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Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do about It

Richard Stengel

3.82 · Rating details · 285 ratings · 65 reviews

Disinformation is as old as humanity. When Satan told Eve nothing would happen if she bit the apple, that was disinformation. But the rise of social media has made disinformation even more pervasive and pernicious in our current era. In a disturbing turn of events, governments are increasingly using disinformation to create their own false narratives, and democracies are p ...more

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Hardcover, 368 pages

Published October 8th 2019 by Atlantic Monthly Press

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Sep 02, 2019 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it

3.5 If you are one, like myself, who wonders why our government is slow to act, seemingly taking forever to get anything done, this is the book to read. Chronicling his time in the state department, he shows the many divisions, turf wars, constant meetings where little is accomplished, he shows how hard it is to put any new programs into place. He also shows how disinformation is put in place, ads targeted to specific audiences, who spread these false beliefs. He talks of the dark web and its in ...more

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Sep 30, 2019 Venky rated it really liked it

Shelves: information-technology-ai

Gleb Olegovich Pavlovsky a Russian political scientist and a self-proclaimed “political technologist”) once famously exclaimed that to get people to vote the way you want, “you need to build a fairy tale that will be common to all of them.” Who better to assimilate this fact than Richard Stengel. Mr. Stengel, in his capacity as the longest serving Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in American history (2013-16) spent his entire tenure directing all resources at his Gleb Olegovich Pavlovsky a Russian political scientist and a self-proclaimed “political technologist”) once famously exclaimed that to get people to vote the way you want, “you need to build a fairy tale that will be common to all of them.” Who better to assimilate this fact than Richard Stengel. Mr. Stengel, in his capacity as the longest serving Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in American history (2013-16) spent his entire tenure directing all resources at his disposal to counter the threat of global disinformation.

In a hard-as-nails, quasi memoir Mr. Stengel regales his readers as in a quest to combat the plague of disinformation, he unwittingly locks horns with two of the deadliest purveyors of the tradecraft of disinformation. No.55 Savushkin Street in St Petersburg, four story limestone building with neither razzmatazz nor name was the very motherlode of disinformation. The machines of propaganda were lubricated and greased in this otherwise nondescript building. No.55 Savushkin was Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s “troll factory.” Registered to the “Internet Research Agency”, “a shadowy Russian company that seems to do everything from creating sock puppets to practicing cyber vandalism…every day, in two shifts, a few hundred young people spend their time writing blog posts, tweets, Facebook posts, VKontakte posts and much more.” Spewing out thousands of content or rather malcontent at a speed which would put the reproduction of rabbits to utter shame, this troll farm was the veritable synonym of malicious disinformation.

As Mr. Stengel reveals in startling detail, the other most insidious source of disinformation emanated from a less tranquil but unlikeliest of settings. Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of the Iraq and Levant (“ISIL” a.k.a “ISIS”) may not strike one as popular mediums of news enjoying stellar ratings. Yet, the two most murderous terror outfits wreaking mayhem across the globe, also double up as genius peddlers of disinformation. As Mr. Stengler, was briefed by a senior intelligence officer, who employed an element of morbid humour for added effect, “ISIS is a distributed network. Al-Qaeda is Yahoo. ISIS is Google.” As Mr. Stengel explains, the twin kingpins of terror while not slaughtering civilians in Syria or reducing cities to a rubble in Iraq, were busy circulating English language magazines. While Al-Qaeda’s online publication was – ironically titled “Inspire”, ISIS’s competing offering was named “Dabiq.” Writing about Dabiq, Mr. Stengel says, “it was a digital publication…it actually had a pretty sophisticated layout and decent pictures…. the two publications debated each other about Islamic theory. They were like the Time and Newsweek of medieval Islamic theology.” Incidentally before accepting a job with the State, Mr. Stengel was Time ‘s 16th Managing Editor from 2006 to 2013.

