We are delighted to share a recording of the March 13th talk given by Rory Cormac, Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham, sharing work from his new project ‘FAKERS: Lessons from the Rise and Fall of Cold War (Counter-) Disinformation.’
In this talk, Professor Cormac delves into the world of UK ‘black propaganda’ during the Cold War era and the lessons that remain relevant today in understanding disinformation and the information war.
Chaired by intelligence studies expert, Dr. Claudia Hillebrand (Cardiff)
Summary; At the height of the Cold War, the UK had a small team specialising in black propaganda. They created fake groups and forged material to increase the credibility of British messaging to target audiences, from Yemen to Indonesia. This paper assesses the role, rise, and fall of this unit from 1960 to 1970. It reveals how a small team of maverick outsiders discreetly grappled with important questions which remain relevant today: how to use secret intelligence to discredit the adversary without compromising sources and methods? How to sow confusion, distrust, and paranoia? Whether to expose forgeries and fake news, or risk giving oxygen to the lie? The paper demonstrates how, on the front line of the information war, the team created fake think tanks to expose Russian front activity; created fake resistance movements to compete for influence in the post-imperial space; forged Russian and Chinese documents to exploit the Sino-Soviet schism; forged Muslim Brotherhood documents to weaponize religion; and attacked nationalist leaders across Africa using yet more forgeries and fake groups. The team essentially created an information laundromat, sanitising secret intelligence so that they could use it publicly in every corner of the globe. The paper concludes by assessing the success of these operations, recognising the difficulties of using output metrics to measure impact.