50 Years of Information Warfare Series

In this first interview, Christian Harbulot analyses France’s current shortcomings in information warfare. The first episode in a long series that will dissect the many facets of this secret war, drawing on the theoretical and practical knowledge of one of the leading...

This second podcast on information warfare clarifies the definition of this form of conflict and presents the two cultures that form its foundations: the culture of the weak and the culture of the strong. Now featuring an unprecedented reversal...

Why and how was information warfare discovered during the high school years of the 60s? Christian Harbulot reflects on this learning process and shows how what might seem distant starkly illuminates the most recent current events: to inveigh, attack the opponent's...

The Mao Years (1968-1977). Before delving deeper into the history of what would prove to be a turbulent commitment, Christian Harbulot recalls what Maoism was in France in the early 1970s and why Trotskyism has been able to endure to this day by developing the...

In this comprehensive episode, Christian Harbulot retraces the escalation of information warfare waged by the French Maoists in the early 1970s. He explains how the informational trap closed in on the Gauche Prolétarienne, while also demonstrating how the struggles of...

Following the Pierre Overney episode, Christian Harbulot leads us to Italy, where the Red Brigades marked the 1970s with an escalation of information warfare and violence, culminating in the Aldo Moro affair. The Italian State then successfully conducted an...

Germany in the 60s/70s was the most fertile ground for a highly "conquering" subversive practice of information warfare through content. Yet, this was not the case. While the Red Army Faction occupied a large media space for many years, its approach in this area was a...

Back in France, the time has come to take stock of information warfare in the 1970s. One major lesson: winning battles is not winning the war. Christian Harbulot then revisits the Tramoni affair, which would change his life, as well as a form of professionalization...

In this 9th podcast, Christian Harbulot discusses the culture of informational warfare, drawing on the rare writings of revolutionary militants who played a major role in the Comintern's clandestine operations. Reference Works: Jan Valtin, Sans patrie, ni frontières,...

This episode explores the contradictions of subversive culture and the birth of dissent through Margarete Buber-Neumann's "World Revolution." The account of this communist activist, who survived both the Soviet Gulag and Nazi concentration camps, opened a breach by...

To counter the machinations of the Comintern and subsequently the Eastern Bloc, the Anglo-Saxon powers developed a highly effective culture of information warfare. British author Frances Stonor Saunders' book "Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War"...

Why is France unable to develop a clear analytical framework for information warfare? Unlike military warfare, where the defender can prevail over the attacker (cf. certain episodes of the war in Ukraine), information warfare is offensive in nature. The failure to...

Genuine case studies that offer insights into the offensive use of information are not very common. The textbook case of the anti-Nazi network led in Berlin by Harro Schulze Boysen between 1934 and 1942 sheds particular light on the creativity of atypical individuals....

Content-driven information warfare reached its zenith during the Second World War. No military conflict or geopolitical confrontation has given rise to the development of a global cognitive warfare system as effective as the one implemented by Winston Churchill during...

In the field of information warfare, the British example demonstrates the essential importance of human intelligence, both for implementing an effective strategy and, above all, for launching a concrete offensive. In this highly sensitive area, the France of 2022 has...

During the 20th century, Germany developed various practices in terms of civilian information warfare culture. This podcast analyzes three examples under different political regimes (two under the Weimar Republic and one under the Third Reich).

How did the United States of America manage to catch up in the field of information warfare during the first half of the 20th century? There is, indeed, an unfortunate tendency to rewrite history. However, contrary to what is stated in certain popular science works,...

The specificities of Japanese culture in information warfare show how an ethnocentric vision can lead to a certain impotence. This case thus alerts us to the way of approaching a very particular culture that differs profoundly from the Western issues presented in...

The importance of cultural perceptions is a vital element in assessing the resonance of information warfare. The Pacific War demonstrates the limits of the Western model of informational combat when faced with the system of thought inherited from the history of the...

Russia is currently presented as a country at the forefront of information warfare. This was not always the case, especially when it found itself in a difficult position. This podcast analyzes three situations where the USSR had to confront its contradictions while...

At a time when information warfare once again holds strategic significance for France, it is an opportune moment to examine the French culture in this domain. CR451 will devote a series of podcasts to this topic, aiming to formalize an analytical framework useful for...

In Algeria, France waged psychological warfare on only one of the three playing fields. Using this analytical framework, Christian Harbulot examines the mechanism of what would become a strategic defeat.

More than 70 years ago, the French army faced a particularly complex situation in which it had to invent a new mode of combat through its special services (SDECE) and a specialized unit, the Groupe de Renseignements et d'Exploitation (GRE). This is the story of...

The ingredients of the information war raging today in the confrontation between Hamas and the IDF are quite similar to the episode that marked the beginning of the Fourth Republic’s collapse process: the bombing of Sakiet on the Tunisian border.

In 2024, the word "offensive" is beginning to be heard again in relation to information warfare. It would appear that the French Presidency has had enough of enduring repeated Russian destabilization operations against our military forces as well as against civil...

The military doctrine of revolutionary warfare is a concept from the 1950s. The "7th weapon" is a victim of its own success (the Battle of Algiers), but also of the ideological drift of its supporters. The institutionalisation of revolutionary warfare gradually...

Victories of the strong over the weak are rare during the long period from the post-war era to decolonization. The case of Malaysia is worth studying as it demonstrates that a counter-insurgency can succeed by exploiting the contradictions within the adversary's camp,...

The weak, symbolized by the Huk rebellion, could not win within the Philippine geographical context, despite effectively adopting Maoist combat culture. Unlike in other theaters of operation, the Americans did not take the lead. They therefore provisionally defeated...

From the defeated Huk guerrilla movement to the insidious guerrilla warfare of the Maoist NPA. This second episode presents the lessons to be learned from asymmetric information warfare—from the weak to the strong—within the very specific context of the Philippines.

Informational power dynamics can reach a very high level of complexity. This was the case with the civil war that profoundly impacted Greece between 1944 and 1949. The Second World War generated insurmountable contradictions within Greek society. This resulted in...

The practice of information warfare requires operational memory. This is one of France’s shortcomings. There is now an awareness that must be encouraged, but it is still limited to the defensive dimension. The aim of this podcast is to recall a strategic victory of a...

At a time when President Trump is "upending the table" by combining a neo-imperial foreign approach with a libertarian questioning of the domestic system, it is interesting to revisit a key episode in contemporary American history. In the 1950s, Trump's predecessors...

The Vietnam War was lost by the Americans in the information domain. While the U.S. military held their own on the lethal front against the Viet Cong’s ground offensives and infiltrated elements from North Vietnam, the United States failed to find the strategic...

It is always useful to return to the sources. In 1971, General de Marolles produced a report on revolutionary warfare that offers a strategic view of information warfare. This analysis is still relevant for examining the “invisible war” waged by the Muslim Brotherhood...

Controlling populations is a major issue in wars of all kinds, and more practically in so-called wars of national liberation. The Vietnam War was a textbook case, as it pitted two combat cultures against each other: lethal and informational. The Viet Cong managed to...

Since the writings of Villatoux on psychological warfare, whose importance is fading from state memory, the issue of information warfare has resurfaced based on Anglo-Saxon theories. The various types of conflicts that have occurred since the Gulf War have highlighted...

The interwar period is crucial for understanding how a poor perception of international antagonisms can lead to a strategic catastrophe. This was, unfortunately, the case for France. It is necessary to revisit what can be considered a true tragedy, as political and...