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.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine that had started out as a war of manoeuvre quickly morphed into an attrition nightmare where several cities are surrounded and being savagely pounded. Generals do end up fighting the last war. In 2008 and 2014, there had been virtually zero resistance and initial Russian plans this time were based on a quick collapse of the Ukrainian forces. The Russians had not counted on the Western genius for creating and exacerbating fault lines within peoples. Once Slav brothers, the people of Russia and Ukraine are sworn enemies today.

As we go to press, the Russians have apparently called off their offensive on Kiev, which they have claimed was a diversionary move to ensure critical sectors in the east were not reinforced. They have achieved a clean break and are regrouping forces for a concerted offensive in the East (Donbas) and the South coast of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. Their attempt seems to be to partition Ukraine along the Dnieper river.

 In this issue we have carried out a very detailed and objective analysis of the war in Ukraine. Since 70 per cent of our cutting edge equipment is of Russian origin we have a vital stake in an objective and truthful analysis. Truth unfortunately is the first casualty in any war. The CIA has deployed an army of some 3,00,000 cyber warriors to hack Russian computer networks and fill the social media with morphed images from war game videos and old conflicts to paint daily narratives of Ukraine’s great victory and an imminent fall of Moscow and Putin. (Quite incidentally, Putin’s popularity ratings have gone above 80 per cent in Russia. Biden’s have dropped steeply). Former US and UK media consultants are mounting strident campaigns on the electronic and print media to paint a military victory for Ukraine. America has clearly won the war of narratives on social media and TV screens. There is a danger, however, of believing your own propaganda as truth.

Russia may have erred initially. However, it has quickly readjusted to the new reality of a very dense anti-tank and shoulder-fired SAM envelope and has calibrated operations accordingly. It is clear that there will be no US/NATO boots on the ground or any No Fly Zones. So Russia is in no particular hurry. It is slowly but methodically wearing down the Ukrainian forces in an unrelenting, meat grinder war of attrition. Ukrainian tank and aircraft manufacturing plants have been destroyed, refineries and oil storage depots gutted and almost all nuclear plants captured (along with some 32 US-funded bio labs). Gas, water and power supply in Eastern and Southern Ukraine are now all in Russian hands. Some 40 towns have been razed to the ground. The asymmetry in military power is far too skewed. Each day that the war lasts will tilt the scales further in Russia’s favour. Yet, western strategy is to extend this war for a few months to bleed the Russians and spite Putin. In the bargain, they are prepared to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian man and building standing.

Russia has fired over a 1000 Iskandar tactical ballistic missiles, Kalibr cruise missiles and other PGMs. The destruction of infrastructure has been grim. An Israeli expert has said that since Russian military might is far superior, relentless destruction of infrastructure and sustained military pressure could lead to collapse of will of Ukrainian government. It could culminate in partition of Ukraine along Dniper river.

In sum, the Russian initial campaign was premised upon faulty intelligence. In addition cultural factors – a feeling of kinship with Ukrainians as fellow Slavs, led Russians to show uncharacteristic restraint in force usage in the initial phase of war. We could also see the tension between Gen Grasimov’s New Hybrid War Doctrine and standard Russian way of war fighting with very heavy reliance on fire power. After initial setbacks, however, they have readjusted tactics rapidly and are now fighting a methodical battle of attrition. In the long run.

Ukraine is taking fearful punishment and this is bound to tell on ground over time. The economic sanctions that seek to imperil Russia’s economic existence over time may well have lowered the nuclear threshold. Any spill over of conflict beyond Ukraine’s border could lead to serious escalation. Russia has been deliberately withholding its cutting edge equipment from Ukraine in anticipation of a larger war with NATO. (Eg, so far we have not seen any T-14 Armata tanks or Su-57 stealth fighters in Ukraine).

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Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe, with a population of 43.8 million. With rolling plains and river valleys, the land is unequally divided by the 980-km course of the Dnieper river. It has a long coastline on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Ukraine is rich in strategic minerals. It is in top position with Europe’s proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores; it has the second largest titanium ore reserves in Europe; it is second in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores and the second largest iron ore reserves in the world; and it has Europe’s second largest mercury ore reserves.

