Editor’s Note: This is the first article in the Outside the Wire series, which highlights authors from outside our community. As editors, we believe it is important to challenge assumptions and look at problems from different viewpoints to receive information from outside of our ideological wire. We hope this fresh perspective sparks critical discussion, and we welcome your feedback.
Introduction
Information warfare is often treated as a messaging problem, but in modern conflict it can function as a long-range effector. A narrative, image, video, or allegation can be delivered across continents, aimed at a specific audience, amplified through social media, and used to create physical or operational effects: delaying a ship, disrupting logistics, suppressing weapons shipments, influencing legislators, or forcing commanders to divert resources. This does not mean that every protest or unpopular opinion is enemy action. In a democracy, dissent is part of the terrain the military exists to defend. But adversaries understand that free societies can be influenced without being invaded. If a missile, mine, or saboteur can delay a military cargo movement, and a narrative can produce a similar delay by mobilizing people against that movement, then the narrative deserves to be planned against, defended against, and assessed with the same seriousness as other long-range effects.
Block the Boat!
On Friday, November 3, 2023, pro-Palestinian protesters entered a restricted maritime area at the Port of Oakland, California, in an effort to delay the departure of the MV
Cape Orlando, a U.S. Ready Reserve Force roll-on/roll-off vessel
.01 Organizers believed the ship was bound for Tacoma, Washington, where it would load military cargo for onward movement to Israel. The action was organized and amplified by the San Francisco Bay Area’s Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which urged supporters through social media to “block the boat.”
Three protestors boarded the boat, delaying its departure, until they could be removed by the US Coast Guard.
Historically, an adversary seeking to delay a military cargo ship in port had several options. It could attack the vessel with a bomb, missile, or torpedo. It could send divers to attach a limpet mine. It could infiltrate the crew, compromise a port worker, or coerce an insider into sabotage. Each option carried significant risk: exposure, attribution, escalation, and possible war.
Information warfare changes that risk calculus. A ship does not have to be sunk to be rendered temporarily unavailable. A pier does not have to be cratered to stop loading operations. A logistics movement can be delayed if enough people can be persuaded to block a gate, occupy a road, overwhelm local authorities, or create a political cost that commanders and civilian leaders are forced to manage.
This is the central point: no one employs a weapon because he wants a weapon. He employs a weapon because he wants the effect the weapon produces. If a social media narrative can delay a ship, disrupt a convoy, suppress production, or cause a commander to divert resources, then it has produced an operational effect. It may not be
fires in the traditional sense, but it should be planned against, defended against, and assessed with the same seriousness as other long-range effects.
Seeding, Harvesting, and Amplification
The Washington Post reported that China, Russia and Iran collectively spend $12.37 billion dollars a year on global information manipulation, disinformation campaigns, and state propaganda.
02 The reason is simple: it works.
Manipulation is often amplified through coordinated online networks. Some accounts are automated bots, while others are operated by real people working for state agencies, political organizations, proxy groups, or contracted influence firms. Increasingly, artificial intelligence can be used to generate posts, images, videos, translations, and engagement at a scale that makes synthetic consensus appear organic.
A disinformation campaign often works in three phases.
Seeding is the initial placement of compelling, emotional, or controversial content into the information environment. This is often done through seed accounts, cutouts, anonymous channels, or personas designed to appear close to breaking news, insider information, or grassroots sentiment.
Harvesting is the testing phase. Narratives are monitored and scored for traction. Claims that fail to spread are discarded. Claims that generate attention, outrage, or engagement are selected for further amplification.
Amplification is the scaling phase. Coordinated networks, influencers, proxy media outlets, and high-follower accounts repeat the selected narrative until it reaches non-aligned actors who spread it on their own. At that point, the campaign no longer needs direct control. Politicians, celebrities, journalists, or influencers may repeat the narrative because it aligns with their ideology, rewards them with engagement, or appears to reflect public opinion. This is how leaders can inadvertently spread adversary narratives. They mistake “likership” for leadership: they confuse algorithmically amplified approval with genuine public demand.
The Information Effects Killchain
The information effects kill chain can be remembered with the mnemonic MAGIC: Mission, Audience, Generate, Insert, Cascade.
Mission: Define the intended operational effect. What is the campaign supposed to accomplish? Delay a ship? Disrupt a shipment? Shape a vote? Reduce public support for an ally? Force a commander or policymaker to divert attention and resources?
Audience: Identify the target population or decision-maker. Who must be influenced for the desired effect to occur? This may be a narrow audience, such as port workers, activists, journalists, legislators, or military families, or a broader audience, such as voters, taxpayers, or allied publics.
Generate: Create the narrative package. This may include a slogan, allegation, emotional frame, misleading image, repurposed video, forged document, synthetic media, or a set of talking points designed to travel easily across platforms.
Insert: Place the narrative into the target’s information environment. This begins the seeding and harvesting process. The narrative may be introduced through anonymous accounts, proxy media, activist channels, influencers, leaked documents, fringe outlets, or accounts designed to appear close to breaking news.