Attempting to combat the pernicious princes of fake news, let alone conquering them, as Mr. Stengel realised was an unenviable if not an insurmountable task. To add insult to injury, the weapons available in his arsenal was turning out to be woefully inadequate. The State was grossly ill-quipped to deal with the sophistry and chicanery of both the Russians and the reprehensible terrorists. As Mr. Stengel elucidates, the actual canary in the coal mine was not the physical war and bloodshed but the information war that was engulfing and enveloping the digital world in a sweep, all encompassing. When Putin’s special Spetsnaz forces invaded Crimea, backed by a narrative of white lies and brazen denial, they were merely paying obeisance to the principles of Igor Panarin and Alexander Dugin, Russia’s two primary theorists of information warfare. Dugin, popularly known as “Putin’s Rasputin” coined the term “netcentric warfare”, a military line of effort. Hand in glove with the digital propaganda machine was RT the English language Russian TV channel. Conceived by former media minister Mikhail Lesin, and Russian president Vladimir Putin’s press spokesperson Aleksei Gromov, RT in the words of Mr. Stengel, “used all the traditional tricks of tabloid TV: attractive anchors, colourful graphics, wacky guests, sensational chyrons.” Even Julian Assange was provided a TV segment for his hosting. However, at the helm of all this glitz and glamour is Margarita Simonovna Simonyan, editor-in-chief and master orchestrator of the disinformation campaign.

Similar was the strategy adopted by ISIS. Their suave imagery, magnetic resonance and the affiliation towards a cause acted as an irresistible lure to the youth to either join them in their homicidal escapades or to essay the role of Lone Rangers in wreaking havoc through individual acts of mindless mass shooting and suicide bombings. Someone even termed ISIS the Muslim version of the Baader-Meinhof gang.

With a view to countering the “Russification”, and radicalization of the world, Mr. Stengel undertakes some bold and ingenious steps. In addition to creating and overseeing the Global Engagement Center, the United States’ only stand-alone anti-ISIL messaging entity., he also co-opted foreign allies in establishing the Sawab Center in Abu Dhabi. Initially nursing honest ambitions, the Sawab Centre has become a model organization for disseminating anti-ISIL messages and campaigns. The Under Secretary also oversaw the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) program is a competitive. This was a merit-based scholarship program funded by the U.S. Department of State. FLEX students who pass multiple rounds of testing earn a scholarship to spend an academic year in the United States living with a volunteer host family and attending a U.S. high school. Unfortunately, Russia prohibited its students from enrolling in the FLEX programme following a false allegation of the abduction of a Russian boy, who was part of the FLEX programme.

Even while dealing with a subject as serious as that of disinformation, Mr. Stengel juxtaposes a blend of sardonic wit with dollops of wisdom. For example, while describing the filtering process to which Mr. Stengel was subjected to before being cleared for service as the Under Secretary of State. “For the SF86 and the Senate Foreign Relations Questionnaire, you have to list every foreign trip you have taken over the past 14 years, every significant relationship you had with any foreign national on the trip, and to the best of your ability, an estimate of how much you drank on these trips, Oh, and whether you had any illegal drugs.”

Mr. Stengel also recounts a painfully embarrassing personal encounter while experimenting with 140 characters on Twitter. Tweeting in a fit of fury about the downing of MH-17, a Malaysian Airlines commercial jet with 298 passengers aboard, by Ukraine separatists, who fired a Russian made BUK missile at it, Mr. Stengler overcome by rage, expresses his disgust on the incident. However instead of employing the hash tag #UnitedForUkraine, he falls prey to the auto-complete function and chooses the first hash tag to appear on screen. Thus #UnitedforGaza instead of #UnitedforUkraine. As may be expected, even though he deletes the tweet subsequently, he gets panned on Twitter by Twitterati, of silly and sublime breed alike.

So long as there are warring factions with entrenched beliefs in their ideologies however manic or senseless, the armoury of disinformation will not be lacking in myriad weapons. This has been evidenced in eviscerating detail by the Trump campaign and the Russian involvement in it. However, hope quelling maliciousness is brought to bear, courtesy, the indefatigable efforts of intrepid people, the likes of Richard Stengel. ...more

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Nov 11, 2019 Himanshu Modi rated it liked it

Shelves: memoir, non-fiction, globalisation, politics, terrorism, psychology

Richard Stengel, as a former editor of TIME, sure knows how to put out an headline to grab attention. The title was what drew me to the book in the first place. It was definitely more appealing than the alternative, more accurate title: Richard Stengel (Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy) - A Memoir.

