García Cantalapiedra, who is also director of the Research Group on Security and International Cooperation at the aforementioned university, announced that the invasion of Ukraine could escalate into a military conflict because the European security order has disappeared. Cognitive warfare integrates cybernetic, information, psychological and social engineering capabilities.  

In his explanatory remarks, he agreed with Kristina Buchok, a Ukrainian analyst on Security, Peace and International Conflict, that the solution will not be easy, given that China will support Russia as much as it can, although increased belligerence will affect Taiwan, "which is not in China's interest". In the same vein, Kristina Buchok denounced that NATO should be more active in its narrative against Russia.

According to García Cantalapiedra, the People's Republic of China will develop an approach of unlimited warfare and the use of all means to make the enemy accept its interests. "The battlefield is everywhere and China is going to develop three strategies: psychological warfare to dismantle the international order; the war of public opinion and legal warfare," García Cantalapiedra said. The aim is to establish a discursive power (within soft power) so that the other person does what they want, without telling them. What is the problem, asks García Cantalapiedra. We are faced with Cognitive Warfare, non-kinetic activities that make it difficult to separate fact from fiction, and thus give way to information fatigue and loss of credibility in the media.

This argument was also ratified by intelligence analyst Manuel Robledo Torres (Co-Director of Minerva Insitute) during his intervention, based on the work of obtaining defensive intelligence for the construction of an objective narrative of all the information we receive. Robledo Torres stressed the essential role played by education in Spain, which should help the youngest and most vulnerable to learn to be discerning. "What does the idea they are selling me respond to? 

Spanish schools should teach the subject of detecting noise signals, useless data, ambiguous and outdated information because it is implicit, the intention to manipulate. "Teachers are the medicine of the moment, because we cannot be mere receivers of information. When it comes to estimating intentions, we are faced with the challenge of interpreting the information we gather. If we want to develop objective and accurate intelligence, we must accept this problem. Today, we must question everything, analyse, and take the trouble to arrive at objectivity. "The good guys are not so good and the bad guys are not so bad in this conflict, since both sides are using their weapons. We must not let ourselves be convinced that "everyone thinks alike".

Given that the audience does not analyse what they receive, we penetrate the capacities and wills of the people we are addressing. What does intelligence do? It teaches how to obtain information and evaluate it in order to generate one's own criteria. In other words, it facilitates decision-making from the point of view of the adversary, "defeating the enemy without having fought him", according to intelligence analyst Manuel Robles.

As a representative of the Nato Sto Science and Technology Organization (from the University of Salamanca), Javier Valencia Martínez de Antoñana warned that the managers of social networks are incapable of preventing manipulators from undermining the integrity of their platforms. So much so that the war of narratives requires an early warning model. "Defence against disinformation is a clear strategic weakness and we are not prepared to fight back. The budget should be increased by 3 per cent, resources should be centralised and the scope for deploying counter-psychological operations should be opened up. In short, educating children about war would be a powerful way to counteract social polarisation.

At the second round table, "War and Disinformation", Mercedes Pullman, a graduate in Russian Philology and Socio-Cultural Anthropology, a regular contributor to the programme "Cuarto Milenio", warned those present that there is a need for critical thinking and that this conflict has affected her home (she was born in the Soviet Union) because "we have not learned to dialogue and even less to handle this issue through the prism of diplomacy. I have been a victim of censorship, I cannot access certain information and I reiterate the idea of a failed diplomacy in every sense of the word".

For his part, Javier Bernabé Fraguas, lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science at the UCM, within the third panel "Typology of disinformation in armed conflicts", alluded to three types of disinformation: erroneous information that is shared, but without the intention of doing harm; disinformation as propaganda; and disinformation to inflict harm on a person, organisation or country. It has also emphasised "intended disinformation" as misleading use to incriminate someone or sow doubt, supplanting original sources and manipulating real images, and "unintentional disinformation" through misleading or false content, with incomplete sources telling the part as the whole and with political bias, becoming pamphlets.

Author: Carmen Chamorro. Atalayar Entre dos orillas