Russian Hybrid Warfare & Ukraine: Propaganda, cyberwarfare & hybrid war methods

Description:
Often we think of war and peace as binary states - one is either at war or at peace.

But history is full of examples of the line between those two states being blurred, and in a modern world of nuclear weapons and globalised economic and military competition, that competitive state between war and peace has grown particularly prominent.

When Russia overtook Crimea in 2014 with its "little green men" the world got a high visibility view of what a hybrid war, combining information warfare, unconventional methods and conventional military force might look like. Today, I want to give an overview of hybrid war methods, their potential, and potential defences against them.

Patreon:

Caveats/comments:
As flagged in this video - the focus on Russian Hybrid war should not be taken as a claim that other countries do not have hybrid war capabilities

The discussion of commentary and writings on hybrid warfare in this presentation are, out of necessity, incomplete

Examples of phenomena like amplification are included for illustrative purposes only and all content within this presentation is presented primarily for entertainment purposes

For the avoidance of doubt, I am making no claims as to the intent, actions, influence, sympathies, or otherwise of any individual person or persons in this presentation (though I may refer to reporting by others on those topics)

Images may be unrelated to the text and audio presented

Sources & Reading:

Clark - Russian Hybrid Warfare

Gearasimov - Presentation to the General Staff Academy 2018

Gerasimov - Vectors in the development of military strategy

JDN 1-19

Kofman - Russian Hybrid Warfare and other dark arts

Monaghan - The 'war' in Russia's Hybrid Warfare

Hofman - Conflict in the 21st Century: the rise of hybrid wars

The "Firehose of Falsehood" propaganda model

Tucker featured by RT

Derleth - Russian New Generation Warfighting

Russia Cyber Threat Overview - CISA

Russian military admits cyber war effort

WHy Russian Cyber Dogs have mostly failed to bark

Russian denial of operations in Ukraine

Matisek - imagining the future of russian agression

Russia on nuclear risk

Little green men 2014

The IRA, social media and political polarisation in the USA 2012-2018

CSIS on Russia and Brexit

Russian military and security periodicals

Bulgarian blasts

Wired reporting on cyberwar

Timestamps:
00:00:00 — Open
00:01:37 — What Am I Talking About
00:03:03 — Sponsor: Ground News
00:04:09 — The Great Power Challenge
00:08:20 — Competition & Western Conception
00:13:51 — Russian Hybrid Warfare
00:22:13 — Cyberwarfare
00:26:09 — Proxy Use
00:29:43 — Ambiguity & Kinetic Operations
00:34:09 — Information Warfare
00:51:43 — Designing Hybrid Campaign
01:00:00 — Hybrid Warfare In Ua
01:08:21 — Countering Hybrid Warfare
01:12:40 — Conclusions
01:13:36 — Channel Update

[PerunAU]

Also - thanks to those on Patreon who voted for this topic to be prioritised for this week. I always appreciate your interest and input.

I'll also leave a footnote here saying that I'm aware there is a lot of interest in further discussion of the reported leaked documents - I've been relatively reserved in addressing that topic this week but may be able to say more in the future if interest remains.

[stevenkraft]

"Hypothetical hybrid warfare scenario" had me momentarily hoping for another tale from the eternal struggle between Kiwiland and Emutopia.

[squidcaps]

Finland has been fairly successful combating Russian hybrid warfare. For sure the DDOS our stuff occasionally but when it comes to social media and media it turns out that education and having long trackrecord of delivering factual information pays out. In that role our national broadcasting company has been pivotal, not just for external but internal attempts of subverting the truth. Also, to be fair it is REALLY difficult to pretend you are Finnish, our language is so unique and difficult that you have to be born here to do that successfully. Just recently there was news about one bot account that translated the words "save NATO" as "save (this file called) NATO"... They had translated the word "save" as IT terminology which makes absolutely no sense in the context, we have separate words for those two meanings.

The official strategy is fairly simple: do not chase after individual rumors but provide factual information about a topic in general. Education plays a big part in all of this.

[DavidF]

51:43 As a Hungarian I approve of you using this totally not corrupt, not power hungry, not destabilizing figure to illustrate the Bearland empires coercive efforts.

[ryanreese]

I love the jokes in this episode.
“Going up against the US and it’s set of alliances is about as one sided as Manchester United playing against a high schools reserve players”
“Sometimes this might work, and other times you get the Afghan National Army.”
“You might compete with one another, but you’re still on the same team so you won’t end up spiking their pregame water with laxatives.”
Just priceless.

