DEFEATING COERCIVE INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN FUTURE CRISES National Security Perspective Paul Stockton DEFEATING COERCIVE INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN FUTURE CRISES Paul Stockton Copyright © 2021 The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory LLC. All Rights Reserved. This National Security Perspective contains the best opinion of the author(s) at time of issue. It does not necessarily represent the opinion of JHU/APL sponsors. NSAD-R-21-002 DEFEATING COERCIVE INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN FUTURE CRISES iii Contents Figures .........................................................................................................................................................................................v Summary ..................................................................................................................................................................................vii Scoping the Challenge ..................................................................................................................................... 1 The Sound of One Hand Clapping .............................................................................................................................1 Defending the United States against Coercion: The Nature of the Challenge ..........................................5 Untangling the Spaghetti Pile .................................................................................................................................. 15 Aligning IOs along the Conflict Continuum ........................................................................................................ 18 Organization of the Study .......................................................................................................................................... 25 How Coercion (Sometimes) Works ...............................................................................................................26 Coercion through Punishment in the Cyber Era ................................................................................................ 28 IOs as a Supplement for Coercive Cyberattacks ................................................................................................. 30 Integrating Direct and Indirect Pathways of Influence: Lessons from OAF .............................................. 33 Coercing US Security Partners .................................................................................................................................. 38 Underlying US Vulnerabilities to Coercion and Implications for Defense ............................................49 Modern Communications Networks as a Vehicle to Shape Public Perceptions ..................................... 50 Psychological Vulnerabilities of the US Public to Manipulation via Social Media ................................. 54 Declining Public Trust in US Leaders and Democratic Governance............................................................ 56 Implications for Strengthening Domestic Resilience ....................................................................................... 59 Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Coercive Information Operations .........................................71 Chinese IO Doctrine and Recent Campaigns ...................................................................................................... 71 Russian IOs and Doctrine for Coercion .................................................................................................................. 75 Microtargeting at Scale ............................................................................................................................................... 79 Additional Threat Vectors ........................................................................................................................................... 87 Implications for Strengthening Domestic Resilience ....................................................................................... 92 Combined Information-Cyberattacks ..........................................................................................................93 China .................................................................................................................................................................................. 94 Russia ................................................................................................................................................................................. 98 iv THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY Defeating Customized Attacks ...................................................................................................................104 Mobilizing Public Pressure on the President to Yield: Problems for Attackers and Opportunities for Defense .......................................................................................................................................105 Sector-Specific Attacks and Levers of Influence: Threats to Banking, Equity Markets, and the Broader Financial System .........................................................................................................................................106 Selective Cutoff of US Mass Communications: Threats and Defensive Options ..................................111 Societal Breakdowns and Mass Panic: Unlikely but Deserving of Further Research ..........................115 IOs against US Leaders ..............................................................................................................................................121 Coercion of US Allies ..................................................................................................................................................129 Conclusions and Next Steps ........................................................................................................................135 Defense Support .........................................................................................................................................................136 Deterrence .....................................................................................................................................................................137 Bibliography .........................................................................................................................................................................141 Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................................................................199 About the Author ...............................................................................................................................................................199 Figures DEFEATING COERCIVE INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN FUTURE CRISES v Figures Figure 1. Conflict Continuum.......................................................................................................................................... 19 Figure 2. Percentage of US Adults Who Get News Often from Each Platform .............................................. 50 Figure 3. Public Trust in the Federal Government, 1958–2019 ........................................................................... 58 Image credits: Figure 1. Conflict Continuum. Adapted from US Joint Chiefs of Staff,Joint Operations, Joint Publication 3-0 (Washington, DC: JCS, January 17, 2017; incorporating Change 1, October 22, 2018), https://www.jcs. mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp3_0ch1.pdf. Figure 2. Percentage of US Adults Who Get News Often from Each Platform. Reproduced from “Social Media Outpaces Print Newspapers in the U.S. as a News Source,” Pew Research Center, Washington, DC, December 18, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/10/social-media-outpaces-print- newspapers-in-the-u-s-as-a-news-source/. Figure 3. Public Trust in the Federal Government, 1958–2019. Reproduced from “Public Trust in Gov- ernment: 1958–2019, “Pew Research Center, Washington, DC, April 11, 2019, https://www.people-press. org/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-government-1958-2019/. DEFEATING COERCIVE INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN FUTURE CRISES vii Summary For thousands of years, combatants have spread falsehoods to help achieve victory. Many of their efforts failed or backfired. However, with the rise of social media and sophisticated technologies to exploit it, attackers have potent new means of conducting information operations (IOs) to shape their victims’ per- ceptions and coerce them to yield in future crises. The IO campaigns that Beijing and Moscow are conducting today against the United States provide a starting point for assessing potential US vulnerabilities to coercion. Deepfake technologies, techniques for manipulating social media algorithms, and other tools used to influence our elections can all be repurposed to shape American perceptions in regional crises. Ongoing Chinese and Russian efforts to weaken public confidence in the integrity of US leaders and institutions (including IOs to exploit the COVID-19 pan- demic) also help prepare the cognitive battlefield for future coercive campaigns. But today’s IOs differ from the coercive pressures that the United States could face in an edge-of-war con- frontation in the South China Sea, the Baltics, or other potential conflict zones. Coercion relies on threats of punishment to convince an adversary to yield in a crisis. In particular,