AI in Strategic Communication: What Are You Going To Value?

I have a view – one I admit has evolved over time into something of a prejudice – that communicators have become overly reliant on the internet, and on the immensely sophisticated targeting technologies that have evolved in the hands of data scientists and software developers over the past two decades. Everybody has a new widget, a dazzling new data dashboard, a never-before-seen piece of meta-wizardry that will remotely deliver your message to the audience/demographic/segment that your politics or product needs to precisely capture. What has happened, I ask myself, to those discreet, informal, behind-closed-doors encounters and exchanges where people could look each other in the eye and listen; where the experience of human interaction could be enough to open up a new sense of possibility? Is it too difficult, too expensive, too hard to measure in comparison with a ‘like’ or a ‘share’ or an ‘impression’? (Does an impression leave any impression at all?)

I first engaged with strategic communications 30 years ago, as director of information for the South African electoral commission during the 1994 elections that brought Nelson Mandela to power. It was ‘mission impossible’; failure wasn’t an option, which meant that we needed ordinary South Africans to protect the election against the spoilers ranged against it. Our communications were critical to securing that protection and it was a powerful lesson for me that I was able to carry into other missions: strategic communications can be a critical instrument in conflict transformation.

Of course, we didn’t call it strategic communications back then. That term first entered into the language of practitioners about five years later, in the late Nineties, when the United Nations under Kofi Annan realised that it had to do far more to project its mission and values into the world. Around that time – the ‘end of history’ having proved short-lived – Western democracies were trying to come to a new understanding of the developing power of communications in shaping geopolitical outcomes. Governments were realising that as actors deploying communications in order to shape those outcomes favourably, they had to develop a philosophy and methodology that would distinguish them from their adversaries and enable them plausibly to make the case to their own increasingly distrustful populations that they were communicating in defence of democracy, using only democratically-approved tools of truth and transparency, and not simply indulging in ‘propaganda’.

Since then strategic communications in the West has become the subject of intense debate, deepening academic study, and terminological and definitional strife – while the Russians and the Chinese, who barely have a word for it, nonetheless pump resources into it at a level of effort that dwarfs that of the West. In parallel, and driving the development of strategic communications as a discipline, there have been dramatic changes in the nature of conflict and the sophistication and pervasiveness of communications and digital technology. These changes have lent asymmetric power to state and non-state actors whose new ability to act and influence within a given territorial and/or psychological battlespace would in earlier times have been far more easily overwhelmed. It took four decades to evolve from the power of TV in Vietnam to the power of Facebook in the Arab Spring. It has taken a mere 15 years to get from the launch of Facebook to the commercialisation of artificial intelligence (AI). Over that same period, the West’s geopolitical focus has shifted from terrorism to disinformation, from the instabilities and threats inherent in its adjacency to the Middle East, to the challenges that China and Russia are now mounting within a changed world order in which globalisation is still an immensely powerful force but where the balance of dependency is shifting and affording these powers greater leverage.

In this new world, everything we do communicates, whether we dispatch a destroyer or build a school or host a poetry festival. My mind these days often goes to Gaza and I’m trying to recall my lessons from South Africa, and from Iraq a decade later where, for eight years, I built and ran the largest strategic communications programme in the theatre. It was not our job to present a picture to Iraqis of benign US intent; that was a task we refused because it was simply unreal. We saw our job as conflict transformation: save lives, shorten the war, end the occupation, help the Iraqis to find their way towards a viable, less-sectarian domestic settlement and a basis for representative government. It was hard, and of course we did not succeed in anything like the measure we might have hoped for. But looking back, I review the data we gathered on public attitudes over that period, and try to imagine the battle space without our campaigns, and conclude that Iraq was a great deal better off with it than without.

What does it mean for Gaza? We have to start somewhere. Where is it, away from the horror of the bombed streets, and the noise on the streets of foreign capitals? What is it that has to be said among different people to help them realise that there are no victories to be won here, there is no vengeance complete enough to wipe away the days and decades of pain and shame, not any single act or triumph today that will make what happened yesterday any better. But I do remember a theme that came to me in the middle of the battle between Sunni and Shia in Iraq, after watching hours of footage of mothers from both sides of the conflict describing their heartbreak, and which we explored thoroughly: “Why do all our different stories sound the same?”

Yet even as I write that, I seem naïve and idealistic about the role of strategic communications in a dangerously turbulent world. My concerns seem very far removed from those of so many other actors who see the discipline as no more than an aggregate of hi-tech tools able to be deployed in order to advance narrow, frequently questionable, and often morally repugnant political or economic objectives.

And now AI, the newest wizardry. I can understand it as a limitless force multiplier in the physical world. I recently had a colleague describe it to me as ‘the utility of the next millennium – like electricity. Generative AI will progress much faster than we can imagine so the key is to posture and tool ourselves accordingly'. He thinks that in stratcom terms, this represents a seismic shift for governments.

I, on the other hand, am deeply wary of it in the intellectual and creative world. We’ve seen the internet, an instrument in whose potential for improved public discourse so much hope was once invested, drag that discourse into a brawling, global cacophony in which it is ever harder to distinguish fact from fiction, truth from lies, and elucidation from fabrication.

But just from a quality perspective, what I’ve seen so far doesn’t impress. AI can aggregate and synopsise but it’s a long way from penetrating analysis and incisive conclusions. And again, judging from what I’ve seen, there are great risks in using it as a substitute for the effort of thought. What tends to distinguish AI-generated content from the human stuff is just how dull, trite and flaccid it is – though no doubt that will improve. My colleague is probably right; business and governments will have to ‘tool up’ with AI. In the final analysis, however, I think it will come down to trust.

If the brand deploying AI is a trusted one, then those employees responsible for its content will have to ensure that its quality and veracity correspond with its values and behaviours; these, after all, are what create the experience that consumers, or voters, relate to in a brand, and generate the loyalty on which its continued success depends.

Finally, it will depend on what the user values; if it prefers profit and credulity to reputation and credibility, AI will provide some wonderful shortcuts but the benefits will be short-lived.

About Paul Bell

Paul is strategic communications expert who has provided advice at the highest levels of government and business, managed large commercial and military communications enterprises, and directed complex campaigns in fragile and conflicted states. A creative strategist, problem-solver and team-builder, he is culturally adept and has a record of building strong relationships with clients and beneficiary organisations.

A British citizen, Bell’s career has been conducted largely in the geo-political and public spheres, including supporting the delivery of successful transitional/peace-building elections in Iraq and South Africa; conducting information operations in a theatre of war; advising governments on youth development-focused anti-radicalisation strategies and the treatment of minorities; and positioning political and business leaders to accomplish strategic goals. He has operated in more than 30 countries, and extensively across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

Paul is an Associate Fellow in the Strategic Communications Department of the Faculty of War Studies at Kings College London. He served for 12 years as a Trustee of the Duke of Edinburgh International Award, stepping down in December 2022. He was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victoria Order in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours.