Western liberal democracy, whose political goals may be found to be similar to the strategic goals advocated by Russia.

Conclusion

It would be naïve not to think that countries such as Russia, China, or Iran would not use current international and domestic events to boost their strategic interests. In the Global Knowledge War, Russia and China intend to convince the public in the West that they can offer a viable alternative to the West. The United States and China are competing over global economic primacy, at least potentially challenged by the European Union as well, while economically unsuccessful Russia is focusing on security challenges including advancing new types of warfare. Therefore, Global Knowledge Warfare is justified for powers intending to move out from status quo and challenging the existing international order. The modern GKW is producing and spreading a culture of uncertainty, fear, and irrational decisions to win the battle for people’s minds.

Winning the knowledge war in the minds of millions of people and challenging the West’s desire to defend its fundamental values or freedom and democracy, can lead to a new multipolar international order where there is less cooperation and transparency, more mistrust, and more restrictions—the Hobbesian warning to the world.

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