Information Wars and Psychological Operations as the Basis for New Generation Hybrid Wars

Abstract

The development of global competition in a multilevel format on the platform of “hybrid wars” makes us assess the prospects for the evolution of such a component of them as “information wars”. For a long time now, information wars have remained an integrating platform for influencing the social systems of competing countries, and the possibilities of both destructive influence and the construction of alien, hostile socio-information communities are greatly enhanced by digital integrated communications technologies. In these conditions, the fundamental task is to consider the development of information war technologies in historical continuity and taking into account not only the evolution of information society technologies, but also its socio-political content. The strategic meaning of the evolution of American approaches to information warfare in political and military-political strategy is the maximum adaptation of doctrinal decisions to current political and military-political needs. Doctrinal design has always been secondary in comparison with the current tasks and has changed relatively quickly. Political legalization of methods of active informational influence on a competitor and adversary — the main goal that it has served. In the current version of the information society, the value of information wars is also determined by the fact that, due to the high socio-constructivist potential of digital integrated communications, the technological basis of the information society, they (IoT) become the most comfortable platform for the integration of tools of various nature and technological content in hybrid wars. The operational flexibility and universalism of information wars as a genre, their ideological omnivorousness, the ability to reduce the response of the world community through the mechanisms of information wars makes them a universal tool for achieving military and political superiority.