[Metalblowing]

Ukrainian here. The information warfare part is really good.

I'm working from Ukraine as a Business Consultant for a big UK company. Before the war I used to travel all over the world so I had a chance to view russian propaganda from EU, US, to Middle East and Africa. It's working quite well.

A lot of the stuff that you're mentioning, I found in a book called "Disinformation". It covers quite a few methods that KGB used during cold war to wage informational war. And as I see it today, not a lot has changed.

Giving a specific example of how russians manage to "poison" a few people and then poison the whole well. Take 2 famous and popular bloggers: Russell Brand and Jimmy Dore. Both guys are great when they're talking about worker's rights and corruption, but then suddenly someone mentioned a) NATO expansion b) Neo-nazi battalions in Ukraine c) russian is defending itself and a few more things... both of these guys simply start relaying this to other people in their sphere like, let's say, Dave Rubin. 6 months goes by and you have dozens of millions of people following russian propaganda about NATO and other nonsense because of few of their friends shared a tweet.

They do the same in Ukraine as well. They basically use all mediums and channels to get their messaging across: bribing politicians/officials, running social media pages, running new websites, creating fake videos, publishing books, using the russian orthodox church. And they aren't necessarily always lying, that's the brilliant part. They are putting out so much information that people simply start to doubt anything. People that doubt everything become very suspicious and difficult to talk to because there's never a single issue that they trust or have a concrete opinion about.

I think that US/EU are massively under China/Russian disinformation influence and it will take a lot of effort for them to stay on top. If you look at the social divide that is taking place, it does look scary from the sidelines.

[zawiszaczarnysulima]

A retired IT Enterprise Architect here. When I was still working, analyzing and designing IT architectures for large organizations, frequently spanning multiple data centers around the globe, I frequently heard people commenting on the quality of my presentations, and on my ability to analyze, dissect and deliver conclusions and recommendations for complex topics and ideas inherently of the dry and boring realms in an approachable, easily digestible and engaging way. That, needless to say, made me feel rather good about my abilities to communicate. Then I met Perun. My hat goes off to you, good Sir!

[matthewmatthew]

As somebody who lives near China with a population that has significant emigration to the west recently, this video (especially on propaganda and information warfare) hit very close to home...there's always a disturbingly high amount of uh, people promoting anti-western (though sometimes not strictly wrong) views and claiming China as a positive helper (not true in most cases) in local forums whenever world events are brought up..五毛 is definitely a real phenomenon.

[paulpenne]

I have never written anything in the comments section before. But I really want to thank you for giving a serious understanding of what is going on. I live in the US and it seems that American TV has forgotten the war unless it has pictures and can be dumbed down to the point of a 5 year old. I truly appreciate the analysis.

[dehydratedwatermelon]

The three geopolical arenas you mentioned were Russia, Ukraine and The West. However, a huge focus of Russia's Info Campaign has been targeted at non-Western aligned nations, e.g. India, China, African and South American nations. Could you discuss this and its impact more?

[Guibod]

Week after week, I’m baffled by the pertinence, frequency and quality of your analysis. It’s really impressive.

[DDR]

Amazing how many people are sitting around waiting to consume some Sunday am PowerPoint. Thanks again for the great Sunday routine!

[TurtleChad]

The vast majority of YouTubers in this category don't provide their sources which leaves them totally unaccountable. I really appreciate that you are one of the precious few that do Perun.

[tudorstefan_]

Always look forward to these every Sunday. Thanks for all the hard work Perun!

[paulsd]

"Highly advanced geostrategic technique known as LYING"

That sounds incredibly familiar...

[peezieforestem]

Awareness about this hybrid warfare is what brings it down, which is why it is important to have videos like this.

[ReZpawner]

"Tasty Period". So much for my morning tea not being spilled all over my desk.

[bmunson]

WIRED had an excellent run down a few years back about how Russia was constantly attacking the power, banking, and government infrastructure on a daily basis……at the time Ukraine was saying they were the test bed for all Russia was trying to achieve via cyber, which it knew it couldn’t either economically, or militarily….

[alexl]

I like analysis of physical warfare, and didn't think I'd like this topic as much. I was wrong, this was one of your best videos yet, and makes SO MUCH of what we've seen the last decade make sense.

[daiakunin]

A deep dive into a complicated topic that frankly I haven't heard anyone else discuss. Superbly done Perun!