What are influence operations?

There have been many attempts to give a pre­cise def­i­n­i­tion of influ­ence oper­a­tions, none of which we find com­plete­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry. For pur­pos­es of the GIOR, we gen­er­al­ly con­sid­er an influ­ence oper­a­tion to be any orga­nized attempt by a state or transna­tion­al actor to non-trans­par­ent­ly influ­ence pub­lic opin­ion and/or pub­lic pol­i­cy and aimed at a demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try. Open and trans­par­ent oper­a­tions such as those con­duct­ed by state media do not fall into this cat­e­go­ry although they cer­tain­ly can be viewed as propaganda.