The Gray Legion: Information Warfare Within Our Gates

Abstract

The information environment, once viewed as an unassailed common for human knowledge, has revealed itself to be a vector for malicious narratives in the ongoing battle for global hegemony. Since 2014, the United States has been under siege from information attacks on multiple fronts, from cyber infrastructure and goods to the cognitive outlooks of its citizenry. Disinformation as a social media tool represents a novel and grave danger to democracy; it serves as a means for sowing unrest and influencing policy changes while enabling conventional conflict or—in the best case for those who would exploit and manipulate narratives—avoiding it entirely. In this article, we identify the harbinger of a dire threat that circles outside, and now inside, the United States' walls by exploring the theoretical dynamics of foreign, state-sponsored disinformation in democracies throughout the West. We examine the mechanisms through which this approach operates and why it is Russia’s preferred course of action.