Propaganda, official narratives, silences, and half-truths in a world where the lions have also learned to govern reality
“Power discovered centuries ago that it does not always need to hide the truth; often, it only needs to surround it with enough words so that no one can find it.”
Political lies were not born with the internet, artificial intelligence, or social media. Pharaohs carved victories into stone, Roman emperors built monuments to transform conquests into glory, and European monarchies financed chroniclers capable of turning dynastic ambitions into national destinies. Every power needs to explain why it governs, why it fights, why it collects taxes, why it enters into certain alliances and, above all, why the sacrifices almost always have to be made by others.
“Before social media existed, the oldest algorithm of power already existed: repeat a story until it becomes memory.”
In the twenty-first century, that capacity has reached an unprecedented scale. A state can broadcast simultaneously through television, radio, digital platforms, embassies, influencers, news agencies, and automated accounts. It can select images, remove context, amplify an atrocity committed by an adversary, and reduce one committed by an ally to a footnote. Manipulation no longer necessarily needs to invent facts. It is enough to choose which facts will reach millions of viewers and which will remain buried beneath the noise.
“The most sophisticated lie does not always invent a reality; sometimes it simply decides which part of reality we will be allowed to see.”
I. THE STATE NEEDS A NARRATIVE
Every government needs a narrative because governing solely through figures, laws, and decrees would be politically insufficient. The United States speaks of freedom and security. China of stability, development, and national rejuvenation. Russia of sovereignty, the Western threat, and strategic depth. Europe speaks of values, international law, and a rules-based order. India of strategic autonomy and civilization. Each lion possesses its own vocabulary to explain why its moves on the chessboard are different from everyone else’s.
The problem begins when an intervention can become a “security operation”; a withdrawal, a “strategic repositioning”; a defeat, the “fulfillment of objectives”; an economic sanction, the “defense of the international order”; and the failure of a policy can disappear beneath a new expression carefully manufactured by advisers and spokespersons.
“The dictionary of power has one extraordinary characteristic: it almost never contains the word failure when the person writing the definition is the one who failed.”
II. THE HALF-TRUTH: THE MOST ELEGANT WEAPON
Complete lies have one weakness: they can be discovered. Half-truths are considerably more resilient. A government can show economic growth without mentioning inequality, military spending without explaining its opportunity cost, the number of enemies killed without counting civilians, foreign investment without discussing repatriated profits, or a reduction in poverty without explaining how much the price of what people need to live has increased.
The half-truth works because it allows someone to defend it by saying: “That happened.” And it probably did. What disappeared was everything that would have made it possible to understand why it happened, who paid the price, and what other information would have changed our perception. There, deception abandons primitive falsehood and enters a far more sophisticated territory: the selective management of truth.
“A half-truth can be more powerful than a complete lie because it carries enough truth within it to walk through the door without arousing suspicion.”
III. THE LIONS ALSO FINANCE THEIR VOICES
For years, estimates presented to the U.S. Congress placed Russian spending on state media at around US$1.3 billion annually, with approximately US$300 million allocated to RT (Russia Today) during certain periods—historical references, not current budgets—but they demonstrate that international influence has never been an inexpensive pastime.
The United States has also devoted enormous resources to its international information outreach, although its institutional model and editorial standards are different. The U.S. Agency for Global Media once handled budget requests approaching US$944 million before the U.S. administration proposed US$153 million for 2026 to fund an orderly shutdown of its operations. The comparison does not automatically make all systems equivalent; it demonstrates something different: information is considered a strategic instrument by all the major powers.
“When states devote hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to explaining the world, it is worth remembering that they are not merely financing words: they are financing influence.”
IV. IT DOES NOT NEED EVERYONE TO BELIEVE
European services have documented networks linked primarily to the United States, Russia, the EU, and also China that use multiple platforms, identities, content, and channels to introduce narratives, contradictions, and confusion into foreign societies.
The strategy is powerful because a democracy requires a certain basic level of trust to function. If every election is considered fraudulent before it takes place, every journalist bought, every institution corrupt, every piece of data manipulated, and all evidence part of a conspiracy, citizens eventually become exhausted. They no longer ask what is true. They conclude that probably no one can know.
“Deception reaches its most efficient form when it no longer needs to make us believe a lie; it is enough to convince us that the truth has ceased to exist.”
V. CHINA: THE NARRATIVE OF STABILITY
China uses a different architecture. Its communications power is combined with diplomacy, trade, infrastructure, international media, and a digital presence. The European External Action Service identifies China as an actor that actively promotes its own narratives while seeking to expand its presence in the international information space and reduce the influence of critical voices.
Beijing does not need to present the world with exactly the same story as Moscow. Its message tends to be more disciplined: development, stability, sovereignty, growth, infrastructure, and non-interference. Selection exists there as well. Achievements occupy the front page; contradictions tend to receive considerably less space. The great Asian lion understands that a train, a port, or a power plant can also become a political argument.
“China understood that a road can carry goods, but it can also carry a narrative about who builds and who merely delivers speeches.”
