Influence Operations - The Sharp Power of Non-Kinetic Subversion - Adil Rasheed

Thus, Influence Operations refer to the use of non-military means of psychological, technological, economic and political influence and subversion to undermine the security and governance of a targeted country. [...] For Influence Operations, the politics of the diaspora is often studied in terms of its role in adversely influencing the politics and undermining the security interests of the host country. [...] The more high-end attacks like the hack of the Ukrainian electrical grid in 2015 and the US-Israeli Stuxnet cyber-attack first discovered in 2010 that melted a fifth of Iranian nuclear centrifuges, cannot be put in the category of Influence Operations, but in the domain of hard power technology. [...] They cite the 2007 cyber-attack on Estonia that targeted that country’s parliament, ministries, bank and media organizations,48 the digital attack on the German parliament in 2015,49 on the Lithuanian and Montenegro parliaments in 201650 and 201751, hacking against French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron in 201752, and the digital penetration into the most infamous computer network of the De. [...] From the 1950s, the Soviet Union used the term ‘Aktivnye meropriyatiya (“Active Measures”) for its wide array of covert and deniable political influence and subversion operations involving the “establishment of front organizations, the backing of friendly political movements, the cultivation and protection of pro-Russian intellectuals, leaders and public figures abroad, the orchestration of domest.