Cascade: Amplify the narrative once it shows traction. If the message becomes sticky, coordinated networks, high-follower accounts, proxy outlets, and non-aligned actors repeat it until it appears organic. At that point, the campaign can generate real-world effects without the originator needing to maintain direct control.
The MV
Cape Orlando protest illustrates how MAGIC can work in practice.
Mission: Delay or disrupt a U.S. military cargo movement associated with support to Israel.
Audience: Activists, port workers, local authorities, journalists, and political audiences likely to respond to claims about weapons shipments.
Generate: Frame the ship as carrying weapons to Israel and connect the vessel’s movement to civilian harm in Gaza. The narrative does not need to prove the cargo manifest; it merely needs to create enough moral urgency to mobilize action.
Insert: Place the claim into activist networks and social media channels already primed to oppose U.S. support to Israel.
Cascade: Once the narrative gains traction, protesters physically move to the port, block access, draw media coverage, and force authorities to respond. Content of the protests will be uploaded, shared, and amplified. The result was not merely online outrage. It was a physical-world disruption of a military logistics movement.
DIP - Deceptive Imagery Persuasion
Synthetic and AI-generated imagery is becoming easier to produce, but it is also becoming easier to detect. Platforms, researchers, and governments are improving their ability to identify manipulated images, synthetic video, and coordinated inauthentic behavior. Wide-scale use of AI-generated media can therefore create risk for the operator in the form of detection, exposure, attribution, platform removal, or the loss of accounts and networks that took time to build.
A simpler and often more effective technique is Deceptive Imagery Persuasion, or “DIP”. DIP doesn’t require the image itself to be fake. Instead, it uses a real or plausible image in a misleading context, paired with text that guides the viewer toward a false conclusion. The technique exploits the audience’s lack of subject-matter knowledge. A picture of an old weapons shipment, a video of National Guard convoying to annual training, a destroyed vehicle from another war, or a crowd from a different country can be presented as evidence of a current event.
The power of DIP is that the image retains credibility. The viewer is not asked to believe an obviously fabricated picture. Instead, he is given just enough visual evidence to feel that he has reached the conclusion on his own. The deception occurs not in the pixels, but in the framing.
Fewer than 6% of Americans are veterans.
03 Few civilians have the tools in their toolkit to comprehend what constitutes a war crime, how missile interception works, or why a bomb striking near a hospital is not, by itself, proof that the hospital was deliberately targeted. Add to this the fact that much of the public’s military knowledge comes from movies, television, video games, and social media, and the United States becomes an especially soft target for adversary manipulation.
A useful example is the way battlefield imagery from Gaza was often used to imply the unlawful use of white phosphorus. There is credible reporting that Israel used white phosphorus during the war, and the weapon’s use in populated areas creates obvious legal and humanitarian concerns. But that fact also made the narrative easier to manipulate. Many viewers could not distinguish between white phosphorus, illumination rounds
04, smoke, flares, missile interceptions, or burning debris. As a result, a real and serious issue became easier to exploit through misleading imagery. Hamas and its supporters did not need every image to be fake. They only needed enough viewers to see a bright object falling over Gaza and conclude, without context, that they were watching proof of a war crime.
The Content Economy as an Information Effects Platform
In my experience as a content creator, the algorithm rules the information environment. The content beast must be fed. Creators who fail to post timely, topical, engaging content risk losing audience attention, platform reach, and revenue. This creates a constant demand signal that adversaries can exploit.
Hamas understood two crucial information warfare dynamics on October 7, 2023. First, it understood that the attack and Israel’s response would dominate global attention, creating an immediate demand for content. Second, it understood that information warfare could function as a long-range effects platform. Hamas could not strike a U.S. depot supplying precision munitions to Israel without risking overwhelming military consequences. But it could use imagery, messaging, and emotional framing to influence foreign publics, pressure elected officials, and complicate continued military support.
This is why information warfare should be understood in terms of effects rather than platforms. If an adversary destroys a munitions stockpile, the result may be that fewer bombs reach an ally. If that same adversary persuades enough voters, influencers, journalists, or legislators to oppose those shipments, the result may also be that fewer bombs reach an ally. The method is different. The operational effect may be similar.
From October 7 to October 31, 2023
05, Hamas and affiliated channels released a steady stream of videos showing atrocities, hostage-taking, rocket attacks, and insurgent operations against Israeli forces. When Hamas-linked channels were restricted on Telegram for Apple and Android users, the content did not disappear. It migrated, was mirrored, clipped, translated, reposted, and recontextualized across other channels and platforms.
This created a secondary information effect. Social media was quickly flooded with creators explaining, analyzing, condemning, defending, or narrating Hamas-produced battlefield footage. Many of these creators were not Hamas supporters. Some were journalists, analysts, activists, veterans, or ordinary users trying to make sense of breaking events. But Hamas had supplied the raw material: dramatic video, emotional framing, and a constant feed of content that could be integrated into the online attention economy. In that environment, the original producer of the footage did not need to control every downstream account. It only needed to feed the system.
