Hostile Social Manipulation

Hostile Social Manipulation Synopsis

The role of information warfare in global strategic competition has become much more apparent in recent years. Today's practitioners of what this report's authors term hostile social manipulation employ targeted social media campaigns, sophisticated forgeries, cyberbullying and harassment of individuals, distribution of rumors and conspiracy theories, and other tools and approaches to cause damage to the target state.

These emerging tools and techniques represent a potentially significant threat to U.S. and allied national interests.

This report represents an effort to better define and understand the challenge by focusing on the activities of the two leading authors of such techniques-Russia and China. The authors conduct a detailed assessment of available evidence of Russian and Chinese social manipulation efforts, the doctrines and strategies behind such efforts, and evidence of their potential effectiveness. RAND analysts reviewed E