The spreading of disinformation is a crime against the truth and against anyone who is deceived. Intelligence-gathering is a science that can counteract disinformation but can also be used for partisan purposes.
The Gospodar of the planet Dennitza governs the Taurian Sector of the Terran Empire which borders the Wilderness separating the Empire from the Merseian Roidhunate. Thus, Merseia can both threaten and influence Dennitza. Disaffected Dennitzans might welcome Merseian support or even rule. The Emperor decrees the disbanding of the Dennitzan militia. Dennitzan Intelligence reports Merseian war preparations that are denied by Terran Intelligence. Who is lying and why?
Disinformation can be internalized. Thus, the Dennitzan, Kossara Vymezal, is not only arrested for treason but also brainwashed with false memories of her own participation in treasonous activities. Arrested on Diomedes, she is quickly and quietly sold into slavery on Terra but then the news of her enslavement makes its way back to Dennitza. Merseian agents have infiltrated both Terran Intelligence and the Zamok/Castle executive centre in Zorkagrad on Dennitza.
In an inflammatory situation, who can find and make known the truth?
3 comments:
Disinforming the enemy is as much a part of intelligence work and espionage as getting accurate information for yourself. It's particularly effective if you can get your enemy to believe something that they want to believe anyway, which is why armies try to use "worst-possible case analysis".
Espionage is often a puzzle-palace of deceptions within disinformations within partially accurate info, and the necessary analysis -- putting information together into a pattern -- is necessarily prey to confirmation bias and motivated reasoning.
Which all means that even accurate information is often disregarded -- particularly if it's something the recipient doesn't want to hear.
Eg., Stalin got accurate accounts of the German plans to invade the USSR in 1941, but disregarded them all - and had some of the agents responsible executed -- because he was convinced that they were disinformation planted by British and American intelligence.
Because that was what he wanted to believe.
As a result, he got caught flat-footed and with his forces disposed in a way that might as well have been dictated by the Germans for their maximum advantage. It very nearly cost him the war and did cost the Soviets on the order of 5 to 7 million casualties.
Of course, the Germans were also working with incomplete intelligence -- estimates that grossly underestimated the number of divisions the Russians could field, for example.
Which is why they thought they'd won by late September; they'd eliminated all the divisions their intelligence had estimate the Soviets could put into the field.
The same thing happened in 1914.
The French had a copy of the actual German plan for attacking through Belgium. They rejected it because they didn't believe the Germans had that many men or that they'd put their reserve divisions in the front line -- the latter because they (for internal political reasons) thought poorly of their reserve divisions and projected that onto the Germans too.
That nearly cost them the war, too. The Germans, in their turn, had overestimated how quickly their forces could move and underestimated the logistical problems.
My disapproval of disinformation was directed at deliberate confusion not of a hostile intelligence service but of an entire population as in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS.
Paul: ah, I see. Good point.
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