— How do you define Influence?

— Raphaël Chauvancy: Influence consists of indirectly and durably shaping an actor’s decisions—or the course of events. We speak of the “arc of interactions.” Influence is not about reacting to the adversary’s actions, but about conditioning an environment at the strategic level and acting on the target’s perceptions at the tactical level, with the goal of leading it to act mechanically in the desired direction, without using force or coercion. The initiator of an influence operation is an architect of change who channels forces, structures the unconscious, and reshapes societies in the domains of interest. Influence is really another name for environmental planning and for the narrative framing of a situation, which leads to practical effects. To achieve its goal, it reshapes cognitive and social structures. To influence is to choose the board on which the strategic game will be played and to define the rules in line with one’s interests. It should not be forgotten, however, that influence is distinct from information warfare, which refers to the set of offensive informational actions intended to distort analytical capabilities, paralyze decision-making capacities, and break the internal cohesion and legitimacy of the target—while securing one’s own.

— What is the “war through the social milieu,” called “GMS,” that you mention in your book?

— The components of GMS are, on the one hand, influence and, on the other, information warfare. GMS is in fact an accomplished version of what George Kennan called, in a declassified 1948 CIA memo, “political warfare.” Over the course of history, war first pitted armed forces against one another. Later, with the advent of revolutionary and subversive wars and colonial conflicts, we saw conflicts shift into the heart of populations—into the social milieu. Today, as we have entered the “age of the masses,” a war through the social milieu has appeared, meaning the whole set of social and cognitive structures that allow a given group to pursue its own strategy. Multi-domain, this war knows no geographic or temporal limits. It is a kind of integrated strategic architecture that uses every means to shape, to its advantage, the material and immaterial structures of its competitors. It is important to understand that GMS does not act on the adversary’s forces, but on its mechanisms and the nature of the target. It will not respond to a hostile act, but will seek to block its expression, or even its conception.

— What are the essential phases of a successful influence operation?

— An influence operation follows a cycle with a defined objective. The components of this cycle number four and must be approached in a global, integrated way. First comes the mapping of actors and their environment. This may be social, cognitive, or intellectual. There may be a mapping of beliefs and of interests between actors. For one must understand that a society can be mapped like a landscape. It has its own reliefs, climates, and as many particularities that must be known in order to act.

The second phase consists of giving an impulse. To do this, a network is created with actors who seem most favorable to our action, then neutral actors are reached. Next, a dynamic is created and joint actions are launched. From that point, it is important to establish a narrative to shape this phase of influence, which must be internalized by all actors.

Finally, the last step is “balancing,” to transform what was initially a voluntarist plan or a contractual relationship into a lasting ecosystem—even a form of harmony desired by the target itself. Why? Because it will judge that any challenge to it would be more costly than maintaining it. In this sense, influence is a form of power through dispossession. That is, the sender of such an operation does not seek to dominate its target, but to make itself indispensable and useful. It seeks to maintain a balanced relationship so that the target finds it in its own interest.

— What roles can art and culture play in the influence war?

— Influence wars are wars of seduction. They are also cultural wars that allow a state to redefine a relationship according to its own norms and moral references, by setting the analytical criteria that will be used by the target. In this sense, culture and aesthetics align with a certain worldview. Thus, during the Cold War, the United States orchestrated the rise of New York as an artistic and intellectual capital, to the detriment of Paris. Their aims were to better export their model and strengthen their power.

Today, France therefore produces mostly works derived from productions coming from across the Atlantic. By allowing the French exception to degrade, it has lost part of its capacity to embody an alternative democratic model—indeed, a competitor to that of the USA. Cultural war, even between allies, thus has a major impact. During the Cold War, the CIA likewise helped instrumentalize the rise of abstract art. It wanted to make Soviet realism look outdated and ridiculous. Thus, the perception of a passé art conveyed the sense of an outdated society and model in the USSR. Art and culture are now integrated into nations’ strategies for increasing power. China has multiplied its Confucius Institutes, which are extremely active; Turkey floods the Muslim world with television series; and South Korea has established itself as a radiating power thanks to K-pop.

— What roles have Russian and Iranian intelligence services played in importing the Russo-Ukrainian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts onto our soil?

— The aim of information wars is not to destroy the adversary but to provoke its internal dislocation. The operators of these hostile powers have sought to superimpose the conflicts in which they are engaged onto French fractures. They have thus pushed public opinion to perform a kind of transfer. For most of our compatriots have no knowledge of the causes and stakes of these conflicts, which should have left them more or less indifferent. This way of displacing conflicts to mask their real ins and outs ends up crystallizing the frustrations of part of the population. When we see the virulence of certain positions, we only understand them when we bring them back to what they conceal—namely, a form of proxy civil war, of exacerbated ethnic or social cleavages. This reveals an unprecedented fragility of French society, whose dislocation now forms part of credible hypotheses. Foreign “operators” feed these fractures. These projections of our internal divisions render the unacceptable acceptable. In France, regional minorities constitute natural levers for our competitors, who will attempt to transform claims expressed within the normal framework of democratic debate into a kind of militant secession from the national body, to provoke its internal collapse. It is difficult to prohibit operations that are, by definition, hidden. Even if some precautionary measures can be taken, these actions are not necessarily illegal. This therefore raises a question: Can we call into question what we are—a free, open society—because we are attacked by hostile powers? Very concretely, there are nonetheless legal measures that exist. Influencers in the service of foreign powers are now being targeted. Our fellow citizens are beginning to become aware of these influence wars, even if they are too few. We must strengthen our cohesion, educate our citizens about what GMS is, and also dare to be offensive and dynamic. For in influence and information wars, there is always a first-mover advantage.

— You note that Sweden has created a “Psychological Defense Agency,” whose mission is to counter disinformation. How does such a structure work? And how could France take inspiration from it to better defend itself?

— Sweden has updated the principle of total defense dating from the Cold War. This consists in organizing the psychological resistance of the population and its moral resilience against subversive inputs. It takes as a premise that every inhabitant must prepare, and that the center of gravity of its own security lies in the will to resist and in national cohesion even more than in material infrastructures. From then on, war through the social milieu becomes the problem of every citizen, who thereby exercises individual responsibility to defend a shared model and political interests. In France, this model does not exist, but we would do well to transpose and adapt it…