Author: Andrej Il’nitskij – 05/11/2019
The modern world lives in a state of hybrid war, which is fought for hegemony, for resources and for the preservation of control over Finance, trade and technology, on the one hand, and for multipolarity and its own sovereign future, on the other.
In this situation, nuclear deterrence is a basic factor that humanizes the international situation. Today, and this is recognized by our opponents, Russia is able to cause unacceptable damage to them, because the probability of a direct ” hot ” conflict is unlikely.
The very content of the concept of “war ” is changing literally before our eyes. The nature of threats is also changing. Very conditionally they can be divided into:
- information-ideological, socially oriented campaigns;
- cyber-technological impacts on infrastructure;
- financial, economic, trade sanctions and the like of the restriction;
- terrorist threats and local proxy wars.
The most relevant factor of external influence on Russia today is information-ideological and cyber threats, the purpose of which is chaos and confusion in the heads, undermining trust at the junction of “power — society”, the destruction of social infrastructure, and as a result — the weakening and disintegration of the state. We will focus on these threats.
The impact resources and vulnerabilities are significant.
The Internet is having an increasing impact on people’s daily lives. More than 80 percent of Russians use the Internet with one or another periodicity. According to sociologists, about 2.5 hours a day the average resident of the country spends on social networks, which is a total of one month a year.
There is a huge increase in the amount of information consumed. Often people are simply not able to understand it.
In such circumstances, there is a blurring of the line between opinion and fact, between fact and its interpretation. People perceive information only at the level of headlines, without going into details and essence.
According to VTSIOM research, every second Russian cannot distinguish reliable news from fake. “A lie will pass half the world before the truth has time to put on shoes” – this, alas, is true.
We live in what analysts already call the “post-truth era.”
The truth decay is one of the world’s leading trends. And if there is no truth, then everything is possible.
What to do in this situation?
First, people need to want to see the real picture of the world. “Anyone who sincerely wanted the truth is already terribly strong“, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky wrote in his diaries. Truth is the true picture of the world around us. The pursuit of truth is an intellectual effort, it is a labor and strain of the mind, it is, after all, a skill to be inculcated from childhood.
Are there people who do not want to see the world as it is? Of course! And, alas, they are becoming more and more. They have the majority! People are immersed in information silos, where they do not need the truth, where they want to listen to what they want to hear, where peace of mind is more important. They “get hooked on the information needle”, where not facts, but emotions are the desired goal.
“Man wants truth only to a limited extent —” Friedrich Nietzsche asserted in his prophetic prediction. — He desires the pleasant, life-saving consequences of truth, and to pure knowledge without consequences he is indifferent and even hostile.”
That’s all it becomes an ideological platform and “social fodder” technologists of information wars. Their goal is to drive people into the information stall, which sounds disappointing to a wide audience, but it is, alas, a global trend.
As a result, the real picture of the world will soon be exclusive, the right to which will have only a narrow group of elites that seeks to rule the world. Sadly…
And yet there is a solution. It is in ourselves, it is to strive to think, to have an opinion, to develop skills of orientation in the information flow, the ability to “not get hooked” on the network and/or at least for a while to disconnect from them. All of the above requires concentration, tension and work of the mind.
This includes the issue of state policy in the field of education. We must teach our children and young people to live their minds in the information world, and not stupidly consume information.
Our opponents believe that today the priority of hybrid influence should be given to information and ideological influence on social attitudes, on the values and traditions of Russians, on trust in the relations “power-society”, because direct and destructive cyberattacks, say, on the infrastructure of the Russian Federation are fraught with a tough response from our side, and therefore very risky for the West. The beliefs of the enemy-ideology, views, goals, strategy are the main prize in a hybrid war against us.
Just these days resumed to “roll forward” to the Russian sports as a social cementing force and pride of the Russians. This is social and informational aggression; this is a policy that has only an indirect relation to sport. And, unfortunately, we are losing here again. I will explain: in information wars there is only one strategy of victory-it is offensive, it is work on anticipation, work as the first number, it is filling of information space with the contents. In a situation where you work reflexively, taking the position of justifying – you will certainly lose. We lose.
“What is the power brother? The power of the truth”. For the truth is a real war, a war for the minds of Russians. Our righteousness must be able to articulate, defend and communicate to the “city and the world”. And in an offensive way, leaving no space for opponents to manipulate the public consciousness.
Information and ideological influence is the first and most important stage of hybrid warfare, followed by social technologies of action.
