How to Lose the Information War Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, reviewed

By Simon Cocking, review of How to Lose the Information War Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, by Nina Jankowicz. Available from Bloomsbury here. Published: 07-09-2020, Hardback
ISBN: 9781838607685 Imprint: I.B. Tauris

Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it?

Central and Eastern European states, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading.

How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments’ responses to Russian information warfare tactics – all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.

How to Lose the Information War Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, reviewed

Negative titles can sometimes be a little counter-intuitive, especially as sometimes it’s not completely clear who the subject of the negative assertion is. After this mild grumble perhaps, the book then gathers steam and it develops it’s thesis well and becomes a really good read.

With UK / Russian influence leaks still coming out on a daily basis, as well as a definitive assertion from US military intelligence that Russian elements affected the 2016 US election, it is clear that Russian cyber activities are wild spread and aimed at destabilising democracies around the world.

The main reason this is denied in the UK and the US is because the current occupants of government were direct beneficiaries of these machinations, rather than because the claims are untrue. While this is beyond the scope of this book, you can imagine it would appear in a second  expanded version or perhaps her next book.

In this book Jankowicz walks us through, in effect a series of country case studies, who, over the last decade each experiences the unfortunate affects of Russian cyber attacks in a variety of evolving and adapting methodologies.

If you consider Peter Hopkirk’s concept in ‘The Great Game”, Russia has aimed to expand its sphere of influence ever since Peter the Great, a Russian version of the American Manifest Destiny mantra. In the last few years they have now merely switched to include cyber warfare, often along with physical troop incursions into areas of tactical interest to them.

The US does merit the first chapter, and in many ways it feels like so much has continued to happen since Jankowicz wrote this book – the peril of writing about recent events perhaps, is that they have still yet to completely unfold. Thankfully Trump’s lock on the US presidency seems less secure than it did even six months ago, either way it is surely only a matter of time until further, definitive facts emerge about Russian influence on the US election in 2016.

From here Jankowicz creates a clear narrative of Russian interference in its immediate neighbours, Estonia, Georgia, Poland, Ukraine and the Czech Republic.

Each chapter deals with one of these countries, in a near chronological exposition of how the Russians launched various forms of cyberattacks, and then learned from what worked most effectively. It is clear that each country had to endure many negative impacts of these cyberattacks, often including combating and defusing multiple conspiracy theories.

Globally these wars of disinformation have clearly been effective as witnessed by the deep polarisation of opposing political parties in all of the countries mentioned above, as well as the US and the UK too.

Supporters of one side’s point of view are far less willing to accept fact and data based opinions if they validate their opponents perspective. Hence the current disaster which is the US Federal response to Covid-19, where the response has been one of denial, downgrading, avoidance and refusal to accept responsibility.

Jankowicz’s book comes out at a really apt and important time. Information and data-based opinions are extremely important at this time and this book is well worth reading, particularly as it is impacting on all of our lives.

Today marks three months until my book is out in the wild, and amid the coronavirus pandemic, this particular passage seems more important than ever.

Preorders help first time authors a lot, so hope you'll get your copy today! Links to purchasing options in the thread below: pic.twitter.com/YiPDQcJe5K

— Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) April 9, 2020

About Nina Jankowicz, she is a Washington DC-based writer and analyst with a focus on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. She is currently a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Kennan Institute. Previously, she served as a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellow, a role in which she provided strategic communications guidance to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

anywhoo, feels like a good time to mention @WaraxAndNatasha podcast where we dunk on dictators, oligarchs, and lame ass fascist goobers like sign guy, all while stanning glamorous intellectuals such as Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia).https://t.co/wpry5W4kQC

— matthew. ?? (@iAmTheWarax) May 25, 2019

Her writing has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, Foreign Policy and others.
Nina received her MA in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where she was a Title VIII and FLAS scholarship recipient, and her BA in Russian and Political Science from Bryn Mawr College, where she graduated magna cum laude.

She has lived and worked in Russia and Ukraine, and speaks fluent Russian and proficient Polish and Ukrainian. Nina was a 2017 Foreign Policy Interrupted Fellow.

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