ALSO READ: Part 1: Psyche Behind the Internet, Information Superhighways

MaaS (Misinformation as a Service) Model

The era of SaaS (Software as a Service) has gone, no one needs software developers and service providers anymore. Those routine old jobs could soon be performed by OpenAI’s GPT-3. Common people’s potential in a democracy needs to leverage for something more interesting, passionate and creative, such as Misinformation or Disinformation campaigns and propaganda wars! Perhaps, that was the idea behind the rise of this new service model called MaaS (Misinformation as a Service), which is often called with better-sounding names like creators economy, curators economy, influencers economy/ marketing, social media activism/ journalism, creative entrepreneurship, etc.

Out of 5 billion Internet users in the world (63.5 percent of the global population), 4.65 billion are social media users, and China, India, and the U.S. top the list of the countries in the world in terms of Internet use. In March 2022, YouTube India flooded Indian/ international newspapers with some interesting advertising stats about its ‘contribution’ to India’s economy and GDP via ‘creator economy.’ A report by consulting firm Oxford Economics, which assessed YouTube’s economic, societal, and cultural impact in India, says that “YouTube’s creator ecosystem has contributed an estimated Rs 6,800 crore to the Indian economy and created some 6,83,900 full-time equivalent jobs in India” in 2020. The statistics say that there are 40,000 plus YouTube channels in India with over 1 lakh subscribers, marking a growth of over 45 percent, year-on-year. Remember, these are the claims of only one social media platform; others like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. have their own numbers, patterns, and claims about contribution to the Indian economy, society, and culture!

If such claims are real then we must be interested to know who delivers MaaS (Misinformation as a Service) to our people on these platforms or, in other words, who performs the stunts on public participation/opinion on Information Superhighways?

Influencers, Creative Entrepreneurs, and Skillful Artists – A brief psychoanalysis of the situation

“The power of false narratives can be very debilitating for the destiny of a nation,” said NSA Ajit Doval in the ‘Sardar Patel Memorial Speech 2018.’ Highlighting the role of technologies in serving contaminated content to our people, he further said that “Democracy requires people to be enlightened, educated and informed, but rightly informed and rightly educated! What happens if what is driving you and what is influencing your decision-making itself is contaminated?”

India, one of the most online countries in the world and home to over 750 million smartphone users, must know who is driving the public participation on these platforms, and what the overall process looks like, from a mountaintop view!

Technically there are different categories of influencers on the Internet, from mainstream celebrities (A-B-C listers) to reality TV stars to vloggers/ bloggers to micro and nano influencers to journalists/ activists/ photographers/ thought leaders, etc. But those who reach the potential to influence the ‘will’ of the nation, and channel public opinion as a weapon, generally fall under the two broad categories:

(a)  Creative Entrepreneurs

(b)  Skillful Artists.

Creative Entrepreneur is relatively a new term introduced by these very platforms, which is their definition for those creators who have a good number of subscribers/ viewership/ followers. They earn income directly from these platforms, and hire paid employees to work on their channel.

In the Skillful Artists category, we can put those people who got some form of skill or talent than average people and who like to pursue that skill as a profession too.

There is a common notion that just anyone can become an ‘Influencer’ or celebrity on these platforms but a careful observation of their selected individuals and their patterns reveals that this is nothing but an illusion. There is a systematic pattern of hunting for influencers on these platforms, designed by using psychology, sociology, anthropology (holism), and human behavior-related experiments.

The selected creative people usually go through a rigorous and psychological method of selection/ recruitment and development.

Process of Selection/ Recruitment and Development

There is an underlying three-stage process, designed to control and mobilize the creative and artistic people, for the purpose. It is not that this process is the invention of these platforms, it was there for ages in human societies and it applies to other industries/ domains of power and fame, too. The social media platforms are only using it more skillfully!

In the First Stage, which is a preliminary stage, everyone is allowed to enter and showcase their talent on these platforms, like an open and live audition. Here, the selected few start earning some money too, as the goal at this stage is to make people addicted to this extra and convenient source of income and to use them for word-of-mouth marketing.

After spending some time in this stage, these creators become addicted to this extra income, and easy publicity, and then they try hard to figure out what will promote them to the next stage – the stage of real fame and more income, unaware of the fact that they all are being monitored very delicately by Big Brothers of these platforms.

In the Second Stage, these platforms hunt for those people, who are fully dedicated and addicted to their skills, talent and platforms and ready to perform any kind of stunt/ adventure on just an order! They are very much like the biker gangs or outlaw motorcycle clubs of the 1990s and 2000s, which used to perform motorcycle stunts on the roads and were known for carrying the ideas of freedom, nonconformity to mainstream culture, and loyalty to the biker group, etc.

This stage is a bit tough. Those who reach here are a bit more famous than those in the first stage but at the same time, since they have talent and free spirit, they are tough to command too!

So here they go through a psychological experiment, where, first their morale is crushed, then their confidence is broken and finally, they are made to believe that their skill/ talent is of no worth! Whatever they have earned in life is due to the mercy of these platforms/ providers and gradually they start seeing these platforms in the image of a ‘God.’ This is a stage of absolute ‘devotion,’ but devotion to whom? Not to the talent or karma, but to the platforms and the forces behind them!

Those who belong to this stage usually have a typical story: ‘I was doing something like a normal person, and one day changed my life entirely!’ They are famous but not ultra-famous (sometimes they are called ‘in-betweeners’ of the Internet, too). They are making good money but they know that a step ahead, the sky is the limit! Those who sustained such a mental status for sometime are carefully monitored for the next stage.

The Third Stage is the final stage, and only a selected few can reach here, after crossing the rigorous psychological experiments in the first and second stages successfully. This is a stage, where we see influencers performing weird stuff, something unusual and alien to the society, culture, and norms/ structure of their targeted region. These people are in the process of becoming ‘cult’ celebrities and have started enjoying the hypnotic addiction of their status.

In one form or the other, the ‘cult’ celebrities were always there, even before the Internet, social media, and smartphones, and we have seen them in different professions/ domains, too, i.e., show business, politics, sports, journalism, activism, and socio-religious domains. But what has changed now is that AI-enabled social media platforms have expanded their impact multifold, and performing cognitive manoeuvres/ psychological warfare for political/ economic/ strategic goals through these mercenaries, at the click of a mouse!

One more thing that is common in these Influencers is that they are artists by character, and an artist is generally a rebel from the inside, and standing against the established norms of the society/system gives them artistic satisfaction!

Now imagine if a battalion of such influencers, Creative Entrepreneurs, Skillful Artists, and cult celebrities, is tasked to march with full force, to wage a battle of false narratives/ misinformation/ disinformation against a country’s interests, decisions, culture, ethos, and structure!

What can be the approach to deal with such a situation?

Sever the Roots – Counter Cognitive Warfare Strategy

It is said that a grand strategy to deal with a problem must include a way to think hard, dig deep, reach out to roots, and severing them, to end the problem with finality. And there should always exist the 10th man in the room too!

To visualize a solution in this scenario we will need to go back to the origin, the roots of internet again!

The idea of “Information Superhighways” was proposed with an analogy to physical highways, and its propagator former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said: “The Global Information Infrastructure will help educate our children and allow us to exchange ideas within a community and among nations. It will be a means by which families and friends will transcend the barriers of time and distance. It will make possible a global information marketplace, where consumers can buy or sell products.”

We build physical highways for the similar kind of purpose, that is ‘smooth travel’ for everyone – from people on foot to horses to bicycles to motor cars to commercial and heavy transport vehicles. Sometimes these highways are exploited by bad elements too, i.e., biker gangs, rioters, protesters, terrorists, anti-national elements, etc., but at the same time ensuring a smooth and safe journey for all is the responsibility of the government.

