One of the major takeaways from the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts, and the skirmish between India and Pakistan in May 2025, has been the importance of information warfare.  In each case, controlling the information narrative emerged as being equally important to the gains on the battlefield because that has meant winning in the court of international public opinion—and as each of these conflicts have shown, winning the minds of the global public is important to justify one’s right to go to war. To understand the role of information warfare one has to go back to how it began, how it was used by governments in war, how technology changed the way a narrative was conducted, and the likely trends in the future.

Background

The birth of short-wave radio in the early twentieth century led to countries using it to beam propaganda around the world and especially at their neighbours.  Since this was the era of colonialism the global media was dominated by the west which had quickly recognized that creating such a monopoly was in itself a form of cultural power.  As a consequence, colonial powers like Britain, Netherlands, and France beamed their broadcasts globally to reach listeners in their far-flung colonies.

During the Cold War, both the Soviet Union and the United States invested in radio broadcasts that covered the world—Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Pravda—to disseminate the message to global audiences that were considered receptive to such information. Thus, the fact that these countries had the technology and the resources allowed them to secure the strongest broadcast bandwidths to transmit their version of current affairs around the world and attempt to create a political environment that was favorable to them.

What also added to the media strength of the West (the Soviet Union could not do this) was the fact that the western media was willing to criticize its own governments and institutions and that added to the authenticity of its newscasts to the rest of the world.

Information in Warfare

Typically, the national media always supported the war effort, embedded journalists were there on each side, and even the militaries had their own press corps that produced photos and documentaries to support the war effort.  What changed this happy union between the press and the military was a succession of wars in the nonwestern world.

The anti-colonial wars in Vietnam and Algeria soon saw the French press view with skepticism the government’s claims that it was winning both conflicts. A section of the French press was particularly vocal about the conduct of the war and the use of torture by the French authorities. This was despite censorship in France. A similar situation emerged with the French war in Indo-China. This was particularly the case because the war was becoming increasingly unpopular in France. But what really brought about a disconnect between public perception and the government’s information narrative was the American war in Vietnam.

The US employed the same media tactics it had used in World War 2 and Korea but this time the American press was not as compliant.  Stories began appear about how the US military was not giving an accurate account of the war and that things were actually going quite badly for the American counterinsurgency. When this media effort was coupled with the rise of the anti-war movement in America the military and the politicians stood discredited.

The Vietnam war led to the US military and conservative groups claiming that the media had been unpatriotic.  Forgotten were such actions as the My Lai massacre and the large-scale bombing of North Vietnam in which Hanoi suffered significant civilian casualties, and the veterans who came back home to insufficient support for their traumas.

The American government decided that in the next major war there would be tight control of the media and that was the case in the first Iraq war.  The war was a short and successful one with low American casualties and the media, perhaps with some sense of past guilt, spoke of finally kicking the Vietnam syndrome.  When the second Gulf war took place the belief was that the media would be controlled just as easily as it had been in the first war.  What changed was that the second time round the United States became an occupier and now faced a full-blown insurgency.   As is the case when any war gets prolonged, media scrutiny increases and the press becomes more critical of the war effort.  The events of Abu Gharib where torture and humiliation took place and the fact that a significant number of Americans were being badly hurt or killed as a result of the insurgency led to a situation where once again the media became critical of US war efforts.

The aftermath of the Cold War left the West militarily, economically, technologically, and ideologically in an advantageous position.  Western soft power was boosted by the advent of modern technology—particularly the internet and satellites—which allowed the West to dominate the global media sphere.  Satellites allowed for 24/7 news channels like CNN, BBC, Sky, and DW to monopolize the global airwaves and drown out nonwestern voices in the media sphere.  By the early 2000s, the maturing of the internet led the major papers of record in the West like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal to have far more global subscribers and, therefore, increased the ability to spread their particular message.

While the West’s soft power was boosted by its media monopoly, Qatar provided the first challenge to this monopoly when it created Al-Jazeera with the objective of having an alternative media presence.  The goal of Al-Jazeera was to balance the flow of information from the South to the North and to provide “the opinion and the other opinion.” Being well-funded by the Emir of Qatar, the new news channel quickly established a global presence and became a force in broadcasting because it was helped by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Especially in the case of Iraq, Al-Jazeera presented an alternative set of facts from the carefully packaged news that came from the western news outlets at the behest of the Pentagon with its policy of having embedded journalists.  Not surprisingly, the United States military was particularly hostile to Al-Jazeera since it repeatedly contradicted the canned narrative that the Pentagon was selling to the world through its embedded journalists.

