Military vs. Disinformation: How America Fights Foreign Propaganda Online

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America faces a new kind of warfare. Foreign adversaries aren’t just building missiles and tanks—they’re weaponizing lies, exploiting the openness of democratic societies to sow chaos from within.

For the Pentagon, countering disinformation isn’t a public relations problem. It’s a core national security mission.

Countries like Russia and China have turned influence operations into precision weapons. They create fake online personas, spread conspiracy theories, and amplify divisive content to erode trust in American institutions. Their goal is to paralyze decision-making and turn Americans against each other.

The Department of Defense has responded by fundamentally reshaping how it thinks about warfare. Information is now considered the seventh domain of military operations, alongside land, sea, air, space, cyber, and command and control.

The Pentagon has created new commands, developed cutting-edge detection technologies, and adopted an aggressive “defend forward” strategy that takes the fight directly to adversary networks.

The Weapons of Information War

Disinformation vs. Misinformation vs. Malinformation

The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency uses a precise framework to categorize false content, often called “MDM.” Understanding these distinctions helps identify the intent behind a message.

Disinformation is information deliberately created and shared to mislead, harm, or manipulate. When foreign governments plant fake news stories or create fraudulent online personas to push political agendas, they’re conducting disinformation operations. The term traces back to the Russian “Дезинформация” (Dezinformatsiya), associated with Soviet intelligence efforts in the 1920s.

Misinformation is false information shared without intent to cause harm. Someone who unknowingly shares a fake news article because they believe it’s true is spreading misinformation. While the intent differs, the damage can be just as severe.

Malinformation uses factual information out of context to mislead. This includes strategically leaked private emails to damage political campaigns or selectively edited videos that create false impressions. The information is technically true, but its presentation is deceptive.

The Architecture of Deception

Modern disinformation campaigns aren’t random acts. They’re structured operations with clear supply chains designed to hide their origins and maximize impact. U.S. Cyber Command calls the masterminds “Orderers of Disinformation”—strategic competitors like Russia and China who deploy networks of actors to create and spread false narratives.

The Cast of Characters

Foreign adversaries use various “disinformation actors” to make their campaigns appear organic and widespread:

Bots and Cyborgs: Automated social media accounts that flood platforms with messages at high speed. Cyborgs are human-operated accounts that can engage in more nuanced conversations or counter dissenting views.

Trolls and Troll Farms: Real people, often in organized groups, paid to post inflammatory content that disrupts online conversations and pushes specific narratives. USCYBERCOM has specifically targeted these operations.

Sockpuppets and Fake Personas: Fabricated online identities designed to look like real Americans, complete with backstories and AI-generated profile pictures. These personas build credibility within target communities before spreading disinformation.

Amplifiers: Perhaps the most crucial actors are ordinary people successfully deceived by campaigns. When they believe false narratives and share them with their networks, they become unwitting participants, lending their credibility to adversary messages and amplifying reach exponentially.

The Tactics Playbook

These actors employ sophisticated techniques designed to bypass critical thinking:

The Media Multiplier Effect: Adversaries create “propaganda ecosystems” by repeating false narratives across multiple platforms and seemingly independent sources simultaneously. This creates an illusion of consensus and credibility.

Astroturfing and Flooding: Coordinated networks of fake accounts create false impressions of grassroots support. Flooding overwhelms social media comment sections or search results to drown out factual information.

Deepfakes and Manipulated Media: AI-generated videos and audio recordings can impersonate political leaders, stage fake events, or create inflammatory content. This includes simpler manipulations like doctored photos or misleading video clips.

Imposter Content: Creating content that mimics trusted sources by using logos and branding of legitimate news organizations or building entire fake news websites.

The ultimate strategy weaponizes target populations against themselves. Adversaries craft messages so emotionally resonant that audiences willingly spread them through their own social networks, achieving scale and authenticity the original sources could never attain alone.

Why Information Warfare Matters

Foreign disinformation poses direct threats to U.S. national security with tangible, dangerous consequences.

