“How disinformation is rewriting the rules of war“
In today’s conflicts, missiles may still shatter walls, but it is lies—carefully crafted, rapidly shared, and widely believed—that shatter peace. The recent near-crisis between two nuclear-armed rivals revealed a terrifying truth: war is no longer sparked by troop movements alone, but also by tweets, deepfakes, and viral lies.
What began as a border skirmish spiraled into a full-scale information meltdown. Within hours, social media platforms were flooded with fabricated military footage, AI-generated images, and recycled videos from past conflicts. The claims? Phantom air raids, downed aircraft, and decisive victories—none of which ever happened. Yet the damage was real. Public outrage surged. Nationalist sentiment reached fever pitch. And both governments were forced into hardline postures, responding not just to events, but to illusion.
This isn’t a glitch in the age of digital warfare. It’s a feature
Disinformation has become a potent tool of modern hybrid warfare. Unlike traditional tactics, it doesn’t require boots on the ground or missiles in the sky. It only needs a viral video and a gullible audience. And in an era when social media platforms often value engagement over accuracy, misinformation spreads faster than any official correction ever could.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, there has been a 150% increase in state-led misinformation campaigns over the past five years. That’s not an oversight—it’s a deliberate strategy. By flooding the public with conflicting narratives, aggressors create confusion, doubt, and division. The goal isn’t just to mislead—it’s to disorient, disrupt, and escalate.
What makes this even more dangerous is the role of artificial intelligence. Today, it takes mere minutes to produce a fake press briefing or a battlefield video that looks almost indistinguishably real. And when such content aligns with national pride or partisan sentiment, it’s consumed without question and shared without hesitation.
Both sides of the recent conflict found themselves chasing ghosts: denying attacks that never occurred, calming citizens riled up by fictional invasions, and trying to correct lies that had already become emotional truths. Even intelligence agencies were forced to make rare public interventions, evidence of how deeply disinformation had undermined strategic control.
Tech platforms must also shoulder blame. While pledging to combat fake news, most remain stuck in reactive mode. Their algorithms are still geared toward engagement, not integrity—rewarding the most sensational content, regardless of its veracity.
The course ahead is clear, aleven though now no longer easy:
Timely Transparency: Governments must fill the vacuum before falsehoods do. Swift, verifiable information is the best defense against manipulation.
Cross-National Fact-Checking Coalitions: Journalists, fact-checkers, and civil society actors should collaborate across borders to counter lies with evidence—quickly and publicly.
Platform Reform: Tech companies must deploy smarter, localized content moderation tools and give precedence to factual content during crises.
Digital Literacy for Citizens: People must be trained to question, analyze, and verify. The ability to detect a fake should be as basic as knowing how to read.
This is not just about avoiding the next war. It’s about defending truth itself. Because in today’s battles, fiction often fires the first shot—and facts arrive too late.
As the lines between war and peace blur, and between real and fake dissolve, one thing remains urgent and clear: the world must treat disinformation not as digital noise, but as a strategic threat. Otherwise, we may soon live in a reality where conflict is manufactured not in war rooms, but in newsfeeds—and peace becomes a casualty of belief.
Reported data referenced from the 2023 CSIS Report on Digital Hybrid Threats.