No, I would not have picked a memoir of a government official. Unless he was going to go all-out and put out stories like Snowden or Assange, the book would be a bit of indulgent reminisci Richard Stengel, as a former editor of TIME, sure knows how to put out an headline to grab attention. The title was what drew me to the book in the first place. It was definitely more appealing than the alternative, more accurate title: Richard Stengel (Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy) - A Memoir.

No, I would not have picked a memoir of a government official. Unless he was going to go all-out and put out stories like Snowden or Assange, the book would be a bit of indulgent reminiscing by an ex-government official, or an exercise in Diplomacy and Public Relations itself. Or so I would have assumed.

Regardless, I think the book was quite ok in the end. Stengel's reminiscing is not of the romantic-nostalgia kind. If anything, the Dilbert like damning of the office culture in the US Government was actually funny. A government body putting out a yeah-right kind of a sarcastic video to tell potential jihadists to NOT join ISIS is the kind of grim humor I did not expect going in the book. Or the labyrinthine corridors in the offices of Governments. They definitely had a I-shouldn't-be-laughing-at-that quality to it.

Stengel's background does mean that he knows how to weave a story to capture the attention of a reader. But it felt like he took the task of organizing a whole book worth of material, akin to editing a magazine article. That didn't work very well. For one, there were the constant jumps between Russian, ISIS and towards the end, Trump's disinformation. Plus there were always the personal experiences, since this really is a memoir. While you can follow the train of thought, the book feels like a collection of loosely connected anecdotes.

That perhaps was my biggest gripe. I wanted to understand more about the dynamics of information wars. We get some of it. But because the book is not just about it, it simply doesn't feel comprehensive enough. Perhaps, subconsciously, I imagined more of a Michael Lewis like handling of the subject. As unfair an expectation that might be, I do wish the book was more about Disinformation, and less about Stengel's stint as under secretary. A lot of the material is still relevant, and things that I had no clue about before I read this book - things like cancellation of the Russian students in exchange programs. Heck, how the purpose of exchange programs is to flex soft power by nations. But, by ring-fencing the subject of dis-information by Stengel's job-description, I think a lot of other areas are blatantly absent. Heck, cambridge analytica doesn't get discussed at all. Neither does China find much of a mention. Heck, use of Information warfare in Indian politics has reached staggering proportions. I wish someone would write a book about that!

In the end, as I said, the book did add net value to my over all understanding of the world. But I will have to look elsewhere for more on the subject. ...more

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Nov 22, 2019 Cary Giese rated it it was amazing

My five star rating of this book is based on the last chapter!

Before the last chapter the book chronicled the goings-on in government as the various interested parties grappled with counter messaging verses ISIS, the Russians, and others. They were struggling to get partners and develope a strategy for global response centers around the world. Bureaucratic ownership of the issue slowed the process but eventually a clear understanding of what to do and who is to do it evolved.

I was reminded that ...more

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Dec 13, 2019 Антон Санков rated it really liked it

All in all a good read, and provides a good insight about how the Government works from the inside from the view point of an outsider.

What I did not liked about the book is that it is way too long, and the main topic is only established in the last few chapters.

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Feb 10, 2020 Hans rated it it was amazing

Shelves: political

He who controls the narrative, controls the minds of the populace. Information Warfare is a battle over reality and most often facts and truth are the easiest victims. Especially pertinent for our times, critical thinking has become not just a 'nice to have' but a 'must have' to survive in the age of disinformation. Adversaries know that they don't have to sell you on their 'facts' or point of view, they just have to get you to doubt yours, often just long enough that it gives them time and spac He who controls the narrative, controls the minds of the populace. Information Warfare is a battle over reality and most often facts and truth are the easiest victims. Especially pertinent for our times, critical thinking has become not just a 'nice to have' but a 'must have' to survive in the age of disinformation. Adversaries know that they don't have to sell you on their 'facts' or point of view, they just have to get you to doubt yours, often just long enough that it gives them time and space to achieve what they're after.

Combine years of marketing psychology, big budgets (often State funded) dialed into common grievances, anger and indignation and you have the recipe for high-jacking the minds of your targeted audience. It's been done repeatedly through out history and is scary how simple and easy it is, that the victims of the manipulation seldom realize their minds have been hacked. Thus you can create your army of mindless and unwitting trolls.

There is an objective reality that can be known and experienced, but disinformationists will deluge the populace with their opinionated toxic waste long enough and with enough sincerity that anyone might begin to question it. Demagogues are the most astute at this, reveling in the confusion they create with a condescending smug grin.

Sadly, though the Russian population has been the victims of disinformation for generations (to the point where it's an accepted part of their culture and experience), their Government has turned it's focus to sowing the seeds of discontent across the West with remarkable success. In a type of Political Ju-jitsu the Russian Government uses the very freedom of speech they deny their own citizens against the West. However, like most demagogues, their day will come when they'll be exposed for the cowardly insecure frauds that they are, even if they've succeeded in making the intellectual world burn.

Critical Thinking, reflection, self-awareness are the individual and collective antidotes to useless white noise being blared 24/7. This was the original purpose of Education in a democratic society, to inoculate the populace against the clever machinations of those who seek to exploit them. ...more

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Jan 21, 2020 Karen rated it liked it

When I shelved Information Wars, I thought it would be a journalistic discussion about disinformation (based on the title). It's not. It's a memoir of Stengel's time at the State Department, with some content about disinformation included. ...more

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Jan 10, 2020 Ned Leffingwell rated it really liked it

Shelves: library, non-fiction

This is part memoir about working at the State Department and part informational text about how ISIS and Russia use social media to spread ideology and try to destabilize the United States. The author is a former editor of Time magazine who went to work on countering ISIS and Russian disinformation. The book was interesting and depressing. He offers his opinion on how to fix the problem in the final chapter. I wish more was being done on this issue. He posits that Russia wants a xenophobic, anti ...more

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Mar 06, 2020 C. S. rated it it was amazing

Shelves: netgalley, non-fiction

By turns eye opening, maddening, fascinating, and humorous.

I haven't been sucked in by a book (let alone a nonfiction book) like this in a while. Read in just a couple of sittings.

Highly recommended for fans of memoirs, politics, and current affairs. ...more

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Nov 29, 2019 Dan Dundon rated it really liked it

I almost didn't pick up Richard Stengel's book on the information (AKA disinformation) wars. Having read many of the news stories about Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election, I suspected this book was just going to be a rehash of earlier news stories.

However, I was wrong and actually learned a great deal more about Russia's efforts. Unfortunately more information makes Russia even more scary. For example, Stengel describes how Russia Today is a widely viewed television pr ...more

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May 26, 2020 Sjpinnow rated it really liked it

Both mindblowing and mundane, look at the Info War thats been subtly ruining our lives, now moreso than ever. This is eye-opening while painting a pretty awful picture of our failures in the process. The purposeful weaponization of information, civility, and privacy is something we all need to understand is happening to us before we can do anything about it. This book helps with that.

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Mar 22, 2020 Ilib4kids is currently reading it

Shelves: w_nf_computer

355.343 STE
eAudio
State: 政权
Terms: autocrats and authoritarian governments.

p3 Why does disinformation work? Well, disinformation almost always hits its target because the target-you, me, everyone-rises up to meet it. We ask for it. Social scientists call this
confirmation bias. We seek out information that confirms our beliefs. Disinformation sticks because it fits into our mental map of how the world works. The internet is the greatest delivery system for confirmation bias in history.

p4 The ana ...more

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Nov 04, 2020 Keyton rated it really liked it

This was a pretty good mix of inside baseball, a tour of how the sausage gets made, and the view from a front-row seat to some interesting world events. The subtitle implies more analysis and less daily humdrum than the reality ... the analysis was lacking but the tick-tock of events was engaging. It was more TIME and less Atlantic, which I guess makes sense given Stengel's previous position.

