Subverting Reality: The Role of Propaganda in 21st Century Intelligence

The digital era has placed most of humanity’s knowledge within a few clicks of a computer mouse or the touches of a smart phone screen. Yet in an age where knowledge is so readily available it is also seemingly elusive. Reality hides behind oceans of information streamed from innumerable sources competing for a single moment of attention. But disinformation dangerously poisons that abundance of knowledge and begins a process of ideational inception, in which even the idea of reality is itself subverted. In the digital age, propaganda and disinformation injected into the global information environment, known now as cyberspace, can have significant implications. Strategically utilized in the digital era, they can facilitate significant political actions that slow or dilute policy responses. They also pose a direct and relevant threat to national security, both within target nations as well as in those beyond the intended scope of a given operation.