We have a time-tested road safety framework to deal with the challenges of traffic collisions, deaths, injuries, property damage, and other harms on the highway system. Some inputs/ experiences to managing physical highways can be applied to frame a roadmap for the safety and security of Information Superhighways, too.

Time for ‘Traffic Rules’

“Don’t mistake the democracy for the ballot box! The ballot box is a mechanism to find out who will make the laws for you, and what will be the laws of this country. It is not democracy by itself. The democracy is that the laws which are made by the representatives of the people, will be adhered by all the people, and will be enforced with the total strength of the might of the state,” said NSA Ajit Doval.

If the Internet is the global ‘Information Superhighway,’ then Misinformation/ Disinformation can be called the adventure/ misadventure and stunts on these highways. To control such chaos on physical highways we have the concept of Traffic Rules, Traffic Inspectors, and a well-crafted Traffic Management System, too. If anyone violates the traffic rules, then there are different provisions to deal with that like issuing the ‘challan’ to traffic rule violators, and suspension/ cancellation of their driving licence.

Some traffic rules for I-ways can be prepared by deriving inputs from this conventional approach!

A broader outline for ‘Traffic Rules’

Apart from the categories of influencers mentioned above and sponsored accounts, some common people like urban/ semi-urban and rural youth, housewives, professionals, and teenagers, also indulge in contributing to Misinformation/ Disinformation, for different reasons, i.e., entertainment/ fun, source of easy and extra income, ideological alignment, unemployment/ poverty and human behavior related aspects. And our response to deal with such cases generally falls under three broad categories: Suspension/ ban of social media accounts, enforcement of criminal charges and arrest (if a case is registered), or temporary Internet shutdown (in case of riots, mass level violence or terrorist act). But in each of these possible responses, there is always a scope for escape and special privilege, under the banner of ‘Freedom of Speech.’

Every social media post/ short/ tweet that spreads misinformation/ disinformation is paid! So, there is the need is to keep the freedom of expression intact but restrain the freedoms of earning from that expression.

How? Today every social media account is connected to a mobile, every mobile is connected to Aadhaar card, and Aadhaar card is connected to the bank account. With the help of technology and connected structure, a system can be developed, where on reporting a misinformation/ disinformation case, the bank account/ financial transactions of the originator of misinformation can be ‘frozen,’ on the click of a mouse, with immediate effect!

Now, this ‘freezing’ process can be very much similar to the process of revoking the driving licence and issuing ‘challan’ on highways, where once caught the violators are forced to go through an exhaustive legal or bureaucratic process. And that lesson becomes the lesson for a lifetime! Those whose bank accounts are frozen/ suspended will be needed to prove their cause and justify the act. If they are able to do so, their bank accounts/ financial transactions can be resumed, if not, then the long, legal and official process follows.

Only by testing such a framework in a handful of sample cases, we can minimize the violations of traffic rules on Information Superhighway to a great extent!

Conclusion

“There is always a possibility of false narratives derailing the democracy. Today it has expanded manifold because of the technology. And it becomes the responsibility of everyone, every citizen, everyone in the media, everyone who speaks, every institution, every gathering that you go to, that erode the strength of the false narrative” – National Security Advisor Shri Ajit Doval (Sardar Patel Memorial Speech, 2018).

Everything that we count as a strength of our society, culture and civilization, is our key vulnerability, too! In the coming days, attacks on the trust and will of the common people through false narratives, are only going to accelerate. So, accelerating the creative improvisations to fight them is our collective responsibility, too!

A technology that was born in the middle of a war, by the people involved in the war, to shape the outcomes of the war, and to attack the mind of enemies in the war, discussing its weaponization, is a bit naïve, and late. What best we can do now is to prepare the mind to deal with its challenges, with the same war-like spirit!

ALSO READ: Part 1: Psyche Behind the Internet, Information Superhighways

The post Counter Cognitive Warfare Strategy for India appeared first on IMR.

ALSO READ: Part 2: Counter Cognitive Warfare Strategy,

“War is not an act of the will aimed at the inanimate matter, as it is in the mechanical arts…. Rather, it is an act of the will aimed at a living entity that reacts,” Prussian general and military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831).

A US tech tycoon bids ($44 billion) for a social networking platform, with a claim to protect ‘free speech’ and the function of ‘democracy’ and millions became his followers overnight, including many countries like India, ignorant of the fact that his idea of ‘democracy’ was more aligned with the ‘Referendum’ mindset of separatist and pro-Khalistani elements.

Musk has some other interesting concerns and creative solutions for the future of humanity, too (which rarely make headlines in India), such as helping humans to become ‘multi-planet species’ and implanting a ‘fit bit’ in their skulls to prepare them to fight against their ‘extinction’ from the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

In April 2021, Musk’s Neuralink Corporation released a video in which a monkey was playing the video game MindPong via the Bluetooth-enabled chips inserted into his brain. The video was shared widely and propagated as a landmark step toward merging human consciousness with AI. By December 2021, Musk announced his plans to start testing his chip with the humans too. As of Feb 2022, there were reports that those tests killed 15 out of 23 monkeys, including the one that played the video game, due to ‘extreme suffering.’

Musk, the savior of humanity, also used his Starlink Internet as a weapon against Russian forces in the Ukraine War, and when told to be held accountable for his actions as an “adult” by the Russian Space chief, he immediately started playing “If I die under mysterious circumstances,” kind of tweets, which stormed the social platforms.

Such is the character of 21st-Century Cognitive Warfare! It is no more some covert or indirect operation, where Maskirovka has any role to play. It is a live stream stunt of 280 characters or 60 seconds shorts that hit directly and precisely to its targets and trigger their dopamine release, in other words, makes them ‘feel good about being targeted!

Background to psyche behind the ‘Internet’

Roscosmos (Space Corporation of Russia) chief Dmitry Rogozin stated that Elon Musk’s Starlink terminals “were delivered to the militants of the Nazi Azov Battalion and the Ukrainian Marines in Mariupol by military helicopters,” and Musk is, thus, involved in “supplying the fascist forces in Ukraine with military communication equipment.” The use of Starlink’s Internet terminals as a weapon in the Ukraine War and a recent verbal exchange between Musk and Rogozin refreshed the memories of the Internet’s background in people’s minds.

On 4 October 1957, Soviet Union inaugurated the ‘Space Age’ with the launch of Sputnik 1 – the first artificial satellite of the world. There are enough documents that suggest that the launch of Sputnik created a big political and moral chaos in the USA and the American society’s reaction (military, government, and public combined) to the Sputnik launch is considered an important juncture in America’s history.

Circling the globe every one hour and 35 minutes, Sputnik was traveling on the north to the south orbital path that brought it over the USA, seven times every twenty-four hours, and its steady “beep beep” sound thrilled and terrified the listeners. The popular term ‘Sputnik Moment’ signifies exactly that. It is said that in many senses, Sputnik hysteria sparked the creation of the Internet.

On 7 February 1958, five months after the Sputnik crisis, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). ARPA was established to catch up with the Soviets in the space race and to lead in three key areas of research: Space technology, ballistic missile defence (BMD), and solid propellants, but very soon (by the early 1960s) it started venturing into the new research areas, including command and control.

There is no doubt that it was the urgency of war (both limited and nuclear) that led ARPA to develop a technology that Rogozin aptly referred to as ‘military communication systems,’ but when we trace the history of the Internet and its different stages of development, from Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider’s “Intergalactic Network” memo in 1963 to Al Gore’s “Information Superhighways” speech in 1994, the first question that comes to mind is what motivated the Pentagon to hire experimental psychologists like Licklider to develop the technology?

