The Weaponisation of Information: Lessons from the India-Pakistan Faceoff
On May 07, 2025, the world witnessed the armed conflict between two nuclear-armed countries with a history of multiple wars. In response to the Pahalgam Attack, New Delhi launched Operation Sindoor destroying nine key terror camps and launchpads deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). This resulted in a series of tit-for-tat retaliations from both countries. The cycle of escalation lasted for almost four days, before both nations agreed to a ceasefire on May 10.
During this face-off, a parallel digital battle was brewing up in the cognitive domain. Pakistan-sponsored propaganda apparatus produced fake narratives designed to shape public perception and erode India’s strategic advantage. There was a significant flow of anti-India propaganda from Pakistan since April 22. Many posts, lamenting the Pahalgam Attack as a “false flag operation” by India, began circulating on social media. However, the real influx of disinformation began disseminating from across the border on the second day of the India-Pakistan conflict. The intensity of fabricated claims of Indian military failures, like attacks on religious sites like the Nankana Sahib Gurdwara and downing of Indian jets and drones, were disseminated across the digital domain. Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) affiliated social media accounts and official channels of political and military leadership propagated these narratives through doctored images and videos. These accounts deployed various tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to bring the conflict to the information domain such as using video game footage, AI-generated deep-fakes and recycled old and unrelated footage from the Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The ‘fog of war’ accompanies every conflict, and it complicated the situation during the recent India-Pakistan conflict also. The concept, initially articulated by Clausewitz, describes confusion and uncertainty intrinsic to conflict. With a lack of credible information and domestic emotions running high, this fog of war created an information vacuum in the digital domain. Despite the Indian Ministry of External Affairs’ daily press briefings and PIB’s regular fact-check reports, it became impossible for the state agencies to debunk Pakistan-sponsored propaganda in real-time. This environment of confusion and speculation provided the fertile ground for misinformation to breed. Pakistan used this information vacuum and the viral nature of social media to push its narrative warfare.
The weaponisation of information is not a new phenomenon with some of its earliest examples seen in the Mahabharata where deception led to Dronacharya’s death through false news of the death of his son Ashwatthama and the strategic insights found in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. During World War II, the Allies weaponised information through Operation Cornflakes, where fake mail was distributed inside Germany to spread anti-Nazi propaganda. Meanwhile, British operated a clandestine radio station, Gustav Siegfried Eins, featuring a character named Der Chef who pretended to be Nazi insider, criticising the corruption and moral decay among Nazi leaders. Thomas Rid argues that disinformation campaigns aim to "engineer division by putting emotion over analysis, division over unity, conflict over consensus, the particular over the universal." Apart from the traditional battlefield, modern conflicts are also fought in the cognitive domains of the people. By disseminating fake propaganda, Pakistan aimed to confuse people and create a divide in Indian society by sowing chaos.
This conflict saw the emergence of independent and decentralised Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) analysts in India. Amid the confusion and chaos, they rose as the bulwark of truth, providing credible inputs, debunking Pakistani lies and separating facts from fiction. These actors used publicly available information (PAI) like commercially available satellite imagery, metadata analysis and geolocation tools to dissect and verify information in almost real-time. Independent OSINT analysts evolved as an unofficial and important component of India's defensive information operations. Governments usually operate under diplomatic and legal constraints. On the other hand, OSINT analysts can mobilise quickly and expose disinformation before it spreads. In the current digital era, power no longer solely resides with state actors and individuals armed with a computer, internet connection and open-source tools can shape and re-shape the information landscape. David Patrikarakos’s concept of “the democratisation of warfare narratives” from War in 140 Characters completely resonates with this phenomenon. He argues that the social media has shifted the power to influence and narrate conflicts from centralised state machineries to independent and decentralised networks and individuals. These decentralised OSINT networks, unlike Pakistan’s centralised ISPR propaganda apparatus, operate in an agile, self-organising, and responsive swarm-like manner.
Operation Sindoor offers a valuable lesson for India’s information security posture, that kinetic operations are undoubtedly necessary in the modern warfare but there is an absolute need to treat information domain as a strategic front too. This episode has again shown that the democratisation of intelligence is not just a theoretical idea but is a tangible and growing force for resilience in the information age. This doesn’t imply that government should outsource information warfare domain entirely to independent OSINT analysts. Rather, the solution rests in synergy between the government and these analysts. To bolster India’s information defence, there is a need to create secure channels for sharing verified data, amplifying credible findings from OSINT actors, and supporting the development of advanced verification tools. This will ensure independence of these analysts while providing accurate information to the public faster than the disinformation can spread.
As India navigates the future of its security landscape, it must recognise that the battle for minds is no less important than the battle for ground. In the face of orchestrated disinformation, the power of transparent, collaborative, and independent verification stands as the strongest defence. In the shadows of modern conflict, where the battle for minds often eclipses the battle for ground, it is the tenacity of these independent truth-seekers that lights the path back to reality.
Pic Courtesy- Photo by Riku Lu on Unsplash
(The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views of CESCUBE.)