And of course, it was utterly disturbing! Both the extent of Russia's and ISIS's mis-/disinformation camp This was a pretty good mix of inside baseball, a tour of how the sausage gets made, and the view from a front-row seat to some interesting world events. The subtitle implies more analysis and less daily humdrum than the reality ... the analysis was lacking but the tick-tock of events was engaging. It was more TIME and less Atlantic, which I guess makes sense given Stengel's previous position.

And of course, it was utterly disturbing! Both the extent of Russia's and ISIS's mis-/disinformation campaigns, and our ineptitude in reacting to them even when we were willing to try (pre-election), and doubly so when we started to turn a blind eye (post-election).

A few quotes for the memory bank:

p.4 This quest for balance is a journalistic trap the Putin and ISS and the disinformationists exploit. In a fundamental way, they win when an accepted fact is thrown open for debate. Treating both sides of an argument as equal when one side is demonstrably false is not fair or balanced - it's just wrong. As I used to tell the foreign service officers who were working to counter disinformation, "There aren't two sides to a lie."

p.31 In government in general and at State in particular, meetings are not preparation for work, they are the work. People prepared for meetings, they participated in them, and then they summarized what had happened for another meeting. In government, meetings are the product. People judged how they had done that day by hos the meetings had gone."

p. 129 The idea that history is written by the victors was an old-fashioned notion. History was being written in the moment in 140 characters. What was new about ISIS - and Russia - was that they were writing the history before the battle, shaping the victory narrative before there was a victory.

p. 167 There's an old saying in journalism, 'We're faster than anyone better than us, and better than anyone faster.' CSCC was slower and worse.

p.198 [Russia's Internet Research Agency definition of troll IN THEIR TRAINING MATERIAL FOR NEW TROLLS!] TROLL. The purpose of the troll is to produce a quarrel which offends his interlocutor. It is worth remembering that trolling is not writing articles to order. It is a deliberate provocation with the goal of ridiculing your opponent.

p.202 It was sobering. They were equal-opportunity offenders. They supported liberal causes and conservative ones. There was no particular through-line or ideology in their messaging other than to stir up dissatisfaction and grievance in the audience. In the same day, they created social media that said immigration was polluting America and that racism was keeping down African Americans. ... ... If you engaged disinformationists - which is what they wanted - they won; if you didnot engage them, they won. They tapped into prejudice and ignorance and grievance. They weren't so much creating resentment as aggravating it.

p. 273 All the questions I got were fundamentally the same. People around the world asking, "All that stuff you've been telling us for so long - about democracy and human rights and fairness and diversity - it's not really true, is it?" American public diplomacy is ultimately about values. And now people around the world were saying that this story was a fiction. It's not as though people around the world had never said that before. We'd been called hypocrites long before Donald Trump decided to run for president. But we'd never had someone running for president who so explicitly rejected those values both in his ideology and in his behavior. That was something new.

p. 285 [on a narrative for the 21st century] A few things seemed clear. Strongmen, authoritarian nationalism, and illiberal democracies were all on the march. Brutal non-state actors like ISIS were on the rise. Big systems were under attack from small systems. The politics of force seemed to be trampling the force of politics. Disinformation was growing while free speech was shrinking. Authoritarian regimes were anti-fact."

p. 291 Democracies aren't very good at fighting disinformation. We are too open. We value free speech in an information war. Our Constitution and our laws are focused on protecting speech whether it is true or false. That is in part because we've always believed that truth will win out. As a result, we have very few laws or means for punishing or restricting the spread of speech that is false. That now seems like a design flaw. I'm not suggesting amending the First Amendment, but I do think it's worth examining whether speech that engenders prejudice and hatred should have the same protections as other speech.

