Information policy at the present stage
Currently, there are two main concepts of the historical development of human society. One of them is Marxist. It identifies five stages of human development according to some concepts, and six socio-economic formations (primitive, Asian, ancient, feudal, capitalist and communist) according to others. This is the concept that is meant when talking about a formational approach to history.
The other is commonly referred to as the concept of post-industrial society (D. Bell, O. Toffler, A. Touraine, G. Kahn, Z. Brzezinski, etc.). Its proponents distinguish three stages in the history of mankind: traditional (agrarian) society, industrial (industrial) society and post-industrial (superindustrial, service, information, technotronic, etc.) society.
The levers of influence (productive forces, the main components) at each of these stages are fundamentally different elements. On the first - the earth, on the second - cars, on the third - information. In the information society, the largest number of people are engaged in processing and generating information. Today, humanity has entered the information civilization.
By the way, military theorists classify the types of possible wars according to these components. The war of the agrarian society was fought, first of all, for the seizure of land, the industrial one - for cars. The war in the information society is aimed at seizing the information space. At the same time, war in an industrial society does not exclude the goal of seizing land (territory), and war in an information society may aim at both seizing land and seizing machines and mechanisms (industrially developed regions). But the most important element, the most important condition for victory is the capture of information space, the capture of information.
The military sees the future war from a new perspective. It will no longer be just an information war, the war of 2025 is seen as a war of knowledge.
Because knowledge gives you the opportunity to make decisions, wrong knowledge will give you wrong decisions.
The enemy will always make the wrong decisions if he is based on false knowledge. One of the subspecies of this direction is called "perception management": we do not change objects, because in many cases this is impossible, but we change their perception in our everyday life, for example, a channel such as television also changes our perception of figures and events all the time.
Information policy defines the laws of the functioning of the information sphere. When the society's media system works effectively, it allows you to quickly grow a new elite, actively discuss new projects, promote transparency of the government, and bring its actions closer to the population. The law of interaction between the government and the population is the adequate functioning of communication between the government and the population. Not only the population should hear the authorities, but the authorities should also listen to the opinion and word of their population.
Information security consists in analyzing the threats that may arise in the information sphere and creating conditions to prevent their occurrence. First of all, this concerns various technical aspects of the transmission and processing of information.
Recent years have demonstrated a clear dependence of the processes of stabilization/destabilization of modern states on one or another functioning of their information infrastructures.
Thus, in the countries of the Middle East, as a result of certain information attacks, unrest began, which turned into clashes and even civil wars. These events are known collectively as the "Arab Spring". In a number of countries, they led to the replacement of the ruling regime (Tunisia), in a number - to the bloody massacre of the head of state (Libya). Elections were held in Egypt that replaced the ruling regime, but they were followed by a new replacement of the ruling regime.
Ukraine also found itself in the epicenter of world politics as a result of serious information attacks that led to destabilization in the country, and then, in February 2014, to the overthrow of the legitimately elected president. This information war continues, and it has actually turned into a civil one.
In August 2020, attempts were made to destabilize the situation in Belarus, the reason for which was the holding of presidential elections, which were won by Alexander Lukashenko. Using a certain dissatisfaction of a part of the population with his long stay in power, an information attack was launched on the population of the Republic of Belarus in order to replace Lukashenko in an uncostitutional way with a pro-Western protege.
These examples show that today a new type of toolkit has appeared, which modern states were not ready for. This toolkit is based on information pressure on the mood of the masses in a particular country, aimed at destabilizing the socio-political situation and replacing the country's leadership, which does not suit the customers of such information pressure. At the same time, the replacement can take place either by holding elections to legitimize it. And if the option of elections does not work out, then the option of a coup that took place under the "influence of the outraged masses of the people" is quite suitable. The reason for such outrage is, or rather, corruption, the undemocratic nature of the regime, the suppression of popular speech, election fraud, etc.
