Disinformation as a Strategic Weapon: A Review of Active Measures by Thomas Rid
by Yevhen Kovalchuk
07.18.2025 at 06:00am
Disinformation as a Strategic Weapon: A Review of Active Measures by Thomas Rid Image
Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. By Thomas Rid. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 120 Broadway, New York 10271. 2020. ISBN: 978-1250787408. 514 pp. $12.10 (Amazon).
In Active Measures, Thomas Rid delivers a meticulously researched and urgent history of political warfare, tracing the evolution of disinformation from early Soviet operations to the digital onslaught of the twenty-first century. He argues that disinformation isn’t new—it’s a refined tool of statecraft. “This modern era of disinformation began in the early 1920s,” Rid writes, as “‘political warfare’ grew and changed in four big waves, each a generation apart” (p. 6). Today, he notes, “private correspondence gets stolen and leaked…,” as influence operations exploit public division (p. 6). As strategic competition shifts toward perception and influence, Rid’s analysis offers essential context for understanding modern conflict.
Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and expert in cyber conflict and intelligence studies, combines scholarly depth and journalistic clarity. He draws on declassified intelligence, archival material from the Soviet bloc, Western counterintelligence records, and media analysis to show how states, especially the Soviet Union and later Russia, weaponized information. The term “active measures,” taken directly from KGB terminology, serves as both the title and thematic backbone of the book, describing covert influence operations meant to deceive, disrupt, and delegitimize adversaries (p. 7).
The book’s core thesis is that successful disinformation campaigns function by blending truth and lies so seamlessly that the resulting narrative cannot be easily challenged without reinforcing it. Rid emphasizes that disinformation is “not simply fake information—at least, not necessarily. Some of the most vicious and effective active measures… were designed to deliver entirely accurate information” (p. 10). These operations, he explains, are most potent when they manipulate real facts and events to erode trust, spread confusion, and deepen divisions. For instance, a Soviet campaign in 1960 that distributed an entirely accurate pamphlet “TO OUR DEAR FRIENDS” about racial violence in the U.S. to African nations, presenting real events in a way that strategically undermined America’s global credibility during the Cold War (p. 137).
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/07/18/disinformation-as-a-strategic-weapon-book-review/
