Deepfakes Emerging as Key Tool in Conflict Disinformation
2026 is already proving to be the year deepfakes explode into the public consciousness, in terms of the key role they play in conflict environments, and their adoption in defense, military, and intelligence operations.
As tensions escalate in the Middle East, with Iran, and Israel and the USA trading ballistic attacks, AI-generated content is flooding social media channels as information warfare, pushing the narrative agenda for both sides to a global audience.
Synthetic content creates compelling false events
In recent days, our Threat Intelligence team has seen numerous videos and images claiming to show missile launches, strike damage, and even fighter jets bombing locations including Tehran, Tel Aviv, and Dubai. In some cases the content is 100% synthetic, while in others, existing footage has been manipulated by AI to change the nature of the media and the narrative that goes with it as part of a conflict disinformation operation.
What’s different about the synthetic media we see today, is that while deepfakes have become commonplace in relation to conflict disinformation in the last few years, especially with regards to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, manipulation of truth through images, video, and audio has now been taken to an industrial level.
It’s only in the last few months that hyper-realistic video with synchronized audio has become possible to generate with off-the-shelf tools. And while all commercial AI content generators embed digital watermarks, tools and techniques are emerging to strip these labels, along with the emergence of dark-market generative models intended for malicious use.
AI-driven psyops take the battle to social media
The result is a rapidly evolving deepfake threat landscape with cognitive warfare at its center, where belligerents and their supporters on both sides are conducting influence operations and psyops (psychological operations) against target audiences at home and abroad.
Content platforms have become the new battlefields. Viral posts are the new shells, applying constant pressure on target populations. Information warfare operates persistently and globally below the threshold of traditional conflict, and within the digital universe.
Gen-AI makes deepfake disinformation accessible
But it’s not just state-level actors leveraging deepfakes as a mechanism for disinformation beyond their borders. Following the recent killing of Mexican drug lord, Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera Cervantes, leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), AI-generated videos have emerged showing clashes between law enforcement and the cartel.
The CJNG is one such organization that has distinguished itself through adoption of sophisticated technologies, including deepfakes and disinformation campaigns on social media, representative of a trend across the criminal ecosystem.
This is creating significant challenges for law enforcement, forensic specialists, and intelligence analysts, which are all facing increasing volumes of media to verify, significantly delaying decision-making in such time-sensitive scenarios.