It should be noted that the leading Western states, in particular the United States, actively encouraging such events under the guise of fighting for democracy, themselves are doing everything possible to counteract such threats in their own states. They believe that they should be afraid of an exceptionally asymmetric information threat, and they invest heavily in ensuring their stability against such threats. In particular, the United States refused to sign international treaties in the field of information warfare, they are only ready to cooperate against information terrorism.
The most important tool for combating such information threats is the availability of a developed information infrastructure in the state. An effective information infrastructure is the key to the development of any state, because:
1) allows you to dramatically reduce the time for the nomination and discussion of new ideas, projects, and people;
2) allows you to develop the most effective branch of the economy - the economy of information, the economy for the production of new knowledge;
3) directs the country to the optimal path of development.
It can be noted that an effective information infrastructure can help the state in solving many political, economic, diplomatic, and military tasks, and with a much cheaper implementation option.
Fundamental changes do not allow the use of old models of information space management today.
Among the most important characteristics of the information society, the following should be noted:
1. The catastrophic growth of information flows, which makes the control process almost impossible.
2. The emergence of new types of communications such as the Internet, combining both individual and mass characteristics, while all control processes are focused on either individual or mass communications.
3. The democratization of society does not allow the old control systems to be applied at all.
4. Bureaucratic control systems (such as ministries or departments, namely, only the state can generate them) can only track stable indicators (for example, the language of a newspaper or channel), they are not able to respond to changing, dynamic indicators.
The task of the state in this regard is not to spread the same information throughout the country, but to ensure the dissemination of diverse information, alternative opinions, but with the presentation of powerful state thought. The US administration has long been trying to provide the public with its product, which turns out to be more intellectually successful and saturated. This is done by numerous highly qualified employees of the White House communications services. And they almost always win against their opponents, because they are engaged in strategic communications, not tactical ones, which include the work of the press service.
Why is a lot of attention being paid to the information space today? The information space is used as a tool for solving social, political, economic or military tasks. It should be immediately recognized that since ancient times, the attention of politicians and the military has been attracted to him. But from the casual use of this toolkit in the past, the world has moved on to its systematic application. Moreover, globalization has made the role of information even more important. Today's economy, politics, and tourism are completely dependent on external factors. The information status of a state and its representation in the global information space is part of its political or economic weight in the world. There are no States whose status in the information plane would differ significantly from the status in other planes. But this is not a random process, a strong state is engaged in its image processes on a par with others.
Researchers of international relations now identify the fourth dimension of relations - informational, stating its equality with such well-known dimensions as diplomatic, economic and military. It is no longer just an information civilization that developed countries have joined, but a post-information one. Recent events in the world vividly demonstrate the importance of such a constituent state as information. In the case of armed conflicts, there is a need to legitimize the use of force, to change attitudes towards values, assessments of one culture by another.
Terrorism as a phenomenon is generally quite closely related to the use of mass media.
Television has become a strong channel of communication in terms of opportunities to influence the mass consciousness. A few decades ago, it was a radio. Now, along with television, the Internet is becoming such a channel. So, the dominant channel in society is changing all the time. The Internet is gradually providing more and more opportunities for the "demassification" (E. Toffler's term) of social communications, since it is based on the rejection of the media - where everyone controls what they want to read.
All countries protect themselves and their image by investing serious financial, material, and information resources in this, and build their own image based on specific priorities. Many countries, for example, invest in information support for the development of tourism and attracting foreign students to their countries. There are also processes of intensive creation of a negative image of the country from the outside, when such political tasks arise. We can recall perestroika, when a systematic approach initiated from the outside led to a change in the social system in the Soviet Union and its disintegration. Having such processes in the arsenal of possibilities, and today they can be much facilitated due to the existence of the Internet, it is necessary to have counteraction options, since no effective technology will ever "retire" as long as it remains effective.
On the contrary, such technologies are becoming more sophisticated every year.
One of the American presidents once said that a dollar invested in propaganda gives more than ten invested in weapons, because it works immediately and really, and those ten will be waiting.
It is necessary to deal with the information side of any action that will be effective only when it has not only information coverage, but also information training, is actively carried out before the action itself occurs, and information support in the form of attention to the event after its completion.
It's never too late.