Eroding Democratic Foundations: The most common objective is undermining public faith in core American institutions—government, free press, rule of law, and election integrity. Creating chaos and division weakens national cohesion necessary to confront external threats.

Paralyzing Decision-Making: Populations saturated with disinformation become vulnerable to manipulation. False premises can drive public pressure for policies contrary to U.S. interests and beneficial to adversaries. During crises, lack of trust in leadership severely constrains effective response capabilities.

Creating Contested Truth: Adversaries exploit America’s open society and free speech commitment as vulnerabilities. Their goal is fostering “truth decay,” where fact and opinion blur and trust in respected information sources erodes, making it difficult to establish objective reality.

Direct Military Threats: Disinformation can physically endanger U.S. service members. During humanitarian missions, adversaries spread rumors to turn local populations against American troops. In conflicts, deepfake technology could generate convincing but fake videos of U.S. military war crimes to radicalize populations and incite violence.

The Pentagon’s Strategic Response

Information as Warfare

A landmark transformation occurred in 2017 when the Joint Chiefs of Staff elevated “information” to the seventh joint warfighting function, placing it alongside command and control, intelligence, fires, movement and maneuver, protection, and sustainment. This wasn’t bureaucratic reshuffling—it signaled a fundamental conceptual shift across the military.

The change moved beyond the older, limited concept of “Information Operations” (IO), which coordinated five distinct activities: psychological operations, military deception, operations security, electronic warfare, and computer network operations. While important, this approach kept information-related activities separate from mainstream operational planning.

The new approach centers on Operations in the Information Environment (OIE). This concept acknowledges that every military action—from press releases to social media posts to aircraft carrier deployments—generates informational effects that must be deliberately planned, integrated, and assessed.

The U.S. Army has taken a slightly different path. While embracing information’s importance, it hasn’t designated it as a separate warfighting function. Instead, the Army views information as integral to all existing warfighting functions and prefers the term “information advantage” to describe its operational goal.

The 2023 Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment

The Pentagon’s master plan is the 2023 Department of Defense Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment. This unclassified document supersedes a 2016 version and provides the guiding framework for the entire defense enterprise.

Core Goal: The strategy calls for a deep “cultural shift” within the DoD. Information must become a “foundational element of all military strategies” where “consistent integration of informational and physical power becomes the norm.” The objective is effectively generating, preserving, and applying informational power to gain and maintain information advantage over competitors.

Defining Information Advantage: The strategy defines “information advantage” as “a condition when a force holds the initiative in terms of situational understanding, decision making, and relevant actor behavior.” This moves beyond simply having more information to focus on understanding faster, deciding better, and acting more effectively than opponents.

Lines of Effort: The strategy pursues four main approaches:

• People and Organizations: Ensuring the DoD has the right personnel, skills, and organizational structures
• Programs: Developing and funding necessary capabilities and technologies
• Policies and Governance: Establishing clear rules, authorities, and oversight mechanisms
• Partnerships: Strengthening collaboration with interagency partners, allies, and private sector

Implementation: The strategy serves as high-level vision, followed by a classified OIE Implementation Plan that assigns specific tasks, responsibilities, and timelines to various DoD offices.

Defend Forward: Taking the Fight to Adversaries

A cornerstone of the DoD’s proactive posture is the cyber strategy of “Defend Forward.” First articulated in the 2018 DoD Cyber Strategy and reaffirmed in 2023, this approach breaks from purely defensive mindsets.

Core Concept: The guiding principle is to “disrupt or halt malicious cyber activity at its source.” Rather than waiting for adversaries to attack U.S. networks, USCYBERCOM operates in foreign cyberspace—in adversary networks—to degrade capabilities before they’re used against the United States. This proactive posture applies to activities “below the level of armed conflict,” where most disinformation campaigns occur.

Application to Disinformation: Defend Forward explicitly applies to countering disinformation. USCYBERCOM’s mission includes actively targeting “troll farms and other different actors that are trying to create influence.” The most prominent public example was the 2018 operation where USCYBERCOM reportedly disrupted Russia’s Internet Research Agency troll farm on U.S. midterm election day.

