Propaganda, Disinformation, & Other Influence Efforts

Security Dimensions of the 21st Century Information Environment

The information environment is an increasingly critical and contested domain in today’s global landscape. CNA analysts are engaged in helping our sponsors and the public better understand the challenges of the 21st Century information environment through projects that combine functional and regional expertise with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and social science methodologies. The emerging global information environment creates both strategic and operational challenges for US national security. With its deep background in security affairs, CNA is helping policymakers and warfighters to understand the information domains in which they are operating—whether the issue is ensuring two-way strategic communications, understanding malign influence operations directed against the United States or its allies and partners, or mitigating vulnerabilities and exploiting opportunities in this realm.

Recent CNA work on these topics includes:

• Understanding state and non-state malign influence on partners and allies in Europe;

• Identifying and analyzing the range of tools available to state and non-state actors in Africa and the Middle East;

• Examining the use of the cyber domain to conduct information warfare;

• Analyses of the information environments of countries in the Indo-Pacific region; and

• Understanding how the Chinese Communist Party uses foreign-directed media to tell a tailored narrative about China around the world.