The Value of Misinformation and Disinformation

Information is a critical dimension in warfare. Inaccurate information such as misinformation or disinformation further complicates military operations. In this paper, we examine the value of misinformation and disinformation to a military leader who through investment in people, programs and technology is able to affect the accuracy of information communicated between other actors. We model the problem as a partially observable stochastic game with three agents, a leader and two followers. We determine the value to the leader of misinformation or disinformation being communicated between two (i) adversarial followers and (ii) allied followers. We demonstrate that only under certain conditions, the prevalent intuition that the leader would benefit from less (more) accurate communication between adversarial (allied) followers is valid. We analyzed why the intuition may fail and show a holistic paradigm taking into account both the reward structures and policies of agents is necessary in order to correctly determine the value of misinformation and disinformation. Our research identifies efficient targeted investments to affect the accuracy of information communicated between followers to the leader's advantage.