Persistent Engagement: Defend Forward operates through “persistent engagement”—continuous activity in cyberspace, challenging adversary actions, imposing costs for malicious behavior, and gaining insights into tactics and tools. This resembles how the U.S. Navy continuously patrols sea lanes to ensure freedom of navigation.

A key component is “hunt forward operations” (HFOs), where USCYBERCOM deploys defensive cyber teams to allied nations—at their invitation—to hunt for adversary malware and vulnerabilities. This strengthens partner defenses while providing valuable intelligence on adversary capabilities for global use.

Who Fights the Information War

U.S. Cyber Command: Digital Warriors

U.S. Cyber Command, headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, leads the fight against foreign disinformation infrastructure. As the unified combatant command responsible for military cyberspace operations, its mission is directing, synchronizing, and coordinating cyberspace planning and operations.

Key counter-disinformation activities include:

Defending Elections: A primary mission is protecting U.S. elections from foreign interference through proactive operations to identify and disrupt foreign actors. During the 2020 election cycle, USCYBERCOM conducted more than two dozen operations against foreign threats.

Disrupting Adversary Infrastructure: Under Defend Forward, USCYBERCOM takes direct action against disinformation tools through offensive cyber operations to disrupt command-and-control servers or take troll farms offline.

Hunt Forward Operations: USCYBERCOM deploys defensive cyber teams to allied nations to hunt for adversary malware and tactics, strengthening collective defense while gathering critical intelligence.

USCYBERCOM’s effectiveness stems from its unique relationship with the National Security Agency (NSA). The “dual-hat” arrangement, where the same four-star general commands both organizations, allows the military command to leverage NSA’s vast signals intelligence infrastructure, expertise, and global access.

Service Branch Approaches

Each military service organizes, trains, and equips forces for information environment operations while developing unique structures based on core missions.

U.S. Air Force: 16th Air Force

The Air Force consolidated information warfare capabilities under 16th Air Force, headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas. This Information Warfare Numbered Air Force converges capabilities to “generate information warfare outcomes,” integrating intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, cyber operations, electronic warfare, and weather capabilities.

The 16th AF oversees wings with specific information warfare missions, including the 67th Cyberspace Wing for offensive and defensive cyber operations and the 70th ISR Wing for global signals intelligence. The Air Force is establishing an Information Warfare Operations Center (IWOC) to better synchronize these effects.

U.S. Army: Information Advantage

The Army pursues a more decentralized model. It recently deactivated its primary information command, the 1st Information Operations Command, creating smaller, more agile Theater Information Advantage Detachments instead.

These 65-person teams align with geographic combatant commands to integrate information capabilities like cyber and electronic warfare directly into maneuver force operations. This reflects a philosophy that “information advantage” should be embedded at tactical and operational levels rather than siloed in separate commands.

For training, the Army utilizes the Information Operations Network (ION), a sophisticated, cloud-based platform that emulates the entire World Wide Web, including social media platforms, news sites, and simulated “dark web” environments for realistic digital landscape practice.

U.S. Navy: Information Warfare Community

The Navy’s approach centers on its Information Warfare Community, bringing together specialists including intelligence officers, cryptologic warfare officers, cyber warfare engineers, and meteorology/oceanography officers.

The IWC delivers three core capabilities: Assured Command and Control, Battlespace Awareness, and Integrated Fires. Given the Navy’s global, sea-based mission, information warfare efforts are highly data-driven and focused on securing vast sensor and communications networks essential for ships, submarines, and aircraft operations.

U.S. Special Operations Command: Influence Specialists

While USCYBERCOM focuses on technical and network aspects, U.S. Special Operations Command possesses unique capabilities tailored to human and cognitive domains.

A core SOCOM activity is Military Information Support Operations (MISO), formerly known as Psychological Operations (PSYOP). MISO are planned operations to convey selected information to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and reasoning, ultimately affecting the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, and individuals favorably to U.S. objectives.