Agriculturally, Ukraine has Europe’s largest arable land area; it the world’s top exporter of sunflower and sunflower oil, second in the world in barley production; and the third largest producer of corn in the world.

Ukraine is an important industrialized country being the top European ammonia producer; having Europe’s second largest natural gas pipeline system and the third largest installed capacity of nuclear power plants in Europe.

Ukraine is a largely democratic nation of more than 40 million people, with a pro-Western president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who in 2019 won 73% of the vote in the election’s final round. Ukrainians want to live in a country that resembles the European nations to its west — and the U.S. — more than it resembles Russia.

In a bid to unshackle itself from Russia, Ukrainian has desired to be a member of the European Economic Union and NATO. Demography and geography, however, weigh against this. To the east of the Dnieper, large sections of the Russian minority are linked to Russia. Thus, Russia has the capability of bleeding Ukraine in an insurgency centred in the eastern Donbass region.

Political Milestones

Both Ukraine and Belarus were independent members of the UN. With 77.8% Ukrainians and 17.3% people of Russian origin, Ukraine was quick to declare autonomy on 16 July 1990, as well as independence on August 24, 1991, as the Soviet Union unravelled.

The present crisis must be viewed in the light of definitive protests of the Orange Revolution (2004-05) and the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv of 2014. The US backed a coup in Ukraine in 2014 to oust the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych. It was an invitation to a Russian military buildup along its frontier?

Why Ukraine’s Invasion is different?

There have been dozens of wars in the almost 80 years since World War II ended but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is different from almost all of them. The invasion involves one of the world’s largest militaries launching an unprovoked ground invasion of a neighboring country. The apparent goal is an expansion of regional dominance, either through annexation or the establishment of a puppet government.

Since World War II, such unprovoked aggression has been undertaken by the Soviets in Afghanistan (in the 1970s), Czechoslovakia (in the 1960s) and Hungary (in the 1950s) and Russia’s annexation of Crimea (2014). The U.S., for its part, sent troops into Vietnam (1961-73), the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), Kuwait & Iraq (1991), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1994), Kosovo (1999), Iraq (2003-2010), Libya (2011) and Syria (2011-).

Why Russia invaded Ukraine?

So, what is it about Ukraine that Russia was compelled to invade? The invasion is a spectacular gamble and a sign that the world might be changing.

Russia believes that liberal democracies are in decline, the U.S. and Europe are struggling to lift living standards for much of their populations, they are polarized by cultural conflicts between metropolitan areas and more rural ones and major political parties are weak. These problems have given Putin and his top aides confidence that “the American-led order is in deep crisis,” as Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Moscow Center wrote in The Economist.

Gabuev explained: “A new multipolar order is taking shape that reflects an unstoppable shift in power to authoritarian regimes that support traditional values. A feisty, resurgent Russia is a pioneering force behind the arrival of this new order, along with a rising China.”
Russia wants to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” Ukraine which Putin refuses to recognise as a “country” and firmly believes, as he asserted in his speech justifying the invasion, that Ukraine is “an inalienable part of our history, culture and spiritual space” for historical reasons. Putin’s claim in fact extends to all the “historic Russian lands” extending to Odessa on the Black Sea coast, the logic on which he had annexed Crimea in 2014.

Russia’s key demand is a halt to NATO expansion. Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked for guarantees that Ukraine will never be allowed to join the alliance, and demanded a withdrawal from eastern Europe. That, naturally, is a no-go for the allies. On the contrary, NATO wants to welcome Sweden and Finland, Ukraine and Georgia.

Why Ukraine Matters to NATO?

The US considers stability and security of Europe as vital to its interests.

Moscow wants to establish new rules of the international order or to weaken the current order. Its objectives include weakening NATO and the EU, which means that the United States has a vital interest in thwarting the Kremlin in Europe. Ukraine is at the very front of this war. If Ukraine cannot repel the Russians, they will go farther and try to gobble up additional European territory. Helping Ukraine defend its territorial integrity and sovereignty is the most economical way of defending our NATO.