There are several historical documents like Charles Bray’s paper “Toward a Technology of Human Behavior for Defence Use” published in 1962 and Ellen Herman’s book “The Romance of American Psychology” (1995) that suggest that throughout the Cold War phase, exploring the ‘Psychology’ and human behavior aspects, was one of the key interest areas of the US military experts. Highlighting some numbers in her book, Ellen writes that “Between 1940 and 1970, the number of psychologists and psychiatrists climbed astronomically,” and “membership in American Psychological Association grew by more than 1,100 per cent, from 2,739 in 1940 to 30,839 in 1970.” She noted that “psychological experts’ rise to power was due initially to the benefits of war, World War at first and then Cold War” and “military imperatives during World War II, provided psychological experts with their first encounter with the policymakers.”

It was during this period and in this background, that the idea of the Internet was developed and Licklider and other experimental psychologist professionals contributed to its design, not to promote the ideas of liberty, democracy, equality, one world, innovation, and freedom of speech kind of fancy ideas but for the objectives of the ‘War’ and to win the ‘battles of the mind.’ Their focus was to provide solutions to loosely defined military problems from the broadest possible perspective. That generation was tasked with waging the psychological warfare, ‘man-machine’ engineering problems, experimenting with the ‘sensation and perception’ aspects and exploring the mysteries of human motivation, attitudes, and behavior.

So, this idea that wars could be won by advancing weapon technologies and killing one’s opponents was repeatedly identified as naïve and incorrect!

While on one hand, these sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and psychologists of the Pentagon tried harder to be seen as ‘scientific,’ as possible, on the other hand, they reached the conclusion that there could be no higher military priority than the “control of human subjectivity.”

It is a bit hard to imagine that if these experts from the Pentagon would have pitched their products/ ideas directly to the third countries, with a promise to help in their economic progress, children’s education, knowledge/ information sharing, and to make their democracies strong, given the track record of such claims, which country on earth would have accepted that deal!

So for Licklider’s “intergalactic network” vision to be fulfilled, the private sector’s financial support, a pinch of humanitarian approach, some democratic jargon, and the narration industry’s backing were needed, and from here the idea of “Information Superhighways” was born.

Information Superhighways

In his famous (March 21, 1994) “Information Superhighways” speech, Al Gore, the 45th Vice President of the USA said: “This GII (Global Information Infrastructure) will circle the globe with information superhighways on which all people can travel. These highways or, more accurately, networks of distributed intelligence will allow us to share information, to connect, and to communicate as a global community.” It was Al Gore who promoted the legislation that funded an expansion of ARPANET and lobbied aggressively in favor of privatization and globalization of the Internet. Gore is currently a member of Apple’s board of directors and a senior partner at venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins (the firm which has been an early investor in more than 900 high tech/social media companies in the US, including Amazon, Google, and Twitter).

In April 1994, Netscape Communications Corporation was born, and Microsoft created a web browser for Windows 95. In the same year, Amazon.com was launched as an online marketplace for books. In 1995, Yahoo was incorporated and a search engine function Yahoo search was introduced. Then came the era of Netflix (1997), Google (1998), Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), and Twitter (2006).

Internet witnessed a phenomenal expansion in its new avatar, from only 16 million users in 1995 to 5 billion users (63% of the world population) in 2022. It is interesting that in their earlier pitch for Information Superhighways, Al Gore and Clinton both projected the idea as an educational tool, virtual library of the future, knowledge/ information exchange utility and virtual research facility, etc., designed to harvest local and global knowledge economy and innovation culture. But we have seen in a very short period of time, that things shifted to dating, entertainment, shopping, live streaming, social experiments, activism, psychological, and political campaigns!

“The fate of information in the typically American world is to become something which can be bought or sold.” mathematician Norbert Wiener, ‘The Human Use of Human Beings (1950).

Convenience of driving “Mass Surveillance”

In 2013, an American intelligence contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the secret wide-ranging information-gathering programmes conducted by National Security Agency (U.S. intelligence agency), and the stories of those leaks were published in The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers. In the article “NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others,” published in The Guardian, (7 June 2013), it was highlighted how the NSA has obtained “direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple, and other US internet giants.” It revealed that “some of the world’s largest Internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing programme (code name PRISM) since its introduction in 2007.” The article says that Microsoft was the first, with a collection beginning in December 2007. It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook, and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and, finally, Apple, which joined the programme in 2012. And “collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks.”

In 2014, while interacting with Edward Snowden virtually on a Russian TV show, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is not carrying out mass surveillance programmes of the kind Snowden exposed in the USA, and “we don’t have as much money as they do in the US,” he added sarcastically. A few days later, while speaking at a media forum in St. Petersburg Putin said that the Internet was originally created as a ‘CIA project’ and “it is still developing as such.”

LifeLog Project – DARPA

In 1972, ARPA gained the ‘Defense’ prefix and was renamed DARPA, but in 1993 it reverted to its original name ARPA (as this acronym suits more to commercial applications), and finally three years later, in 1996, again renamed as ‘DARPA,’ to re-emphasize agency’s original focus. In 2002, DARPA launched the Personalized Assistant that Learns (PAL) programme, a cognitive system to “make military decision-making more efficient and more effective at multiple levels of command.” (This research led to the launch of Siri Inc in 2007, which, three years later, was acquired by the Apple).

In mid-2003 something more interesting happened. DARPA launched an ambitious project called LifeLog, which officially was aimed at recording essentially all of a person’s movements and conversations and everything that they listened to, watched, read and bought. The idea was to create a permanent, searchable, electronic diary of the entire lives, of the entire population of the planet. LifeLog was a bit ahead of its time, it was tasked to perform everything that smartphones, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, and other apps do these days! The idea was to trace the ‘threads’ of an individual’s life in terms of events/ states/ relationships, deducing behavioral patterns from monitoring people’s daily activities, and to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees, or does.

It cannot be a mere coincidence but it is said that the exact date (3 February 2004) on which Facebook was launched, Pentagon revoked its LifeLog project!

The real log of DARPA’s fascinating research is a bit long! But the question is – after developing dozens of interesting commercial tools, where does DARPA is focusing its energy these days?

‘AI-Next’ Campaign

In September 2018, DARPA launched a multi-year investment of more than $2 billion (in new and existing programmes) called the “AI Next” campaign. According to its official statement: “AI Next builds on DARPA’s five decades of AI technology creation to define and to shape the future, always with the Department’s hardest problems in mind.” DARPA is investing in the third wave of AI to develop machines that “understand and reason in context.” In Feb-March 2019, the agency started exploring ways to improve how AI systems like Siri/ Alexa teach themselves language and the Competency-Aware Machine Learning programme too. In a nutshell, the approach is quite simple, as they often say – “the best way to avoid surprises is to create surprises.”

Stunts on ‘Information Superhighways’

“War is never merely about victory on the battlefield or the simple conquest of land; it is about the pursuit of a policy that cannot be realized in any other way than through force.” Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

There are three important elements of the idea of “Information Superhighways”: Investment, Infrastructure, and Public Participation. While the first two are in absolute control of their makers, it is the third one, which belongs to us, the rest of the world that is traveling on these highways. Without ‘Public Participation,’ a highway is of no use, be it physical or virtual and it is this third and most crucial element of Information Superhighways, which is a matter of concern for democracies around the world, too.

Misinformation/Disinformation

Misinformation/ Disinformation is one of the most popular global concerns of our time. From Musk to Obama to Kissinger to white-haired architects of Information Superhighways, a flood of ‘free speech absolutists’ and guardians of ‘democracy’ is emerging in the Western world and it seems that almost every important person on earth is nowadays issuing a ‘wake-up call’ for democracy/ humanity and fighting the battle for a ‘safer’ Internet!