...more

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Dec 22, 2019 Jill rated it really liked it

The author, former editor of Time Magazine who accepted a role in the State Department as Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, offers an illuminating and disturbing view into the seriousness of the disinformation war that has ramped up dramatically in recent years, as well as the excruciatingly ponderous pace at which government organizations address such concerns. He openly admits that the "scale and sophistication of Russian disinformation were beyond what we were capable of The author, former editor of Time Magazine who accepted a role in the State Department as Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, offers an illuminating and disturbing view into the seriousness of the disinformation war that has ramped up dramatically in recent years, as well as the excruciatingly ponderous pace at which government organizations address such concerns. He openly admits that the "scale and sophistication of Russian disinformation were beyond what we were capable of responding to" and a truth that we've all come to know by now: "Disinformation doesn't create divisions; it amplifies them."

Soon after Stengel's arrival at the State Department he learned that meetings are not preparation for work, they are the work. Meetings are the work product and State is an observational culture. Every move is thoroughly vetted and thought out, and words are carefully parsed. I could sense his frustration at the pace and constrictions of this type of work environment. It also took a full year for him to be confirmed to take on the role that Kerry had selected him for. At the time, State Department didn't have a single person assigned to tweet or be on social media while the Secretary was speaking, and they lacked a comprehensive digital communications strategy. This, and other shortcomings in their communications, consumed much of Stengel's time while at State.

Much of the text in the book is dedicated to ISIL, ISIS and Russian communications, and the impact they had on the U.S. and on the world. Stengel readily admitted that "we were getting beaten on volume in the information war against ISIS." How ironic that the government of the society that invented the technologies used were unable to harness those technologies as well as our foreign adversaries !

The book is organized into 7 sections: I. Welcome to State; II. Getting There; III. The Job; IV. Information War; V. The Battle is Engaged; VI. Disruption; VII. What to Do About Disinformation. Each section contains various vignettes about meetings and topics, though at times they felt rather free form, disorganized and unrelated. Perhaps this was addressed in the final edition of the book. (I was reading an advanced reader's copy.)

Though the book was filled with a lot of disturbing and fascinating detail about disinformation and the war on truth, the final chapter on what we can do about disinformation was the most useful to me, and I'm sure I'll be reading that section again. This is a broad topic that will consume our culture and our legislators for years to come as we navigate our way through this new information age, and I'm sure I'll be reading a lot more about this. I welcome any additional insights Stengel can provide from his vantage point in both journalism and government service. ...more

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May 28, 2020 Scott Martin rated it liked it

(3.5 Stars) Not the most uplifting read, but one that has some significant ramifications for the world today. It is part memoir, part educational/current affairs work about some of the key information confrontations the US has faced in the past few years. In particular, when the author was working at the State Department during the Obama Administration. It follows the two biggest international informational challengers that the US dealt with during his State Department time: ISIS and Russia. Bot (3.5 Stars) Not the most uplifting read, but one that has some significant ramifications for the world today. It is part memoir, part educational/current affairs work about some of the key information confrontations the US has faced in the past few years. In particular, when the author was working at the State Department during the Obama Administration. It follows the two biggest international informational challengers that the US dealt with during his State Department time: ISIS and Russia. Both caught the US off-guard, and often saw the most powerful nation in the world playing defense in the information realm.

For Russia, disinformation is a well-established part of their game. The rise of the internet and social media gave them a new platform in which to engage in their form of information warfare against the US and its values, with a higher degree of success than the author would like to have admitted. The US lacked the focus and understanding of Russia and their mindset, thus leaving them unchallenged in their assertions and actions, which still have significant ramifications on international policy.

With ISIS, their recent military setbacks dampened their once formidable on-line presence, but particularly in the early 2010s, they were a significant information threat to the US and its interests in the Muslim World. It also didn’t help that the US had trouble determining the right audience for ISIS and their counter-information strategy.

As for the US, the government mechanisms, especially the ones at State Department, were often not sufficient to counter the rise of social media and the ability for disinformation to spread so rapidly and rebuff the efforts of fact-checkers and accurate, verified information. That the author was once an editor for Time Magazine makes his observations particularly insightful, as a man used to one form of media had to face the impact of newer systems and mindsets.

The end does offer some hope and ways ahead in how the US can counter the various forms of disinformation that seem to trip up US foreign policy. However, the current administration is not helping matters in this realm. It is possible, the book is far from optimistic that the US can overcome many of these challenges in a timely fashion.

