Russian disinformation attacks Western democracies daily. Moscow is spending well over a billion euros every year on propaganda and other information operations which aim to destabilise societies, and achieve malign Russian foreign policy objectives.
Russian disinformation is powerful; the onslaught correlates with a steep decline in trust and cohesion across several of their target audiences. Democracies are asymmetrically vulnerable to effective disinformation, since they rely on electorates making sound judgements about public choices. Yet the militaries of most democracies are unable to offer much defence; they’re configured against tradition, kinetic operations.
Some disinformation is ethical: positive placebo effects are an example of good disinformation. If a terrorist googles, ‘How can I make a biological weapon?’ it is justified to direct them towards false instructions which self-sabotage their experiments. This is a consequentialist justification (that is, a justification routed in the likely beneficial consequences of the action). A follower of Immanuel Kant may also accept deceiving would-be terrorists if they agree the terrorist planned to treat would-be victims as means rather than ends.
But the presumption must be that most disinformation is bad: it breaks the implicit contract to exchange information truthfully – or, at least, helpfully – which comes with all non-fiction-based communication.
So, can there be a single, agreed standard by which acceptable disinformation can be delineated from bad? And when is it right for our militaries to retaliate with disinformation of our own?
Deontological (rule-based) and contractarian (agreement-based) ethics generally frown on disinformation more than consequentialist systems. This is because while consequentialist models tend to assess examples on a case-by-case basis, which might allow a few examples to be acceptable, deontology – in seeking to establish rules and norms – tends to take a more absolutist position: it is hard to advocate for a world in which everyone spreads disinformation, because the maxim could itself be disinformation. To advocate for lying is paradoxical.
Aristotle’s discussion on lying, in the Nicomachean Ethics, is instructive: the ancient Greek philosopher believed all lies were ‘base and fundamentally blameworthy’, that lies erode trust in the person who tells them, that they tend to beget further untruths, and that they make virtue more distant. But note that Aristotle also allowed for discretion and politeness; truthfulness wasn’t everything in his search for the golden mean.
It is possible to reconcile consequentialist, deontological and virtue-based approaches to the ethics of lying – just. There is a coherent and plausible approach, as long as the consequentialist miscalculation based on ‘getting away’ with a lie could be discounted. The rule is: ‘Deceive only if you can change behaviour in a way worth more than the trust you would lose, were the deception discovered (whether the deception actually is exposed or not).’ This rule was designed with interpersonal lying in mind, intended to excuse white lies while condemning self-serving falsehoods. Does it provide a useful metric for large-scale disinformation, and practical advice for the military?
The maxim, ‘Deceive only if you can change behaviour in a way worth more than the trust you would lose, were the deception discovered (whether the deception actually is exposed or not),’ places different disinformation efforts on a moral spectrum, from good to bad.
It permits some traditional information operations. Falsifying troop movements, exaggerating capabilities, and camouflaging assets: these tactical deceptions are all excused. The enemy is not owed honesty; the stakes are life and death; and the deception, if discovered, would not damage trust anyway.
Then there are twilight cases – morally dubious disinformation, such as covert support for democratic movements abroad. Should we fund sympathetic media, to shape narratives and promote a favourable outcome in a foreign election? The value gained may be real: a more stable and democratic neighbour. But the trust lost, if the operation were exposed, could be severe.
Emergency information management — a government temporarily suppressing alarming intelligence to prevent panic — might also be in this space, defensible only if the suppression is brief and the information is eventually disclosed. The longer the electorate is deprived of the means to make effective decisions, the worse the disinformation becomes.
Note that the motives for disinformation also come into play. A democratically elected government disinforming its citizens to stay in power is worse than one seeking to protect them. The maxim factors this into how the value of behavioural change is calculated: what matters is the value to the victims of disinformation. Placebos must work for the patient, not the doctor.
Which takes us to large-scale Russian disinformation, and it clearly falls at the very bad end of the moral spectrum. The behavioural change sought by Moscow’s malign information operations is to corrode faith in social and political institutions. Distrust is not the byproduct; it is the purpose. Hence, according to the maxim, Russian disinformation is automatically bad. Note that the trust in question in this formulation is not trust in Moscow and its media proxies, since that is already low; it’s the trust in public discourse and the political space, which their disinformation pollutes. Putin’s billions spent on propaganda should be condemned strongly, alongside his other atrocities.
Is there ever a case for large-scale disinformation? Should democracies direct their militaries to use the tool against Russia? If disinformation led to positive, social behavioural change, and this improvement was greater than the decline in trust required to achieve it, then it is possible. But calculating whether a behavioural change will be positive is difficult: it involves making a hypothetical projection. Second- and third-order effects are inevitable, making the options difficult to define. Fundamentally, there is a problem of information which prevents a simplistic calculus.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that the ethics of disinformation has a problem of information at its heart. But it should also be reassuring: Western democracies can rest assured that the ethical issues are settled. Russia is wrong to use tools of large-scale tools of disinformation against us. We are objectively right to defend ourselves, and occasionally to attack them back.