VI. THE UNITED STATES AND THE NARRATIVE OF EXCEPTIONALISM
Washington does not live outside this anatomy either. For decades, many U.S. interventions were presented using words such as freedom, stability, democracy, security, or defense of the international order. The point is not to argue that all of them were fraudulent, but to recognize that great powers rarely present their decisions by simply saying: “This also serves our interests.”
The Western lions also possess a considerable communications advantage: much of the global infrastructure of information, entertainment, technology, and cultural production was born or consolidated in the West. This means that certain ways of seeing the world can come to seem natural precisely because we have spent decades observing it from the same place.
“The deepest form of power is not forcing everyone to repeat our narrative; it is making our narrative appear to be simply common sense.”
VII. SILENCE ALSO LIES
There is a form of deception that requires no words: silence. One victim may receive a thousand headlines while another barely earns a photograph. One war can occupy front pages for months while another disappears even though it continues burying people. What is not published, not questioned, or abandoned too quickly also shapes perception.
Silence is especially powerful because no one can easily verify a story they never knew they should look for. Traditional censorship prohibited information. Contemporary censorship can accomplish something far more elegant: flood the public space with so many stories, scandals, images, and opinions that what truly matters simply drowns.
“Twentieth-century censorship erased a story; twenty-first-century censorship can bury it beneath ten million more stories.”
VIII. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AS A NEW INSTRUMENT OF THE STATE
Artificial intelligence gives the state an unprecedented capacity to produce, adapt, and multiply messages on a scale that was impossible barely a decade ago. Synthetic photographs, cloned voices, fabricated speeches, and content targeted by language, age, territory, or political orientation can become instruments of mass influence. The difference no longer lies only in controlling a radio station, newspaper, or television network, but in possessing systems capable of generating thousands of versions of the same narrative and distributing them simultaneously. The cost of producing deception falls while its speed, precision, and reach increase. The state no longer needs a single powerful voice: it can construct millions of digital voices repeating the same narrative.
“For centuries we feared the ruler capable of controlling the printing press; now we must also fear the state capable of manufacturing millions of invisible printing presses inside a machine.”
IX. THE BUSINESS OF MAKING PEOPLE BELIEVE
Political lies do not merely need to invent facts; they need to create the conditions under which a particular version of reality becomes credible, repeatable, and ultimately acceptable. For this purpose, the state has spokespersons, institutions, public media, campaigns, statistics, images, speeches, and now digital tools capable of amplifying a narrative until it becomes an everyday presence.
The lions understood long ago that governing perception can be as important as governing territory. Repeating an explanation, selecting certain facts, reducing others to silence, and permanently occupying the information space makes it possible to transform a political interpretation into apparent collective evidence. State deception reaches its greatest effectiveness when it stops looking like propaganda and begins to merge with reality itself.
“The most powerful propaganda is not the kind that forces people to believe a lie, but the kind that makes the state’s version appear to be the only possible reality.”
X. THE PROBLEM IS NOT ONLY WHO LIES
It would be convenient to end by pointing a finger at Russia, China, the United States, Europe, or any other actor. But the true anatomy is more uncomfortable.
All states select information.
All construct narratives.
All attempt to persuade.
The fundamental difference lies in the limits: freedom of the press, access to alternative sources, the possibility of investigating the government, institutional pluralism, and the citizen’s ability to discover that what they hear from those in power may not be the whole truth.
That is why not all government communication is propaganda, nor does all propaganda necessarily constitute a lie. The boundary appears when informing ceases to be the objective and manipulating perception becomes deliberate policy. There, we are dealing with the engineering of consciousness.
“A democracy does not demonstrate its strength when its leaders always tell the truth; it demonstrates it when institutions still exist that are capable of exposing them when they do not.”
WHEN THE LIONS WRITE HISTORY BEFORE IT IS OVER
The lions of the twenty-first century possess aircraft carriers, missiles, central banks, satellites, digital platforms, intelligence services, and budgets worth hundreds of billions of dollars. But they also possess something older and perhaps equally powerful: stories.
Each one explains:
Why its army defends while the other threatens;
Why its sanctions are legitimate and those of its adversary are coercion
Why its allies deserve context and its enemies condemnation
Why its victims must be remembered while the others can slowly become statistics
Geopolitical deception does not simply consist of lying.
It consists of managing reality until the convenient version appears to be the only possible one.
And perhaps that is where the true challenge of our time begins: not merely learning to detect when someone gives us false information, but discovering when someone is giving us a carefully incomplete truth…
“The lions will always try to write history from the center of the savanna. Freedom begins when those who live around them discover that they too have the right to look at the landscape from somewhere else…”
“The first victim of power is not always the truth. Sometimes it is our ability to recognize how much of it we were allowed to see…”
Brief Bibliography
European External Action Service (EEAS). 4th EEAS Annual Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Threats, 2026.
U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Budget and Financial Reports / Congressional Budget Justification, 2026.
Reference Links
EEAS – 4th Annual Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Threats: https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/4th-eeas-annual-report-foreign-information-manipulation-and-interference-threats_en
USAGM – Budget and Financial Reports: https://www.usagm.gov/our-work/strategy-and-results/strategic-priorities/budget-and-financial-reports/
