Information Warfare: Russian Cyber Strategy Abroad and Future Policy Recommendations
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Since the early days of the Soviet Union, the Russian government has been using information warfare in order to sow distrust in adversaries. For Russia, “information warfare” is a broad and inclusive term that covers hostile activities using information as a tool, a target, or a domain of operations. A fundamental difference between Russian and Western conceptions of information activities is that it is not a Russian concept to believe Computer Network Operations or other activities in cyberspace to be a separate domain. Information warfare for Russians covers a broad array of tactics, including hacking, distributed denial of services, and disinformation campaigns. These campaigns have altered throughout the 2010s but were most prevalent in the 2014 invasion of Crimea, the 2016 U.S. election, and are now frequently used in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Throughout this paper, I will analyze recent Russian information warfare events and information operations, while defining the various tactics they use and their relative efficacy. I will also follow up this analysis with a short policy recommendation for Western legislators and social media platforms. In this paper, I will argue that information warfare has been and will continue to be used by Russia as a method of hybrid warfare in order to attain strategic victories. These tactics were seen before the collapse of the Soviet Union and have transformed with the digital age. NATO, the EU, and other Western alliances must adopt certain policies in order to mitigate Russian information operations and ensure that Western ideology and democratic institutions are protected.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Publication date | August 24, 2022; August 19, 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Hill, Christina |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor | Weiner, Amir |
| Thesis advisor | Gottemoeller, Rose |
Subjects
| Subject | Information warfare |
|---|---|
| Subject | Disinformation |
| Subject | Russia |
| Subject | National security |
| Subject | War |
| Subject | Cyberspace operations (Military science) |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Hill, C. (2022). Information Warfare: Russian Cyber Strategy Abroad and Future Policy Recommendations. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/hh217hd9625
Collection
Masters Theses in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
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- Contact
- christina.hill@stanford.edu
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