Global Knowledge Warfare, Strategic Imagination, Uncertainty, and Fear

Governments are rapidly advancing their strategies for influence operations conducted in cyberspace. Global Knowledge Warfare (GKW) is the purposeful use and management of knowledge in pursuit of a competitive advantage over opponents by influencing the minds and, ultimately, the behaviour of the targeted groups in foreign countries. Psychological warfare is the deliberate manipulation of information to influence emotions, judgement, and subsequent behaviour of individuals or groups to fulfil particular political goals. Ideological warfare is a clash of fundamental ideas or principles referring to economy, government, politics, lifestyle, or life in general. Russia, as an influential status seeker together with another powerful challenger China, has been among the pioneers of GKW, which are effectively using new tools of communication for achieving their strategic goals. Strategic imagination is the method of creative and critical assessment of possible scenarios involving threats to security. This method allows security experts to think about the future, consider “what if” situations, and assess the probability of different threats, even those that appear improbable to some. Educated forecasting—based on historical facts, today’s developments, and strategic imagination—is an important component of building successful security strategies and supportive public policies. Using examples of apparent troll activities on the web in the past, the authors discuss two prevalent features of the GKW. Global knowledge warriors operate under the conditions of three cultures developed to support their status-related goals: culture of uncertainty, culture of fear, and culture of irrational response.