Information War: How Russia and China Are Winning the Battle for Global Influence

A silent conflict is unfolding across the globe, one fought not with bullets and bombs but with narratives and messaging. While Russia and China pour extensive resources into sophisticated propaganda campaigns designed to reshape global perceptions, the United States and its allies have largely failed to mount an effective response.

This cognitive battlefield represents what some experts describe as World War III—a conflict waged in the realm of ideas, beliefs, and information. The stakes could not be higher, with American global leadership and the future of the international order hanging in the balance.

“Russia and China, emboldened by America’s lack of decisive retaliation against malign activity, exploit asymmetries and faultlines between the United States and its allies,” explains Michael Miklaucic, a senior fellow at the National Defense University. “They always stay below the threshold of retaliation, always inching forward toward their strategic objective to achieve strategic superiority by fracturing the US alliance network.”

Information warfare—the use of information as a weapon to achieve strategic goals—has become a central pillar in both Moscow and Beijing’s geopolitical toolkits. By saturating global discourse with carefully crafted narratives, these authoritarian powers are gradually reshaping international perceptions to align with their objectives.

The Chinese Communist Party has systematically promoted the narrative that Taiwan has always been and must always remain an integral part of China. This framing has gained significant traction internationally, effectively setting the cognitive conditions for Beijing’s primary geopolitical objective: the absorption of Taiwan.

Similarly, the Kremlin has saturated media ecosystems with claims of historical sovereignty over Ukraine while denying the legitimacy of Ukrainian national identity. These information campaigns have yielded measurable results, with American support for Ukraine declining significantly since the war began, despite the objective facts of Russia’s unprovoked invasion remaining unchanged.

Democratic societies are particularly vulnerable to such information warfare due to their open information environments and resistance to information control. This creates an asymmetric advantage for authoritarian regimes that can easily penetrate and contaminate the Western information space with deceptive content.

While Russia has historically dominated this domain, China has rapidly advanced its capabilities. Beijing’s growing mastery of artificial intelligence, combined with vast data repositories collected through both legitimate and illicit means, has enabled the development of sophisticated micro-targeting operations aimed at key individuals in the United States and allied nations.

According to research by Brett Benson and Brett Goldstein of Vanderbilt University, a Chinese company has compiled extensive data profiles on at least 117 members of the US Congress and over 2,000 American political figures and thought leaders. This represents “information warfare executed at a scale, speed, and degree of sophistication never seen before.”

The Western response to these challenges has been largely reactive and ineffective. Several factors explain this shortcoming, including a traditional military mindset that emphasizes kinetic operations over cognitive warfare, ethical reservations about engaging in information operations, and fear that aggressive counter-measures might trigger escalation.

“Western discussions of information warfare emphasize detection, exposure, and resilience,” notes Miklaucic. “These are necessary but hardly sufficient to deter Russia or China from waging information warfare against us.”

To address this growing threat, Miklaucic advocates for a more proactive approach modeled after the US Cyber Command’s “Defend Forward” and “Hunt Forward” cyber strategies. He proposes a “Fight Forward” approach to information warfare that would target three key audiences: the Russian and Chinese populations, their military personnel, and populations in third countries that Moscow and Beijing are courting.

Such operations would aim to encourage Russians and Chinese citizens to question their political authorities, sow doubt about regime legitimacy, and create internal discord. Additionally, information campaigns would reveal to potential partner nations the realities of life under authoritarian rule, including human rights abuses in places like Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as the suppression of freedoms in Hong Kong.

“Until our adversaries experience unacceptable pain, they have no incentive to cease their information warfare attacks,” Miklaucic concludes. “Only punishing retaliation inflicted by a ‘Fight Forward’ strategy will persuade them that the benefits of information warfare are outweighed by even more significant costs.”

As this cognitive battle intensifies, the response from Western democracies may determine not only the outcome of this silent conflict but also the shape of the international order for decades to come.