Expert SpeakRaisina Debates
Published on Jul 22, 2026
As AI reshapes information warfare, India can strengthen its defences more effectively through strategic AI partnerships than by pursuing technological self-sufficiency in isolation.
Information warfare has entered a new epoch globally with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). It has shifted from the periphery of strategic thought to occupy a central position within national security affairs, with states and non-state actors alike actively competing to influence what populations believe. Coordinated efforts to shape public opinion, confuse audiences, or erode confidence in institutions — commonly referred to as influence operations — have become commonplace across international borders, thereby blurring the distinction between conventional rivalry and open conflict.
Recent scholarship has demonstrated that information warfare is now integral to regime survival and ideological control — evidenced, in particular, by the discovery of a centralised information system that amplified leadership directives to shape public opinion during Iran’s December 2025–January 2026 protests. The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine offers a further example: it has been the subject of extensive documentation regarding Russian information influence operations, which have targeted a range of audiences, including Ukrainian civilians and defence personnel, populations in neighbouring states, and pro-Kremlin groups across Europe.
As AI reduces the cost of producing convincing disinformation while simultaneously expanding its reach, the instruments of information warfare have become increasingly accessible, harder to detect, and correspondingly more consequential.
As AI reduces the cost of producing convincing disinformation while simultaneously expanding its reach, the instruments of information warfare have become increasingly accessible, harder to detect, and correspondingly more consequential.Arguably, the most effective response lies in deploying AI defensively. However, the uneven global distribution of AI capabilities presents a considerable obstacle, particularly for countries such as India that are not among the leading innovators in this domain and may therefore struggle to achieve this objective efficiently.
AI in Information Warfare and Influence Operations
The use of AI in information warfare marks a critical development, for two principal reasons. The first is the considerably enhanced ease of producing misinformation. With the aid of generative AI, the creation and alteration of media that can lend legitimacy to false narratives has become easier, substantially improving their impact on target audiences. A recent illustration of this phenomenon was the ultra-realistic AI-generated videos of Ukrainian soldiers in apparent distress, which circulated on social media in early November 2025. These fabricated videos appeared to be intended to cultivate negative sentiment towards the Ukrainian government among both domestic and international audiences. The US and China have also actively begun incorporating the technology into information warfare and influence operations (IWIO). Given India’s historically fraught relationship with China, this development should be treated as a matter of considerable concern for Indian policymakers and security planners alike
The second contributing factor is the increased ease of spreading misinformation in the modern era — a development attributable in large part to the sheer ubiquity of social media platforms and the deployment of autonomous AI-driven bots. This enables malicious actors to saturate the information environment with false narratives within extremely small timeframes, flooding the online spaces of target demographics. It is also relatively easy to programme such bots to mimic authentic user behaviour, making it considerably more difficult to distinguish genuine public sentiment from manufactured consensus.
A February 2026 malign influence campaign tied to the Russian-linked ‘Matryoshka’ bot network, which targeted Ukrainian and European leaders, illustrates this at a national security level. According to a report examined by Homeland Security Today, the network relied on large numbers of inauthentic social media accounts, synthetic media, and synchronised amplification across multiple platforms simultaneously, rather than isolated posts on a single site. Analysts found that the campaign repurposed high-profile scandals to discredit Western political leaders, using emotionally charged narratives specifically engineered to drive engagement and reinforce broader geopolitical messaging aligned with Kremlin interests.
As the involvement of AI in IWIO increasingly complicates the detection and containment of misinformation across national borders, sustained and substantial investment in the AI industry emerges as the most viable means of countering such threats. The technological capabilities used to generate inauthentic media and mimic online user behaviour can equally be harnessed to identify, flag, and neutralise such content before it circulates widely. States with established AI infrastructure are therefore better positioned to develop robust detection mechanisms and verification tools capable of addressing the scale and speed of these threats. Conversely, states lacking such technological capacity remain vulnerable to external interference, increasing the risk of eroding public trust in domestic institutions.
