Intelligence and Anticipatory Communication

Abstract

Democratic deliberation on how to address public issues affecting our European societies and how to protect us from and counter those threats, global risks and challenges similarly require public awareness and informed public opinions. That is not possible if our societies cannot count with a pluralistic information environment where news, opinions, science-based analyses, as well as legitimate persuasive communication practices can circulate free from manipulations. Securing the infosphere is key for ensuring that our societies conduct the necessary democratic debates on how to address public issues, including those related to security and foreign policy, where legitimate political disagreement can be expressed and controversies can be solved based on evidence and argumentation. Disinformation and foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) are top tier security threats in themselves, but also, very importantly, because they corrode our democratic systems inhibiting the capacity of our societies to make informed decisions on a number of many other policy areas, including security and defence. While the detection of manipulative patterns of coordinated behaviour and reaction to the already disseminated foreign disinformation and propaganda by threat actors, in the form of content fact-checking and debunking are the usual practices –that is to say, once the harmful narratives, conspiracy theories and disinformation is already out there– anticipatory intelligence and anticipatory communication are critical to address proactively these threats. I understand anticipatory communication as the deliberate communication processes and communication activities performed in anticipation of events, likely developments, emergent issues or of potential actions by hostile actors, that aim to exert influence on information, knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of stakeholders and on the strategic and the information environment, in order to deter, neutralize and counter the aims of hostile adversaries. Anticipatory communication has a strategic intend and is informed by rightful information, intelligence, threat analyses and assessments, indications and warning, forecasting and foresight.