‘Home-grown disinformation’ a growing threat to Canadian Armed Forces: report

A report for Canada’s military research branch finds the Armed Forces are 'poorly placed and inadequately prepared' to defend against misinformation and disinformation campaigns.

The Canadian Armed Forces are “poorly placed and inadequately prepared” to guard against misinformation and disinformation campaigns from both “homegrown” actors and foreign adversaries, according to a new report prepared for the military’s research branch.

Prepared for Defence Research and Development Canada, the report also found that the CAF has an “ad hoc” approach to countering disinformation and needs a broader strategic plan for “information operations.”

Failing to address the issue could lead to greater dissatisfaction within the ranks, make it harder for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) to retain members and deepen an already serious recruitment crisis, suggested the report.

Disinformation and misinformation are terms often thrown around in the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and definitions vary. But broadly speaking, disinformation refers to incorrect information purposely spread by malicious actors, while misinformation refers to incorrect information spread by people who believe it to be true.

The report says that while the CAF does have “significant … capabilities” to address misinformation and disinformation, it also suggested those resources are largely “untapped due to an institutional mindset … rooted firmly in the pre-Internet Cold War.”

“The situation should be of particular concern to an organization in a self-described ‘existential crisis,’ which makes the (Department of National Defence and the) CAF more susceptible to harm by mis- and disinformation … especially to domestic forms,” the report read.

While the term “information operations” can conjure up images of wartime propaganda and mistruths, Brett Boudreau, a retired colonel and the author of the report, said it can also apply to everything from how the Forces communicate within the ranks to the kind of “information warfare” the world has seen during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The report – which was informed by interviews with current and former senior defence and security officials – provide a long list of recommendations to improve the CAF’s handling of information operations, but mainly that the defence community needs to incorporate information operations into their overarching strategy, instead of just putting out public relations fires as they arise.