The attention war: ceasefire one minute, missiles the next

As headlines swing wildly between ceasefire talks, missile strikes, diplomatic breakthroughs and fresh retaliation, this episode of Conflicts of Interest explores the growing sense of global confusion surrounding modern conflict.

ACLED CEO Prof. Clionadh Raleigh is joined by Bron Mills to unpack the “attention war” shaping how conflicts are understood online, where algorithms, viral misinformation and nonstop breaking news are increasingly competing with verified reporting and nuance.

From Iran and the United States to Russia, Ukraine and the UK, the conversation examines how modern warfare now unfolds across both battlefields and social media feeds — often leaving audiences struggling to understand what is actually happening, what matters, and what comes next.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Zombie numbers, that's what I call them, have an enormous role to play in modern journalism, which is that often journalists and the media will grab the largest number that's totally unsubstantiated.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

I am confident enough to say that the first number that you get about anything in the world will be wrong. There's a number in the headlines today. It's a hundred and sixty-three thousand. Can you think what that might be in relation to?

SPEAKER_02 0:24

That is a nonsense number, right? I would go so far as to call it a total bullshit number.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Conflicts of interest brought to you by ACLED.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Hello everybody, welcome to a new episode of Conflicts of Interest. My name is Queen O'Rolly. I'm here, of course, with the wonderful Braun, and we are under strict instructions to be chirpy today because everything is so miserable.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

I mean to put it simply, everything is quite miserable. I there isn't a corner of the world right now where there isn't something kicking off, but it all feels to kind of just be maybe bubbling away and uh people just over it at this point. Like we were reading, weren't we, the piece on how BBC Verify shelved their live blog. And is it that people don't want the truth? Is it that the truth doesn't make the best headlines, or is it that people just don't care anymore?

SPEAKER_02 1:11

That's an interesting development. So BBC Verify was effectively a way in which the BBC could kind of ground truth some of the numbers coming out, and it's no longer going to be operational. I think like it that kind of is the result of a number of different things. The first is that zombie numbers, that's what I call them, have an enormous role to play in modern journalism, especially around conflict, which is that often journalists and the media will grab the largest number that's totally unsubstantiated about whether it's fatalities or number of people at a protest or whatever the case, and they run with it. And it often gives the impression of this kind of monstrous threat. And they often are monstrous, but they're not necessarily as large as that. And BBC Verify could give some support to often more conservative numbers. Now, people don't want to hear those smaller numbers. I can tell you that as an absolute fact. And I think that the problem has been that those big numbers no longer have any meaning for people, right? So that one of the problems with BBC Verify is that people aren't particularly interested in the truth of the details. I think another thing, of course, is that they had a problem in who was reading BBC Verifies. It was people like you and I, Braun, which is not the audience they're looking for. You know, they're not going to create a service for you and I. I mean, as you said yourself, right? Talk about the truth, but make it, is it viral?

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Is that what you said? Clickbait, make the truth clickbait. Because I think there was there was something that I saw them do a while ago, and it was after the situation unfolded in Venezuela earlier this year, as we all remember vividly. And there were claims from lots and lots and lots of those kind of online news fluencers that haven't got a qualification between them, claiming that, you know, Venezuelans were out on the streets celebrating. And like that wasn't true. We knew from where we're sat there's still going to be risk to people's homes being bombed at that point. It was all too soon. And so BBC Verify then went through the video footage, for example, and said, actually, this one was taken four years ago. This one's actually in Puerto Rico and so on, so on. And they were able to unpick in that way. But it certainly doesn't make as interesting reading as the fabricated version, where, you know, there's a place now for everybody's voice and everybody's opinion and everyone's version of what's going to get the most clicks.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

That's a really good point, Bronn. I think that part of the BBC Verify problem is that everybody wants to have their version of the truth here rather than one standardized version of the truth. But I would also say that there is a problem here in that everybody wants conflict or, you know, really, really intense political crises to have a very clear storyline and be very quick now, when in fact, you know, like we're just seeing in Iran, things move on and mature and evolve in ways that aren't particularly obvious and clear every single day, but really become much more clear in retrospect. And that's not that's not that's not for the gram, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

No, well, exactly that. And we've had the same conversation, haven't we, with our data hundreds of times about how we're continually updating and looking backwards if we get more different information that contributes to to various things, but it's almost certain, and I am confident enough to say that the first number that you get about anything in the world will be wrong.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