“People are dying because of misinformation,” said former US president Barack Obama in a recent speech. While the EU has passed Digital Services/ Digital Market Acts, the USA is forming the “Disinformation Governance Board,” too, but despite such enormous human efforts/ concerns the information superhighway, on the contrary, is becoming more and more chaotic, unsafe, and disordered with time.

With a similar kind of urgency the world was debating terrorism and counter-terrorism, until a few years ago, it is now discussing the issues of Misinformation and Disinformation. It is important to note that global forums like the UN are yet to develop a common consensus on the definition of ‘Terrorism,’ so devising an effective strategy is a far cry.

“You cannot defeat the enemy you can’t define,” often says national security adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval. Similar to the issue of terrorism, what is missing in all these global deliberations/ campaigns against Misinformation/ Disinformation is the affirmation of the basic fact that on the matters related to social, economical, religious, regional, and national consequences, spreading misinformation/ disinformation is a crime, cause of crime or a motive of the crime, and it needs to be tackled that way.

Misinformation is not a simple ‘spam,’ content that can be laughed at or ignored. In the case of India, we have seen how under the broader flag of ‘Misinformation/ Disinformation’ there are dedicated channels/ actors who promote anti-national/ anti-system and anti-establishment sentiments, and create social divide in the name of caste, community, regionalism, language identities, etc. We have seen how from abrogation of Article 370 Act to Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to Farms Laws, and even for those future bills/ moves that are yet to be drafted by the government like National Register of Citizens (NRC), a mass level damage to people and property was done, across the country, within a matter of few minutes of misinformation spread.

Last year, the number of imposed Internet shutdowns crossed over 106 in India. A few days back in May 2022, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) banned some 16 YouTube channels (under the IT Rules) for spreading misinformation on India’s national security and foreign relations matters, stirring communal discord and disturbing the law and order situation in the country. In April, MIB banned over 22 YouTube channels, and a number of similar actions were taken in the past. These channels/social media accounts usually hold millions of subscriptions/ followers and, by the time the ban is initiated, the damage is already done. A ban cannot automatically trigger a ‘delete all’ command on millions of devices where such content is already copied/downloaded. Misinformation/ disinformation spread on social media sometimes transitions to much larger audiences when picked up by traditional media – print or electronic too!

A new study by MIT scholars on Misinformation, published in 2018, found that on social media “falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude.” Many such types of research are being conducted on the issues of Misinformation and Disinformation, and they often talk about things like novelty hypothesis, transmission chain, Machiavellian intelligence/ Social Brain, laws of human nature, etc., but interestingly, none of these researches ever attempt to reach the root of the problem!

“Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.” Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

If Al Gore’s ‘Information Superhighways’ analogy was right then social media platforms/ apps can be seen as the vehicles on those highways and misinformation/ disinformation as the fuel that runs those vehicles (after all, these companies make enormous profit out of misinformation/ disinformation). But then the question comes – who is sitting on the driver’s seat and who is performing stunts on the information highways?

ALSO READ: Part 2: Counter Cognitive Warfare Strategy

The post Psyche Behind the Internet,Information Superhighways appeared first on IMR.

Maj Gen (Dr) GD Bakshi, SM, VSM

Winning wars is all about gaining information about the enemy and denying him the same information about one self. Thus, information warfare is as old as war itself. However, in recent times, it has been waged most successfully over the mass media. During World War I, it was primarily waged over the print medium using newspapers, magazines and books to promote one’s own narrative and counter that of the enemy. It was used to wage unrelenting propaganda wars to sustain the morale of one’s own population and erode that of the enemies. In World War II, radio became the prime mass media that could reach across continents. Radio and print media were widely used to conduct some very successful psychological operations and information war for narratives dominance. After the war, TV became the prime mass media and its all out telematic assault was first used in the Gulf Wars. Now the Internet and social media have become the most influential mass media. These have overridden all the previous tools of mass media – whether print, radio or TV. Social media is a paradox – highly personalized yet open to mass outreach as far as manipulating the mind on a massive scale is concerned.

Social Media and Telematic Assault

The present Russia-Ukraine War has seen the massive impact of social media and television in waging information war at a global level. Social media has now become the greatest tool of reaching out to individual minds and, thereby, influencing the mass mind in a manner that supersedes the impact of all legacy mass media tools like print, radio and even TV. Donald Trump in USA and the BJP in India had also realised the overwhelming impact of the social media to challenge the customary dominance of mass media. Its message is so personalized and yet has such massive outreach that it is instrumental in shaping the mass mind. Today, its impact supersedes the impact of traditional mass media. Today, some 2.7 billion viewers use Facebook every day, some 206 million use Twitter and some 122 million use YouTube daily. These social media platforms, therefore, have major role in shaping public perceptions and opinion. Big Tech giants of the US-based social media were blatantly partisan in this war. They permitted calls to assassinate Putin, demonise the Russians as a race and went out of the way to push the Ukrainian narrative in this war. The truth is that hundreds of former US Government officials from the Departments of Defense, FBI, Homeland Security, etc. work in these companies to peddle the US Government narratives. There is a revolving door policy between Big Tech and US Government agencies (eg, Jerarad Cohen of US State Dept and Joseph Rozek of the US Dept of Defense and many others are now with the social media platforms) playing a blatantly partisan role. In fact, these platforms had received some $44.4 bn worth of contracts from the Pentagon and Dept of Homeland Security to spread stories of violent extremism during the Global War on Terror.

Network Battalion 65

Another CIA sponsored cyber army called Network Battalion 65, hacked into Russian Nuclear Institute files and published them openly on the net to spill Russian nuclear secrets. All these cyber warriors have every day been posting hundreds of video clips (some taken from video war games, previous conflicts and military exercises) showing destruction of Russian military equipment by Javelin missiles and Stinger SAMs. Even as they advertise American military equipment, they create a hype that Ukraine is winning the war against all Russian odds. The impression they generate is of an impending Russian military collapse of will and morale and a coup that could overthrow Putin in Moscow. In actual fact, Putin’s popularity rating has shot up to 80 per cent in Russia post this conflict.

This hype about a Ukrainian victory is plastered all over the social media. It is then picked up by the echo chamber of US electronic media – CNN and BBC – and relayed all over the world. The Third World media also dutifully picks up this western narrative and parrots it to create a climate of global opinion against Russia. The Russian view point has been totally blanked out in this war.

As it is, RTV and Sputnik have been banned by USA and Western Governments to block out the Russian viewpoint entirely. The wartime tactic of spreading disinformation to undermine morale of the rival camp has received a technical boost as seen in hundreds of false videos being circulated during this war on social media and then on to the TV screens. Fake narratives and lies are being promoted shamelessly.

Western Propaganda Playbook

Alwyn and Heidi Tofler, in their famous book – War and Anti War – had listed six basic propaganda ploys or tools. These are:-

Atrocity Accusations. These have most skilfully been employed in Ukraine with civilian deaths in Bucha being touted as not just atrocities but as genocide. The Russians have reacted angrily to these accusations – calling them fake and deliberately staged. With such fierce air attacks, tank battles and artillery barrages – civilian casualties are bound to occur on a large scale. The surprise is that despite huge amounts of ammunition expenditure the civilian causalities are comparatively much lower than what we have seen in Iraq and Syria. Ukraine prohibited all males from16 to 60 to leave the city battlefields. They armed some 18,000 civilians – thus making them legitimate targets. Now they are coming up with strident atrocity accusations that are used to justify more economic sanctions against Russia and additional weapons shipments to Ukraine.