MISO is exclusively directed at foreign audiences and legally prohibited from targeting U.S. citizens. For example, USSOCOM conducts internet-based MISO with U.S. Southern Command to “expose, counter, and compete against adversary malign activity and disinformation” throughout Latin America.

Supporting Organizations

Several DoD entities play important supporting roles:

Joint Information Operations Warfare Center (JIOWC): Now aligned under the Joint Staff, JIOWC acts as a center of excellence supporting combatant commands by helping plan and integrate information-related capabilities. Its Joint OPSEC Support Element provides critical operations security training.

Defense Media Activity (DMA): The DoD’s primary public affairs organization runs the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service and produces official news content. While its mission is public affairs rather than counter-propaganda, it provides authoritative, verified information to counter false narratives.

The Technology Arms Race

DARPA’s Next-Generation Arsenal

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency leads the Pentagon’s efforts to build breakthrough technologies for tomorrow’s AI-driven information war through several key programs.

Media Forensics (MediFor) Program

This foundational program, concluded in 2021, created automated media authentication platforms to assess image and video integrity. MediFor researchers developed algorithms to detect three manipulation types:

Digital Integrity: Looking for pixel-level signs like compression artifacts indicating editing.

Physical Integrity: Identifying manipulations violating physics laws, such as objects with incorrect shadows or reflections.

Semantic Integrity: Spotting logical or contextual inconsistencies.

One widely cited success was discovering that early deepfake videos featured faces that blinked unnaturally or not at all—subtle clues human eyes miss but algorithms detect. Technologies developed under MediFor are now transitioning to operational commands and intelligence communities.

Semantic Forensics (SemaFor) Program

Building on MediFor’s success, SemaFor aims not just to detect fakes but perform attribution (who created it?) and characterization (was it created maliciously?).

The core insight driving SemaFor is that while generative AI creates statistically perfect images, it struggles with semantics—underlying meaning and logic. An AI-generated person might look photorealistic but feature mismatched earrings, six fingers, or nonsensical background text.

SemaFor exploits this weakness based on the principle that falsified media creators must get every semantic detail right, while defenders need only find one flaw. DARPA has launched public initiatives including an Analytic Catalog of open-source forensic tools and the AI Forensics Open Research Challenge Evaluation (AI FORCE) competition series.

Influence Campaign Awareness and Sensemaking (INCAS) Program

While SemaFor focuses on single media authenticity, INCAS helps analysts understand and track entire influence campaigns spreading across the internet.

Currently, tracking influence campaigns requires painstaking manual analysis of thousands of social media posts and articles. INCAS aims to automate this by developing tools that can:

Detect Geopolitical Influence: Automatically identify influence indicators in multilingual online content, such as strong emotional language, moral appeals, and specific agenda pushing.

Understand Audience Response: Moving beyond demographics to segment populations based on psychographic attributes—worldviews, values, and beliefs—hypothesized as better predictors of response to influence messages.

Model Campaign Evolution: Provide interactive tools to visualize how campaigns evolve over time across platforms with quantified confidence levels.

INCAS focuses on providing analyst sensemaking tools for understanding foreign campaigns rather than developing technology to counter or conduct influence operations.

Social Media Intelligence and Analysis

While DARPA builds tomorrow’s arsenal, the DoD must also contend with current threats using tools to analyze publicly available information from social media and online sources for situational awareness of foreign adversary activities.

In software solicitations, the DoD outlines needs for tools that can ingest and analyze massive data volumes in near-real time from platforms like X (formerly Twitter). Required capabilities include searching data in major languages, performing trend and sentiment analysis, distinguishing between human authors and automated bots, and providing alerts on spiking events.

This is complex and sensitive territory. RAND Corporation reports highlight that building this capability requires careful navigation of U.S. privacy laws and cultural norms, plus risks of investing in technologies that quickly become obsolete as social media platforms change.

Defensively, the DoD implemented a 2022 department-wide social media policy directing public affairs officers to establish procedures for identifying, reporting, and recording fake accounts impersonating DoD officials as part of disinformation campaigns. Telltale signs include very few followers, recently uploaded photos, and unsolicited friend requests to large numbers of people.

