Cyber wars

Text Ingo Mannteufel, DW Head of IT and Cybersecurity

In free media markets, many costly practical hurdles to information dissemination have fallen thanks to digital technology. There, journalists and editorial teams in traditional media companies have irrevocably lost their classic “gatekeeper” function. What is published and what is talked about is no longer decided by them alone and now often not at all: Today, any person, group or institution can feed content into the global information world.

Journalists with expertise and quality criteria are no longer needed as intermediaries with the target groups and are even openly rejected by some recipients. Institutional media suffer from the changes in business models and the loss of social trust. They are now fighting for attention with an almost infinite number of other content producers—especially during crises and wars.

On the one hand, the chances for a better understanding of the world have increased due to this almost inexhaustible flood of information. On the other hand, this blessing of free and diverse information in free media markets has also become a curse for many people: now everyone must keep track of and orient himself in this information (over)supply in order to distinguish the important from the unimportant, to distinguish facts from lies. The algorithms offered as aids by search engines and social networks for organizing information have not only failed to solve the problem of information noise. Rather, new opportunities for disinformation and the manipulation of public opinion have emerged, such as fake news websites, trolls on social media platforms, and filter bubbles or echo chambers in chat groups.

Now everyone must keep track of and orient himself in this information (over)supply in order to distinguish the important from the unimportant, to distinguish facts from lies.

The opportunities offered by the huge and unregulated flood of information have also been recognized by dishonest actors. In particular, authoritarian states have used the situation in the digital world for novel propaganda and disinformation operations. The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 has given rise to a war that a revisionist Russia under President Putin has been waging for years in the cyber and information space against Ukraine, but also against all liberal democracies and the transatlantic-European peace order.

A hallmark of these Kremlin activities is the clever combination of cyberattacks, hacking, propaganda, and disinformation to achieve a political-military goal. Unlike intelligence cyber espionage or traditionally conceived war, which implies the use of destructive weapons with a kinetic effect, “hybrid warfare” is usually a non-kinetic tool. To be sure, such cyber-attacks may also aim to disrupt or even destroy infrastructure and services (e.g., power and energy supplies, communications). But primarily, disinformation and propaganda serve to cause confusion and purposefully manipulate opinion formation.

Propaganda, agitation and disinformation have always been part of armed conflicts. What is new is that the digital media and information world that has emerged in recent decades has made these activities much easier and more targeted.

Twitter of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine is displayed on a mobile phone screen photographed for the illustration photo taken in Krakow,Poland on February 15, 2022. The Ukrainian government has accused Russiaof being behind a cyber-attack on dozens of official websites.

The objective is to induce is political paralysis or uncertainty that seeks to undermine democratic decision-making processes and discredit and delegitimize democracy as such.

It is important to make a clear distinction between illegitimate interference and legitimate influence on free opinion-forming processes.

Foreign state interference is illegitimate when it disseminates misinformation in a concerted and covert manner via dubious websites, inauthentic social media profiles or online ads to manipulate political discussions and opinion-forming processes in democracies.

A clear distinction must be made between this and the legitimate processes of influencing opinion-formation in other states by transparent media companies that operate with ethical standards and quality criteria, clearly state their origins and are governed by public law. After all, “open societies” in the sense of the great Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper gain through dialogue with other societies. The transparent and factbased exchange of opinions between societies and mutual influence are desirable and enrich both sides.

However, authoritarian states such as Russia are currently using the digital possibilities of an “open society” to combat them. Instead of desired enrichment of public discussions, “active measures” are used covertly and secretly to interfere in the democratic opinion and decision-making processes. This is a new form of expansive digital authoritarianism that threatens liberal democracies.

In their own national media spaces, on the other hand, they take repressive action against independent and critical media from their own country and abroad. Russian state media, on the other hand, has consistently and aggressively propagated Kremlin narratives that are underpinned with lies and half-truths. As a result, much of the population in Russia now lives in a parallel world created by the Kremlin. In the wake of the war of aggression against Ukraine, repression against independent Russian or foreign media has once again increased significantly in Russia. Almost all independent media are banned or blocked on the internet. The Russian state tries to censor unwanted information. For example, DW and other leading international information providers in Russia have been banned and obstructed on the internet since February 2022.

But the biggest challenge for independent media is not to technically circumvent internet censorship. That can be easily done by technical means. Since the increased internet censorship, many Russians have been using VPN software, the Tor browser or circumvention software such as Psiphon to access the global internet again without problems. Others use temporary mirror addresses of blocked websites. The internet address is for example 26394.info and leads directly past the censors to the DW website. As soon as this mirror address is blocked by the Russian supervisory authority, a new mirror address appears.

All people have the right to free information to decide freely.

The biggest challenge is therefore not to overcome the technical internet censorship, but to reach the people in Russia mentally in the first place. The Kremlin has created a mental firewall against Western information and views with its propaganda narratives and this mental firewall is very stable, especially in the last weeks of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

But democratic societies must consider it their duty to break through Putin’s propaganda. People in Russia have the right to get independent information and make up their own minds—about the war, about Ukraine, about the actions of European states. Reporting in Russia and other authoritarian states must not be left to state propagandists. All people have the right to free information to decide freely.