Western hybrid warfare technologists understand that humans are a resource for achieving certain goals. Military-political — including. It is necessary to be able to work with this resource. After the globalization of capital, goods and images came the time of globalization of the human mass. “Color revolutions” — only one, let and the most known social technology of coups in the conditions of artificially created instability. Using it, the West destroyed entire countries and coalitions in favor of their interests. The most recent examples are Hong Kong, the unrest in Lebanon, Iran, Venezuela and the coup in Colombia. Next-everywhere…
As stressed by Russian defense Minister Sergei Shoigu: “the West has long worked out patterns and algorithms to overthrow any inconvenient for them the legitimate government in any country. Of course, all this is done under the slogan of promoting democracy…»
How, where and what to beat?
They work on a broad front, but the edge of information attacks is aimed at the following social environments of our society:
- youth as the most vulnerable group to the influence of a segment of society;
- pensioners as the most socially dependent and therefore manipulated category;
- state employees and recipients of social benefits, as categories that are fully dependent on the sustainability of the functioning of the state;
- military and law enforcement personnel, as the most difficult in terms of “achievability” target audience, but the most important and support for the Russian state, and therefore promising. Attacks on the army and security forces are on the rise.
Russian-language platforms based in the Baltic States and Ukraine, as well as the fifth column inside our country, are used for information attacks. The factor of de-consolidation of part of the Russian elites is used. The key is the psychological and ideological stability of society.
Opponents ‘ cyberstrikes are aimed at the entire infrastructure of the state and society, but above all at:
- the country’s energy system;
- logistics, cargo and passenger traffic management systems;
- social service databases;
- banking system, payment system;
- social networks where disinformation campaigns can be carried out against the background of the disabling of the classic state-controlled media;
- system in emergency situations.
There are enough vulnerabilities here. At the domestic level — including… for example, today is often used such a phrase as “Internet of things”. In fact, these are devices that are imposed on us by marketing technologies and collect information about us for our own money. They are based on integrated Internet communications. These are TVs, and systems like “smart home” , and all sorts of gadgets, such as, for example, a smartphone or a “smart watch” that scan us and the environment, our interests, habits, status and requests. And most importantly-by controlling you, the “Internet of things” begins to control you. According to statistics, most often used to access the Internet smartphone: in 90 percent of cases-young people (18-24 years), 50 percent-middle-aged people (40-60 years) and 30 percent-the older generation (60 or more years). That’s it-Big Brother is here…
Now is the time when humanitarian knowledge is turning into technology. Not always creative, but often destructive properties. Artificial intelligence is perhaps the most significant of them. It is not for nothing that it is believed that AI is the third revolutionary innovation in the military after the invention of gunpowder and nuclear weapons.
“If someone can provide a monopoly in the field of artificial intelligence, the consequences are clear to us all — he will become the ruler of the world — ” said Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Ministry of defense of the Russian Federation pays great attention to the problems and prospects for the development of artificial intelligence, its effective application in the military and security in the civilian sector. We intend to ensure Russia’s leadership in this area.
Limitless cyber capabilities are also difficult to predict risks in the field of national security, and global risks. To various “nuclear buttons” around the world are approaching people, including from the generation of computer games, extremely irresponsible attitude to the issue of the use of military force.
Announced in Russia, the program of total, and often ill-conceived and hasty digitalization campaign generates additional vulnerabilities and risks to national security.
In this regard, the strictest state examination of the security of projects involving the use of artificial intelligence technologies, a built testing system to detect possible errors, intentional tabs and failures is necessary.
Such state expertise at the interdepartmental level should be entrusted to the competent law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation, where specialized units should be established to control risks and license artificial intelligence technologies.
The creation of a single interdepartmental center for countering information and cyber threats is overdue.
It is necessary to state – today there is no strategic vision of information security. State policy in this area, corresponding to the seriousness of the challenges, is only at the stage of formation. There is no single ideological and technological platform for information warfare, and its legal framework has not been adequately developed. Global processes in the field of information and cyber warfare are analyzed insufficiently systematically. The work is carried out reflexively, chaotically and after the fact. There is a lack of professionally trained personnel.
To begin with, it is possible to introduce into official circulation, into the management system and the legal field such a concept as socio-information stability, which determines the ability of state and public structures to maintain their capacity in the conditions of cyber-strike operations against Russia, including those associated with negative information campaigns.
Achieving a given state of socio-informational stability should be considered as one of the most important goals of Russia, not only military and security, but also in the sphere of socio-economic development of the Russian Federation.
The situation is quite serious. Without a systematic policy in the field of information and cybersecurity, we can gradually cede control over our lives to foreign technologies and centers of influence. If we cede control and initiative in this area, we will lose sovereignty and our country…
Andrej Il’nitskij, Member of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy