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  "description": "In today’s conflicts, information is no longer a supporting layer – it is part of the battlefield. As AI, platforms, and networks reshape how narratives move, communicators face a deeper question: what does responsibility look like in a system that often rewards the opposite?",
  "path": "/when-communication-becomes-a-weapon/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-30T06:22:42.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.nevillehobson.io",
  "tags": [
    "sustained military campaign against Iran",
    "how Iran has overhauled its social media strategy",
    "this is not just a single actor pushing messages: it is an ecosystem",
    "Content is pushed rapidly across platforms",
    "via DW",
    "asymmetric warfare",
    "human-centred AI in warfare",
    "Recent analysis from crisis communication expert Philippe Borremans",
    "via X",
    "In an Asymmetrical War, Iran Seeks an Edge With Its Information War",
    "Iran's propaganda machine trolls Trump",
    "Iran targets US public opinion with online information war",
    "Iran social media strategy pivots to information war amid US-Israel attack",
    "Fact check: How fake images from Iran misled media outlets",
    "White House's use of internet memes to promote Iran war sparks criticism",
    "Trump accuses Iran of using AI to spread disinformation",
    "What the 2026 Middle East War Is Teaching Us About Communications",
    "AI-generated Iran war videos surge as creators use new tech to cash in",
    "How AI Is Turbocharging the War in Iran",
    "When human-centred AI meets the realities of war",
    "2026 Iran War",
    "Asymmetric warfare"
  ],
  "textContent": "Since late February 2026, the United States and Israel have been engaged in a sustained military campaign against Iran, targeting its leadership, nuclear programme, and military infrastructure. Iran has responded with missile and drone attacks against Israel, US bases, and allied countries across the Middle East, widening the conflict across the region.\n\nWhat began as a series of coordinated strikes has quickly evolved into a broader regional crisis. Attacks have spread beyond Iran and Israel to neighbouring states, disrupted global shipping routes and oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, and raised fears of escalation across multiple fronts, not to mention a growing global economic crisis.\n\nAlongside the military conflict, another front has emerged – less visible, but no less consequential.\n\n## **When communication is part of the conflict**\n\nLast week, a report in _The Guardian_ described how Iran has overhauled its social media strategy in response to US and Israeli military attacks. What stood out wasn’t just the scale of the activity, but the clarity of intent: this is an all-out information war, running in parallel with events on the ground.\n\nSince then, further reporting has added another layer to that picture. As _The New York Times_ reported a few days ago, this is not just a single actor pushing messages: it is an ecosystem where state media, influencers, AI-generated content, and platform dynamics combine to move narratives across borders at speed.\n\n💡\n\nIn an environment shaped by fast-moving platforms, fragmented audiences, and increasingly capable AI tools, information is no longer a supporting layer in conflict. It is part of the conflict itself.\n\nThe shift is striking.\n\nWhat were once broad, multi-issue influence campaigns have become tightly focused, single narratives tied directly to the war. Content is pushed rapidly across platforms like X, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky, designed to exploit existing divisions – particularly within the United States.\n\nSome of that content is generated by AI. Videos, memes, even fabricated footage purporting to show successful strikes or emotional reactions from soldiers. Not necessarily to convince everyone, but to provoke, to unsettle, and to amplify doubt.\n\nAI-generated and doctored images can circulate widely before they are challenged – shaping perception before verification catches up / image via DW\n\nBut what matters just as much is how that content moves.\n\nA narrative might begin with a broadcast from state media. It is picked up and reshaped by online influencers. AI-generated media reinforces it. Then it is amplified across networks – sometimes aligned, sometimes opportunistic – until it reaches a global audience.\n\nBy that point, its origin is almost invisible.\n\nAt the same time, inside Iran, access to information is being restricted through near-total internet shutdowns and intimidation of those who might challenge the official narrative\n\nControl outward, control inward – two sides of the same strategy. This is what analysts call asymmetric warfare.\n\nWhen you cannot match your opponent in conventional terms, you compete where the barriers are lower, and the impact can still be significant. Today, that means the information environment.\n\nThis is not happening in isolation. Reporting suggests that narratives are not only created but also amplified through networks that extend beyond a single country, involving aligned state media, proxy accounts, and loosely coordinated actors.\n\nThis is less a campaign than a system – and this is where things become uncomfortable.\n\nThe tools and techniques being deployed are not unique to state actors. They are extensions of the same systems that underpin modern communication – targeting, amplification, emotional resonance, and speed.\n\nIn other words, the infrastructure of everyday digital communication is also the infrastructure of information warfare.\n\n## **When human-centred AI meets reality**\n\nEarlier this month, I wrote about human-centred AI in warfare and the idea that our use of these tools should reflect human values – dignity, accountability, and transparency.\n\nBut what happens when those same tools are used in a context where the objective is not understanding, but advantage?\n\nAI does not introduce deception into communication. It accelerates and scales it. It lowers the cost of producing content that looks and feels real, regardless of whether it is. And it does so in combination with human intent.\n\n💡\n\nMuch of the activity described in recent reporting is not automated in the way we might assume. It is hybrid – human-operated accounts, coordinated behaviour, and AI-enhanced content working together to produce something more powerful than any one element alone.\n\nIn a conflict setting, that changes the balance.\n\nTruth becomes slower than narrative. Verification lags behind visibility. And by the time something is proven false, it may already have done its work.\n\nRecent analysis from crisis communication expert Philippe Borremans reinforces this shift. Writing about the current conflict, he argues that events have compressed years of theory into days, exposing how quickly traditional crisis assumptions break down.\n\nIn one example, misinformation spread within minutes of an event, while verified explanations took hours to emerge – by which time the narrative had already taken hold.\n\nPhilippe's conclusion is a practical one: the question is no longer whether organisations can respond quickly, but whether they are structured to respond at all. In an environment where channels themselves are contested, and information moves at speed, conventional communication planning may simply be too slow.\n\n## **The role of communicators**\n\nFor those of us working in communication – not in conflict, but within the same information environment – this raises a more difficult question than simply identifying misinformation.\n\nWhat is our responsibility in an environment where the system itself rewards speed over accuracy, emotion over evidence, and reach over reflection?\n\nIt is tempting to see information warfare as something that happens “out there” – the domain of governments and intelligence agencies. But the dynamics are not separate from our world. They are extensions of it.\n\nMost communicators are not participants in these campaigns. But we operate within the same systems that make them possible.\n\nTrusted brands can be repurposed to carry misleading or manipulated narratives / via X\n\nThe same pressures that shape corporate messaging, public relations, and social media strategy – the demand for immediacy, the pursuit of engagement, the reliance on platforms we do not control – are present here, just intensified.\n\nAnd, increasingly, operating in an environment where the guardrails that once constrained misleading or manipulative content appear weaker or more unevenly applied.\n\n💡\n\nPerhaps the real issue is not whether this strategy is effective, or whether others will respond in kind. It is whether we have already normalised a communication environment where this was always going to happen.\n\nIt's where speed matters more than substance. Where visibility can be manufactured. And where authenticity is increasingly difficult to distinguish from simulation.\n\nIf that is the case, then information warfare is not an exception. It is an expression of the system as it now exists.\n\n## **What this means**\n\nFor communicators, the challenge is no longer just about crafting clear messages or building trust. It is about navigating a landscape where trust itself is under constant pressure.\n\nWhere the question is not simply “is this message effective?” Instead, it's “what does responsible communication look like in a system that often rewards the opposite?”\n\nThat is not a question with an easy answer, but it may be the one that matters most.\n\nPerhaps the most striking thing about this moment is not the sophistication of the tools or the scale of the activity. It is how familiar it all feels.\n\nThat's not because we have seen it before in this form, but because the underlying dynamics – speed, amplification, division, persuasion – are the same ones we engage with every day.\n\nOnly now, the stakes are much higher.\n\n* * *\n\n**Sources:**\n\n  * In an Asymmetrical War, Iran Seeks an Edge With Its Information War (The New York Times, 28 March 2026)\n  * Iran's propaganda machine trolls Trump (NPR, 28 March 2026)\n  * Iran targets US public opinion with online information war (France24, 25 March 2026)\n  * Iran social media strategy pivots to information war amid US-Israel attack (The Guardian, 22 March 2026)\n  * Fact check: How fake images from Iran misled media outlets (DW, 19 March 2026)\n  * White House's use of internet memes to promote Iran war sparks criticism (PBS, 19 March 2026)\n  * Trump accuses Iran of using AI to spread disinformation (Reuters, 16 March 2026)\n  * What the 2026 Middle East War Is Teaching Us About Communications (Philippe Borremans, 14 March 2026)\n  * AI-generated Iran war videos surge as creators use new tech to cash in (BBC, 7 March 2026)\n  * How AI Is Turbocharging the War in Iran (The Wall Street Journal, 7 March 2026)\n  * When human-centred AI meets the realities of war (6 March 2026)\n  * 2026 Iran War (Wikipedia)\n  * Asymmetric warfare (Wikipedia)\n\n",
  "title": "When communication becomes a weapon",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-30T06:22:41.918Z"
}