Security Dimensions of the 21st Century Information Environment

The information environment is an increasingly critical and contested domain in today’s global landscape. CNA analysts are engaged in helping our sponsors and the public better understand the challenges of the 21st Century information environment through projects that combine functional and regional expertise with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and social science methodologies. The emerging global information environment creates both strategic and operational challenges for US national security. With its deep background in security affairs, CNA is helping policymakers and warfighters to understand the information domains in which they are operating—whether the issue is ensuring two-way strategic communications, understanding malign influence operations directed against the United States or its allies and partners, or mitigating vulnerabilities and exploiting opportunities in this realm.

Recent CNA work on these topics includes:

• Understanding state and non-state malign influence on partners and allies in Europe;
• Identifying and analyzing the range of tools available to state and non-state actors in Africa and the Middle East;
• Examining the use of the cyber domain to conduct information warfare;
• Analyses of the information environments of countries in the Indo-Pacific region; and
• Understanding how the Chinese Communist Party uses foreign-directed media to tell a tailored narrative about China around the world.

Reports

• The Psychology of (Dis)information: A Primer on Key Psychological Mechanisms
• The Psychology of (Dis)information: Case Studies and Implications
• Telling China’s COVID-19 Story Well: Beijing’s Efforts to Control Information and Shape Public Narratives Regarding the 2020 Global Pandemic
• Social Media Bots: Implications for Special Operations Forces
• Social Media Bots: Laws, Regulations, and Platform Policies
• China's Playbook for Shaping the Global Media Environment
• Black and White and Red All Over: China’s Improving Foreign-Directed Media
• Mapping the Information Environment in the Pacific Island Countries: Disruptors, Deficits, and Decisions
• Shining a Light on the Western Balkans: Internal Vulnerabilities and Malign Influence from Russia, Terrorism, and Transnational Organized Crime
• Mapping Russian Media Network: Media’s Role in Russian Foreign Policy and Decision-making
• Mobilizing Compatriots: Russia’s Strategy, Tactics, and Influence in the Former Soviet Union
• Exploring the Utility of Memes for U.S. Government Influence Campaigns
• Independent Assessment of U.S. Government Efforts against Al-Qaeda
• Russia’s Approach to Cyber Warfare

Podcasts

• Coming in From the Cold: From AIDS to Covid-19: Disease and Disinformation
• Coming in From the Cold: Disinformation Cont.
• Coming in From the Cold: Active Measures
• CNA Talks: The Protests in Hong Kong
• The Modern Information Environment: China's Covert Collaborations
• The Modern Information Environment: Chinese Influence in Australia
• The Modern Information Environment: The Pacific Island Countries

Experts