38 | New Scientist | 19 October 2019
Inside the
information
wars
In the age of fake news and digital manipulation,
you are the new battlefield. Carl Miller reports
from the front lines of information warfare
A
T FIRST glance, you might think you
were in the office of a technology
start-up. People peer at computers
and talk about influencers, reach and hashtags.
Like their peers in Silicon Valley, these men
and women know how the internet can be
used to change hearts and minds. But this is a
world away from the primary-colour campuses
of the tech giants. These offices lie behind
barbed wire, and everyone is wearing the green
patterned camouflage of the British Army.
The 77th Brigade is the British Army’s unit
for what it calls “information manoeuvre”
and what everyone else calls information
warfare: using print and online media to
change the behaviour of hostile parties and
prevent them causing problems at home.
When I visited, just over two years ago,
everything was in motion. Flooring was being
laid, units installed. Desks formed neat lines
in offices still covered in plastic, tape and
sawdust. Even then, there was a sense that
they were already too late.
Today, they face new kinds of conflict that
are breaking out online, leading to mass
deception, protests and even deaths. Our
information flow is being invaded. Attention
is being hacked. The hostile manipulation of
information has even been blamed for riggingCOREY BRICKLEYelections, the Brexit vote and paving the road
for Donald Trump.
Whether real or imagined, the fear of such
activity is changing our world. Amid all the
intrigue and shadows, you have become the
front line. Your opinions, your values, what
you hold to be true, even the way you feel, are
all under siege. And it isn’t clear what anyone
can do to stop it.
A powerful illustration of that fragility
came on 7 March 2019, when Facebook made
an announcement. Among the billions
of accounts, groups and pages that inhabit
its site and its subsidiary, Instagram, it had
identified a network of 137 engaged in what
it termed “inauthentic” activity targeting the
UK. Yet to the 180,000 people who followed all
or part of this network, it would have seemed
utterly unremarkable. Tedious even.
On the one hand, nationalists were sharing
slogans. “Being a leftist is easy!” one meme
said. “If anyone disagrees with you, call them
a racist!” But others in the network pushed
a different angle. One account called for
the leader of the pro-Brexit party UKIP to
be charged with hate crimes. Others drew
attention to stories that LGBT Christians
were being bullied because of their faith.
The vitriol and polarisation would be familiarFeatures