Winning a propaganda war is as important as beating an enemy on a real battlefield

Ben Glaze

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Winning a propaganda war is as important as beating an enemy on a real battlefield, a spy chief has warned. Chief of Defence Intelligence, Air Marshal Phil Osborn, said tackling fake news and combating false cyber stories in war would be increasingly important. Air Marshal Osborn said “deception and counter-deception” operations would be “critical” in dealing with such threats. “We need to have a convincing justification and narrative for our actions while countering opposition disinformation and lies with the truth,” he told the Royal United Services Institute military think tank. “The fight for the narrative is arguably as important as the actual fight.” The senior RAF officer feared potential enemies had both new tools and the desire to use them. A full-scale cyber attack could cripple a country within minutes, he warned.

Air Marshal Osborn believed the UK was in danger of “falling behind” in the face of the growing threat.

In a rare public address, he said the ability of adversaries to mount attacks without it being immediately clear who was responsible had fuelled the chances of confrontation though “miscalculation”.

“If we have an increased sense of strategic danger, and I regrettably think we should, it is the product of witnessing the combination of increasing capability and escalatory choice for many, and the growing intent in some to use these capabilities at higher levels of risk,” he told military experts.

He urged politicians and commanders to be prepared to “act first” in the face of potential threats before it was too late.

“Depending on opposition capability and intent and, critically, our resilience, a full-scale cyber confrontation could have the nationally strategic crippling effects in minutes and hours,” he said.

“Without change we risk falling behind in today and tomorrow’s full-spectrum confrontation. More of the same will not cut it.

“We need to compete, sometimes pro-actively, and certainly just not observe.

“To wait for risks to mature before action is to contemplate strategic failure.

“Our aim should be to understand first, to decide first and then, if necessary, to act first across the physical and the virtual.”

He also issued a coded signal warning against fresh cuts to the armed forces, saying: “While we will require far enhanced-information capabilities this should not be substantively at the expense of more traditional, conventional capabilities.”