That's a really good point. It's one of the reasons why I really have shied away from this notion that you should get like super real-time information about conflict. Because as you say, not only are the numbers wrong, but often the details are totally wrong. And it's really a reflection of who's trying to manipulate that conversation in the very beginning or who who is just telling you what they know, which is going to be limited, rather than an accurate interpretation of it.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah. So, okay, there's a number in the headlines today. It's 163,000. Can you think what that might be in relation to? That's how much a tank of petrol is going to cost. Yes, correct. Next week. No, it's the um amount of jobs that the Iran crisis is likely to cost the UK. Firstly, I'm desperate to know how 163,000 has been come up on. But the conflict continues, the economic fallout continues, and then today it's all over the UK media. What is is happening there? Why are we in this kind of confusion state and why are they looking that the economic stuff is going to continue sort of way into the future?

SPEAKER_02 5:36

This is a really good point, because that is a nonsense number, right? I would go so far as to call it a total bullshit number. But that's not to say that the conflict itself is not having ramifications indirectly with Britain. Burton, if you if you remember, took a position of extreme irrelevance to this conflict, right? So they're just the takers of the problems of the conflict in Iran. And both Britain and France now want to offer themselves up as, for example, guides through the Strait of Hormuz. Effectively, they want to be escorts to ships within an open strait. So you'll notice there that they want to be involved, but they do not want to actually do anything. So they will only be escorts to ships that don't require escorts because the situation in the strait would have been fixed. But it's an attempt to become involved at this stage of the conflict because they are seeing that their populations are going to be on the receiving end of some of these problems. And I think that the way that they're trying to make that meaningful to people is look how much the, you know, this petrol's going to cost, look how this is going to affect food security and in places in the world, look how much fertilizer is going to cost. I don't think it's particularly effective, I must say. But I do think that what we're looking at the moment is this period of attrition between the US and Iran where there is actual attacks, right? I mean, UAE was attacked recently. There are boats being sent out by the IRGC that are attacking the US, and the US is also trying to engage with Iran, but none of this is above the rate that they would consider to be a ceasefire breach. There's all sorts of things I think going on in the front and in the back, which I do think that is really important, which is that obviously the Trump administration is pretty frustrated about what's happening, but yet doesn't want to make a big move. Now I think that the reason that doesn't want to make a big move is that the last moves has really destabilized its Gulf relations because the US is very kind of, you know, present and then absent, present and absent. And one of the ways that they tried to open up the strait last week on Tuesday was ended about 24 hours later, I think. And the reason being is because they weren't allowed to land in Saudi space to coordinate the action. And Saudi Arabia said, we just don't believe that you're actually going to stick around if things get difficult for us. So I would say that's a much more important development, which apparently has been fixed, than, you know, a nonsense number in the UK about job losses.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Well, absolutely. And then the latest today is that Trump has flatly rejected the last deal to come out of Tehran. What is going on there? Who is winning this power play at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Well, reiterate my kind of final thought here, which is that the laws of political gravity apply to the Trump administration and they apply equally to Iran, right? So neither of them has magical powers to somehow change the fact that this blockade is having significant effects inside Iran. But equally, Iran knows that for every day of patience it shows, it creates more of an impetus in the Trump administration to just get this over with, right? Like he's not a man known for his patience. He seems to be making the decisions about this conflict. So if Trump shows less patience, it means that Iran can come out of this intact. And so it really is a test of Trump's worst trait and potentially Iran's best trait, which is its ability to withstand this. But I think that again, the situation in the Gulf, especially Saudi and UAE and Israel, of course, the situation is that they're not going to let the Trump administration simply walk away from this by being impatient. So that's the real political story here, rather than the tit-for-tat conflicts that are kind of working their way through the strait.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Yeah, because there's been some conversation about resilience as a form of defense for Iran. And I think testing that. But it's coming across, especially in the media, as a kind of stubborn off. And, you know, who can dig the heels in the longest? But the complexity around the Gulf, is it that those Gulf countries are looking to get back to a perceived normal as soon as possible?