The Solution
Immediately following Operation Sindoor, which commenced on 7 May 2025, a substantial wave of misinformation proliferated across the internet, falsely claiming that Indian forces had entered Pakistani territory. The scale of this campaign was such that the Indian government was compelled to block over 1,400 URLs disseminating anti-India propaganda during and immediately after the operation. Artificial intelligence played a significant role in this campaign, proving instrumental both in generating the synthetic media that was disseminated and in powering the bot networks that amplified it across social media platforms.
However, the delay between the initial circulation of these claims and their subsequent debunking by the Indian government allowed an anti-India narrative surrounding Operation Sindoor to become entrenched across these platforms, requiring considerable effort to reverse. Preventing such situations from recurring will require India to develop a robust and resilient framework to counter AI-enabled information warfare. This, in turn, will require significant advances in AI-driven threat detection and mitigation capabilities. Yet this approach is not without its challenges.
India, whilst demonstrating notable strengths in talent concentration and research output — ranking third globally in AI competitiveness according to Stanford’s Global AI Vibrancy assessment — is nonetheless in a precarious position, where relying solely on internally developed models is insufficient to meet its security requirements.
The global distribution of advanced AI capability remains markedly asymmetric, with the United States and Chinaestablished as the two principal leaders. Furthermore, the broader AI ecosystem exhibits pronounced oligopolistic tendencies, with a small cluster of major corporations commanding disproportionate influence over research, infrastructure, and deployment. Countries outside this narrow sphere, therefore, find themselves at a considerable disadvantage in terms of national security capabilities, particularly in defending against AI-enabled information warfare. India, whilst demonstrating notable strengths in talent concentration and research output — ranking third globally in AI competitiveness according to Stanford’s Global AI Vibrancy assessment — is nonetheless in a precarious position, where relying solely on internally developed models is insufficient to meet its security requirements.
Despite lagging behind the United States and China in infrastructure and computational capacity, India nonetheless possesses several assets of significant strategic value to prospective partners. Firstly, its vast population and extensive digital footprint provide access to a markedly wider pool of threat and user data, a resource of substantial utility in training and optimising AI models for security applications. Secondly, India’s well-established information technology and AI service sectors offer extensive operational and technical support, underpinned by a large and skilled workforce. Thirdly, India’s growing security partnerships and diplomatic standing within the Indo-Pacific confer meaningful geopolitical leverage, positioning it as a valuable partner capable of reinforcing collective efforts to counter AI-enabled information warfare and influence operations.
The European Union (EU) is arguably the most balanced and mutually reinforcing partner India can pursue in addressing this challenge. Building on the recent EU-India Trade and Technology Council and the January 2026 EU-India Free Trade Agreement, India and the European Union must establish a substantive institutional foundation for cooperation between the European AI Office and the IndiaAI Mission across large language models, responsible AI, semiconductors, and high-performance computing. India must prioritise practical, sector-specific AI security models that are readily deployable rather than competing to develop frontier AI models.
Conclusion
AI-enabled IWIOs are proliferating globally and have emerged as a significant national security concern across the international community. By forging international AI partnerships with countries at the technological frontier, India can compensate for its comparatively modest position in an industry currently dominated by China and the United States. As matters stand, without meaningful external assistance, India remains considerably vulnerable to AI-enabled IWIOs, particularly from China. The European Union is a particularly compelling partner in this regard, primarily because it stands to derive significant reciprocal benefits from deeper engagement with India—a dynamic already reflected in the establishment of the EU-India Trade and Technology Council. Pursuing such partnerships is a far more prudent approach than attempting to develop indigenous AI models in isolation, given the considerable time and resource constraints such an undertaking would entail. This should therefore be treated as a matter of utmost priority, given the urgency of mitigating the national security threats posed by AI-enabled IWIOs.
Pranoy Jainendranis a Research Assistant with the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technologyat the Observer Research Foundation..
The author acknowledges the use of Claude Sonnet 4.6 for language refinement.
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Author
Pranoy Jainendran
Pranoy Jainendran is a Research Assistant with ORF’s Centre for Security, Strategy & Technology.
His work examines how technology shapes State institutions, national and international affairs, …
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