Countering CBW Disinformation

"Before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, its diplomatic missions began circulating some particularly fantastical lies. For example, the United States was using Ukrainian laboratories to develop biological weapons that would be spread by specially trained migratory birds and 

Despite its moniker, the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic almost certainly did not originate in Spain. The belligerents of World War I suppressed reporting on the outbreak in order to avoid harming morale, while Spain, as a neutral country, had a media free to report openly on the extent of the disease. Since most media coverage of the outbreak came from Spain, so too did its origin story. The 1918 outbreak — frequently compared to the current COVID-19 pandemic in terms of public fear and response — could have begun in China, or the United States, or northern France.

One fall day in 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian defector who once worked in Moscow’s secret intelligence community and who became a prominent Kremlin critic in the United Kingdom, ate sushi for lunch before meeting with two former colleagues from his spy agency days at the Pine Bar in London’s Millennium Hotel. The anti-corruption crusader was reportedly set to travel to Spain to investigate the Russian mob there. But just a few short weeks later, Litvinenko was dead.

The series "Arms Control in Today’s (Dis)information Environment," produced by scholars from the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, encompasses a trio of papers that delve into the intricate relationship between disinformation and arms control. This scholarly work aims to foster a comprehensive dialogue on the potential influence of disinformation on the formulation and implementation of future arms control treaties and agreements.