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Well, they don't really have any normal. I think they're trying to establish what the new normal is. So if you're a Gulf state at the moment, what do you now know? You know that the US is not reliable, and yet you're still quite tied to it. Which you need to be able to extract sufficient promises from Trump. Again, his longevity in some of those promises are not his strong suit, but you need to be able to extract enough to make the short course of re-attacking Iran to get to a place where they can be contained. They need to get that where that's an acceptable cost in the short term. And I think that what they were hearing and seeing from the US made it seem like that wasn't going to be an acceptable cost because they weren't going to be able to extract promises that the US would see this through. I've heard an interesting thought recently. I'm curious about your thoughts on this. What Iran knows is that these next few months are going to be really, really crucial because post-US midterms and post, let's say, Israeli elections, if we've been September, then you know the floodgates are open again for Trump to re-establish attacks on Iran. And maybe that's possible, maybe that's what they're looking for. But I would say is that, again, coming back to the laws of political gravity, the situation in Iran is not going to be that they can withstand the internal costs, this blockade within the IRGC, within the Iranian population at large, and still end up being a regional hegemon, right? You can't weaken domestically and somehow be incredibly strong internationally.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yeah, and for me, it comes back to that reputation piece. Because if you're right, practically speaking, absolutely not, especially if the population, as you say, goes through that and comes out at the other end. But to be the one against the states is kind of something that you might think might outweigh the sacrifice that they're making. Because the same with as as far as Trump is concerned, he doesn't really mind if people are protesting against the conflict. He doesn't really mind if it's a cost conversation or population. I think he's frightened of looking weak and so will therefore do whatever it takes so that that isn't the narrative that comes out.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

Yeah, and I would say that this current way of Iran's engagement, which is rejecting treaties made, either through Pakistan or through the the US, is making the US look weak. But the US isn't weak. I mean, they can restart this conflict. I think that their biggest issue is that they don't want to commit in real ways to what it's going to take to contain Iran. So they're trying to weaken it to the point where that containment is going to be shorter and more acceptable to them than if they went in now where they're dealing with like a, you know, still a very empowered IRGC. This isn't going to be a two-month endeavor, right? If anything, it'll probably last the remainder of Trump's presidency and on. But I do want to just say that, like, you know, people can can really go after Trump for going into Iran at this point. And of course, like the justification at the time, if you remember, was that it had not been ever weaker. But the previous US administration's engagement with Iran was also not good. Right. I mean, it was just a different form of quite bad. Because the Iranian state itself is not trying to be a normal state, you know, enriching itself, having certain amounts of regional power. It was a very, very negative force within the region and the world more broadly. So it was never going to be a particularly easy weed to to grab. And I think that they've done it pretty badly, but it's not to say that it didn't need to be done. Like it was entirely of choice.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Yeah. At risk of asking a stupid question. What does ceasefire mean?

SPEAKER_02 13:25

No, I mean it can mean anything now. Um, because of course, like you might recall that over the weekend Russia and Ukraine was supposed to have a ceasefire, and then within about 20 seconds of it being declared, they were both declaring that each of them had violated it. So I think it's just, you know, we'd almost should see it as uh a public breathing room, right? Because all of these conflicts, whether it's Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, all of these kind of major international conflicts are being determined now much more by politics than they are by the conflicts on the ground. No one's winning the conflict. You know what I mean? So if you're not winning the conflict, then it's really politics, or some people might say diplomacy, but I will say that it doesn't seem very diplomatic, so politics. And a ceasefire is basically saying we want the politics to take the main focus at the moment rather than the gun. And it certainly doesn't mean that the military conflicts now cease, right? That's not what it currently means. It just means that people are going to get in a room and chat.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Because there's been ceasefire conversations across the Middle East. There was the first wave of those that were Lebanon ended up being a sort of sticking point. And then, as you say, over in Europe at the moment, Russia and Ukraine are in a similar back and forward. And it is almost as though Putin has borrowed Donald Trump's random number generator with the kind of time frames and uh pulling these figures out of the sky. And today he says he thinks the Ukraine conflict is coming to an end. That was a BBC headline this morning. So how how could he be drawing that conclusion at this point?

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Maybe because he's the one who basically gets to determine whether or not he leaves Ukraine. So that that could be one way of thinking about it. I mean, again, if if no words or numbers mean anything, then saying that he won Ukraine and, you know, taking the territorial wins where he can might be now acceptable, whereas last year they weren't acceptable. You know, they've they've made very, very few gains in the last 12 months or so. Very few. Whereas Ukraine has come not necessarily as a military power within Ukraine, because it too has not necessarily made any better gains, but it has revived itself in a totally different way, which is of course it's now like the drone lord of the world. And so they now are coming at both Russia, but also building up international credence as a different type of power. And it's effective, very effective.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

So so why now then? If you're if you're Putin, like you say, you know, him saying it could end soon is because he is the one in charge of that. It's like saying, yeah, we'll make dinner soon if you're the one making dinner. But why why does it suit him now?

