There was a time in the recent past—certainly before 2016—when the U.S. did not think very seriously about information operations. That’s ancient history now. As someone who was early to the “disinformation studies” field and who just came off a year in DoD Cyber Policy, I can say that the U.S. is closely attuned to information threats—and often eager to use the same tools to fight back. I’d suggest that we have overcorrected. And I’d like to discuss why, from a purely pragmatic perspective, information operations are usually a bad idea.
