West needs new generation of "information warriors" - expert

The West and the entire democratic world need to actively use the latest technologies to effectively counter the propaganda of authoritarian regimes, as well as attract a new generation of "information warriors."

Peter Pomerantsev, a British journalist, author, and long-time researcher of propaganda, expressed this opinion in an interview with Ukrinform.

"It's the job of what I think will have to be a new generation of information warriors who fight to support democracy. And, it'll involve understanding audiences, it'll involve thinking about effects and impacts in really concrete ways. Not in diffuse ways […] So it'll involve all those kind of thinkings which we all have but they were just never used for geopolitical aims or for foreign policies. I mean, we use them all the time in election. We use them all the time in campaigns if you want a good example," said Pomerantsev.

At the same time, according to him, authoritarian regimes, including Russia, "have embraced these new technologies and made them a tool of their policy and information warfare”.

The expert considers an institutional problem to be the main reason why the West has not yet taken similar steps.

“We just don't who's job it is. This is not public diplomacy, or PR, or anything like that. This is really understanding how you use informational tools for, in our case, the survival of democracy and the victory of democracies over dictatorships," Pomerantsev emphasized.

He recalled that the democratic world had done something similar before: “In the Second World War, the British had something called a Political Warfare Executive which fought Nazi propaganda. We did it in the Cold War when the Americans had something called the U.S Information Agency."

Commenting on the readiness of the West to resume such work systematically, Pomerantsev noted that this must be done "if we want to survive."

"We'll have to come up with our own version. We know how the other side works. They work through disinformation campaigns, conspiratorial TV channels, seeding doubts, cynicism. We have to embrace the modern technology and its possibilities, embrace the modern research and its possibilities in order to stand up for democracy. And if we don't do it, we'll just lose," the researcher concluded.

As reported, the head of the department for countering informational threats to national security at the Center for Countering Disinformation of the NSDC, Anait Khoperia, said that while at the outset of the full-scale invasion, all Russian propaganda was directed at Ukraine, now it is targeting mostly other countries.