There is good information, but I probably could have done without all the person recollections. Still, not a bad read, and one that does have some use as a teaching aid/warning about the power of disinformation, and that the US is not all powerful. ...more

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Nov 17, 2019 Jonathan rated it really liked it

Shelves: trump

"There is not much irony in diplomacy"

Perhaps the best sngle line from this well written book. Stengels class as a journalist shines through this book. As a former managing editor at Time magazine and collaborator with Nelson Mandela on Long Walk to Freedom and other books Stengel brought some serious class and clout to his role as under secretay of something or other at the state dept, I don't remember the exact title and Stengel has some exasperated fun with the various acronyms and mysterious ...more

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Jun 22, 2020 James Bourland rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

So I wasn't sure what to expect with this book, honestly because I bought the wrong book (I was originally looking for "The Revolution That Wasn't", but I mixed them up, simply due to the common theme).

All that said, I'm really glad I made the mistake of buying this one.

This was a really interesting book. It's the insider's view of the State Department, but told from the perspective of someone who was not a career State employee. I didn't have much of an idea as to how State operated, but than ...more

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Feb 21, 2020 Betsy rated it it was ok

I read this book because I was interested in understanding what disinformation looks like, how it evolved, and how we can combat it.

Instead I got hundreds of pages of autobiography from a very uninteresting person with no real ability at self reflection. The whole time I kept thinking, “did no one edit this to remove the boring parts?” Having worked for the federal government myself, I can vouch that much of the information he discusses—the bureaucracy, the acronyms, the silo effect of different ...more

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Jun 26, 2020 Amanda rated it liked it

Shelves: smart-people-books

This book sells itself as being all about disinformation, and particularly how disinformation is being used by the Russians and ISIS. And that's sort of true, but sort of not true. The first 30-40% of the novel reads more like Stengel's memoir of his time at the State Department. I'm a nerd for Obama-era D.C. memoirs, so that was fine, but definitely not what the "blurb" says the book is about.

I was reading this book for its suitability as a college course "textbook" of sorts on how disinformat ...more

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Jan 09, 2020 Bill Sleeman rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-history

An ARC copy from ALA (thanks Anne!) Information Wars: How We Lost the Battle against Disinformation and What We Can do about it by Richard Stengel is a fascinating and scary read. Anyone interested in how information is used, mis-used or ignored should read this book. Stengel provides important details on how disinformation played a key role in the election of President Trump long before Trump was even a candidate. There is so much in this book that it is difficult to summarize in any cogent w

...more

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Jun 16, 2020 Ed Barton rated it really liked it

Of the 300+ pages in the book, only about 40 cover policy discussions and fulfill the title's promise. That doesn't make for a bad book, but certainly a different one than expected. Richard Stengel's memoir of his time at the State Department resonates with bureaucracy, dry humor, and the type of readability that you would expect from a former award winning journalist. Whether it is describing the gloomy offices on the first floor, the Senate confirmation process, or meetings with POTUS, you get ...more

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Jun 27, 2020 Steph rated it liked it

3.5 As has been stated, this book reads more like a memoir as it is based almost solely on Stengel's personal experience. Not that there is anything wrong with that as his experience in the field is relevant, timely, and impressive, I just felt like the title and overview could have been more forthright. That said, I appreciated his honest reflections throughout where he takes ownership of his mistakes and what he overlooked. Worthwhile, but I think I will search for something more comprehensive ...more

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Sep 20, 2020 Ace Brownstone rated it really liked it

I'd give this a 3.5 if I could. As a dear friend said of the book, "it contains a great deal of interesting information presented in a less than compelling way". The author is mistakenly under the impression that the minutiae of life in government is what readers are interested in and he can't help but view almost every interaction with the governmental bureaucracy in a comparative light to the private sector, often drawing myopic and boorish conclusions, which is a dull distraction. However, wh ...more

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Nov 08, 2019 Carsten Hansen rated it really liked it

