(WATCH) Disinformation: the new tool of war?


As America has struggled through a string of seemingly unrelated crises, there are some who say they are not just random events. Lisa Fletcher talks about that with former soldier and national security strategist Sean McFate, author of The New Rules of War: How America Can Win Against Russia, China, and Other Threats.

Lisa Fletcher: So, Sean, you said nobody fights conventionally anymore, except for us. What does a war between superpowers look like to you now?

Sean McFate: So, the way people fight now is they fight by, uh, I say wars becoming more epistemological. It means telling truth from lies, determines winners and losers, the way that battlefield victory used to. And that’s where seeing China and to some extent, Iran and Russia and others as well, engaging in information operations for lack of a better word. And that is how wars are being won and fought through strategic deception.

Lisa: You talk about in the book, the Russian military prioritizing information confrontation, basically an empire of lies.

McFate: That’s right.

Lisa: So, you say Russia is now a disinformation superpower. What does that mean?

McFate: Well, disinformation is deliberately false information. Misinformation is passing on things that you are false, but you think that they’re true, disinformation is manipulation. Think about the Russians trying to swing close elections, not just American presidential races, but across the EU, the Brexit vote. They’d use things like Twitter and Facebook. They use legal means, frankly, right? And they create so much chaos in the information space about people who give up. They don’t know what to believe, and so they don’t believe anything. And it’s turning us into a nation of nihilists, right? That’s a way to win. You don’t need to, to, you know, take on invade Berlin like it’s 1945. You can reach into a democracy and subvert it from the inside out and let it collapse upon itself. And the strategic logic is this: who cares about the sword? If you can manipulate the mind that wields it.

Lisa: So if we’re spending, as you say for a war we’re not fighting, where should we be spending?

McFate: We should be spending on making Americans better consumers of information. The battlefield is and what people think, especially in a democracy. So how do you make Americans more resilient to false information to disinformation? You know, one way is maybe new types of technology. For example, we all have clothes that tell us where our clothes are made, made in Romania, made in India, made wherever. Look at the plumb of clickbait. Would people be less apt to click on clickbait if it said a label made in North Korea, made in Russia? We need to be thinking about how do we outsmart and out-communicate the strategic narrative of our adversaries. And I believe that a nation that created Hollywood that created Madison Avenue, we have the capacity to do this.

Lisa: Let’s talk a little bit about shadow wars. What are they, where are they happening?

McFate: So shadow war is what I use to describe what modern war looks like these days. So, when people think about war, especially in United States of America, they think about Hollywood. They think about Tom Hanks and D-Day. They think of a conventional war. War does not look like that anymore. War is underground taking place in the shadows. And when things get really bad, it bubbles up to the surface where it makes headline news. And then it quickly goes back into the shadows. And the reason why war is doing that is because we live in an information age and nobody wants headline news or media attention. That is actually a weapon of war that you want to avoid. So, warfare is getting more sneaky. That’s the future of war.

Lisa: We see a lot of violence right now, a lot of unrest in the U.S. presumably sparked by events that have been occurring. But given the context of your work, is there any room here for some of this to not be organic and to be sparked externally?

McFate: Yes, and this is a big concern. We don’t know what war looks like today, and that’s why I think we are struggling. So yes, we have a cultural war going on in our country today. Republicans vs. Democrats, Fox vs. CNN, et cetera, blue state red state, we know democracy is messy. And if we’re having an organic family feud, that’s okay, but we’re not. We know Russia and China and others are reaching in finding the seams in the fabric of our society and pulling. They are literally flat fanning flames through disinformation, et cetera, is that war? That’s what I believe that we are already at war with Russia and China, and do not even know it. They’re not creating these seams. They’re just exploiting them.

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6 thoughts on “(WATCH) Disinformation: the new tool of war?”

  1. I wish you would go on the blaze and become part of their network–I can[t afford to support all of you independently. They need mature sensible women and not just the little girls that rant that they now have. Not that the little girls aren’t cute, they are, but I prefer a mature and knowledgeable woman to them–but I can’t support you all. Shelly

  2. Thank you for this. We need to become far wiser, as Americans under siege by the Democrat Party and some of its liberal Republicans. I believe information warfare is being used against us by what we call the mainstream media in addition to the political parties and foreign actors.

  3. “They think about Tom Hanks and D-Day. ”

    Of course, Tom Hanks wasn’t at D-Day, but he seems to think he was. If I were an actor, I’d have a hard time performing in war movies based on real events; I’d feel like a fraud, like I was stealing the glory from the real heroes. .

  4. Steven Northover has it right. America’s biggest threat is coming at us from the Left/Democrat party and from in the United States.
    I read an a ‘news’ report about Biden’s immigration plans/policy.
    Whatever happened to obeying the law?
    = In 2016, the Director of the FBI decides their was no intent on Hillary’s part to break the law and refuses to file charges against her for a private server, missing govt records, 35,000 missing e-mails many classified. All because the voters should decide who the president should be. The people should also know they are not voting from criminals. Besides, Comey’s decision is one that needs to be made by a Federal Prosecutor. The people deciding whether Hillary broke the law are the people, in this case a Jury
    + Contrast that with the FBI operation to derail the Trump campaign and keep him from winning the 0val 0ffice. Of course it wasn’t their idea, orders came from 0bama, Lynch, Biden, with Brennan and others involved.. When they failed, they turn Mueller loose.
    = The FBI comes into possession of a Biden computer and sits on it for about a year. It contains information indicating that crimes have been committed by Biden and his son, and they do nothing. Because Biden is the Democrat candidate and they do not want to make a decision that the voters should make.
    + Now the Democrats want to make sure Trump can never run of office again. Isn’t that a decision for the voters to make.
    It is beginning to look like right and wrong is decided by which political party the person belongs to. Has the law become irrelevant?

  5. Now for the media.
    Clinton: 8 years of running interference and obstruction to presenting the news.
    Bush: 8 years of relentless criticism.
    0bama: 8 years of running interference and hiding the truth, not looking for the truth.
    Trump: 6 years of lies, false accusations. hiding the truth.
    There is a pattern here. Doesn’t the law mean anything?

    “It is not – or should not be – a question of which side is the reporter is on. The question is not whether the reporter is there to report or filter, conceal or spin”. – Thomas Sowell.
    “The journalistic fraternity arrives at a kind of consensus by osmosis about what the story is on a particular subject and you bet your sweet aa that nothing contradicts. The Story will never see the light of day”. – James Morris, author.

  6. Sheryl,
    We need more honest journalists like you. I would like you & better yet a group of honest journalists to investigate this past election. I think it would give it more creditability. The numbers in the election just don’t add up & according to a lot of reporting, several states broke their own election laws & nothing up to this point was done about it.

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