Insights

The War Before the War: How Social Media Now Prepares the Battlefield

February 5, 2026

Alain Gavin

Alain Gavin

Managing Partner - Chief Investment Officer

From Telegram to Tanks: The New Digital Frontline of Warfare

This short 5-minute video, carved out of Episode 6 of Tech Command Investing, explains a striking new development in modern warfare:

today, battles often begin onlinelong before soldiers arrive on the ground.
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🎧 Listen now:
Amazon Music | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Audible

Using social-media monitoring technology from LetsData, analysts can observe how messaging accounts especially on platforms like Telegram (similar to WhatsApp) are quietly created across towns, villages, and cities in Ukraine months before any kinetic military action takes place.

Why months in advance?

Because to avoid being flagged or shut down, these accounts must appear normal and organic. They are set up well ahead of time, slowly building credibility, followers, and local connections.

As Russian forces move closer to a town, something revealing happens:
👉 These accounts suddenly become far more active.

They begin pushing messages designed to influence local residents shaping opinions, spreading narratives, and attempting to win hearts and minds.

The objective is simple but powerful:
to prepare the population psychologically before troops ever arrive.

This became especially clear in the early weeks of the war in Ukraine.

Russian intelligence services had assumed that advance influence operations largely supported by agents on the ground would smooth the invasion.

When Russian forces failed to encircle Kyiv and were pushed back, it revealed just how critical and how vulnerable this information-war preparation truly was.

At the same time, it revealed something equally important to Ukrainian forces:
the enemy’s strategy becomes visible if you have the tools to see it.

Today, sovereign governments increasingly recognise the value of this kind of advanced forewarning not only on the battlefield, but also in the run-up to democratic elections, where similar narrative-shaping techniques are used to manipulate public opinion and undermine trust.

This is radically changing how states view social-media signals: not as public-relations noise, but as essential national resilience against grey-zone and hybrid warfare.

In short:
Modern warfare isn’t just fought with tanks and missiles. It starts with messages, narratives, and social media months before the first shot is fired and long before democracies themselves come under pressure.


▶️
Watch the short extract

This 5-minute clip is taken from Episode 6 of Tech Command Investing and explores how modern warfare increasingly begins online through messaging platforms like Telegram months before any physical conflict unfolds.
🎧 Want the complete conversation?
The complete episode is available above on Tech Command Investing via Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Audible.

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Alain went beyond imaginable limits with his ability and professional VC expertise to coordinate our fundraising activities at CyStellar. His capability to deeply understand our company’s vision and match it with the right investors was crucial in shortening the time to closing the investment.

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