Assessing Information Ecosystems : How Governments Can Get Ahead of Hybrid Threats

The hybrid warfare landscape is evolving rapidly, leaving policymakers without clear strategies. To better inform their work in addressing emerging challenges, governments must dig deeper into the underlying dynamics at play. For the past twenty years, militaries and civilian policymakers alike have increasingly adopted the term “hybrid warfare.”1 Originally used to characterize a mix of conventional and unconventional tactics in warfare, the phrase now serves as a catchall for nearly any destabilizing action, spanning multiple domains from cyber attacks and drone threats to disinformation, economic coercion, and election interference. Yet, hybrid as an organizing concept blurs important legal and operational distinctions across war, peace, coercion, competition, and endogenous democratic dysfunction. As a policy shorthand, the term remains useful. As an analytical framework, however, it often obscures more than it clarifies. The purpose of analysis is to provide evidence-based insights to inform goal setting and strategic choices in decisionmaking. Beyond confirming that adversaries use all kinetic and nonkinetic tools and methods at their disposal, and imagining the near-mythical powers they may wield as a result, the concept of hybrid threats falls short when it comes to outlining pragmatic courses of action. Consequently, grouping various threats together can only go so far…