Documentaries

HISTORY of INFORMATION WARFARE with CHRISTIAN HARBULOT
Information warfare has its roots in military culture, as evidenced by the propaganda and counter-propaganda of the First and Second World Wars. However, since the beginning of the 20th century, the battle for public opinion has taken a predominant place in power relations, giving rise to a new civil culture of information warfare. As a recent example, the war in Ukraine is also an information war: the use of words, photos, and videos creates a war of perceptions in which anything goes. It is the first time a war has been visible from the inside on such a large scale. Subversive actions are now intrinsically part of conflicts between powers and are embedded in hybrid warfare. In this introductory episode of the new documentary series “Information Guerrilla Warfare”, Christian Harbulot, founder and Director of the School of Economic Warfare and the CR451 Research Centre, provides an interpretive framework for the civil culture of information warfare.

HISTORY of INFORMATION WARFARE with CHRISTIAN HARBULOT
Over the course of the 20th century, the civil culture of information warfare developed mainly around two matrices: the Comintern matrix and the Anglo-Saxon matrix. The Comintern matrix emerged from the various forms of subversive practices of the Third Communist International. Its creativity stems from the know-how of the weak, developed through an international approach by figures such as Willi Münzenberg. This head of Comintern propaganda during the interwar period—mastermind of international rallies against fascism and manipulator of networks of European and American intellectuals—developed both overt propaganda activities and other, covert influence activities.
Anglo-Saxon circles took time to become aware of this new form of threat. They only reacted by combining their efforts after the Second World War. London, via SIS, and Washington, with the CIA, evolved their information-warfare matrix, and secret war became primarily a battle of ideas through the production of knowledge and content in every possible form: literary, artistic, academic, geopolitical. The objective was no longer to deceive the enemy, but to win the battle for legitimacy. Mirroring the communist bloc’s influence operations, the fields of intervention now targeted the intellectual, artistic, and educational milieus of democracies outside the Iron Curtain. Thus, the “progressivism” promoted by fellow travellers of communism was countered by the Anglo-Saxons with the “dissidents”—those disillusioned by the “Pact with the Devil” signed between 1939 and 1941 by Hitler and Stalin, the infamous German-Soviet pact.

This information war also took on a global dimension, like the one the Comintern gave it between the two world wars. Its creativity focused on how to reach public opinion in order to try to change perceptions in the major societal debates of the Cold War. The scope of “cognitive fire” expanded beyond primary propaganda (closing ranks among the population in wartime) and beyond disinformation and deception operations designed to trap the adversary in the conduct of its military operations. These two matrices have evolved over time, but they remain today the main levers of cognitive confrontation between the dominant powers of the 21st century.

HISTORY of INFORMATION WARFARE with CHRISTIAN HARBULOT
For the third episode of its documentary series on the Civil Culture of Information Warfare, CR451 focuses on the information confrontation between Hezbollah and the IDF during the 33-day war in 2006. A true textbook case of reversing the balance of power between the Weak and the Strong, it is also one of the first examples of the use of the internet and social networks by civilian actors in information confrontations.

History of Information Warfare with Christian Harbulot
The Civil Culture of Information Warfare relies on interpretive frameworks that cover all aspects of an information confrontation. The case of China is particularly illustrative, insofar as many mistakes were made through a market-centred approach. The Chinese communist regime exploited these Western shortcomings very skilfully. It was necessary to wait for the rupture created by Donald Trump’s policy and for questions about possible Chinese responsibility at the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic for the first major criticisms levelled against Beijing to emerge. Waging information warfare against a regime created by Mao Zedong—a major civilian practitioner of information warfare—is not an easy undertaking. This is the subject addressed in CR451’s fourth documentary.

History of IW with Christian Harbulot
The political and economic crisis Venezuela has experienced since the early 2000s, with its largely internationalised “Information Warfare” component, deserves particular attention for at least one distinctive reason: unprecedented longevity and intensity. CR451’s fifth documentary aims to take an analytical look at this content-driven information war between those who came to power in 1998, with President Chávez’s socialist turn, and those who have since sought in vain to regain power. For thirty years, the opposition to the regime, with the help of the United States of America, has initiated powerful destabilisation mechanisms. However, it must be noted that they have been relatively ineffective in Venezuela, where they still have not led to the fall of the authorities in place.

It took the decisive intervention of ADIT, a leading consulting firm in economic intelligence in France, to prevent this little-known dimension of the “skandal” from coming to light and to help the French group’s executives out of this predicament.

The first priority is to draw lessons from the multiplier effects of recent crises. The effects of the confrontation between China and the United States, the revelations of structural shortcomings linked to the pandemic, and the repercussions of the war in Ukraine have changed our perception of the realities of this world.

Since its creation in 1997, the School of Economic Warfare has viewed French agriculture as a vital issue in order to guarantee food for our population. The upheavals linked to COVID and the war in Ukraine have taught us that market mechanisms are not sufficient to withstand major crises. This is why the question of our food sovereignty is a political issue that must ONCE AGAIN BECOME A PRIORITY on the agenda of future governments. French agriculture is the historic foundation of our market economy and it must remain so. It contributes to the national wealth needed for our country’s development, and it is not the often contradictory decisions of the European Union that should call this reality into question.

At a time when trade wars are raging, this documentary produced by our research centre explores the major challenges our agriculture must face.

Thank you to our guests: Christiane Lambert, Bruno Cardot (‪@SalutSalut02‬), Marie Bigot and Étienne Lombardot.