The following are my introductory remarks for a panel at NATO’s Riga StratCom Dialogue. I entitled these remarks “Global Non-linear Memetic Warfare Is Here — Practical Recommendations for NATO Members”

Thanks for the opportunity to be here with you. My name is Jeff Giesea. I’m an entrepreneur by background, living in Washington DC. I’ve written two papers on the topic of memetic warfare. The first, “It’s time to embrace memetic warfare” was published in 2015 in the first edition of Defence Strategic Communications (see pg 68). The second, “Hacking hearts and minds: How memetic warfare is transforming cyberwar,” was published this April by NATO’s Open Publications.

In this brief talk, I’d like to do two things: First, to acknowledge that we are entering an era of global, non-linear, memetic warfare. Much of the talk during the conference today has focused on state-on-state information war. I believe the situation is more complex. Second, I’d like to offer a few practical recommendations for NATO member countries. My main message is to be more proactive. I don’t believe we can afford to sit on the sidelines, so forgive me for being a bit of a provocateur on this topic.

Memetic warfare can be a confusing concept, so let me define it: Memetic warfare is competition over narrative, ideas, and social control in the social-media battlefield. One might think of it as a subset of information operations or psychological warfare tailored to social media. One can think of memetic warfare more broadly as narrative or cognitive conflict — the battle for hearts and minds that increasingly takes place online.

Two years ago when I wrote my first paper on memetic warfare, few understood what I was talking about. Today, phrases like fake news, Russian active measures, troll armies, and memes are part of everyday dialogue. Explaining memetic warfare is easier, but unfortunately the underlying challenges have intensified.

Indeed, the weaponization of memetics is everywhere and seems to be taking place as much within our countries as between our countries. I say memetic conflict is non-linear because the lines are often blurry: What is domestic versus foreign? What is part of a healthy exchange of ideas versus something more nefarious? At what point does memetic conflict become actual warfare?

I know most of us are here to look at it from a national security perspective, so let’s talk about its complexity in this light.

Think about Wikileaks. In March Wikileaks released the Vault 7 files detailing the CIA’s cyberwarfare capabilities. This was the memetic equivalent of a tactical nuke: It was an intentional, massive leak of highly sensitive information. It was weaponized for distribution across social media for a purpose that appears to be to weaken and embarrass the US. How do we think about this? Is Wikileaks a publisher, an extension of Russia (as some speculate), or something else?

Or think about Daesh. Daesh relies on the virtual realm to spread its message, radicalize new members, and coordinate remote-control attacks. It is a hybrid, open-source insurgency. How do we deal with a non-state actor like this — that uses our openness against us, that operates both within and outside our borders, that actively weaponizing memetics to advance its objectives?

Finally, there is Russia. Russia uses memetic warfare as a form of asymmetric conflict to advance its geopolitical objectives, often in a sort of privateering model. Even here the lines are blurry. If a Russian oligarch hires a US PR firm to run an influence campaign promoting CalExit (the separation of California from the United States), what do we make of it? Is this a PR campaign or an act of warfare? How do we think about this?