By the 2010s, the media monopoly of the West started to shrink because new technologies allowed for global coverage at a significant reduction in costs. In the United States, the mainstream papers began to lose readership to websites like the Drudge Report and later online magazines like Slate, The Daily Beast, and Politico as the traditional news sources did not provide the type of news and analysis that specific audiences wanted and their credibility was increasingly being questioned by the audience they sought to influence.  In the case of Ukraine and Gaza, therefore, one saw nations grab control of the media narrative from far more formidable competitors.

The Ukraine war saw tech savvy young Ukrainians, mostly in an unofficial capacity, go on the propaganda offensive and successfully deflate the portrayal of the Russian war effort.  Whether it was the fighter pilot dubbed the Ghost of Kyiv, which turned out to be the clever manipulation of a video game, or the listing of Russian casualties—which were grossly exaggerated—the Ukrainians became adept at manipulating global public opinion.  They were aided by the fact that the West had a vested interest in portraying the Russians as performing poorly in the war.  Further, the Russians were hurt by their own inability to manipulate the media due to their excessive secrecy and unwillingness to allow independent journalists to see what was happening on their side of the military front.

While the Ukrainian efforts were initially successful, a number of YouTube and Signal channels sprung up, both in America and the rest of the world, that started presenting facts and debunking Kyiv’s claims about the success of the war effort.  This not only led to a healthy skepticism about the way the war was going but also to a section of the American public opposing further military and economic assistance to Ukraine since it was seen as a lost cause and were worried that the United States would be dragged into the conflict (these were by and large people who blamed Joe Biden for the war and went on to vote for Trump). The Gaza War similarly saw the narrative shift from what the mainstream media was saying to a more balanced narrative thanks to the nontraditional media.

The mainstream American media of television channels like CNN and Fox were solidly behind Israel reflecting the policies of the Administration.  So too were the papers of record of the United States—The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post—making it easy for Israel to dominate the information war in the West.  The problem for the Israelis and the Trump Administration was that an entire range of alternative media existed that was to present a different perspective of the Gaza War.

Tik Tok, YouTube, and Signal were the platforms on which the young in Europe and America got their information and they did not see what the mainstream media stated were the facts on the ground.

While American media support was crucial in the way the war was presented in the international print and broadcast media, smaller outlets were much more critical in determining public attitudes towards the conflict. The Intercept, a small independent media outlet which is supported by the donations of its readership, made the case that, “The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza showed a consistent bias against Palestinians, according to an Intercept analysis of major media coverage.”

But perhaps the most egregious example of biased media coverage was the story that 40 Israeli babies had been beheaded in the Palestinian attack.  By any standard the story, if true, would have been major violation of international law and something that no normal human being could have justified.  It would have led to universal condemnation of the Palestinian war effort and seen a substantial lowering of support for their cause among the global public.  Le Monde, however, did a careful analysis to show that the story was actually a rumor that had gained credence and been widely circulated by the global media.

In both cases why did the mainstream media only project a particular image of the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts rather than attempt to show both sides of the conflict? The papers of record framed their writings to support the foreign policy objectives of the American government and to some extent ignored the realities on the ground.  What they failed to understand, despite the Iraq fiasco, was that the non-traditional media had bypassed them to present an alternative version that makes their print or broadcast pronouncements less authoritative. Thus, the rising toll of Ukrainian casualties was downplayed and the anger among the young about Gaza was minimized.

By the spring of 2024, a series of pro-Palestinian and to a lesser extent pro-Israeli demonstrations broke out at campuses across America.  The largest ones were along the north-east coast at prestigious schools like Harvard and Columbia but there were also significant protests in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Universities had to balance between the free-speech right of their students, protecting Jewish and Muslim students from harassment, and dealing with the angry calls and public pronouncements of some wealthy donors who felt that campuses should not be permitting pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Polls found that a third of the adults under 30 said that their sympathies were entirely or mostly with the Palestinians while 14% said their sympathies were entirely with or mostly with the Israelis.  In contrast, in the age group 65 and over, 47% were entirely or mostly with Israel while only 9% were sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.  Six in ten adults under 30 had a positive view of the Palestinian people and 46% of that age group felt the Israeli response was unacceptable.