Hyperbolic Inflation of Stakes. It gives the national audience a feel that everything that they hold dear is at risk. Thus, the Ukraine War has been made into a hyperbolic contest between Democractic and Autocratic regimes. India is being pressurised to take the side of democracies. Ukraine is hardly an ideal democracy and no better than Russia in democratic freedoms and practises. Corruption is, perhaps, more rife in Ukraine than it is in Russia. Yet the entire struggle is being elevated to that moral plane of democracies vs dictatorships.

Demonisation or Dehumanisation of Opponent. Putin has been called a war criminal and killer by no less than President Joe Biden himself. The Russian military in general and, especially Putin in particular, are being demonised. This is destroying any chances of resolving this crisis peacefully. How can you negotiate with killers?

Polarisation. Those who are not with us are against us. India is being pressurised to condemn Russia and not buy cheap oil and weapons from them. This, even as Europe continues to buy massive quantities of oil and gas from Russia every day.

Claims of Devine Sanction. Islamists freely invoke Allah’s support and blessings for their wars. Even western democracies stridently invoke God’s support in what they claim to be a just war. Justice is simply defined. Whatever they do is just – whatever the enemy does is unjust. The invasions of Afghanistan, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, etc, were all just and humane (regardless of the destruction caused and the number of civilians killed)! The Russian invasion of Ukraine alone is evil! Killing 1,30,000 civilians in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki was just and moral – Bucha alone is evil.

Meta Propaganda. Propaganda that discredits the other sides propaganda is termed as meta propaganda. It calls into question everything that comes from the enemy. All statements made by Russian military are said to be lies and fabrications. Ukraine alone is telling the truth. Its aim is to produce “whole sale” disbelief in whatever the enemy says.

Out Sourcing Propaganda

Dan Cohen, writing in the Mintpress.news.com, has blown the lid off a massively funded, specialized PR campaign that is being run by several entities associated with the governments of US, UK and NATO to portray the war in Ukraine to suit western agendas. The Strategic Communication Narrative is to depict the Ukrainian military as a tiny but righteous David standing up to a brutal Russian military Goliath and winning outright. Not widely known is the fact that behind this massively successful propaganda campaign are a group of international PR firms working directly with the Ukraine foreign ministry.

Just hours after the beginning of the Russian military campaign, an anonymous figure who runs a PR firm in Ukraine, started collaborating with Ukraine’s foreign ministry. A slew of some 150 international PR firms collaborated to commence a massive propaganda Blitz. This PR juggernaut was led by PR Network co-founder Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham. Francis Ingham, incidentally, is a top consultant loosely connected with the UK government. Reportedly, he sits on the UK Government’s Communication Services Strategy & Evaluation Council.

Dan Cohen also mentions Yuroslav Turbil – a communication Specialist –  who has worked with several US Government organizations. He is credited with creating a dossier containing key messages, approved language and other data to run the Ukraine PR campaign. Dan says the story of the Snake Island heroes (taken from famous incident in the German Ardennes offensive) and the Ghost pilot of Kiev (who in his lone SU-27 supposedly shot down half the Russian Air Force, are all credited to him). These were hugely popular and catchy stories. Unfortunately, in the end stories remain just that – stories. Art work and posters for these PR campaigns to promote the heroism of the Ukraine armed forces was done by Stephen Bandera. Dan Cohen says he was a one-time Nazi collaborator, who had earlier led an organization that had murdered thousands of Jews and ethnic Poles in World War II. These posters celebrated Molotov Cocktails – as Bandera smoothies. These posters listed Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria, etc., as incurable diseases and also created racist and violent depictions of Russians in general and Putin in particular.

There is an Army of lobbyists working to send more weapons to prolong the conflict in Ukraine . A tremendous media hype has been created of a heroic Ukraine that has thrashed an incompetent and lumbering Russian military. The problem is that this narrative most deliberately underplays the huge military differential between the two sides. Despite sweeping Western propaganda, Ukraine’s forces have taken very heavy losses. Over a 1000 Iskander tactical ballistic missiles (TBMs), Kalibr and Yakhont cruise missiles have been fired which have reduced over 40 Ukrainian cities to rubble. More to the point, most oil refineries, petrol and lubricants storage facilities and ammunition dumps of Ukraine, have been destroyed. This will severely erode the Ukrainian capacity to continue the fight. Each day that the war lasts, those losses will mount and increase the pressure on the Ukraine military and population. Some 5.5 million have had to flee to neighboring countries and over 7 million have been displaced internally. Over time, this will take a cumulative toll. The longer the war lasts, the more vulnerable the Ukraine military will be to a sudden collapse of logistical stamina and the will to go on. The ability to continue fighting is premised upon a continual supply of arms, fuel oil and lubricants and huge stock piles of ammunition. While greatly playing up Russian losses, the Western media has completely blanked out the very heavy punishment taken by the Ukraine armed forces and logistical infrastructure. Over time, this will widen the gulf between propaganda and reality to unbridgeable levels.

Use of Intelligence Speculation & Analysis as Propaganda

NBC News reported that the US has been using intelligence leaks and even half-baked intelligence analysis as part of their information war. Most of the time, the intelligence cited is not rock solid. It is not based on hard evidence. Low confidence inputs based on mere analysis or even plain false and fake inputs are passed on as hard facts. Over time, this is eroding the reliability of information put out by the US. US officials conceded they were using intelligence releases not to tell the truth but to influence decisions of Putin. A former MI 6 chief said these were more designed to manipulate than inform. Some examples of this genre are the initial reports leaked about Russian plans to attack Ukraine. These were designed to delay the Russian attack. Then there was the claim that Russia had asked China for supply of weapons and spares. Then, Intelligence was put out that Russia was planning to use chemical and biological warfare agents (this was to cover up the US funding of some 32 bio-warfare labs in Ukraine). Critics in the US decried this imperial narrative control by a democratic government openly manufacturing the consent of its public to be lied to for their own good and get limited strategic gains. This could badly erode credibility in the long run. Thus, all the hype about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had later proved to be outrageous lies. The disenchantment with the American narrative building exercise is setting in rather early in this war. Most of this is see-thru and blatant propaganda that is eroding US credibility.

Like in the Gulf war, the danger now is the West getting carried away by its own propaganda and failing to analyse objectively the military outcomes in the field. There is a frenzied chorus from retired American Generals who feel that Ukraine has actually won the war and, with a little more of heavy weapons support, it can inflict a humiliating defeat on the Russian Army and push them back across the border. This has led to many futile Ukrainian counter-attacks that have been decimated by the Russian artillery and air. As the relentless attrition grinds down the Ukrainian armed forces, there could be a sudden collapse a few weeks down the line as the interdiction of Ukraine’s petrol oil and ammunition begins to take its toll.

Conflict Termination: Unconditional Surrender?

Then there is the aspect of conflict termination. President Biden calling Putin a killer and war criminal virtually closes the window for any dialogue for conflict termination. It takes us back to the two World Wars, when such maximalist stances were adopted and the call was for unconditional surrender. Is the US expecting Russia (armed with some 6,300 nuclear warheads) to surrender unconditionally? Russia will get disintegrated and economically destroyed but will never use weapons of mass destruction against the beloved US? The logic is very weird and could result in a nuclear catastrophe at the global level. Such levels of subjective thinking are very dangerous and could lead us to dead ends where crossing the nuclear threshold becomes entirely possible. Driving a nuclear armed adversary across a dead end drop is risky business at the best of time.

Russian Information War

Maskarovika and Disinformation have been an integral part of Russian strategic thought since World War II. In 2013, Gen Valery Gerasimov had propounded the Russian Whole-of-government Approach or Hybrid war doctrine. This entailed a judicious mix of conventional and sub-conventional warfare as also a coherent mix of hard and soft power options in terms of information war, cyber war, propaganda, disinformation and deception coupled with use of political, diplomatic and economic tools to prevail in any conflict.

