Active Measures and Influence Operations
Creating Chaos for Opportunity
Last week Stars of David were spray painted on buildings in Paris to identify Jewish homes and businesses. Immediately comparisons were made to Nazi-era historical images preceding the Holocaust. This incident amidst anti-Israel protests and rising antisemitism further polarized French society, raising the temperature of civil unrest and adding to the chaos of the moment. In an under-reported story you likely missed, two Moldovan citizens were detained and interrogated which resulted in the confession they were in fact paid agents of the Russian intelligence services directed to deface buildings in France. This is a classic Russian active measure operation.
Active measures are a broad range of plots including espionage, propaganda, disinformation, sabotage, and assassination designed to create chaos and weaken an adversary. In 2014, Russian intelligence services released a doctored signals intercepts of a senior Department of State official, speaking with the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine––offering frank criticism of the European Union’s response to the Revolution of Dignity––to imply the U.S. was orchestrating Ukraine’s revolution. In 2016 Russia conducted a major operation to interfere in U.S. elections. A recent example of a violent Russian active measure was the GRUs (Russia’s military intelligence) attempted assassination of the Montenegrin Prime Minister in 2017. Their aim was to derail Montenegro’s membership in NATO, but they failed on both counts. Russian active measures operations have funded and fueled both far-right and far-left movements covering the spectrum of subversive to violent activities. Examples include funding Marie Le Pen’s party in France and ADF in Germany and supporting radical socialist and ultra-nationalist groups in the United States.
Some of the most significant innovations in Russia’s chaos tradecraft have been in its doctrine of influence operations. It is in this informational domain that Russia and illiberal, anti-democratic, and authoritarian regimes have been exchanging best-practices and honing their influence operations tradecraft, increasing their effectiveness, and achieving successes. With armies of bot farms, influencers with large followings, and unprepared/complicit news and social media companies, state and non-state actors have developed tools to target and repress opponents as well as attack democracies with alluring false messaging, like the decolonization and apartheid narratives employed against Israel.
A consistent goal of influence operations is to eliminate the idea of absolute truth and muddy the waters because for our enemies chaos creates opportunity. Hence, influence operations in the cyber domain are the tools of choice for Russia and illiberal regime’s efforts to sow discord and create chaos. For instance, after the murder of George Floyd and widespread protests calling for accountability and changes in policing emerged, Russian intelligence activated false personas and co-opted social media influencers to promote increasing calls for retaliatory violence pitting fake BLM protestors, local officials, and white nationalists against each other to fuel violence. Russian influence operations sought to spark a wider cycle of violence to destabilize the United States domestically. The Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom is another classic example of an influence operation. The Russians amplified nationalist and anti-immigrant content to promote a break in UK-EU relations. Once these narratives take root, they are extremely difficult to displace. Take for instance the Soviet Union’s 1980s campaign in Africa claiming the U.S. engineered HIV/AIDS to oppress Africans. This narrative endures decades after it was debunked.
While at the Pentagon, I wrote both the Global Campaign Plan and the National Military Strategy for Russia. In the White House, I coordinated responses to Russian active measures. Now I see the hallmarks of Russia’s tradecraft being employed by other illiberal organizations such as Hamas and even the Trump/MAGA movement. It makes sense that others would see Russia’s successes and employ similar tactics to spread disinformation and disrupt societies after witnessing the effectiveness of these tactics in the information age.
Since October 7, 2023, I have seen influence operations permeate Hamas’ information strategy in their war against Israel. The current far-right Israeli government’s West Bank settlement policy and the terrible state in Israel-Palestine relations add credibility to idea that Israel is an oppressor. The situation is complex (understatement), but what is clear is Russia, Hamas, and other illiberal actors are conducting influence operations and promoting false narratives seeking to inflame anti-Israel sentiments by advancing the narrative that Israel is indiscriminate in attacking Hamas, that Israel is the aggressor in the Israel-Hamas war, and that Israel is worse in the conduct of its war than Russia is in the war on Ukraine. Too many individuals and media sources have embraced and repeated these accounts.
Why it Matters: While influence operations fail more than they succeed, they most easily find purchase is in exploiting existing fissures, fractures, and divides. These are in the expected places we often don’t even acknowledge ourselves but those biases exist in all of us. In a time when many receive their information online from unvetted sources, it is the perfect opportunity for disinformation to flourish. There is no simple antidote to influence operations. But we can vaccinate ourselves with media literacy, develop reliable sources and take a beat in reacting to both crisis events and simple alluring narratives.
References and further reading:
https://www.politico.eu/article/france-condemns-russia-involvement-stars-of-david-graffiti/
The short answer is that Gaza was/is completely controlled by Hamas and western NGOs were/are forced to operate under Hamas rules and see what Hamas wants them to see. So NGOs aperture, for conclusions, is both narrowed and skewed. I haven't seen credible evidence Israel is committing atrocities. What I have seen are the horrific scenes of war, something I've had the unfortunate experience of witnessing in a few places around the world.
Thank you for this! Although I had read about the Stars of David on doors in France, I had not been aware that this was found to be an active measure by Russia. I’m just finishing the book ‘Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare’, and the author describes a campaign by the KGB to inflame anti-semitism worldwide in the Cold War period, 'pinning' the actions on actors in West Germany in order to destabilize their alliance with the U.S. So unfortunately, it seems that specifically active measures that use anti-semitism to further their goals have been part of the Russian playbook for a long time…