During the Cold War, Western Germany served as another buffer to the rest of Europe, and it also allowed NATO states to help influence the country’s military development. Ukraine could very well serve a similar purpose that West Germany did.

Promise Belied

In the early 1990s, US President George HW Bush verbally promised not to expand NATO into former Soviet bloc countries. The promise was ditched and the Russians lost trust in the West. US leaders assert that Russia is a expansionist state, but they are blind to NATO expansion against Russian terrain since 1991.

The issue of Ukraine’s exclusion from NATO has been a long-standing obsession for Putin, who bitterly remembers the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union under his predecessor Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s as “a decade of humiliation” in which Bill Clinton’s US “imposed its vision of order on Europe (including in Kosovo in 1999) while the Russians could do nothing but stand by and watch”, according to diplomatic relations expert James Goldgeier.

To address Russian anxieties, the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed in 1997, a political agreement explicitly stating that: “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries.” The formation of the NATO-Russia Council followed in 2002.

Putin is nevertheless said to begrudge what he regards as the alliance’s gradual extension eastwards, which saw ex-Soviet satellites Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join in 1999, followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004.

He chooses to interpret the recruitment of these nations as the US breaking a promise allegedly made by its then-secretary of state James Baker to Mikhail Gorbachev during a visit to Moscow in February 1990 to discuss German reunification following the fall of the Berlin Wall. “There would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east,” Baker is supposed to have pledged to Gorbachev, according to Russian officials, although the quote is heavily disputed and the latter denied the topic was ever discussed in an October 2014 interview with the Kommersant newspaper.

Europe’s Dependence on Russia

Europe imports approximately 40% of its gas from Russia. Russia also has the ability to disrupt global oil markets. It has already directly hit Americans.

A year after the “Orange Revolution” in end-2004 which led to the ouster of a pro-Kremlin leader, replacing him with one who sought closer ties with the West, Gazprom demanded Ukraine pay full market rates for its gas. Ukraine refused and Russia restricted the flow of gas through the pipelines. It was also later used as the basis for claims that Ukraine was an unreliable gas transit country, which helped build support for a new pipeline named Nord Stream that directly channeled gas from Russia to Germany. That pipeline opened up in 2011 and resulted in the annual loss to Ukraine of US$720 million in transit fees.

The U.S. had led efforts to thwart the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline running from Russia to Germany. While the US has succeded it is a disaster for Germany. Nord Stream had significantly increased German energy dependence on Russia, which by 2020 was supplying an estimated 50 to 75 per cent of its natural gas, up from 35 per cent in 2015. Natural gas is used not only to power industry but also for heating and to generate electricity in Germany. That pipeline grew to supply a third of all Russian gas exports to Europe. As a result, Russian gas exports to Europe reached a record level in 2021 – despite U.S. efforts to ramp up exports of liquefied natural gas to Europe.

Why Ukraine Matters

Ukraine is the second largest country by area in Europe by area and has a population of over 40 million – more than Poland.
Ukraine ranks:
• 1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores;
• 2nd in Europe and 10th in the world in titanium ore reserves;
• 2nd in the world in explored reserves of manganese ores;
• 2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons);
• 2nd in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves;
• 3rd in Europe (13th in the world) in shale gas reserves;
• 4th in the world by the total value of natural resources;
• 7th in the world in coal reserves (33.9 billion tons)
Ukraine is an important agricultural country:
• 1st in Europe in terms of arable land area;
• 3rd in the world by the area of black soil;
• 1st in the world in exports of sunflower and sunflower oil;
• 2nd in the world in barley production;
• 3rd largest world producer and 4th largest exporter of corn;
• 4th largest producer of potatoes in the world;
• 5th largest rye producer in the world;
• 5th in the world in bee production (75,000 tons);
• 8th in the world in wheat exports;
Ukraine is an important industrialized country:
• 1st in Europe in ammonia production;
• Europe’s 2nd’s and world’s 4th largest natural gas pipeline system;
• 3rd largest in Europe and 8th largest in the world in terms of installed capacity of nuclear power plants;
• 3rd largest iron exporter in the world
• 4th largest exporter of turbines for nuclear power plants in the world;
• 4th world’s largest manufacturer of rocket launchers;

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