Hacking Minds, Manipulating Machines: A Primer on Information Warfare

Takshashila Discussion Document - Version 1.0

Executive Summary

While widespread mechanisation, large industrial clusters and increasingly lethal militaries defined the preceding Industrial Age that lasted for more than two centuries, the ongoing Information Age has been about the structuring of human society around the production, consumption and effects of information.

Information warfare is not a feature of the Information Age alone. But the Information Age has imparted the former an unprecedented scale and reach. Using information to influence decisions for achieving political objectives (without necessarily employing physical force) is information warfare.

While all states—including democratic ones—engage in information warfare, authoritarian states are at an advantage when stacked against the democratic ones. Authoritarian states, however, pay an opportunity cost for maintaining a sanitised domestic information environment.

The double-edged sword nature of information power gives rise to a fundamental conundrum: What prevents states which are empowered to safeguard the cognitive autonomy of their citizens from using the same information power against the latter?

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