SPEAKER_02 16:03

There's some talk that internally within the Russian government there's a lot of dissension over Ukraine and that he's struggling to be able to make that argument stick within his own circle. But equally, I think that the Russian state itself is quite exhausted. You know, these sanctions that have been lifted on Russia, whereas it certainly gave them more money to play with, these oil sanctions by the US, it actually potentially has made them think that they could normalize their economy if they just didn't have this war hanging over them. Obviously, they're four years in, they've made kind of miserable, limited progress, right? Even Putin has to see that. But I think the costs of it had now, again, coming back to just the trade-offs here, right? The costs of it are no longer either right now or in the future going to be lower than they seem to be.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Well, when you talk about the progress, would it not be a case of lots of people asking what the point was?

SPEAKER_02 16:56

I mean, again, this is not a man up who I think is too concerned about answering those questions. In general, he's going to be much more responsive to is Russia stronger or weaker as a result of this conflict? Or is there a way that Russia could be stronger internationally by not engaging in this particular conflict? And he may see that. He may see opportunities opening up, of course, in the Middle East, or, you know, a front with China and Iran over a reduced US power. You know, there's all sorts of ways in which I think the strategies, again, are not based on the guns and instead based on the politics.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

So as these conflicts continue to kind of spread and impact more people more broadly, more regularly, what are you seeing coming next? I know we've spoken a lot, haven't we, about conflicts impacting more developed countries, feeling a bit closer to home. And then at the same time, governments, especially in the in the UK and the States, even are kind of more aware of the kind of public disorder and things sort of bubbling up everywhere you look, really.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

Yeah, so like I was thinking about this recently, about the conflicts of 2027. What's it going to look like, where they're going to be. So I think that there'll certainly be some new conflicts emerge. You know, the Horn of Africa, I think, is is the next very large, very complex conflict to emerge. I think Pakistan is not going to get out of this particularly easily. But I do want to talk a little bit about how, and you'll be of very good interest here, I think, Braun, which is the feeling that because conflicts are impeding a lot on people's everyday life, either indirectly, as you were noting with the job numbers, but also with the actual physical presence of conflict in places where we wouldn't have expected it before. There's all sorts of, believe me, I think, nonsense about the US and the UK becoming more violent. But I think it's very difficult to not claim that there is an increasing sense of disorder. Now, the violence that you may see within the US and the UK is actually not because of the sources of disorder that you see in the US and the UK or the political kind of malaise. But I think it's all happening at once, and so it's very difficult to sometimes distinguish between those things.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yeah, and there's there's all sorts of kind of secondary and tertiary conversations happening across the board where the questions are being asked about where this extreme level of hate has come from in people, and there's lots of arguments saying that actually it's the wokism that's driving the hatred to kind of be more extreme as one side gets more extreme, the other side does as well. Then there's that whole piece about if people were called to war in the way that they used to be, then would anybody show up and there's my generation all saying no because of various reasons, like, you know, what's my country ever done for me? And all of that that fit feels like it's taking over the public discourse rather than, you know, what's actually happening overseas and where the conflicts are.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Yeah, there's I mean, that's a good point. I would say that when most people think of conflict, they might think of a country like Sudan, right? Where even though it's a very modern conflict in its internationalization, all the rest of it, it still has recognizable signs of two large groups fighting each other with a lot of smaller groups supporting those two larger groups. But what happened in the US during their last election, and I think what's happening in the UK, especially around this notion of you were saying kind of whether it's anti-Semitism or very low support in the government and then confusion about what role they should play on the international stage and what it asks of its citizens, all of those things are simultaneous to threats that are hybrid threats from Russia or Iran or potential terrorist attacks or assassination squads being sent from, you know, maligned states. It's all coming together to make people feel like there really isn't a huge amount of security and control, even in places that are extremely developed, very high levels of democracy, and still quite high levels of social cohesion, but it it doesn't feel that way. That's having a very depletion effect, I think, on how people see what can be done about conflict.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Yeah, and how close it feels to the individual, right? So one thing we haven't touched on, and I think is worth mentioning, is the this piece about China and are they going to benefit? Are they the winner when it comes to what's happening in between Russia and Ukraine and in the Middle East with Iran? Where what's their kind of role and what are they getting out of it?