Shelves: history-20th-century, arc-other, various-non-fiction

Former TIME editor and Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs discusses his times, challenges and experiences during his three-year stint in the State Department under John Kerry.
During his time he, the department and the Obama administration dealt with the challenges combating ISIS's information campaign, the Russian attacks, and disinformation on Twitter and Facebook, the rise of Trump and much more.
I found the book to be an interesting look behind the curtains, the problems ...more

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Aug 12, 2020 Richard rated it it was amazing

This is a page-turner that you will not want to set down. While acknowledging that disinformation has a long history across many societies, Stengel lays out the sky-high stakes for all of us today. The globalization of ommunications systems has facilitated disinformation across all of our media. Stengel not only persuasively lays out the challenge, but also has suggestions for addressing the mess we have gotten into. As he makes clear, only an informed public can begin to turn around the forces ...more

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Jan 03, 2021 Dan Stoyell rated it liked it

It's been a while since I read this. I remember being disappointed that the vast majority of the book is a memoir rather than analytic. That part wasn't insightful or interesting enough that I would have picked it up for that alone. If you are interested in learning about the specific machinations of the federal government's more obscure arms, it might be a good fit.

The latter part was much better. It's a more focused analysis of how (most the US government) can and should respond to foreign thr ...more

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Oct 28, 2019 Brijesh rated it it was ok

Point of view of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs who was leading TIMES magazine before this post , although the topic is listed as Information wars, the book is more about his time at White house , it was a bit let down , but still the books talks about Russia , ISIS , middle east Iran , Iraq , Syria , media tweaking , white house politics , information leakage at White house,; etc..

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Dec 25, 2019 Lenny Herman rated it it was amazing

Shelves: current-events, audiobook, politics, non-fiction

Did we lose the Global Battle against disinformation? Yes and no. Mr. Stengel answers these questions. Unfortunately, much of the work he did has been destroyed by the current administration. I recommend the book, but the first three chapters are about the bureaucratic workings of the State Department why it is so hard to achieve anything of importance But Parts 4, 5 and 6 of the book are about the information battle on lies and disinformation of Russia and ISIS.

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Feb 18, 2020 Linda rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Wow! This is a fascinating memoir of Richard Stengel, a former NY Times editor and Undersecretary of State. The written word has power, more than most of us ever imagine. A lot of what we read, see, and hear in the media--especially online--is wrong. Whether it's a "harmless" mistake, rumor, or gossip or something purposely posted to deceive, we need to learn to discern what is true and what is spin. This book is a first step in heightening our awareness to this insidious problem. ...more

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Mar 31, 2020 Alex rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: cyber-infowar

Much more anecdotal and like a memoir (including the first 1/3 about what it’s like to work in the State Dept etc) than analytical. And a lot more about the frustration of working within the US bureaucracy. May be better for readers less familiar with US policy making generally, but on information operations specifically, disappointing. For analysis, skip to the last chapter, which could be a stand-alone article.

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About Richard Stengel

Richard Stengel

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Richard Stengel is the former editor of TIME. He collaborated with Nelson Mandela on his bestselling 1993 autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, and later served as coproducer of the 1996 Oscar-nominated documentary Mandela. He is also the author of January Sun: One Day, Three Lives, a South African Town. Stengel is married to Mary Pfaff and they have two sons.

Books by Richard Stengel

Mandela's Way: Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage

Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

You're Too Kind: A Brief History of Flattery

TIME The Constitution: Does It Still Matter?

January Sun: One Day, Three Lives, a South African Town

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“Trump's election was also an enormous challenge to American public diplomacy and to the American brand. So much of what we believed and promoted as part of the American Brand --free speech, freedom of religion, the power of diversity, equality before the law, a level playing field -- was challenged by brand Trump.” — 0 likes

“Our adversaries are fighting to prevent people from having agency over their own lives. They are fighting to have autocrats and ideologies make decisions for us. They are fighting to dismantle the infrastructure of truth. They are fighting to undermine the idea that human beings can be moved by fact and reason. They are fighting for relativism, the idea that no idea is worth fighting for. When I was in government, I felt my job was to help people here and around the world determine their own destiny. At the heart of that fight was the idea that people could use information - factual information - to decide what was best for them. That idea is still worth fighting for.” — 0 likes

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