The Israel Defense Forces, by contrast, often appeared poorly adapted to the modern information environment. Some official videos showed soldiers carrying boxes of humanitarian aid labeled “medical supplies” in English
06, a presentation that looked staged to skeptical audiences rather than persuasive. Other updates relied on scripted briefings from public affairs officers whose delivery felt more bureaucratic than native to the platforms where the narrative fight was taking place.
07 Relatively little combat footage was released in a format that outside analysts, journalists, or creators could explain and contextualize for broader audiences. Nor did Israel appear to make a systematic effort to embed journalists or cultivate credible independent voices who could help tell its side of the story. The result was an asymmetry: Hamas produced raw, emotional, shareable content at scale, which influenced Americans, while Israel often produced official messaging that looked like official messaging.
Interdicting Information Warfare Effects
The speech rights of American citizens cannot be curtailed lightly, either as a matter of law or conscience. The United States has a poor record when it has attempted to suppress dissenting views, particularly during periods of war or national crisis. Disagreement, criticism, and even deeply unpopular opinions are not weaknesses in a democracy; they are part of the system democracies are supposed to defend.
These information long-range effects can be countered, but not by suppressing lawful speech. They are best intercepted by establishing factual dominance early: releasing accurate information quickly, explaining military actions in plain language, correcting false claims before they harden into public belief. Operation details and footage must be provided to credible journalists, analysts, and independent creators as the evidence they need to inform their audiences. The objective is not to silence dissent. It is to ensure that adversary narratives are not the first, loudest, or only explanation available to the public.
The Army’s 2025 Creative Reserve Pilot Program was a step in the right direction.
08 It recognized that credible voices outside traditional public affairs channels can reach audiences the military often cannot. But the pilot was primarily focused on recruiting and marketing, and it was later paused amid ethical review over the use of soldier-influencers. It does not appear to have been designed to mobilize the veteran, journalist, or independent creator communities as part of a broader effort to establish factual dominance in the information environment.
The use of a broad network of friendly, independent creators, provided with accurate information, releasable imagery, and timely context, could become a crucial component in disrupting adversary information warfare effects.
Conclusion
Information warfare is not merely a contest of messages. When it delays ships, disrupts logistics, suppresses weapons shipments, shapes political decisions, or forces commanders to divert resources, it becomes an operational effect delivered through the information environment. The United States does not need to answer this threat by suppressing lawful speech or treating dissent as enemy action. It does need to recognize that adversaries are already using narratives, imagery, algorithms, and influencers as long-range effects platforms. If the military would not allow an enemy missile to fly unchallenged toward a logistics node, it should not allow adversary narratives to fly unchallenged toward the public, policymakers, and commanders who enable that logistics node to function. The answer is not censorship. The answer is speed, truth, credibility, and preparation. Information fires must be detected, tracked, intercepted, and assessed before they achieve effects on the battlefield, in Congress, or in the minds of the American people.
Ryan McBeth is a cybersecurity and information warfare expert, software engineer, author, and retired U.S. Army infantryman. He holds degrees in computer science, engineering management, and cybersecurity, and previously developed C4ISR software used to identify and track national-security threats. Today, he analyzes cyber intelligence, online influence operations, military technology, and disinformation for a global audience, translating complex technical and security issues into clear, practical explanations.
Twitter: @ryanmcbeth
Instagram / Threads @TheRealRyanmcbeth
References
01
Ed Komenda, “Protesters Calling for Gaza Cease-Fire Block Road at Tacoma Port While Military Cargo Ship Docks,”
AP News, November 6, 2023,
https://apnews.com/article/c43e58036416e7e883616d84561a539d.
02 Jim Geraghty, “In the Disinformation War, the U.S. Unilaterally Disarmed,”
Washington Post, May 26, 2026,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/05/26/information-war-trump-america-surrendered-china-russia-iran/.
03 U.S. Census Bureau, “Veterans Day 2025: November 11,” November 28, 2025,
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2025/veterans-day.html.
04
Ramy Abdu [@RamAbdu], X post, October 10, 2023, 7:22 a.m.,
.
05 Bobby Allyn, “The Telegram App Has Been a Key Platform for Hamas. Now It’s Being Restricted There,”
KUOW, October 31, 2023,
https://www.kuow.org/stories/the-telegram-app-has-been-a-key-platform-for-hamas-now-it-s-being-restricted-there.
06 Israel Defense Forces, “IDF Transfer of Medical Supplies to Shifa Hospital in Gaza,” YouTube video, November 2023,
(utm_sourcew.youtube.com/watch?v=O9UXvI4eEgQ&utm_source=chatgpt.com).
07
https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/israel-at-war/briefings-by-idf-spokesperson-bg-effie-defrin/october-24-press-briefings/press-briefing-by-idf-spokesperson-radm-daniel-hagari-october-24-2024/
08 Nuray Taylor, “Army Kicks Off Creative Reserve Pilot Program,”
SIGNAL Media, February 20, 2025,
https://www.afcea.org/signal-media/army-kicks-creative-reserve-pilot-program.