Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic deceptions and media manipulation tactics to advance political, military, or commercial goals. Disinformation is implemented through attacks that "weaponize multiple rhetorical strategies and forms of knowing—including not only falsehoods but also truths, half-truths, and value judgements—to exploit and amplify culture wars and other identity-driven controversies."
Former Romanian secret police senior official Ion Mihai Pacepa exposed disinformation history in his book Disinformation (2013).
How Disinformation Can Be Spread, explanation by U.S. Defense Department (2001)
A framework for how disinformation spreads in social media
Military deception (MILDEC) is an attempt by a military unit to gain an advantage during warfare by misleading adversary decision makers into taking action or inaction that creates favorable conditions for the deceiving force. This is usually achieved by creating or amplifying an artificial fog of war via psychological operations, information warfare, visual deception, or other methods. As a form of disinformation, it overlaps with psychological warfare. Military deception is also closely connected to operations security (OPSEC) in that OPSEC attempts to conceal from the adversary critical information about an organization's capabilities, activities, limitations, and intentions, or provide a plausible alternate explanation for the details the adversary can observe, while deception reveals false information in an effort to mislead the adversary.
Dummy airbase and mock aircraft
British "sunshields" were used to create displays during World War II
Plaque memorializing Reginald Victor Jones at his former home in Aberdeen, Scotland
An early example of military deception was Thutmose III's capture of the Sinai city of Yapu