#10 Gavin Wilde: Why We Are Wrong About Hybrid Warfare

How powerful is propaganda—really? In this episode of The Next Best, Marcel Dirsus speaks with Gavin Wilde, a former White House official and U.S. intelligence analyst, about why we consistently overestimate the impact of fake news, disinformation, and "information warfare." From World War I and Edward Bernays to Russian hybrid warfare, social media bots, and AI-generated deepfakes, Wilde argues that propaganda is far less decisive than we like to believe.We discuss:• Why democracies struggle with persuasion and media literacy• How Russia exploits existing social fractures rather than creating them• Why calling out disinformation can sometimes backfire• Why "ignoring it" might be a more rational strategy than constant outrageThe conversation also explores AI, deepfakes, hybrid warfare, and the limits of deterrence in the information age—challenging many of today’s dominant assumptions.Timestamps:00:00 — Why ignoring propaganda might be the most rational response00:29 — Introduction: Gavin Wilde on propaganda, Russia, and hybrid warfare00:53 — What propaganda actually is (and how it differs from persuasion)01:04 — World War I, democracy, and the birth of modern propaganda03:40 — Edward Bernays, psychology, and “torches of freedom”05:10 — Propaganda as belonging, not mind control06:29 — Propaganda in democracies vs. autocracies06:50 — Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and reinforcing existing beliefs09:18 — The internet, bots, deepfakes, and how the game supposedly changed09:57 — Computing, social science, and the myth of predictable persuasion12:20 — Why propaganda and advertising oversell their own effectiveness13:50 — Russia, hybrid warfare, and election interference14:17 — Do we know Russia interferes in Western elections?15:30 — Soviet history and the roots of Russian information warfare17:32 — Opportunism vs. grand Kremlin strategy18:58 — The risks of overestimating foreign interference19:28 — Why blaming propaganda undermines democratic agency21:35 — Exploiting existing divisions & the Doppelgänger operation23:10 — When exposing disinformation backfires24:40 — Policy takeaway: why “ignore it” may be the best option25:58 — Should democracies fight back with information warfare?26:11 — Why information warfare is fundamentally autocratic27:30 — Telling a better democratic story (not just better facts)29:24 — Kinetic hybrid warfare: sabotage, terrorism, and fear31:34 — Attribution, deterrence, and why resilience matters more34:10 — Artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and the “dog that didn’t bark”36:51 — What we still get wrong about human behavior and propaganda37:54 — Closing remarksThe Next Best with Marcel Dirsus offers deep dives into geopolitics and international relations. We provide serious political commentary on foreign policy challenges, modern warfare, and global security.