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Oh, that's a good question because I think it's a at the moment there was an economist front page a few weeks ago, which is China's philosophy here was don't get in your enemy's way when they're making a mistake. And US President Donald Trump is, of course, going to visit China this week. And so there's questions about how these two powers are going to survey the world at the moment and what they want to get out of it. I think that China is increasingly trying to be a military power, although it's not been tested in any way ever. In that way. It's kind of an economic mess at the moment, but it's a political powerhouse. It's a political superpower. There's no question about that. Whereas the US is looking increasingly unreliable as a political ally. It's of course the largest military the world has ever seen. And it's economically quite strong. So I wouldn't say that it's all lost yet, and that we should be prepared to be, you know, speaking Chinese soon by any stretch of the imagination. But they have different benefits and different, I would say, drawbacks to their strategies of global power. And Iran, I think, has complicated this a lot. Again, in part because the US role in the Gulf is still that it retains the most important allies there. And of course, they're all tied to it through military exchanges and aid. But China looks like a sure pair of hands to a lot of people. I can't say how this is going to play out because I don't know how it's going to play out. I'm not sure anybody knows.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

No. But I'm sure lots of people would give us their opinion on it. Whether it's got anything behind it or not. Um, so okay, as far as the immediate next on earth is going on, what do you think we should be expecting in the coming days from the Middle East, from Europe, from the States?

SPEAKER_02 23:13

I mean, there's always just such an open question about how the US is going to make decisions about this. I think the conditions in Iran are obviously not dire enough for them to make any concessions. And so the US might try to push them, especially while Trump is in China, in order to give the impression that, you know, we can still throw our weight around. One thing Trump is not going to want to do is to head to China under some impression that he's weak in a key area of US influence and control like the Middle East. I think Israel is just desperate to ruin any sense of normalcy to this ceasefire. So we would expect continued action in Lebanon and maybe even some sort of way to destabilize the situation. I mean, as always, I'm looking to see what Saudi does because UAE is kind of saying, that's it, you know, we're ready. We're going to throw our weight around, which is considerable in the region. But Saudi Arabia has been incredibly reluctant to move into anything where it doesn't necessarily know the outcome. And that's been a big problem here. There's been some movement, of course, in Sudan and Ethiopia around what's happening in Tigray. That will be kind of a tinderbox for that region for sure. Although the US has decided to remove sanctions on Eritrea, which is an odd move, I would say. An odd, odd move. Not an end in and of itself, but it seems to be part of a sequence of actions that I haven't quite thought through yet. So, you know, maybe nothing will happen before next week, Ron, I have to say, other than this. I will say that everybody in the UK is howling with anger over the local elections and what it means, but it's not going to have any effect on COP.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

No. And we have run out of time now, but we haven't even mentioned Eurovision.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

I don't I don't actually watch Eurovision anymore. No, I think it's tawdry. It is. That's that's the point. I know. I I feel like you're just going through all the Irish people possible to host it. And I don't know. I think it's taking itself too seriously.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

I'll send you my favourite one from last year, and then you let me know if it changes your mind.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Oh, who was it?

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Germany.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

Oh no. I don't know that one. So yes, please do send it to me.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

I will.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

All right. When is it on?

SPEAKER_01 25:28

It starts tomorrow, but then the big one is on Saturday. Oh right. That's quick. What have they decided to do with Israel this year? Um, I actually I'm not that they've been round the houses so many times about it. I'm not sure what they've landed on, but it's it has really kicked off in the last couple of years because they're just whoever the poor soul is that gets ferried out on behalf, they are just booed to high heaven and it's and it's like pretty shameful.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Yeah. Um but I will say that the Irish are really maxing their ability to be miserable in us.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Do you remember when you sent Jedward out? You as in you are obviously responsible for the whole of us.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

I wish I'd make some big changes.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Okay, well, thanks, Bron. Let's hope that the Eurovision cannot distract us. Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Bye-bye.

unknown 26:15

Bye.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

You've been listening to Conflicts of Interest with Professor Cleaner Raleigh, brought to you by ACLED, the world's leading source of political violence and protest data. Subscribe so you never miss an episode, and follow us on socials for updates in the meantime.