Misinformation and Disinformation in Modern Warfare

Advanced information technology has changed the landscape of modern warfare, as it facilitates communication among nonconventional actors such as violent extremist groups. This paper examines the value of misinformation and disinformation to a military leader who through investment in people, programs, and technology is able to affect the accuracy of information communicated between other actors. We model the problem as a partially observable stochastic game with three agents, a leader and two followers. We determine the value to the leader of misinformation or disinformation being communicated between two: (i) adversarial and (ii) allied followers. We demonstrate that only under certain conditions, the prevalent intuition that the leader would benefit from less (more) accurate communication between adversarial (allied) followers is valid. We discuss why the intuition may fail and show the necessity of embracing both the reward structures and policies of agents to correctly manage information. Our research identifies efficient targeted investments to affect the accuracy of information in communication to the leader’s advantage. We demonstrate the application of the developed methodology to warfare situations in the Battle of Mosul.