This article explores the Russian strategy of digital diplomacy, cyber warfare, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as fundamental tools in global competition. Initially welcomed, Russian soft diplomacy has experienced fluctuations due to information campaigns that have damaged the country’s international image. In recent years, Russia has developed a “digital diplomacy” to influence international public opinion, leveraging tools like social media to spread polarizing messages and alternative news. At the same time, the country has enhanced its cyber warfare capabilities, considering it an essential component of information operations and a means to achieve an asymmetric military balance against the West. The use of AI amplifies these operations, enabling large-scale disinformation and strengthening espionage techniques and cyber-attacks, with the goal of destabilizing adversaries and consolidating Russian influence on a global scale.
The tactical level is worrisome, but it is not the priority of terrorism. The real success is at operational level: it is the “functional blockade”
Even when it fails, terrorism gains, in terms of the costs inflicted upon its target: it is successful as it can still impose economic and social costs on the community and influence the latter’s behaviour over time as a consequence of new security measures aimed at safeguarding the community: this effect is what we call the “functional blockade”, able to reach the average of 82% of the cases. The cost-benefit ratio is, no doubt, in favour of terrorism.
Claudio Bertolotti comments on the results of the G20 on Afghanistan: Xinhua
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