Legal and Ethical Boundaries

The Foreign-Domestic Firewall

The most critical rule governing DoD counter-disinformation efforts is the bright line between foreign and domestic activities. U.S. law and policy strictly prohibit the Department of Defense from targeting U.S. citizens with propaganda or influence operations.

This prohibition stems from laws like the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and DoD policies such as DoD Directive 5122.05, forbidding military funds for domestic “publicity or propaganda.” When disinformation is created or spread by U.S. citizens, it falls outside DoD authority to counter directly. Instead, the approach involves distributing accurate, factual information to educate the public and build resilience.

The extreme sensitivity surrounding government roles in domestic information was illustrated by the brief, controversial life of the DHS Disinformation Governance Board in 2022. Although the board’s stated function was coordinating efforts against foreign disinformation threats, its “bungled rollout” and lack of clear information about its mission led to widespread backlash and accusations of creating a “Ministry of Truth.” The controversy forced DHS to pause and ultimately disband the board.

Congressional Oversight Framework

DoD information operations face robust congressional oversight designed to ensure legal conduct aligned with U.S. policy objectives. This oversight divides between two committee sets based on legal authority.

Title 10 vs. Title 50 Authority: This crucial distinction determines oversight:

• Title 10 governs “traditional military activities” overseen by House and Senate Armed Services Committees. Congress affirmed that clandestine military activities in cyberspace for information operations or force protection are traditional military activities under Title 10.
• Title 50 governs intelligence activities, including “covert action”—activities to influence conditions abroad where the U.S. role isn’t apparent or acknowledged. These require presidential findings and oversight by House and Senate Select Intelligence Committees.

This dual-track system can create oversight challenges, as clandestine military operations under Title 10 might appear functionally similar to covert actions under Title 50.

Intelligence Oversight Program: To guard against historical abuses, the DoD maintains a dedicated Intelligence Oversight program established after Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements revealed improper monitoring of American citizens. The program ensures DoD intelligence functions protect constitutional rights of U.S. persons.

Recent GAO reports note that the modern information environment increasingly brings military personnel into contact with U.S. person information, making robust oversight more critical than ever.

Ethical Framework for Influence

Even when directed at foreign adversaries, influence operations raise profound ethical questions. The DoD and national security community actively grapple with conducting these operations consistent with democratic values.

The RAND Framework: RAND Corporation proposed a formal framework for ethically planning influence operations in a DoD-commissioned report. The framework addresses the principal ethical objection to influence—its potential threat to individual autonomy, a person’s fundamental right to determine their own beliefs and actions.

The framework builds on three core principles:

• Necessity: Operations must be necessary to achieve legitimate military outcomes
• Effectiveness: Operations must have high likelihood of success
• Proportionality: Likely positive benefits must significantly outweigh likely harms

The framework proposes multi-stage workflows including initial screening, full ethical risk assessment, and formal justification statements for operations involving deception or manipulation.

Ethical AI Use: As artificial intelligence becomes central to operations, the DoD publicly committed to responsible and ethical use through published Ethical AI Principles including responsibility, equitability, traceability, reliability, and governability. These principles align with ally frameworks, including NATO, and the Pentagon presents this transparency commitment as a key moral distinction from competitors like China and Russia.

Civil Liberties Concerns: Despite internal guardrails, organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union remain deeply concerned about government surveillance of online activity. The ACLU argues that government social media monitoring, even for tracking foreign threats, inevitably chills American free speech through self-censorship from fear of being watched. They warn such programs can unfairly target racial and religious minorities, immigrants, and government dissenters.

Your Role in the Information Defense

Building Personal Digital Literacy

Foreign adversaries target the American people because they form the foundation of the democratic system. Building societal resilience—developing a “cognitive immune response”—is critical national defense. The ultimate line of defense is a resilient, well-informed public.

Disinformation often provokes strong emotional reactions—anger or fear—that bypass rational thought and encourage immediate sharing. The most effective tactic is adopting a “Think Before You Link” mindset. Before sharing content, pause, let initial emotional reactions cool, and critically evaluate what you’re seeing.

