Information warfare can succeed by inducing generic confusion rather than by persuading anyone.

Evidence

Even an optimistic account of our ability to spot fake news has to come to grips with the fact that not everyone needs to be fooled in order for misinformation to be highly influential and dangerous. After all, major elections are often decided on small margins, and cyber propaganda is playing an increasingly important role in tearing down the fabric of our democracy. In early February of 2022, Russian propagandists flooded the media with fake videos supposedly portraying Ukrainian acts of aggression and attacks on Russian territory in order to create a pretext for the planned invasion. Some of the social media images were taken from Israeli airstrikes on Gaza; other footage came directly from the tactical shooter video game, Arma 3. The goal of these campaigns was not to convince foreign audiences that Russia’s military invasion was somehow justified but to make it harder for people to discern fact from fiction: the hope was that political analysts and fact-checkers would be distracted by having to track down and debunk obviously false materials. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 13

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the shift from persuasion to confusion as the actual objective of modern propaganda — ‘cognitive cost’ warfare rather than belief-change warfare.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that flooding obviously false material aims to consume fact-checkers’ bandwidth — an attack on the verification infrastructure rather than on beliefs — is a genuinely paradigm-disturbing reframe.
• XREF: connects to: Bias can transmit between agents when threats are ambiguous. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 297; Being rational, informed, and in control is not always strategic — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 52; Misleading intelligence strategies can escalate arms races. — Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Secrets in the…, 1240 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Psychological inoculation can build societal resistance to misinformation #complicates (0.78) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 20
• Deliberate misinformation weaponized for profit or power can outcompete true news #expands (0.78) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 218
• Bias can transmit between agents when threats are ambiguous. #expands (0.75) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 297
• Being rational, informed, and in control is not always strategic #corroborates (0.72) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 52
• Misleading intelligence strategies can escalate arms races. #expands (0.72) — Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Secrets in the…, 1240