News and internet: an advance of war

The data regarding the evolution of the pandemic flow uninterrupted; not intending to invade fields for which there is a risk of giving inaccurate perspectives, we try to propose an alternative reading in order to induce other reflections based, of course, on what is accessible and available, and trying to combine the reflections with the relevant objective elements, extrapolated from the mass of whitenoise.

There are many reports related to the progress of the situation, and the possibility that their size confuses rather than clarifies is palpable. An apparently incongruous mass of information leads to the only result of not having a clear picture, especially when the actors involved play hegemonic roles, and the interests involved are manifold and relevant.

A first aspect to be evaluated concerns the development of the information society, which has led to a change in the conflict landscape. According to a recent theory, "It will not be who has the biggest bomb to prevail, but who will tell the best story", thus giving space to the concept of information dominance, or the identification of the competitor's weak points, with a collection of verifiable information aimed at fueling controversies related to objective facts.

The spread of the network has led to the realization of a form of attack that falls under the aspect of cognitive war o, if you prefer, say multidimensional infowar; how to react? With an intelligence that, thanks to Humint e Techint¹, thwart attacks.

Three types of activity are associated with this type of activity which, already stigmatized by Clausewitz at the time, have a considerable weight: nomos, ethos, pathos that, triggered from information which follows the same ratio as the use of the power, they contribute to influence every social activity; after all, the communication, it has always been a fundamental political instrument both in war and in peace, an invitation to accept more mild advice, or a threat to suffer further offense, given that wars are fought to achieve political or economic objectives, and not to lead to destruction ends in themselves: if you want, it is the success of the cheapest soft power, on an expensive hard power, the triumph of the flexibility of social networks in the Arab springs on the security apparatus, the mobility of the electorates in virtual spaces that have eroded representative, slow and predictable democracy, according to a more dynamic paradigm that aims to direct efforts cognitive towards government weaknesses and institutional delegitimization; in short, a use of the aspects psychological communications.

But what would the media be like at the time of the virus crown without the factor cyber? There is no doubt that the collection of information reflects a form of power capable of attacking the opposing foundations, both tactically and strategically, which leads to evaluating the computer means as weapons capable of effective anonymous attacks; proof is that almost half of the tweet posted between 11 and 23 March with the hashtag #forzaCinaandItalia it is attributable to automated accounts, as well as over a third of those with the hashtag #thanks China, as evidenced by the analysis carried out by the Alkemy R&D Lab.

Finally, the propaganda, always a valid foreign policy tool that has been underestimated for a long time despite the fact that it has often been used by Russia to destabilize and influence western politics by using traditional media, the internet, with employees aimed at using the most up-to-date techniques of psychological warfare, studied in the political-military field, and which have now led to misrepresent the journey of Russian planes to Italy, for which Poland had been unjustifiably blamed, or to re-launch as Putin's recent claims in 2015. All communication skills for which there is the clash taking place between a well-known Italian newspaper with the Russian Ministry of Defense, a much harder bone than usual, who certainly cannot be attacked without proving that he has certain and proven information.

Obviously, the use of propaganda is not exclusively Russian, also because it has been observed that Beijing has treasured over time both the experience of the Kremlin and the asymmetric theory of the text "War Without Limits"²; Proof of this are the thousands of fake or stolen twitter accounts discovered by ProPublica, and which served as Chinese propaganda to support the regime by first attacking the demonstrators in Hong Kong, then supporting it in the disinformation about the pandemic, accounts related to the OneSight Technology company in Beijing, which counts as Alibaba and Huawei customers interested in the 5G network.

All these elements operate on a main element: theinformation. To the data of the cognitive war accompany those not verifiable and altered by the disinformation, aimed at manipulation, which should hopefully be accompanied by the activity of counter-misinformation, by intelligence services.

Cognitive warfare, psychological elements, propaganda, information and disinformation, all aspects of aninfodemic which is affecting the West, and which has led the US to identify the sources of campaigns in Russia, China and Iran to spread terror for the virus. While unfounded news about the NATO exercise was being propagated Defend Europe 2020Mike Pompeo urged China to take on its responsibilities, also in light of the misinformation that had as its object Italy, a country interested in the Silk Road.

Despite what is claimed by official sources of the Dragon, how many Italians know the Chinese national anthem to be sung on the balconies? We tend to analyze the Soufan Center of NY, which sees an outbreak marked by “a combination of disinformation, cyber attacks and a lack of political leadership"Which" amplifies the threat posed by the spread "of the coronavirus, and that even spreads false maps on contagion or on non-existent therapies, not to mention the concealment of medical data, news about infections purposely spread by ethnic or political minorities, or laboratory manipulations.

But who spreads misinformation? That there are strategic reasons for geopolitical competitions is evident; cognitively China, careful to balance strategic-economic objectives and resources available to avoid struggles for survival, is accused of manipulating information in order to represent its fight against the epidemic as a success; the US was not always openly clear and, while the Ayatollahs accused them of attempting to show the Iranian inability to contain the virus, they claimed that Russian attempts existed to identify the virus crown as an American biological weapon.

The US references to the "Chinese virus" by shifting the focus on the protection of national security, constitute the response to the CCP's propaganda to erase the image of the country where the virus was born, was ignored and then censored.

The Chinese disinformation campaign therefore consisted of a narrative inversion, so the virus was eradicated thanks to the people's war, followed by the export of Wuhan system by sending aid to the most affected countries, Italy leads the way with a renamed marketing operation Health Silk Road, and finally the accusation addressed to other countries of having been the real ones responsible for the spread of the virus, primarily Italy and the USA.

At a non-state level, disinformation activities are highlighted, such as those carried out by groups anti-establishment, or elements of organized crime, conspiracy theorists, anarchist groups, which find fertile ground in a public opinion which, sensitized from the point of view of pathos, it is also led to believe in aspects without scientific basis, as happened in Egypt or Turkey, where the authorities have propagated grotesque theses on the immune system of the population.

What will remain of the geopolitics of a few months ago? Shortly. For China, in the wake of the appreciation of the mass of the latest counter narrations, the virus crown could be an opportunity to intervene directly and no longer from the scenes, on a revision of the traditional liberal order born during the Second World War in Washington, leader of the then new system, a sort of test that highlighted the fragility of the liberal system and the American withdrawal from international leadership.

That hegemons are never welcome is ascertained, but that information and counter-information can obscure the bureaucratic and totalitarian nature of the governance of a regime that has introduced a new digital tool to calibrate the loyalty of the people, the smartphone application xuexi qiangguo, it should lead to some further evaluation, given the reticence about the pandemic and the impossibility of expressing any form of dissent on both Hong Kong and Tibet.

Some closing considerations; Italy has found itself interpreting the role of the useful stage for too many hegemons, in a moment of deep crisis that has forced the security services to emphasize the need to protect the main national assets, as vulnerable assets as and more of others to cognitive conflicts, according to a model which, however, in predicting a US-China bipolar confrontation, does not clearly identify the possible position of our country, a country which at the moment does not seem to be fully involved in the international realities that are evolving and that, as in the case of ISIS, prove profound knowledge cognitive e propagandistic.