The War You’re Watching Isn’t Real |
How our adversaries are winning the information front and why that is bad for democracy
“I’m just amazed at what people believe,” told me a friend at the heart of the military effort against Iran. “When I have a break and check my phone, I am just astonished at the narratives people are buying. The world I see portrayed in the media is like night and day from what I see from the inside.”
While he wouldn’t tell me more – as well he shouldn’t – his brief reflection has stuck with me. It reminded me that the war is being fought on multiple fronts, and that all of us are targets in the information war fought to manipulate us to take action in the political sphere. And in the information war, unfortunately, our adversaries (some of which are current allies in the war with Iran) have a distinct advantage, and they are expertly using that advantage to further tear our societies apart.
As Israel and the United States invested in their ability to project hard power across the globe, Qatar, Iran, Russia, and China honed their ability to fight multi-front information wars, recognizing that the Achilles’ Heel of open societies is their ability to maintain public support for military campaigns. As Barak Herscowitz explains in Prophecy, “These influence campaigns do not need to convince everyone, only to sow enough doubt to widen cracks.”
You can be certain that Russia and China are doing more than just sharing satellite images with Iran to help their war effort. Chances are much if not the majority of what you see online from ‘real people’ in the region is sourced from their influence operations whose aim is to tip the war in Iran’s favor.
This is especially vexing to me because I believe it is a citizen’s duty in a democratic country to remain apprised of their government’s decisions and to voice their support or opposition to influence future policy. I’m assuming that because you’re reading this, you agree: we read the news and engage in analysis not as a sport but because we believe it’s our means of influencing the world we live in.
And here we are, in the midst of this war, unable to tell fact from fiction. Are the Gulf Arab governments opposed to this war or are they telling Israel and the US to strike harder? Depends where you get your news. Did Israel strike Iran’s gas facilities with the explicit order of the United States? Some argue so, while Donald J. Trump claims otherwise. Are reports that Israel is about to run out of missile interceptors a show of weakness, or an attempt to get Iran to fire more missiles at once so that their launch sites can be more efficiently located? We on the outside cannot know, no matter how generally trustworthy our news sources are.
What should a citizen do?
In the short term, we need to (at the very least) demand our news sources stop amplifying stories with no real news value featuring individuals with opinions that are clearly bought and sold.
Take, for example, the copious amount of attention lavished on Javier Bardem’s publicity stunt at the 2026 Oscars. As an actor, Bardem is literally paid to make the public believe fictions as fact. He’s an expert at assuming personas, convincing the audience he says what he means. He spent his life honing this skill, benefiting from his ability to make the incredible credible. He’s also on the Saudi payroll, incentivized to push an antizionist narrative into the public light. As are many others, as part of a deliberate strategy to buy influence through the silver screen.
One might think the Saudis and Qataris would have an interest during this round of hostilities to focus the attention on Iran. One would hope they would nudge their beneficiaries in Hollywood and the media to focus their attention on the injustices carried out by the Iranian regime. But they’re more sophisticated than that. By pushing the antizionist narrative across all channels even while nominally fighting on the same side of the war against Iran, they’re signaling to the Islamic Republic their willingness to move beyond the current struggle in case the regime pulls through; by keeping global attention on Gaza, they distract from their own weakness on full display.
Next, we need to demand our journalists place stories in their proper timeline. For example, every story on Israel’s strike on Iran’s natural gas facilities that amplifies the Iranian claim that “oh, now that Israel’s struck our gas we will take an eye for an eye from the Gulf,” must include the fact that Iran has been striking the Gulf’s oil and gas infrastructure since the first days of the war. Or another example: we must demand that every story about how Israel is striking targets in Lebanon clarify that Hezbollah attacked Israel first, despite repeated warnings, following the 2024 agreement between Israel and Lebanon that Lebanon would dismantle Hezbollah.
But more broadly, this war should raise the red flag for citizens and policymakers alike across the democratic world: the tools honed through the antizionist campaigns are now ready for deployment against any government policy that displeases the superpowers of deception: Qatar, Russia, and China. Those of us who care about democracy and believe that an informed citizenry is the only way to hold our leaders accountable need to focus our energies after this current battle to harden our information infrastructure against the wars to come.