Maskarovika in Ukraine. The massive Russian military deployment against Ukraine could be seen by the whole world via all-weather satellites – accompanied by UAVs and American AWACS and JSTARS flying over Poland and other East European countries bordering Russia. Yet the Russians were able to keep their intentions secret till the very end. Indian students in Ukraine were told it was all bluff and bluster and there was no need for them to go back. Most of them stayed back on the assurances of the Ukrainian authorities and had to face major problems in evacuation during the hot war. The head of German Intelligence was equally caught off guard and had to be flown out from Kiev at the very last minute when the war started. The French chief of intelligence reportedly had to resign as he failed to anticipate the Russian invasion. Even though President Biden was warning the world of an impending Russian invasion, perhaps, he actually did not believe it himself. He and most Western leaders felt Putin was just bluffing and was using the coercive military deployment merely as a show of force to get US and NATO to revamp the European Security Architecture. The Americans had spelt out 16 February as the date of attack. Putin had meanwhile given a very fair chance for extended negotiations to resolve the crisis. However, this only served to delay the launch of the operation and caused it to get bogged down in the mud of the spring thaw – especially around Kiev.

Winning the Information War

With the deployment of over 300,000 experts by the CIA in support of the Ukraine war effort, USA has succeeded entirely in winning the information war. The social media and electronic and print media are flooded by the Ukrainian narrative. One major advantage that the Americans have is the English language, which is a global link language. Information wars are waged at three levels – global, regional and local. Russia and China are able to hive off their social media domains from Western social media and, thereby, protect their local domains. However, the information domain at the global and regional level is all dominated by the Western narratives. The Russian and Chinese both tightly control their own domestic social media and, to a great extent, are able to insulate their domestic populations from the adverse impact of the enemy’s information war. India has major lessons to learn here because Indians use all Western social media systems and there are no firewalls to protect the local information domain.

However, one problem of this overwhelming global Information dominance is the trap of believing your own propaganda and treating this as the ground reality and not the fictive reality. This can lead to highly flawed estimates of the situation and a loss of objectivity in military planning. Perhaps, key organizations and individuals may know the truth but the general perception that is fashioned by the relentless info-war assault on the social, electronic and print medium, is so overwhelming that, overtime, it overrides and perhaps shapes the actions of the elite leadership itself.

Information Overkill

Buoyed up by the Western narratives of Ukraine’s military success, a lot of retired US Generals are pressing for a Ukrainian counter-offensive to throw out all Russian forces from Ukraine’s soil. This narratives is overly optimistic and dangerously flawed. It does not take into account the very heavy and severe punishment inflicted on Ukraine’s militaries logistics and infrastructure. In specific, Russian interdiction by tactical and cruise missiles, air and artillery has destroyed a great deal of Ukraine’s oil refining and FOL storage capacity as also underground ammunition depots. Over time, these cumulative losses are bound it have a significant impact on the ability to conduct prolonged and concerted operations. Each day that the war continues will tilt scales is favour of Russia. The next few weeks will be critical.

Nuclear Threshold

Also, the US generals are clearly losing all sight of the dangerous nuclear threshold. Russia has the largest number of nuclear warheads in the world. American Generals feel Putin is bluffing with his nuclear sabre rattling. Before Russia invaded Ukraine they had felt his force deployment was also a bluff and he would not invade – just use posturing to get the West to renegotiate the security architecture in Europe. They were wrong then. If they prove wrong a second time about nuclear thresholds, the consequences could be catastrophic for the whole world.

Demographic Weakness

What this war has highlighted, however, are the severe manpower shortages in Russia. Russia traditionally used to rely on heavy fire power and sheer mass. The mass is now clearly missing. Russia has no second or third echelons or even the Operational Maneuver Group (OMG) to exploit the success gained by the leading troops of the first echelon. This was standard Russian doctrine in the Cold War. Russia now is simply recycling and reusing the same troops after giving them time for rest and refit. The same had been seen in Afghanistan. Five Motor Rifle Divisions were sent in initially and this force level was maintained throughout the war. Despite great escalation of support to the Mujahideen by the CIA and Saudi Arabia, this force level was not increased. The use of heavy and unrestrained fire power in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria, however, saved the day. It was uninhibited by any presence of the media or mobile phones on the ground to record images. The large scale presence of the media in Ukraine is becoming a major hindrance for Russian forces to use excessive fire power. Frankly, for the time being, they have lost the information war. They may as well have to focus on winning the ground battle – however, brutal and bloody it becomes. Russia has now articulated pragmatic and achievable aims and should be able to achieve them in phase two.

The post Information War in the Ukraine Conflict appeared first on IMR.

ALSO READ: Cognitive Warfare in the Ukraine War (Part 1)

How did that approach work in Russia-Ukraine War?

“When people speak in vague generalities, for example, and use a lot of abstract terms like justice, morality, liberty, and so on, without really ever explaining the specifics of what they are talking about, they are almost always hiding something. This is often their own nasty but necessary actions, which they prefer to cover up under a screen of righteous verbiage. When you hear such talk, be suspicious,” Writes Robert Greene in “The 33 Strategies of War.”

From the beginning, the Ukraine war is a crusade for liberty/ free will and some kind of global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism for media. Global media is flooded with stories that Ukraine is such a model for democracy in the region that its mere existence makes Putin uncomfortable, and that is why he launched a brutal attack on civilian centers. In his remark on 26th March, US President Joe Biden said: “we emerged anew in the great battle for freedom: a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

Such narratives needed a great narrator too. Zelenskyy’s entertainment and media background combined with live-streamed propaganda (streaming 24/7 to every corner of the globe), and Russia’s complete isolation from the internet, provided NATO a cognitive weapon for which Putin had no counter. From press to social media to parliaments to diplomatic enclaves to Grammy to Oscar, the one-sided celebration of Ukraine’s heroic resistance and Zelenskyy’s Netflix-like leadership approach virtually declared Ukraine a winner in this war, no matter what may be the outcomes.

In the early hours of 24 February, shortly before the start of the war, Zelenskyy recorded an address to the citizens of both Ukraine and Russia, in which he said: “Who can prevent this (war)? People – are these people present among you? I am sure there are – public figures, journalists, musicians, actors, athletes, scientists, doctors, bloggers, stand-up comedians, Tik-Tokers, and many more – regular people.”

The overall western narrative on Ukraine and Zelensky’s position can be summed up in the lines from a recent article “Glory to You, President Zelenskyy,” published in Harvard Political Review (March 3, 2022): “Tens of millions of people worldwide have seen President Zelenskyy’s videos shared online and on television. He has harnessed the power of social media to become history’s first truly online wartime leader, bypassing traditional gatekeepers as he uses the internet to reach out to the people. His uncensored, unadulterated spirit shines through in each broadcast” and Zelenskyy, “through his tactful use of social media, has rallied the world to the cause of Ukraine.”

In the information war, the winner is unquestionably Zelenskyy but it is important to note that information is not the only front in this War!

Now the big question among the Western strategist is – how long can we keep the short-attention-span internet audience (particularly the Americans) interested and engaged in Ukraine’s real-time war series?

Weaponization of AI – A Trailer

It is not that Russia was not aware of the growing Western might on the technology front. In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement on AI made the headlines, when he said: “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind, it comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict.” And “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.” Russia’s military systems are also well equipped with advanced AI capabilities including AI-enabled robotic weapons, autonomous tanks, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), long-range strikes involving high-precision missiles, and the Russian military already use AI for intelligence gathering, C4ISR, logistics, and development of autonomous weapons.

But backed by U.S. and NATO support, Ukraine has a clear edge over AI and digital technology, particularly in the psychological and cognitive warfare domains.