Here’s a practical checklist based on U.S. Army and CISA guidance:

Consider the Source: Click away from stories to investigate publishing sites or accounts. Are they reputable news organizations you recognize, or unfamiliar websites with generic names? Be wary of sources mimicking legitimate outlets with altered URLs (abc-news.com vs. abcnews.com).

Check the Author: Does the article have an author? If so, search them quickly. Are they real people? Credible experts on the topic? Content with no listed author should raise immediate suspicion.

Check the Date: Look at publication dates. Is this new, or old content reposted to seem relevant to current events? Outdated content can be highly misleading without original context.

Read Beyond Headlines: Headlines are often sensationalized for clicks and may not accurately reflect article content. Always read full stories before forming opinions or sharing.

Examine Supporting Sources: Does the article cite sources and include links to original reports or data? If so, click those links. Do they actually say what the article claims?

Look for Errors: Reputable news organizations have editors checking for spelling and grammatical errors. Poorly written articles with frequent mistakes can indicate less credible sources.

Check Your Biases: Be honest about whether you’re more likely to believe stories confirming existing beliefs. Our biases are powerful vulnerabilities manipulators exploit.

Investigate with Other Sources: Conduct thorough, unbiased searches for stories. Are other credible, independent news organizations reporting the same information? If major stories only appear from single, unknown sources, they’re likely false.

Trusted Sources and Fact-Checking Resources

When verifying information, knowing where to turn for reliable facts is crucial.

Government Sources: For official information, the most reliable sources are official U.S. government websites ending in .gov or .mil. These restricted domains cannot be used by non-governmental entities. CISA maintains extensive disinformation resources. The Department of Defense posts official information at its website.

Independent Fact-Checkers: Non-profit, non-partisan organizations specialize in fact-checking claims by politicians, public figures, and media outlets:

• FactCheck.org: A University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center project serving as a “consumer advocate” for voters monitoring factual accuracy of major political players.
• PolitiFact: A Pulitzer Prize-winning organization researching and rating claim accuracy on its “Truth-O-Meter” scale.
• Snopes: The oldest and largest online fact-checking site, widely regarded as essential for investigating urban legends, rumors, and viral claims.
• Washington Post Fact Checker: Provides in-depth analysis and ratings of political statements.
• SciCheck: A FactCheck.org feature focusing specifically on debunking false and misleading scientific claims influencing public policy.

Practice “Lateral Reading”: One of the most effective media literacy techniques involves opening new browser tabs to investigate sources while reading unfamiliar sites. Ask questions like: Who is this organization? What do credible sources like Wikipedia or established news outlets say about them? Reading across multiple sources provides much better sense of original source credibility and potential bias.

By developing these critical thinking skills and adopting more skeptical mindsets, you can strengthen not only your own resilience to disinformation but also the collective resilience of the nation. In the information war, every citizen stands on the front line.

The Continuing Battle

The information war isn’t a temporary challenge—it’s a permanent feature of modern strategic competition. As artificial intelligence makes creating convincing fake content easier and cheaper, the battle between deception and detection will only intensify.

The Pentagon’s response represents one of the most significant transformations in military thinking since the Cold War. By elevating information to a core warfighting function, developing new organizational structures, and investing in cutting-edge detection technologies, the Defense Department is adapting to fight wars that don’t look like traditional conflicts.

But technology alone won’t win this battle. Success requires a whole-of-society approach where government agencies, private companies, and individual citizens all play essential roles. The most sophisticated Pentagon algorithms are useless if Americans continue to share false information without verification.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. In an era where a single viral lie can travel around the world before truth puts on its shoes, the ability to distinguish fact from fiction isn’t just about being well-informed—it’s about preserving the shared sense of reality that democratic society requires to function.

As foreign adversaries continue refining their information weapons, America’s defense depends on both the Pentagon’s technological countermeasures and the critical thinking skills of its citizens. In this new kind of warfare, every smartphone is a potential weapon, and every person with a social media account is a potential target—or defender.

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