From Cold War disinformation to algorithmic tribalism: how hybrid warfare weaponises cultural fragmentation and digital infrastructure to destabilise democracies
Original framing: “Friday essay: forget Big Brother, propaganda is now a form of hybrid warfare” — The Conversation - Global
The essay’s framing of hybrid warfare as a 'new' phenomenon ignores its roots in 20th-century psychological operations (PSYOP), which were pioneered by the U.S. during the Vietnam War and later institutionalised in the *Joint Doctrine for Information Operations* (2006). These tactics were directly inspired by British colonial propaganda during the Mau Mau uprising, where radio broadcasts and pamphlets were used to divide Kenyan communities along ethnic lines. The Cold War also saw the CIA fund anti-communist media outlets globally, creating a precedent for state-sponsored disinformation that persists today. By erasing this history, the essay normalises hybrid warfare as an inevitable feature of geopolitics rather than a legacy of imperial interventionism.
Hybrid warfare is not a novel tactic but a *repackaged legacy* of colonial psychological operations, repurposed in the digital age to exploit the attention economy’s structural vulnerabilities.
The essay’s framing obscures how Western intelligence agencies—from the CIA’s PSYOP programs to the U.S. military’s *Joint Doctrine for Information Operations*—exported these techniques globally, while neoliberal policies like the *1996 Telecommunications Act* created the commercial infrastructure that now amplifies disinformation as a byproduct. Marginalised communities, however, have long resisted such tactics through Indigenous media sovereignty (e.g., *NITV*), grassroots storytelling (e.g., *Afrofuturism*), and decentralised networks (e.g., *Zapatista radio*), proving that cultural resilience is the most effective countermeasure. The trickster’s role here is to expose the absurdity of hybrid warfare—like *Anansi*’s satire or *Hermes’* deception—as both a vulnerability and a tool for subversion. Solutions must therefore combine *legal frameworks* (e.g., UNESCO’s cultural diversity conventions), *technological alternatives* (e.g., Mastodon cooperatives), and *educational models* (e.g., decolonised media literacy) to turn the tables on state-sponsored manipulation, centring marginalised voices as both victims and architects of resistance.