Beyond the Firehose
How AI, Sharp Power, and Digital Proximity Redraw the Protection Battlefield
So, if in 2016 the RAND article I used for my Disinformation and Cognitive Warfare paper called it the Russian “firehose of falsehood” propaganda model, today we are not dealing with a hose anymore. Automated accounts, synthetic video and text, and algorithmic feeds push influence that is always on, hyper-targeted and gamified. TikTok is the clearest example of this weaponised attention, but it is not alone. The same logic runs through almost every major platform on your principal’s phone.
Looking ahead, quantum-safe encryption sits in the background as the next structural shift. As these technologies mature, more of the coordination behind influence operations will move into channels that are harder to inspect at speed. Not science fiction, just a trajectory. A visible flood of content on the surface, with more of the plumbing underneath sliding out of forensic reach.
In parallel, what Joseph Nye D (2018) described in Foreign Affairs as authoritarian “sharp power” is reshaping the information space. Soft power aimed at attraction. Sharp power aims to penetrate and bend the information environment of open societies, to distort rather than persuade. In an AI-saturated ecosystem, that kind of power becomes cheaper, faster, and easier to scale under the radar.
The real risk is not one big lie that everyone suddenly believes. It is a slow grind where people no longer trust that anything in their feed is solid. Truth does not vanish; it fragments. Trust does not suddenly disappear; it erodes and retreats into small islands: closed groups, private chats, tightly filtered sources. That fragmentation is exactly what hostile actors exploit.
And this battlefield is not only geopolitical. It becomes personal very quickly. How many times do we hear “no security needed”?
Think of the principal’s daughter going out in Ibiza, tagged in stories, easy to find, easy to profile. A fake friend-of-friends slides into her DMs, builds trust, mirrors her interests, pulls her into risky content and late-night conversations. Cyberbullying, catfishing, and social pressure, all wrapped in nightlife aesthetics. That is no longer teenage drama; it is a lever. Used well, it can isolate her, destabilise the family, and create pressure points on the principal without a single physical approach. In the worst cases, it opens the door to blackmail with pictures, coercion, grooming, and even engineered setups that increase the risk of kidnapping or physical harm. Not because she is careless, but because the ecosystem around her is designed to profile and exploit.
For people in protection, this is not an academic side topic; it is part of the operational picture. Every principal now carries a personalised battlespace in their hand, and that battlespace extends to partners, children, staff and close friends. Narrative hits can move markets, trigger crowds, or destabilise a route or an event before your team even sees it coming.
The question is simple: are you treating that environment as background noise, or as a front that needs its own intelligence, procedures and training?
Joseph S. Nye Jr.
Nye, J. S. Jr. “How Sharp Power Threatens Soft Power: The Right and Wrong Ways to Respond to Authoritarian Influence.” Foreign Affairs, January 24, 2018.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-01-24/how-sharp-power-threatens-soft-power
RAND (Firehose of Falsehood)
Paul, C., and Matthews, M. “The Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood’ Propaganda Model: Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It.” RAND Corporation, 2016.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
Rifesser, B.J.F. " An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Weaponisation of TikTok." Master’s Thesis, 2023.
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373824227_An_Interdisciplinary_Analysis_of_the_Weaponisation_of_TikTok