Last month, in the middle of the war, a conversation between two Russian soldiers got automatically captured, transcribed, translated, and analyzed using artificial intelligence algorithms (developed by a US company called Primer). There is news that several unsecured Russian transmissions have been posted online, translated, and analyzed on social media. It is also important to note that every single tech platform and social networking site that, not just Russians or Ukrainians, but the entire globe is using to explore the War, every single platform where people talk/ share or present their views on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, have embedded advanced AI algorithms, that are recording our response/ reactions and emotions in real-time in this big laboratory of psychological experiments called the Internet.

So in a way technology has made everyone a participant (with or without our consent) in this war and from that point of view, it is indeed a kind of virtual WW III. But given the possibilities of AI weaponization in the future, it can still be called only a trailer or snapshot of the future!

From an outer view, the latest developments in Cognitive Warfare and associated psychological manoeuvres appear as matters of the Big Power game, where countries like India have some scope to remain ‘untouched’ and ‘neutral’ but the question is – Can we afford to ignore the fact that in this battle of public perception, every single user, irrespective of his/ her national/ cultural identity, knowingly or unknowingly is a potential team member of some regional/ national or global battalion, recruited to serve the interests of forces, outside our borders?

India’s National Security Concerns

Recently, India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval remarked about these new trends/ shifts in approach to warfare and their possible impact on India, when he said, “The civil society is the new frontier of warfare,” and it is “the common people, their thinking, their perceptions, their sense of well being, and their perception of their own governments,” and everything that can impact the “will of the nation,” is under attack, in this new age of information revolution.

These tech platforms which made their way into the Indian market in the name of some educational activities (Amazon as an online book store), some aid in research (Google search), and occasional entertainment activities (YouTube), now become not only the source of radicalization of a large section of youth but also a significant facilitator in illicit trade and anti-national activities. Today, we have reached a situation where, whether it is some engineering graduate living in a metro city or some rural youth indulging in farming in his village, the cognitive weapons of the information revolution are capable of affecting everyone’s “wetware” irrespective of their personal/ educational/ social or professional background.

When we trace the root of the problem, we find that it all began not with computer technology and the Internet but with “Reality TV” culture, the initial platforms of psychological experiments, and what we are observing now is largely a scaling up of that culture through a more precise and targeted information weapon in our hands – the smartphone and its 24/7 streaming apps.

From Reality TV to Live Streaming

Similar to computers, Reality TV made its debut in India in the name of some singing, dancing and adventure sports/ activities, and through their auditions among the youth, they developed a mass appeal. The craft was fairly simple – putting some people under complex psychological situations and collecting the reaction of the different groups and societies, via voting lines (dial-in mobile phones or SMS). That was the beginning of an active mass engagement and an implementation of the “Persuade, Influence and Change,” frame of traditional PsyOps.

Now, these experiments are entering a new phase. The technological developments in the last few decades have accelerated the pace and reach of such entertainment products to a different level. This phase marked the full exploitation of advancement not only in the digital technology domain alone, the other complementary fields such as Neuroscience and Cognitive Psychology have undergone significant progress too. It is important to note that due to absolute presence and unhindered access for over two decades, now makers of these platforms have a rich experience in analyzing the message and communication exchanged between different groups of our society too, across all regions/ cultures and age groups. Our actions, reactions, emotions, behavior, choices, likes/ dislikes, and overall psychology is nothing but bit-sized information stored in their massive data servers! As a result, their tone, flavor and craft of experiment are consistently improving and getting more precise with each passing day.

Alignment with the Youth ‘Psych’

These days YouTube is circulating and advertisement that their growing creator ecosystem contributed Rs 6,800 crore to the Indian GDP and supported 683,900 full-time equivalent jobs in India in 2020. What does that mean in simple terms?

Entertainment, gaming, dancing, music, cooking, travel, comedy, pet care, home care, self-care, talking or any other hobby or routine, is no more some leisure activity. These are the new employment opportunities for the youth and a highly rewarding career too.

Indian society is inherently outcome-oriented. When a child spends more than usual hours on something, the parent usually asks  – what’s the return? By keeping this psyche of youth and society in mind, these platforms have revamped their strategy too. Today, the more a youth spends time on social media, the more he/ she is capable to earn followers/ likes/ shares/ impressions, higher the chance of his success in life (this is what they highlighted). And when they see around, what do they find? There are several success stories, that originated from a common source! There are several influencers-cum-celebrities out there who not only have a highly rewarding career/ income on social networks but a post-retirement plan too. Several such faces can now even be seen in our regional/ national politics. And if these local examples are not sufficient then search globally – these platforms have created several success cases, for each region/ race/ color/ culture on the planet (at this moment, Zelenskyy is one such face too). On a broader level, all that makes traditional career/ education/ innovation/ discovery/ research/ engineering kind of path appear as a less attractive and less rewarding option for the young minds!

This is the psyche of our Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which are born and nurtured in this environment!

Conclusion

“Elevate yourself through the power of your mind, and not degrade yourself, for the mind can be the friend and also the enemy of the self.” (The Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 6, Verse 5).

From perception to change to influence to command, computer technologies’ improvisations are now entering a state for which we have a reference in our ancient texts. In Ram-Ravan Yuddh, it is said that there came a moment when Ravan invoked “Maya” (the weapon of illusion), the weapon created an illusion of reviving all the armies and their leaders already killed in the war. Then Ram was reminded by his charioteer Matali that: “In your original identity, you are the creator of illusions in this universe. Ravan has created the illusion of phantoms to confuse you. If you make up your mind, you can dispel them immediately.” It is said that then Ram invoked the weapon called “Gyaana” (wisdom) and soon the entire illusion of terrifying armies created by Ravan evaporated into the thin air.

To deal with the Cognitive Warfare’s new improvisations, India’s ancient wisdom and thousands of years of experiences of experimenting with human intelligence can show a path! If name/ fame/ greed is the focus of the approach of Western model, then ‘Tyag and Tapasya’ is a time-tested approach of Bharat. It is this approach of our great rishi munis (who were the world’s leading inventors/ explorers and scientists) which made us thrive in several human endeavours in the past!

Bharat can develop a unique counter-Cognitive Warfare doctrine of its own and a time to work in that direction has come!

ALSO READ: Cognitive Warfare in the Ukraine War (Part 1)

The post Cognitive Warfare in the Ukraine War (Part 2) appeared first on IMR.

ALSO READ: Cognitive Warfare in the Ukraine War (Part 2)

Misinformation, Propaganda, Narratives, Info War, Psy Ops and other non-kinetic tactics of World War II and Cold War phase, are rapidly getting replaced by tools of the 21st Century, that are more concise, precise, targeted, and at the same time largely ‘extremist’ in their approach. These are designed keeping the continuously reducing attention span of targeted viewers and the needs of hyper-empowered ‘homo digitalis’ in mind.

In the classic war strategies, it is often said that the best deceptions are based on ambiguity, mixing fact and fiction so that one cannot be disentangled from the other. In all the previous forms of psychological operations, whether leaflets, loudspeakers, radio, print and electronic propaganda, the truth remained an important ingredient of use and the key idea was that for manipulation to be effective, it had to be based (to a maximum extent) on some Truth and Credibility, otherwise it would not work in the long run. But all that is now a thing of the past. Those strategies belong to a phase when deceptions or manipulation operations used to be some irregular events, not a 24/7 live-streamed reality! In the world of bite-sized content and streaming communications, the philosophical concepts of ‘Art of War’ have mostly been replaced by psychologically fascinating ‘Art of Lying’ and the ideas of fact, logic, truth and credibility are gradually becoming obsolete and ineffectual.

So how the future recipe of psychological experiments will taste with these new ingredients? Russia-Ukraine War offers a perfect snapshot of that future!

