Now the war is psychological

“Can people be hacked?” Title taken from Article – Commodity at the Defense Research Institute (FFI) on psychological warfare and psychological operations. “Psyops,” often shortened among insiders.

As is known, the armed forces have the best shortcuts.

psychological operations, or propaganda, is not a new phenomenon between rival parties. While the flow of information has exploded, the potential for impact is still much greater. Accordingly, interest in its potential impact in various conflict situations has increased. Among other things, NATO discussed whether “cognitive warfare” should be introduced as a new domain called, along with air, land, space and the Internet.

FFI describes how Russia and China have created “extensive networks and methods to influence, manipulate and pressure citizens of other countries and political leaders below the threshold of armed conflict”.

“Psyops”, “domain”, “below the threshold of armed conflict”. There are many terms, and they may sound technical. This is a familiar term in defense circles, but for most others, these are new terms.

In the situation in which Norway now finds itself, it is nevertheless quite central to understanding what is happening around us. A good place to start is Thursday morning’s press conference with Jonas Gahr Store “On the situation as a result of the war in Ukraine”.

wallpaper for The press conference was an escalation of the war in Ukraine, threat to use nuclear weapons, and recent drone sightings in Norway – including the arrest of seven Russian nationals suspected of illegal activity in that country.

This has naturally led to unrest, and to an enormous amount of media coverage.

The Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) calls what Norway is going through in the midst of a “new political-security situation”. PST believes that Russia is now taking greater chances when it comes to intelligence activities. We must be prepared for more drone rings, or other types of intelligence threats that may be difficult to associate with a specific country or actor, PST believes.

Stoer delivered the same message during the press conference at Marmorholn in Oslo. However, he specifically focused on another interesting point:

Intelligence activities do not necessarily have to be a physical threat. It may also have a very specific motive: to create fear and uncertainty among the population.

So, a form of psychological process.

threat of use of nuclear weapons may have the same motive. Professor Tormod Heyer at the Norwegian Defense Academy is among those who have argued that Putin’s threat of nuclear weapons should be interpreted as an attempt to create fear and turmoil among the population of Western countries. The goal is to weaken the desire to support Ukraine.

Heyer argues that the drone activity in Norway may be a new attempt at intimidation, after the nuclear threat has been shown to have little effect.

It’s an unpleasant fact Norway now has a central and strategic role in the Ukraine war. As Russia’s neighbor, a staging area for the Russian Northern Fleet – not least as Europe’s largest energy supplier, we can be a major factor if the war escalates.

Thus, the question is whether we are actually seeing the results of that, but is currently a matter of a “sub-bottom” escalation of the armed conflict.

For Norway and other NATO countries, this kind of escalation is a nuisance. While we are in what we consider a state of peace, we may still experience mixed or compound threats. We understand them, but we still do not want to respond militarily for fear of escalating the conflict so as to lead to outright acts of war.

We still have to respond. but how?

Until now, that was the case Questions played by work script researchers, or material for screenwriters who write TV dramas.

Now this is actually happening.

I interpret Thursday’s press conference as one of the answers to how the government is trying to confront this new threat. It would be strange to call what Store presented from the podium psychological operationsbut perhaps we can describe it as psychological defensive operation. It would surprise me if there was no strategic thinking behind it.

We don’t need that It is seen as sneaky or problematic. exactly the contrary. It should be mentioned that Norway has a conscious strategy for how the government communicates with the population when the country is likely to undergo psychological operations now.

It can be compared to the strategic communication we’ve seen in other contexts. It is natural to compare with the Corona crisis. The government, of course, must make clear how it wants the population to behave in a crisis situation, when there is a lot of information and a lot of uncertainty.

So, it’s not just the higher density of drone observations that we can expect in the future. We can also expect a high density of press conferences.

Everything will be about control

Nobody should realize These sessions of government as a dictate or a call to obedience. This is not the point either. One of the strengths of open democracies in difficult situations or conflict is precisely the trust in the authorities.

The fact that we feel we can trust those who run the country, and trust that the press and civil society will expose it if the administration fails in any way, gives a profound resilience in the population.

This in itself is a point that we can use in our psychological defense.