Communication has been weaponised, used to provoke, mislead and influence the public in numerous insidious ways. Disinformation was just the first stage of an evolving trend of using information to subvert democracy, confuse rival states, define the narrative and control public opinion. Using the large, unregulated, open environments that tech companies once promised would “empower” ordinary people, disinformation has spread rapidly across the globe. The power that tech companies offered us has become a priceless tool in propagandists’ hands, who were right in thinking that a confused, rapidly globalising world is more vulnerable to the malleable beast of disinformation than straightforward propaganda. Whatever we do, however many fact-checking initiatives we undertake, disinformation shows no sign of abating. It just mutates.

While initially countries that were seasoned propagandists, such as Russia and North Korea, were identified as the main culprits, the list of states employing disinformation is growing. China is apparently using disinformation to portray Hong Kong protesters as proxies of nefarious western powers and violent rioters, potentially to prepare the ground for more violent intervention to suppress the movement. India has been the host of constant disinformation campaigns, either ahead of the most recent elections or during the current standoff with Pakistan over Kashmir. Lobbying and PR firms have now professionalised online disinformation, as the cases of Sir Lynton Crosby’s CTF Partners in the UK and the troll farms in the Philippines indicate.

The next stage in the weaponisation of information is the increasing effort to control information flows and therefore public opinion, quite often using – ironically enough – the spectre of disinformation as the excuse to do so. Internet shutdowns made headlines recently during India’s communications blackout in Kashmir but they have already become commonplace in Africa. Access Now has reported that internet shutdowns between 2016 and 2018 more than doubled. According to some reports, the app used by protesters in Hong Kong to coordinate, Telegram, also received a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack from mainland China.

‘Lobbying and PR firms have now professionalised online disinformation.’ Lynton Crosby, pictured with Boris Johnson. Photograph: Alan Davidson/Rex/Shutterstock

The control of information can take more benign forms, too, such as the total disintegration of the White House press briefings that have made Donald Trump’s Twitter the de facto mouthpiece for the US executive, or the attempt by Boris Johnson to establish a direct channel of communication with his audience through Facebook. Removing regulated, accountable and experienced journalists from the equation can only be deleterious to the public interest. The fourth estate is a fundamental part of our political systems. The never-ending series of social media privacy and political scandals proves that tech companies are not able to play that role – and in any case, they don’t want to.

The third stage in the weaponisation of information may be even worse. As invasive and stealth data mining practices are becoming commonplace, we may soon be dealing not just with disinformation or communications blackouts, but with mass-scale surreptitious manipulation through nudging. Prof Karen Yeung of Birmingham Law School has used the term “hypernudges” to define adaptable, continuously updated and pervasive algorithmically driven systems that provide their subjects – us – with highly personalised environments that define our range of choices by creating a tailored view of the world.

According to IBM, 2.5 quintillion (that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000) bytes of data is created every day. Data sets containing personal information – obtained via our online engagements with people or companies – are becoming more elaborate and expansive. Even though the analysis necessary to obtain useful insights from them can overcome human capacity, artificial intelligence systems and their algorithmic models can fare much better.

Communication mediated through hypernudging can gradually shift our moral values, norms and priorities. YouTube recommendations and their alleged promotion of far-right content in Brazil, causing the radicalisation of certain users, was a form of nudging – unwitting as the tech company claimed it was. But intentional nudging using models built on our individual preferences and vulnerabilities will become much more impactful in the future. While the effectiveness of personalised propaganda such as that employed by Cambridge Analytica may still be debatable, there is no doubt long-term nudging can be powerful – if not to swing a close election, maybe to increase apathy or foment dissent and distrust towards our institutions. The possibilities for manipulation are endless.

Still, to categorise the weaponisation of communication as “information warfare” could distract us from the fact that the root of the problem is not information per se. We have to address the fact information manipulation is employed by political actors taking advantage of regulatory and legal vacuums to change power dynamics. They use the technology of companies unsupervised for so long that they have acquired sufficiently dominant market positions to lobby themselves out of government regulation, while traditional media remain seemingly unable to resist the hijacking of the news agenda by divisive actors seeking to amplify their agenda via clickbaity disinformation.

In the midst of this, people remain confused, disempowered or too petrified to reclaim our agency and confront this attack on our information space and our digital rights. Reclaiming our privacy is the first step. We are going to need it if we are to stand a chance of resisting the information weapons being used to discipline and control us.

• Sophia Ignatidou is an academy fellow at Chatham House, researching AI, digital communication and surveillance