Rubén Arcos: Intelligence and anticipatory communication

The liberal international order and our European liberal democracies have been facing and face a number of threats and challenges that need science-based informed decisions, principled democratic governance, strong institutions, international cooperation based on shared values and determination to act upon them.

At the same time, democratic deliberation on how to address public issues affecting our European societies and how to protect us from and counter those threats, global risks and challenges similarly require public awareness and informed public opinions. That is not possible if our societies cannot count with a pluralistic information environment where news, opinions, science-based analyses, as well as legitimate persuasive communication practices can circulate free from manipulations.  Securing the infosphere is key for ensuring that our societies conduct the necessary democratic debates on how to address public issues, including those related to security and foreign policy, where legitimate political disagreement can be expressed and controversies can be solved based on evidence and argumentation.

Disinformation and foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) are top tier security threats in themselves, but also, very importantly, because they corrode our democratic systems inhibiting the capacity of our societies to make informed decisions on a number of many other policy areas, including security and defence.

Analyses and assessments on disinformation and FIMI, also as part hybrid threats and warfare, are key for informing the decisions and enabling actions aimed at countering the hostile activities of state and non-state actors with this regard. Intelligence on the covert hostile influencing activities and malign perception management efforts by foreign authoritarian actors and their proxies targeting policymakers, opinion leaders and constituents is key for informing preparedness, prevention and coordinated responses.

While the detection of manipulative patterns of coordinated behaviour and reaction to the already disseminated foreign disinformation and propaganda by threat actors, in the form of content fact-checking and debunking are the usual practices –that is to say, once the harmful narratives, conspiracy theories and disinformation is already out there– anticipatory intelligence and anticipatory communication are critical to address proactively these threats.

I understand anticipatory communication as the deliberate communication processes and communication activities performed in anticipation of events, likely developments, emergent issues or of potential actions by hostile actors, that aim to exert influence on information, knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of stakeholders and on the strategic and the information environment, in order to deter, neutralize and counter the aims of hostile adversaries. Anticipatory communication has a strategic intend and is informed by rightful information, intelligence, threat analyses and assessments, indications and warning, forecasting and foresight.

Anticipatory communication and strategic communication (that purposeful communication processed aimed at achieving goals and objectives according to a strategy, either deliberate or emergent, using symbolic communication and significant behaviours, though not necessarily anticipatory) practices are important capabilities to develop and instruments against hostile information-led influencing.

Anticipating emergent and latent issues –such as economic, historic, political, societal, or any other domain associated vulnerabilities of our democracies– likely to be weaponized in future endeavours by threat actors is key for proactive preparedness and planned coordinated efforts, complementary to coordinated responses. Foresight approaches may identify factors driving future disinformation scenarios and assess likely manipulative narratives that could be weaponized against European members states and EU partners and allies abroad. Crowd forecasting methods may be used for predicting future political developments abroad and hence inform the strategic planning of positive communications. Table-top exercises and wargames can be used for exploring courses of action against disinformation under plausible threat scenarios, the disruptive potential a new technology, or for gaining insights on the potential behaviour of adversaries.

Anticipatory analysis and the assessment of FIMI risks is key for orienting the behaviour of our European democratic systems.

In order to operate with full capabilities under an anticipatory policymaking approach and mindset against FIMI and disinformation, our systems also require an expert reservoir of knowledge (i.e., subject matter, technical, thematic expertise including on countries or regions of interest on issues likely to become the focus of disinformation and information manipulations) ready to be used, particularly under crises and emergencies contexts when surge capacity is needed.