Summary
The constant evolution of information and communication technologies, in the context of global dynamics, have become par excellence the dynamizing engine of the ideological media pulse in the scenarios of bidding and great power competition, where the imperious eagerness of the opponents to conquer the minds of the legitimizing entity, has resulted in the gestation of hybrid-type phenomena that have become unconventional threats with invisible actors acting in the information environment, using as a means of dissemination the benefits that the digital era offers with cutting-edge technologies that allow from the cybernetic domain, with artificial intelligence, to mediatize, massify and influence the collective imaginary of public opinion, in order to legitimize their ideological actions, and undermine the democratic systems of free nations.
This is where the various Information-Related Capabilities (IRCs) face a great challenge, since their mission, apart from being responsible for protecting the reputational capital of institutions, counteracting unconventional threats, contributing to the stabilization of nations, they are in charge of generating spaces for integration, synchronization and articulation of tools and components that act in a coordinated manner in the physical, cognitive, informational – digital dimensions, and are the ones called to lead the fight against hybrid threats, from strategic axes of containment, deterrence, anticipation, prevention and perception.
Keywords:
Communications, public opinion, democracy, massification, digital era, security and defense, disinformation, Information-Related Capabilities (IRCs).
Introduction:
Communication apart from being a process inherent to the formation and evolution of the human being, has become a lethal weapon, the power of the word, primary orality, secondary, media and currently digital , has allowed hand in hand with the new information technologies, not only to create discourses with ideological charges in order to influence the cognitive dimension of the imaginary collective of the legitimizing entity (society – populations), but its versatility in the framework of the digital era has made it easier for messages to transcend borders in real time, simultaneously reaching unthinkable places, generating environments and context of disapproval or approval of a certain event.
In this sense, and taking into account the power that communicational processes bring, it is that the Information-Related Capabilities (IRC) take preponderant importance in the processes of social, economic and humanitarian interrelationship; Likewise, in the processes of information transfer, which must be thought, analyzed and implemented as a national defense capability that contributes and cooperates, not only with the stabilization of a country in question, but also contributes to the protection of democratic systems and local, regional and hemispheric stabilization within a context of cooperative and collaborative security.
This means that the world’s military forces must implement, develop and strengthen their capabilities in the information context in order to operate in a synchronized manner in the new confrontation scenarios, where the threat is characterized by being intangible, suigeneris, lacking borders, which cannot be delimited and, above all, slips nimbly and stealthily through the new information technologies, making simultaneous and virtual presence in any part of the universe, implementing narratives that secure ideological tendencies.
Hybrid threats in the information environment
The V generation wars are characterized because their threat system is a set of unconventional actions that act dynamically in the information environment and travel rapidly on the highways of the new digital technologies, which has led to information being seen as a universal strategic asset.
“Media ecology analyzes how the media affect human opinion, understanding, sensation, and value; and how our interaction with the media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival. The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people. An environment is a complex system of messages that imposes on human beings ways of thinking, feeling, and acting”.
Phenomenon that today, the generating agents of institutional destabilization, employ as systematic mechanisms of hybrid – unconventional warfare, where the scenarios of confrontation are fought in the spectrum of the information environment with the dynamic use of digital technologies, imbrication that allows them to potentiate the receptivity of the messages, generating an informational echo at local, national and even international level, achieving with it, not only to launch the ideological load, but to massify the contents, obtaining a greater resonance.
Repercussion that not only remains vibrant in the physical and cognitive dimensions, but also remains in the digital repositories of information, which at any time can be activated or reactivated by the threat in order to inflame the audiences, managing stratagems of institutional discrediting in order to weaken the legitimacy of the governmental entity of a State and undermine the democratic system.
Understanding the new theater of operations and the hybrid scenarios in which the threat proceeds, it is important to specify that within this great package of discursive phenomena, ideological charges, mass agitation, public-digital opinion exacerbators and generators of narrative violence, there are regional and extra-regional influences that within the context of power competitions stoke the bonfire of confrontation and media polemic, fueling what is nowadays known as the post-truth phenomenon.
By virtue of the above, the integration and synchronization of Information-Related Capabilities (IRC) has been developing a titanic vanguard mission anticipating with deterrence, containment, perception, anticipation, offensive and defensive strategies to the actions of the threat, which nurtures its highly dangerous system in environments of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VICA).
Disinformation Warfare Scenarios
It is peremptory to point out that a great number of nations have not been unaware of this type of hybrid threats, which articulate and synchronize all their capabilities to systematically affect, from the information environment, the components of State power: at social, political, economic, cultural and environmental levels, in order to generate erroneous and wrong perceptions of institutional instability and ungovernability at national and international level.
In this system of attacks, disinformation stratagems are the bastion par excellence of the threat, since the exercise of disinformation gives rise to derived actions such as: noise, saturation, atomization and informative ambiguity, executing processes of alienation to simultaneously influence the different layers of society.
In different cases, nations and their institutions have experienced the media convulsion of disinformation resulting in the misrepresentation of reality to the national and international community, with the aim of creating chaos to weaken the legitimacy of institutions and undermine the democratic system.
It is peremptory to point out that the purpose of the whole chain of disinformation events is to destroy the reputational capital of State institutions, including military institutions, and even more so in a context of traditional security, where the Military Forces support the protection of the democratic system.
In that order of ideas, the first thing that the threat intends to attack indiscriminately is the institutional image of the Armed Forces, that is why the stratagems of disinformation, false news, digital tendentious movements, information saturation and post-truth, were the harassment mechanism used by the detractors to affect the legitimacy of the military institutions, Stratagems that did manage to scratch the institutional images, but did not knock out the progress and work of the soldiers in the achievement of their legal mission, the defense and security of the populations, the sovereignty of the territory, the protection of strategic assets and of the state institutionality.
In this disconcerting, controversial and contradictorily ideological panorama, the Information Related Capabilities (CRI) were of decisive importance, since they were the combat team that faced and countered the media attacks from the field of transparency, truthfulness and legality, carefully protecting the reputational capital and the legitimacy of the State institutions.
Strengthening of security and defense capabilities in the information environment
In view of the new theaters of operations, which are uncertain, unconventional, intangible and hybrid, Information-Related Capabilities (IRCs) with their various competencies and skills must be invigorated as a strength for the security and defense of nations, since IRCs are the combat muscle in the field of the war against disinformation, in order to protect the institutional image, jealously guard the strengthening of reputational capital and the protection of the most important strategic asset of institutions, legitimacy.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency of the U.S. government, Diálogo magazine, or its members. This article was machine-translated.
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