Can Democracy Survive in an Age of Information War?

Speaker: Peter Pomerantsev (Johns Hopkins University)

Date: 30 March 2021

Speaker Session Summary

SMA hosted a speaker series session with Mr. Peter Pomerantsev (Johns Hopkins University) as a part of its SMA IIJO Speaker Series.

Mr. Pomerantsev began by highlighting a phrase that he believes relates well to Russia’s concept of information: “The most dangerous idea in information war is the idea of information war itself.” This phrase is particularly applicable to Russia because the Kremlin views all communication as a facet of information warfare, according to Mr. Pomerantsev. The belief that all information is used to manipulate contradicts friendly political discourse between state leaders, feeds into conspiracy theorists’ rationale, and forces governments to securitize any form of communication. Furthermore, Russia’s concept of information leads them to view all of history through the lens of an information battlefield, Mr. Pomerantsev explained. This viewpoint was evident even as far back as the collapse of the Soviet Union, when former KGB agents began writing a revisionist form of history claiming that the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of its adoption of Western values, as opposed to political or economic causes. Mr. Pomerantsev concluded his brief set of remarks by emphasizing that the main dilemma facing Western countries is: How do they effectively combat Russia’s disinformation without resorting to the same combative mindset and tactics?

Speaker Session Recording

To access the recording of this event, please email Ms. Nicole Omundson (nomundson@nsiteam.com).

Briefing Materials

Peter Pomerantsev is the award-winning author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia, and This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality. He is a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, where he directs the Arena Program, a research initiative that explores contemporary propaganda and what to do about it.

He has testified on the subject of information war to the Senate, Congress, and UK Parliament, and he was a Specialist Advisor on the UK Parliamentary Committee on Disinformation. The Guardian called him “the pre-eminent war reporter of our time, the Martha Gellhorn or Ed Murrow of the brutal campaigns against fact,” while P. J. O’Rourke called Nothing is True “the strangest book of note I have ever read.”

This speaker session supported SMA’s Integrating Information in Joint Operations (IIJO) project. For additional speaker sessions and project publications, please visit the IIJO project page.