Information Operations

Information operations are military activities that use and shape information to influence, disrupt, or deceive an adversary while protecting one's own information and decision-making. The idea is that information itself is a domain of conflict, that shaping what an adversary knows, believes, and decides, and what populations and audiences think, can be as consequential as physical force, so militaries conduct operations in the information environment alongside their operations in the physical one. Information operations span a range of activities, from the deception that misleads an enemy about your intentions, to the psychological operations that influence the morale and behavior of enemy forces and populations, to the broader effort to shape perceptions and narratives, all unified by the aim of achieving advantage through and over information.

What information operations encompass

Information operations bring together several related activities that all involve using or affecting information for military advantage. Military deception seeks to mislead the enemy about your capabilities, intentions, and actions, feeding them false information so they make wrong decisions, a classic and powerful application, since an enemy deceived about where you will attack or what you will do can be defeated by their own mistaken response, and the great deceptions of military history, like the Allied deception before D-Day that convinced Germany the invasion would come at Calais, are information operations at their most consequential. Psychological operations aim to influence the perceptions, attitudes, and behavior of target audiences, enemy forces, populations, and others, through information designed to affect what they think and do, whether undermining the morale and will of enemy troops, encouraging them to surrender, or shaping how a population views a conflict. The broader effort to shape narratives and perceptions in the information environment, contesting the story of a conflict, countering enemy propaganda, and influencing how events are understood, has grown especially important in an age of pervasive media and social networks, where the battle over perception and narrative can significantly affect a conflict's course and its political outcome. Information operations also include protecting one's own information and decision-making from the enemy's efforts to influence and disrupt it, the defensive side of the information fight, and they connect closely to cyber operations and electronic warfare, since these too involve the information environment, though information operations focus specifically on the content and influence of information, shaping what is known and believed, rather than the technical means of the electronic and cyber domains.

The information environment has become an increasingly central and contested arena of conflict, transformed by the rise of pervasive media, social networks, and the global, instantaneous flow of information. In the modern information environment, narratives, images, and messages spread instantly and globally, populations everywhere are connected and exposed to competing information, and the contest over perception and belief plays out continuously and publicly, which has made information operations both more powerful and more difficult, since shaping perceptions in this environment can have great effect but is hard to control amid the flood of competing information and the scrutiny of a connected world. States have invested heavily in information operations in this environment, and the phenomenon of state-sponsored disinformation, the deliberate spread of false or misleading information to influence populations and undermine adversaries, has become a major concern, with Russia in particular conducting extensive information operations aimed at influencing perceptions and sowing division in target societies, a form of information conflict that operates continuously, below the threshold of open war, in the gray zone of persistent competition. The war in Ukraine has featured intense information operations on all sides, contesting the narrative of the war, influencing domestic and international audiences, and shaping perceptions in ways that affect the political and material support that flows to the combatants, demonstrating how central the information fight has become to modern conflict, running alongside and interacting with the physical fighting.

The promise and the limits

Information operations hold real power but also real limits, and their effectiveness is genuinely debated, since shaping perceptions and beliefs is difficult, uncertain, and hard to measure. At their best, information operations can achieve significant effects, deceiving an enemy into a fatal mistake, undermining the morale and will of enemy forces, shaping perceptions in ways that affect a conflict's course and outcome, and the historical examples of successful deception and influence demonstrate that information can be a powerful weapon. But information operations are also uncertain and hard to control, since influencing what people believe and how they behave is difficult, the effects are hard to predict and measure, and in the modern information environment the flood of competing information and the scrutiny of a connected world make it hard to control the narrative or ensure a message has the intended effect. There is also the risk that information operations, especially disinformation, can backfire, damaging credibility when exposed and provoking counter-effects, and the question of the effectiveness of much information operations activity, whether it actually achieves its intended effects or merely adds to the noise, remains genuinely open. The reality is that information operations are a real and important dimension of modern conflict, capable of significant effects and increasingly central in an information-saturated world, but also uncertain, difficult, and limited in ways that temper the sometimes exaggerated claims made for the power of information warfare, so they are best understood as a genuine and consequential element of conflict, worth serious investment and attention, but not a decisive weapon that reliably achieves its aims, since the human perceptions and beliefs they seek to shape are complex, resistant, and hard to move in intended directions, making information operations a powerful but imperfect and uncertain instrument in the contest between adversaries.

How is information operations different from propaganda?

Propaganda is one element within the broader field of information operations, specifically the use of information, often biased or misleading, to promote a particular view or influence an audience, whereas information operations is the wider military discipline encompassing propaganda-like influence activities along with deception, psychological operations, the protection of one's own information, and the broader shaping of the information environment for military advantage. Propaganda, in its traditional sense, is the dissemination of information to influence opinion, which overlaps with the psychological operations and influence activities that are part of information operations, so propaganda can be seen as one form of the influence that information operations conduct, but information operations extend beyond propaganda to include the deception of enemies about military matters, the disruption and protection of information and decision-making, and the integration of these activities into military operations. The term propaganda also carries connotations of manipulation and one-sided messaging that make it a loaded word, often applied to an adversary's influence efforts while one's own are described in more neutral terms, whereas information operations is the more technical and comprehensive term for the full range of military activities in the information environment. So propaganda is a component and a close relative of information operations, the influence-and-messaging aspect, within the broader discipline that also includes deception, psychological operations, information protection, and the wider contest over the information environment, making information operations the larger and more encompassing concept of which propaganda-style influence is one part.