This policy brief is part of CIGI’s project on freedom of thought: Legitimate Influence or Unlawful Manipulation? Find out more at: www.cigionline.org/fot
Policy Brief No. 6 — February 2024
Narrative Dominance, Information Warfare and the Freedom to Think Nitin Pai Key Points → Information warfare involves the use of information to influence political decisions without necessarily using physical force. → States and non-state actors are engaged in a quest for narrative dominance — to shape the landscape of public opinion in their favour. → Liberal democracies must protect the individual freedom to think, and cognitive autonomy is a national security objective. → There is a need for constitutional safeguards to prevent governments from directing information power against their own citizens.
Introduction Politics is everywhere and on a perpetual quest for narrative dominance. Aphorisms from ancient practitioners of statecraft in Assyria, India and China1 warn us that the word is mightier than the sword, that the power of knowledge is superior to force and wealth, and that to vanquish the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. History is replete with the use of cultural power, propaganda, disinformation, deceit and censorship as instruments of policy. Information warfare — the use of information to influence decisions in order to achieve a political objective without necessarily using physical force — is not new. It has, however, become the centrepiece of international politics because we are in the Information Age, an epoch where society is structured around the production, consumption and effects of information. This policy brief presents a high-level analysis of the external, geopolitical dimension of information warfare and offers recommendations for defence and national security policies for liberal democratic states.
1
The phrase “the word is mightier than the sword” originates in the teachings of the Assyrian royal adviser Ahiqar (circa 700 BCE) (see Matthews and Benjamin 1997). Kautilya, a political adviser in the service of Chandragupta, the founder of the Mauryan empire, places “knowledge power” as the foremost type of power in The Arthashastra, a classic Indian treatise of statecraft (see Olivelle 2023, chapter 6, verses 2–33). Similarly, Sun Tzu considers subduing the enemy without fighting as the acme of skill, in Art of War (see Kaufman 2012, chapter 3).