The cheapest form of warfare

I downloaded several books on spookery, an area that has always interested me (especially for the difference between reality and legend) to read over the year-end holiday.

Call it what you will - espionage, intelligence work, secret service, spying, etcetera, true spookery is the art of gathering and using information about one or more targets, unbeknownst to (though often suspected by) that target, for any of a number of economic or political purposes (and, in the end, aren't 'economic' and 'political' inextricable strands of the same thread?)

Cue the obligatory Von Clausewitz quote:
"War is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means."

One thing that obtrudes in the study of modern spookery (*defining 'modern' as beginning with the build-up to WWI, at the end of the 19th Century) is the extent to which the organizations involved are vulnerable to misinformation, disinformation, common griftery by dishonest agents, and many types of error. Whatever 'information' comes in via the spook channels has a surprisingly high chance of being at best incomplete and/or inaccurate (partially or wholly) and at worst, the work of counterspooks deliberately working to deceive the recipients.

This isn't always information warfare (see: "The Tailor of Panama" - while such incidents are rarely so extreme or cinematographically lurid, they are distressingly (to the spook organizations) common.) With the best intentions to maintain some level of integrity or even just reliability, the nature of spookery breeds grifters like roadkill breeds maggots.

However, information warfare emerged as a major function of spookery quite early on in the modern era. While a certain amount of deception has been included in many mission goals from the earliest days, initially it was the case (and still is in some spook organizations) that such goals were limited and focused as elements of larger operations. A means to an end rather than an end in itself.

Enter the Bolsheviks, early in the 20th Century. Finding themselves in the position of the dog who has actually caught the car and discovered it to be an old beater with an empty gas tank, and additionally, being squarely in the crosshairs of virtually every better-funded, better-armed, and more stable government in existence, they had to improvise. With verve. And conviction. The Third International was a shitload cheaper (not to mention a whole lot easier) than bringing the remnants of the Russian military, plus the revolutionary comrades still busy squabbling among themselves, up to par as a deterrent force.

Lenin and his Bolshevik comrades knew from their decades of experience kicking around the nations of the world as exiles and gathering plenty of information about them, that absent a potent, overtly military common threat, it was every nation for itself. They all secretly distrusted or hated each other, were constitutionally disinclined for any kind of meaningful united action, and would backstab or exploit each other at the drop of a hat if they thought they could get away with it.

Had two or three national powers united and mounted a military action in the wake of the October Revolution (early November in the Gregorian calendar) it would have been a cakewalk to dislodge the Bolsheviks from power. Even one major power, had they been willing to commit substantial military effort, could probably have done it. But in the wind-down and aftermath of WWI, none of the many nation-states who saw Bolshevism as a terrible threat to the established order was willing to step up to that extent.

Instead, the Third International declared its goal of "World Revolution" and the Central Committee of the Soviet mounted a successful information war, working to convince the thicket of opponents surrounding it that a) the Soviet was a strong, capable, and united government with a firm grip on its own territory; and b) viable revolutionary cells were springing up in every opponent's very own backyard. None of which was remotely true, in hindsight. But bolstered by a ruthless and successfully scary counter-espionage effort within its own borders, it succeeded in buying them the time needed for the sting of the successful revolution to moderate a bit and sap the will of potential opponents for a major military action to dislodge them.

Spook organizations will generally admit some level of awareness of their own vulnerability to information warfare. Indeed, they spend a lot of time and effort coming up with protocols and systems to prevent infiltration, identify disinformation, etcetera. It's a literal game of whack-a-mole (in the spook sense of 'mole') that costs a lot of money and effort. Throughout the 20th century, and especially in the post-WWII heyday of Cold War high spookery, a large portion of any spook organization's resources was devoted to fooling, and not being fooled by, other spook organizations.

They got used to it, they created tools, they improved their skills, and most accepted a certain percentage of losses in the spook-versus-spook arena. Because everyone in the spook world knew the stigmata of disinformation and the dangers of information warfare, they managed to contain quite a lot of it, up through the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In 1991, the former Soviet Union broke up, foundering under the weight of a military and technological infrastructure its core economy had never been able to adequately support. Its power structure disintegrated into a kleptocratic scramble for control of economic resources, and its considerable cadre of spook resources hollered "sauve qui peut!" and went on the grab, too.

In 1993, just over 30 years ago now, the Internet went public.

In 2001, the 3G network made the Internet accessible by mobile phone.

In 2004, just about 20 years ago, Facebook hit the 'net and "social media" became a thing.

In 2007, Apple released the first iPhone.

As of today, an estimated 5.3 billion people - about 65% of the world's population - use the internet. In 'developed' countries that number approaches 100% of the population.

And sometime on that timeline, all warfare transitioned to a version of information warfare, taking place performatively and directly, not in the fetid swamps of spookery or between seasoned nation-state actors, but on the smart phones of virtually everyone.

Why mobilize vast military might or develop expensive new superweapons when you can horrify the world with a terrorist attack, and then proceed to successfully divide and conquer any potentially organized, thoughtful response? Why invade your enemy when you can divide their citizens and get them to immobilize and destroy their own effectiveness? Why create an elaborate disinformation program targeted to effectively deceive savvy professional spooks when you can propagate everything from misdirection to the wildest lunacy with a few bot networks?

Why try to hide your information warfare when you can successfully get your targets so tangled up in arguing about what it is and where it's coming from and who started it until they hate each other far more bitterly than they will ever hate you?

Think about it, DU friends, the next time you believe it's imperative to prove how wrong and/or malicious and/or misguided and/or stupid and/or deceived and/or mean and/or ignorant THAT bunch of your fellow DUers are.

The GOP may be scrambling for campaign cash, but their sugar daddies in the oligarchy can still fund a VERY successful information war. And they are perilously close to winning.

grimly,
Bright