Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It

Richard Stengel served as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs under President Obama — the US government's most senior official responsible for countering foreign propaganda and disinformation. Information Wars is his account of that experience: the bureaucratic obstacles, the inadequate tools, the interagency conflicts, and the fundamental difficulty of countering Russian and ISIS disinformation with the resources and authorities available to the State Department. It is a frank insider account of institutional failure.

The book is essential reading for anyone advising governments on counter-disinformation strategy, because it documents in operational detail why so many official responses to information threats fail. Stengel is honest about the State Department's limitations — its slowness, its risk-aversion, its inability to produce compelling content, and its structural disadvantage against adversaries unencumbered by democratic norms. The lessons are transferable: organisations facing information threats need to understand not just what works in theory but what the institutional and cultural barriers to effective response actually are. A sobering and practically important account.