Myanmar’s information war is now as decisive as the ground war.
The generals fight it with a 64‑year‑old propaganda machine, Russian and Chinese “cognitive warfare,” Western lobbyists dangling access to natural resources and a growing ecosystem of enablers, while the opposed National Unity Government (NUG) still lacks a serious information‑warfare capability and too often fails to respond.
Since Ne Win’s 1962 coup, military officers have controlled the information ministries and turned state outlets like MRTV and Myawaddy into propaganda organs. Over six decades, this became a professional information‑operations system with psychological warfare units, tight censorship and thousands of personnel tasked with offline and online disinformation.
Since the 2021 coup, hundreds of journalists have been jailed or driven into exile and independent media shutdown or captured. The regime knows it will never win genuine popular support; its goal is confusion and exhaustion, so people no longer know whom to trust.
Domestic: discredit and divide
Domestically, the information strategy has two aims. First, discredit the resistance leadership and thus dry up its domestic and international funding. Second, break the resistance’s unity along ethnicity, religion and generation lines.
State and proxy media attack the NUG and resistance commanders as corrupt, divided or self‑serving. Pamphlets accuse the NUG and ethnic armed organizations of being funded by narcotics and “poisoning youth,” while social‑media networks circulate edited videos and fabricated documents.
One particularly corrosive narrative claims the NUG is misappropriating US aid. It plays on real concerns about corruption but misrepresents how assistance works.
US humanitarian and democracy programs are designed and controlled by US agencies; funds are routed through UN agencies and international and local NGOs, who then work with community‑based groups and ethnic service providers.
The NUG does not sit on a USAID account and cannot simply “spend US money” at will. All support, be it non-lethal or humanitarian, allowed under the BURMA Act is subject to US vetting and implementing‑partner procedures. In this context, accusations that the NUG is “pocketing US aid” look less like oversight and more like information warfare.
The second domestic objective is to reopen old fractures. The same toolkit once used against the Rohingya—hate speech, fabricated crimes, fearmongering—is now deployed to undermine unprecedented cooperation between Bamar‑majority People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) and ethnic resistance organizations (EROs).
Every disagreement is amplified as proof that “they will never unite.” Religious division is stoked by ultranationalist Buddhist monks and lay networks aligned with the authorities, targeting Muslims and sometimes Christian minorities. Generationally, older democratic politicians are painted as weak and compromised and younger activists as reckless.
In this distorted environment, some Rohingya and Christian advocacy voices, especially in international forums, portray the broader Bamar public as inherently bigoted religious extremists undeserving of assistance.
The anger behind this is understandable, given past atrocities, but it obscures a crucial fact: Myanmar’s sectarian divisions are not innate; they are the deliberate product of decades of military policy and propaganda.
Treating “the Burmese” as irredeemable erases the millions who reject military rule, have joined the resistance, or now stand in solidarity with persecuted minorities—and ultimately helps the regime.
Education and honest dialogue, not collective revenge, are the only sustainable path out of this engineered hatred. A future federal democracy will have to confront past crimes through justice and truth‑telling while building shared civic identities across religions and ethnicities.
A quieter but important strand of the information war targets EROs themselves. Through diplomatic language and NGO reports, they are often framed as “tribal” actors—parochial militias defending narrow interests.
This minimizes the political sophistication and federal vision many EROs have developed over decades, and it reinforces the argument that only the national army is truly “national.”
Abroad: normalization as ‘stability‘
Externally, the generals want foreign governments to believe that (1) the NUG is a fragmented “shadow government” with little authority; (2) the resistance coalition—including EROs—is too divided and “tribal” to govern; and (3) whatever its crimes, the military is the only institution capable of preventing state collapse.
These themes now appear in mainstream international commentary that portrays Myanmar as a “failed state in the making” and treats the regime as the unavoidable center of gravity. Here, Russian support and Western lobbying intersect.
Moscow provides arms, joint exercises, media partnerships and “cognitive warfare” expertise: long‑term campaigns designed to shape how societies think, not just what they believe about individual events.
Meanwhile, the generals have hired powerful Washington public relations firms to “rebuild ties” with the US: first the expensive Dickens & Madson deal in 2021, then a multi‑million‑dollar annual contract with DCI Group in 2025 and a substantial monthly contract with the McKeon Group. The NUG has no comparable access.
The return on this investment is visible in recent pro-regime op‑eds in Forbes, The Hill, The Washington Times and Eurasia Review. These articles downplay the regime’s brutality, exaggerate opposition “fragmentation,” and argue for engagement with the authorities and acceptance of their managed elections as a path to “stability.”
They also deploy an economic lure: normalize ties and Western companies will gain access to rare earth elements (REEs), hydropower and other strategic resources—supposedly helping to “counter” China.
This logic is thin. For decades, it has been the military that opened the door to Chinese pipelines, ports, dams, mines and special economic zones in exchange for political protection and hard currency.
Today, the regime is still heavily dependent on Beijing and Moscow for weapons, diplomatic cover and financial lifelines. Western normalization would be an addition to that dependency, not a replacement for it.
In a landscape where key infrastructure and resources are already mortgaged to Chinese interests, Western companies would arrive late and with limited leverage, while legitimizing a regime that Beijing already dominates.
Normalizing a military‑run resource economy will not meaningfully “contain” China. It will entrench a resource‑for‑impunity bargain with a client regime.
Enemy within: opportunists and market forces
The information field is further muddied by actors who claim to be on the side of the revolution but, in practice, weaken it: diaspora politicians, social‑media commanders and some NGO and CSO leaders whose incentives are shaped by money, visibility and donor markets more than by strategy.
Many platforms and alliances—including formations like the Spring Revolution Alliance—have publicly committed to cooperate with the NUG and, in many cases, have done so constructively. That cooperation is real and important.
Yet individual figures in and around such networks sometimes use the language of unity and inclusivity to build personal brands, gain leverage with donors or challenge NUG authority in ways that fracture rather than strengthen the common front.
Personality‑driven fundraising can pull scarce resources away from accountable structures and towards opaque “brands.”
The story of Bo Nagar is a case in point. Once lionized online as a fearless commander, his BNRA force was later accused by the NUG and local communities of serious abuses, including killings and extortion through illegal tolls.
In early 2026, NUG officials announced they were in the “final phase” of operations against BNRA after Bo Nagar reportedly fled toward areas under military control, with multiple accounts suggesting he sought protection from the very forces he claimed to fight.
For a long period, diaspora donations flowed directly to him and similar figures, bypassing NUG structures. That money did not build a coherent federal resistance; it built a private power base that ended in scandal. The generals benefited twice: funds were diverted from accountable channel and the resulting fiasco was trumpeted as “proof” that the revolution is run by warlords.
NGOs and CSOs add another layer of complexity. A relatively small group of well‑connected Myanmar CSOs, working with international partners, has become the main conduit for much external funding.
In a competitive donor marketplace, there is a strong incentive to favor “neutral” language, avoid anything that looks “political,” and keep channels open with whoever controls territory.
In practice, calls for neutrality and engagement with “all stakeholders” can restrain pressure on the military while treating the NUG and EROs as just another risk factor.Some NGO and CSO leaders lean on their ties to the NUG—joint statements, photos, endorsements—to bolster fundraising pitches but privately encourage donors to bypass the NUG in favor of “civil society.”
Direct proof that specific NGOs are secretly financed by military‑linked businesses is scarce and should not be casually asserted. What can be said is that organizations able to keep working under military‑controlled systems and to promise “stability” tend to be more attractive to risk‑averse donors.
When their “technical” advice consistently favors premature dialogue, diluted federalism or aid routes that run through official channels, their neutrality ends up benefiting the regime, regardless of intent.
NUG’s information deficit
Facing all this, the NUG’s own communications and advocacy capacity is dangerously weak. Its leaders are experienced politicians, but they were formed in a political era of cautious statements and quiet negotiations, not a 24‑hour digital information war against a ruthless military backed by Russian strategists and well‑paid Western lobbyists.
In Washington, NUG diplomacy has often depended on a tiny team with limited professional communications capacity and no fully resourced public‑affairs operation. Across the wider diaspora, there is still no institutionalized mechanism for regular consultation, recruiting diaspora expertise, or building political literacy.
In this vacuum, opportunists and social‑media warlords shape perceptions for many ordinary supporters.
The NUG has tried to build more structured advocacy mechanisms, including joint initiatives to coordinate outreach to US policymakers and donors. Some allies, including EROs and movement platforms, have engaged constructively.
Others have undermined these efforts by denouncing proposed structures as “not inclusive enough,” using the language of inclusion to demand vetoes and guaranteed seats. When every platform must satisfy every faction, focused and competent teams become almost impossible—and the generals’ interest in disorganization is served.
Winning the info war
Silence in this environment is not neutral; it concedes ground. When lobbyists place op‑eds in elite outlets, when propaganda accuses the NUG of stealing US aid, when influencer‑commanders absorb diaspora donations and then defect, when NGOs promote “technical” fixes that leave the military structurally advantaged, and when advocacy voices portray whole populations or ethnic forces as irredeemable, the NUG cannot simply endure.
It has to answer. That means recognizing information warfare as a core battlefield; investing in professional communications, fact‑checking and rapid‑response teams; creating clear, accountable channels for diaspora expertise and feedback; and drawing a firm line between constructive criticism and sabotage.
It also means insisting that the real source of Myanmar’s divisions is a decades‑old military project, and that the way forward is justice, truth‑telling and inclusive civic education—not collective revenge and not another round of “stability” through normalization with the generals.
The military is losing territory but betting it can win the story: that foreign governments will accept its staged elections, that donors will prioritize stability and access to REEs, that EROs can be dismissed as tribal actors and that the NUG will never build the capacity to contest the narrative. For the revolution to succeed, the military’s bet has to fail.
James Shwe is a semi-retired professional engineer and independent advocate for Myanmar democracy. He writes on infrastructure, sovereignty and regional geopolitics.
