Applied Influence Warfare

This is an academic style paper designed to further explain a field of security. This is not the work of a security professional. These are the researched musings of an security student. This is also a living document, it might change as I do more research and change my mind.

In my introductory article to Influence Warfare I introduced my definition of Influence Warfare, I suggest you read it first in order to understand this article.

Note that I use "efforts" rather than "campaigns" in this article to confirm that Influence Warfare may not be limited in timeframe, and may last as long as a traditional, physical war.

Targeted Influence Efforts

The concept of large scale disinformation efforts is widely recognized and studied in the world today. For example, Russian interference in the 2016 US general election.

I classify this example as a targeted campaign because research shows that the campaign largely only reached strongly Republican voters.

This is the type of Influence Warfare most established and recognized in the world (generally called an "Influence Campaign"), but is a narrow understanding of the breadth of effect attackers can have with the strategies outlined in this document and the broader field of Influence Warfare.

Further research is necessary into the efficacy of these types of efforts, as research into one of the best known examples (the 2016 US election) has suggested that it has limited effectiveness.

Note that this is classified as an "influence campaign" as opposed to the classic "disinformation campaign", part of the reclassification of the term Influence Warfare is to differentiate between disinformation efforts from efforts which may spread true information in order to reach a goal. The field is based on the ability to influence a medium, not necessary limiting itself to only tooling false information.

Non-Targeted Influence Efforts

A non-targeted influence campaign is similar to a targeted campaign in all ways except instead of targeting a specific audience or group, the campaign doesn't discriminate in the type of targets it reaches.

Whaling

While large scale influence efforts are not novel and are well documented, small scale efforts are no less feasible. For example, Israeli Intelligence agencies influencing social media to show messages urging key US lawmakers to sponsor military funding for Israel.

Censorship

Censorship is another well documented class of Influence Warfare, as its use has reached nearly every modern dictatorship. It is an extremely effective way of controlling a populace. While traditional examples place censorship at controlling the influx of information from the internet to a nation's citizens by a government, note that disinformation may be used by any type of group to control the information reaching any target.

Health Operations

The last class outlined in this document is more theoretical, and arguably has no confirmed examples.

It is defined as efforts which are designed to reach no goal other than demoralize and/or harm the mental health of a target.

Social media by itself is already known to be dangerous to users' mental health. The algorithms which determine a user's feed exploit human psychology to get the user to stay on the platform for as long as possible, often promoting content which incites conflict.

It is established that social media as it is now already contributes to a mental health crises among teens (which I posit is on a scale unseen before in human history), and that is before any party purposefully manipulates it to become more harmful.

But of course, this doesn't end at social media. Internet users interact with technology for 6 hours and 31 minutes a day on average. Other devices or websites can be manipulated too. Search engines returning more depressing results, chat rooms and video games matching up people who provoke each other into anger at each other or the world, VR headsets literally changing the user's point of view, email inboxes only showing malicious emails and removing any contact with real friends.

This is not as far fetched as it seems.

What if an organization manipulates (increasingly tangible) media to specifically amplify an existing mental crisis and demoralize a population?

Citations

Publications | Intelligence Committee. (2018). Senate.gov. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/committee-findings-2017-intelligence-community-assessment

Eady, G., Paskhalis, T., Zilinsky, J. et al. Exposure to the Russian Internet Research Agency foreign influence campaign on Twitter in the 2016 US election and its relationship to attitudes and voting behavior. Nat Commun 14, 62 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35576-9

Frenkel, S. (2024, June 5). Israel Secretly Targets U.S. Lawmakers With Influence Campaign on Gaza War. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/technology/israel-campaign-gaza-social-media.html

Chang, C. C., & Lin, T. H. (2020). Autocracy login: internet censorship and civil society in the digital age. Democratization, 27(5), 874–895. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2020.1747051

Murthy, V. (2024). Social Media and Youth Mental Health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s

Donate, A. P. G., Marques, L. M., Lapenta, O. M., Asthana, M. K., Amodio, D., & Boggio, P. S. (2017). Ostracism via virtual chat room-Effects on basic needs, anger and pain. PloS one, 12(9), e0184215. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184215