Roger, that's no rep, get there, gentlemen.

Welcome to True Spies, Brief Histories.

In these bonus Minisodes, we'll draw on the knowledge of our true spies' experts to enhance your understanding of the forces, events and personalities that shape the modern world.

We're living through an era in which the impact of spies, subterfuge and covert influence is increasingly visible.

We're bombarded with headlines about foreign interference, wartime propaganda and threats from cyberspace. And that's just for starters.

But how did we get here?

I'm Joe Foley, series producer for true spies.

This is a brief history of information warfare.

Look, if you follow the news, you'll have noticed more and more noise about information and how it can be deployed to benefit one group or another. Three words in particular spring to mind.

The first is disinformation.

That's false information which is specifically designed to mislead.

That makes it distinct from the second misinformation, which isn't deliberate.

So let's say a photo of a politician is incorrectly captioned on a news website,

giving a misleading impression of who that person is, where they are, or when the picture was taken.

You then share that photograph expressing your disbelief at what you're seeing.

Intentionally or not, you've refrained the narrative based on bad intel.

That's misinformation.

Now let's say you doctor that same photograph to give the impression

that the unfortunate politician is outraging public decency on consecrated ground.

That's disinformation.

Sometimes it's hard to know if a piece of false information is of the miss or dis variety,

accidental or deliberate.

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