Most young people were getting their information from their chosen social media platforms be it Tik-Tok, Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, or YouTube. These sites had certain advantages that the mainstream media could not compete with.  They provided tailored content that suited the preferences of their younger users.  They were not beholden to corporate and political interests and most importantly the content was cheap to produce and easy to upload to a platform where they could reach millions. 

All this has serious implications for any nation’s decision to go to war and on how to pursue the conflict. Since the first Gulf War of the 1990s governments have sought to embed journalists in their military units so as to accurately portray their version of events.  We are past the era of embedded journalism since Tik Tok and associated social media make it impossible to control the narrative anymore.

Operation Sindoor

Operation Sindoor brought home how the information narrative has shifted both domestically and internationally with consequences for the successful pursuit of Indian military operations.  Most of the Indian media sensationalized the news and spread wild rumors and engaged in excessive hyperbole.  The Indian public was turned off by the excessive jingoism of the domestic media because it was clear that truth had become a casualty in the process.  Ignoring the careful statements being made by the Indian government and military, sections of the media instead spread stories like Karachi had been attacked by the Indian Navy and that the Baluch Liberation Army had captured Quetta.  Retired Indian Navy officers had to go on talk shows to point out that if the Navy went into action it would be in a declared war and not in the type of skirmish that Sindoor was being limited to.  By the third day of the confrontation with Pakistan, Indians were complaining about how the domestic media had moved away from a balanced coverage to sensationalism. Not exactly the outcome that the Indian media had hoped for.

At the same time, however, the international media was equally irresponsible in its coverage of Sindoor. Al-Jazeera hurt its reputation by spreading the fake news that an Indian woman fighter pilot had been shot down and captured by the Pakistanis thus leading India to sue for a ceasefire. CNN lazily carried the Al-Jazeera story without fact checking it.  Neither news organization issued an apology for the inaccuracy of their story.

The other thing that became clear after Sindoor was that initially Pakistan was able to better wage the information war against India due to its skillful use of the international media as it was able to make the unverified claim that three Indian Rafales had been shot down. Putting on an impressive display of technology with giant TV screens the Pakistanis were able to initially sell their version of events to the world. Thus, the story of the success of Chinese weaponry over western systems quickly gained credence.  It was only after the Indian armed forces were permitted present their own evidence that an information balance was restored in the conflict.

The reason the Pakistanis were able to achieve their initial success was due to the fact that their military dominates the political process and they did not have to go through the time-consuming bureaucratic hurdles that are there on the Indian side and are a consequence of the civil-military structure in the Indian system.  Had India got its message out quickly it would have done better in the information war with Pakistan.  Instead, it took several days for the evidence of Indian strikes to get out and make international journalists and strategic analysts change their views on how well both sides were doing in the skirmish.

What must be understood, therefore, is that in a future war, expect a lot of video clips and commentaries on social media that will go against the narrative a country gives.  The best way to do that is to be truthful and measured in one’s comments.  Once Chief of Defense Staff Anil Chauhan accepted that India had lost aircraft but that it was a normal course of war, the domestic and international media became less obsessed with the issue.  Also, the Pakistanis had nothing else left in their quiver in terms of propaganda to try and discredit India.

The lessons to be learned from the new information wars are simple. Expect a very high level of disinformation or even information that does not fit into the country’s stated narrative.  It will be generated on internet platforms like YouTube or on social media platforms like Tik Tok and will go viral quickly.  The country’s armed forces, therefore, must be given the leeway to react effectively and quickly providing alternative evidence and quashing rumors.  India, should have immediately come out with a rebuttal that a woman officer had been captured by the Pakistanis and chastised both CNN and Al-Jazeera for shoddy reporting.

To do that India has to move away from the idea of letting its creaky, secretive, and inefficient Victorian age bureaucracy to try and shape a narrative.  To successfully implement such a policy the government should bring in journalists and advertising executives so as to learn how to successfully wage an information war. An information war is a narrative and the best people to sell an idea to the public are advertising executives and journalists.  This is what happens in other parts of the world with some success.

Further, a serious attempt should also be made to cultivate the traditional foreign press since it still has influence in the corridors of power of the western world. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal may not be read by the general American public, especially Gen Z and the Millennials, but  they are read in the corridors of power in Washington and by financiers in New York. This means giving access, acknowledging mistakes, and being willing to take difficult questions which go against Indian policy.  Such openness and frankness are appreciated and it raises the country’s standing as one with an open society.