Information operations (IO) encompass the deliberate use of information — and of information systems — to shape the adversary’s perception, decision-making, and behavior while defending one’s own information environment from analogous manipulation. The concept bridges the military (influence operations, psychological operations, deception) and the informational (narrative control, media engagement, strategic communication), and its boundaries with intelligence are contested: intelligence produces the understanding that IO exploits, and IO shapes the information environment within which intelligence operates.
IO operates across a spectrum from overt strategic communication (government statements, press briefings, public diplomacy) to covert influence (planted stories, front organizations, fabricated evidence). The distinction between “informing the public” and “conducting information operations against one’s own population” is never clear in practice, and the intelligence discipline’s frameworks for analyzing adversary IO — evaluating source incentives, tracing narratives to originating sources, identifying coordinated amplification — apply equally to one’s own side’s information activities.
The 2026 Iran war’s post-strike disclosures illustrate the IO dimension of intelligence: the rapid public release of operational details about the Khamenei assassination served deterrent, political, and alliance-management objectives simultaneously, functioning as an information operation with multiple audiences while also providing the raw material for genuine intelligence analysis. The analyst’s challenge is to use the disclosed information while recognizing that its selection and framing are themselves operationally motivated.
Related terms
- Denial and deception — the adversarial complement to information operations
- Operational security — the defensive function IO can compromise through disclosure
- Politicization — the institutional risk when IO objectives shape analytic outputs