After over 40 days of stunning speeches and standing ovations, massive cheerleading campaigns, TikTok manoeuvres, Instagram/ Twitter/ YouTube revolutions and all-out internet invasion, some horrific images of Ukrainian civilian causalities started coming out to the surface, and the world heard the “silence of ruined cities and killed people,” as Zelenskyy rightly quoted in his Grammy award message. These images do not go well with the much celebrated “heroic victory” of the Ukrainian President, yet he shared them with the global audience with some kind of ‘guarantee’ that neither the blame nor the accountability for this whole episode would ever come to his shoulders!

After all, it is Russia, the aggressor who committed these “war crimes.” NATO partners who betrayed the Ukrainians and the rest of the world, which is unable to decide whom to side with, is further making it worse! So where is the fault of Zelenskyy in all this? He is only doing the job that best suits him, carrying the image of “servant leader” (that elected him to chair) managing public opinion/ perceptions, and giving perfect shots for this live-streamed war series, in real-time! But how do those millions of Ukrainians who turned ‘refugees’ overnight and those who lost their families and dear ones in this nonsensical campaign for “NATO membership” see all this? How they perceive the role of their social media hero President whom they elected to end the war not to accelerate it, perhaps, will never come to the light!

“Ukraine has gone from bread basket to bread line,” said UN World Food Programme Head, citing the serious humanitarian crisis in the country. According to UN reports, Ukrainians are trapped in besieged Ukrainian cities, lacking access to food, water and essential services. Interestingly, from day one of the war, providing ‘uninterrupted internet’ connectivity to civilians tops the list of priorities for the Ukrainian government. As of now, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in partnership with Elon Musk has provided over 5,000 Starlink satellite internet terminals to Ukraine, which are largely up and running despite missiles and cyber attacks.

From absolute internet control to weaponization of public opinion, in many ways, the Ukraine war is a classic case of 21st-century Cognitive Warfare, pilot-tested successfully!

‘Persuade, Change, Influence and Command’

“Communication is a kind of war, its field of battle is the resistant and defensive minds of the people you want to influence. The goal is to advance, to penetrate their defenses and occupy their minds,” writes Robert Greene in his book “The 33 Strategies of War” (2006).

In the middle of the Ukraine War, the White House invited selected social media influencers on a zoom call to guide them on how to educate their millions of followers spread across the world, about U.S. policy on Ukraine. The White House digital strategy director tweeted: “An astonishing amount of people are learning about the invasion of Ukraine through digital creators who have begun to cover it,” and “we take that really seriously, and are working to make sure those creators have the ability to have their questions answered.”

That in simple words was an open invitation for social media influencers to join NATO Psy Ops and Cognitive Warfare against Russia.

What is Cognitive Warfare?

“Cognitive Warfare is the weaponization of public opinion by an external entity,” for “influencing public and governmental policy” and “destabilizing public institutions,” defines NATO’s report: ‘FALL 2020 – Cognitive Warfare – An Attack on Truth and Thought.’ The study says that Cognitive Warfare is different from earlier forms in the sense that it is not limited to controlling the “flow of information” rather it is a fight “to control or alter the way people react to information.” It highlights the “power of words/ ideas and non-kinetic war,” citing how “the Soviet Union watched the collapse of the Iron Curtain,” and the impact of the power of “blue jeans and rock and roll.”

The document mentions Russia 54 times, China 20 times, and Iran 6 times, citing how these three had waged cognitive attacks against the Western bloc through misinformation/ false narratives campaigns about the Corona outbreak and what the three could do in the near future. It highlights how the combination of social media, news networks, automation algorithms, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, psychology, and sociology is paving the way for a dangerous future and talks about adopting the “defense forward” doctrine of the USA, which means “preemptively preventing and proactively searching for attacks.”

A careful look at the Ukrainian leadership approach in this war reveals that it is largely inspired by findings of such NATO reports on psychological and cognitive warfare.

Cognition refers to “the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses,” and Cognitive Warfare attempts to influence this process and its internal mechanism. A recent definition comes from Oliver Backes and Andrew Swab of Harvard’s Belfer Center, in their published work in Dec 2019 that says: “Cognitive Warfare is a strategy that focuses on altering how a target population thinks – and through that how it acts.”

If we look around, from a teenager to adults to senior citizens, what are the sources for acquiring knowledge and understanding through “thought, experience, and senses,” in this Google’s system of the world?

According to a recent report “Digital 2022 – Global Overview,” there are approx 4.95 billion internet users in the world (62.5% of the global population) and 4.62 billion active social media users, who spend on an average 6 to 7 hours daily online. India comes in the list of countries where people spend more time than the average on the Web and now Gen Z (the generation born between 1997 and 2012) is the biggest target audience of these platforms. Major activities, which information prosumers (one who both consume and produce) perform online, include keeping up-to-date with news/events, watching/producing videos, TV shows/ movies/ gaming, live streaming content and chatting with family/ friends and social networks. And most importantly, all these activities they perform not with a routine mindset, there are inbuilt elements of ‘addiction’ in these algorithms that are the product of ongoing research on psychology, neurology, sociology and science of influence, designed to affect the ‘wetware’ of the human brain, which is also called the “grey matter” of the brain in which opinions/ perceptions are formed and decisions are made.

If Media is psychological and cognitive warfare’s most useful weapon then Content is its ammunition. Advanced research in the domains of Artificial Intelligence (AI), psychology and neuroscience has the potential to impact the cognitive functioning of human brains and when this potential gets leveraged for the psychological operations in real-time through a device that people carry 24/7 in their hands, the results are simply remarkable!

Zelenskyy’s Leadership Approach – a Brief Case Study on ‘Persuasion’

In the middle of the Russia-Ukraine War, Netflix decided to stream Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s political series “Servant of the People” again! It is a political TV series created and produced by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who stars a 30-year-old history teacher, who got unexpectedly elected as the President of Ukraine (after a video of him ranting about the corrupt system goes viral). The series, which is the product of Kvartal 95 studio (a studio founded by Zelenskyy in 2003) ran for three seasons from 2015 to 2019. It is interesting that, while the series was still on the air, in 2018, Kvartal 95 studio registered a political party similar to the title of the series “Servant of the People,” and the whole election campaign of Zelenskyy was orchestrated to establish this narration that Zelenskyy in reel life and real life was the same.

Zelenskyy ran the entire presidential campaign on a virtual mode, avoiding human contact with his electorate, and addressed his voters through YouTube shorts, TikTok and Instagram posts and garnered millions of views. There was news that he also spent a good amount of time of his campaign producing the next three episodes of the TV series. An article “The World Just Witnessed the First Entirely Virtual Presidential Campaign,” published in Politico magazine on April 24, 2019, mentions that: “He not only traded on the image of a complete outsider, he also did no face-to-face campaigning, made no speeches, held no rallies, eschewed travel across the country, gave no press conferences, avoided in-depth interviews with independent journalists and, until the last day of campaigning, did not debate.”

The article further notes that Zelenskyy’s “virtual-first strategy” allowed him to run his campaign “on general themes and vague promises and to avoid issuing detailed positions on policy issues,” and the entire campaign was focused on the “discontent with the way things are—and lambasting Ukraine’s business and political elites for making them that way.” And finally, it concludes thus, “the U.S. and the West can help ensure that the choice Ukrainian voters have taken in electing an ambitious but untested political newcomer pays off and does not plunge Europe into an accelerating conflict with Russia.”

In a nutshell, from the 2019 election to the 2022 War, the internet and Western help were always on the back of Zelenskyy, and if one keeps the virtual propaganda aside, it seems like a classic case of installing a puppet leadership!

ALSO READ: Cognitive Warfare in the Ukraine War (Part 2)

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