Apps on the Battlefield

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked the world — and revealed how much today’s digital landscape has reshaped conflict, often in unexpected ways. Smartphones, social media, and high-speed data links have brought on-the-ground visibility to the war in ways previous generations never could have imagined.

Vocabulary: 

• TikTok War: The use of social media — particularly TikTok — to spread awareness of Russia’s invasion and undermine propaganda efforts to downplay it. This conflict has seen social leveraged on a larger scale than ever before, from ordinary Ukrainians to President Zelensky himself.

• Fog of War: The uncertainty in situational awareness that military forces experience. The outpouring of digital visibility around the Russian invasion has both alleviated and exacerbated this uncertainty.
  

WHAT’S UP ⬆️:
Armed conflicts have gone digital to an extent we’ve never seen before, likely forever. Big Tech is increasingly on the frontlines, with apps and internet-based cloud software crowdsourced into military intelligence.

• Google Maps’ live traffic feature was being used by both sides to track troop movements. Last week, researchers spotted Russian troops moving toward Kharkiv on it, hours before the first bombs fell. Google has since disabled the feature to protect Ukrainians.

• Twitter is one of many digital platforms striking back at and demonetizing Russia’s propaganda machine. The social network has restricted Russian state-run channels like RT, halted Russian advertisements, prioritized the visibility of public safety information for Ukrainians, and has taken more proactive steps to monitor and remove Russian disinformation.

• TikTok users have circulated live videos of devastating civilian airstrikes and the deployment of Russian forces. This new kind of antiwar activism has been crucial to getting casual observers across the world to see the truth of the war. It has even helped people track the movement of planes, vehicles, and rockets. 

WHAT’S DOWN ⬇️:
Governments unwilling to collaborate with social media. After serving as a Congressional punching bag for years, Big Tech has been a crucial partner in the coordinated response to Russia.

WHAT’S NEXT ➡️:

D Disruption	The intensity, immediacy, and volume of content coming out of Ukraine is disrupting social networks trying to clamp down on disinformation and creating a new fog of war. We’ve seen that in places like TikTok, where the Kremlin has created misleading videos using everything from old conflicts, movies, and even video game cutscenes.
I Innovation	In today’s digital landscape, civilians can tell their own wartime stories to the entire world through social media, rather than being beholden to reporters or journalists. And they can stay connected in more ways than one: a recent story profiled a Ukrainian woman in Poland who received instant updates from her family thanks to high-speed data. That woman then used a Facebook Group of volunteers to coordinate returning home so she could join the resistance.
P Polarization	Social media has allowed the world to see the truth of the invasion up close and personal like none before. But these channels remain susceptible to disinformation; the sheer volume of messages from on-the-ground has sown confusion that the Kremlin is eager to exploit.
S Stickiness	Big Tech is right to take a firm stand in defending the Ukrainian people. But it’s both easy to overlook and hard to overstate how enormous a precedent this has set. Tech companies will be expected to take sides — and make interventions — during future armed conflicts or other geopolitical events.
S Social Impact	Will the future of warfare be livestreamed? Less than two weeks into the Russian invasion, the world has already seen an enormous amount of footage featuring airstrikes, ground battles, helicopter combat, and civilian attacks. We can expect future conflicts to be viewable “minute by minute, battle by battle, death by death.”