Bot Armies: The Invisible Soldiers of Digital Warfare
Once, warfare was synonymous with blood-soaked borders, infantry battalions, artillery, and fighter aircraft. Diplomatic confrontations inevitably culminated on the battlefield. In the technology-driven twenty-first century, however, the landscape of warfare has undergone a profound transformation. Today, one of the most powerful theatres of conflict is social media. Here, bullets and bombs have been replaced by information, rumours, disinformation, social division, emotion, and algorithms. Among the most potent weapons in this new digital battlefield is the "bot army"—an invisible digital force capable of redirecting public opinion within minutes, fuelling social polarization, or even destabilizing the political environment of an entire nation.
Between 2024 and 2026, the character and dynamics of social media changed dramatically across the globe, driven primarily by the extraordinary advances in artificial intelligence (AI). Earlier generations of bots were largely limited to repeatedly posting or amplifying pre-written messages. Modern AI-powered bots, however, can communicate in natural, coherent language, answer questions, engage in online debates, and even tailor different messages to different audiences by analysing their psychology. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult for ordinary users to distinguish between genuine human accounts and AI-operated ones.
Technology researchers describe this unprecedented phenomenon as Computational Propaganda. At its core, it refers to the deliberate manipulation of public opinion through the use of computing systems, advanced algorithms, automated accounts, and artificial intelligence. Its objective extends far beyond promoting a particular political ideology or narrative. More fundamentally, it seeks to create widespread confusion, undermine public confidence in state and social institutions, and foster an environment in which the boundary between truth and falsehood becomes almost impossible to discern.
In its Global Risks Report 2025, the World Economic Forum (WEF) identified misinformation and disinformation as among the most significant short-term risks facing humanity. The reason is straightforward: a single piece of fabricated information, if made artificially viral, can profoundly disrupt a country's national election, economy, public health policy, or social cohesion within a matter of hours. As technology becomes more sophisticated, those who spread disinformation are becoming equally adept at executing increasingly precise and rapid digital influence campaigns.
Today's bot armies are no longer merely collections of fake automated accounts. They are supported by sophisticated troll networks, deepfake videos, AI-generated images and voices, and algorithm-driven influence operations. Frequently, thousands of coordinated accounts simultaneously share or comment on the same narrative. Social media algorithms then interpret this coordinated activity as evidence of widespread popularity, promoting the content into the timelines of ordinary users. Consequently, many people assume that the narrative represents the opinion of the majority, when, in reality, much of the apparent public consensus has been artificially orchestrated from a central source.
Although this strategy is not entirely new, its scale and sophistication have increased exponentially. Over the past decade, coordinated digital influence campaigns have been alleged to play roles in elections, geopolitical conflicts, and social movements around the world. Since 2024, however, the widespread availability of AI-powered content generation tools has fundamentally altered the landscape. Today, even a small group—or in some cases just a handful of individuals—can produce enormous volumes of text, images, and videos at minimal cost, flooding the internet with coordinated disinformation.
The greatest psychological weapon of bot armies is their ability to exploit human emotion. Issues such as religion, nationalism, language, elections, economic hardship, and national security are especially effective targets. When misleading information is framed around these emotionally charged subjects, people tend to react instinctively rather than critically. Social media algorithms reward precisely this behaviour: the greater the engagement, the wider the distribution. Consequently, false narratives spread with extraordinary speed and reach.
Since 2024, another particularly dangerous trend has emerged worldwide: AI-enabled influence operations. These campaigns combine human strategy with artificial intelligence. For example, an individual may create a false or misleading claim, after which hundreds or thousands of automated bot accounts instantly amplify it across multiple platforms. In some cases, bots carry the campaign; in others, human actors do; often, the two work in tandem. The result is a blurred information landscape in which distinguishing genuine public opinion from coordinated manipulation becomes increasingly difficult.
Bangladesh is by no means immune to this evolving cyber reality. Particularly in the period following 2024, political developments, heightened social tensions, and several high-profile incidents have been accompanied by the rapid spread of fabricated information, recycled videos presented as recent events, manipulated images, and entirely fictitious social media posts. Fact-checking organizations in Bangladesh continue to identify and debunk such misinformation on a regular basis. At the same time, technology analysts have observed a worrying increase in coordinated campaigns that disseminate identical or remarkably similar messages across multiple accounts. Nevertheless, determining whether a particular incident was driven primarily by automated bot networks requires rigorous technical investigation and conclusive forensic evidence.
This brings us to a fundamental question:
Are bot armies merely a technological challenge, or do they pose a far greater threat to democracy, national sovereignty, and civil society itself?
The answer is far from simple.
Social media has evolved beyond being merely a platform for entertainment or personal communication. It has become one of the primary arenas where political discourse unfolds, economic decisions are influenced, news is consumed, and public opinion is shaped. Consequently, when this information ecosystem is deliberately manipulated or poisoned, the consequences extend well beyond the digital world. Citizens make decisions based on false information, social polarization deepens, trust in democratic institutions declines, and suspicion grows between governments and the people they serve.
Perhaps the most troubling reality is that, in this digital information war, falsehood travels much faster than truth. Verifying facts takes time, whereas a sensational rumour can reach millions within moments. Even after it is conclusively disproven, its psychological and societal damage often endures.
For this reason, bot armies should no longer be viewed merely as a technological issue. They have become a matter of national security, democratic resilience, media integrity, and public awareness. In this new era—where information itself has become a weapon—any state that fails to secure its information environment, and any society that fails to cultivate a strong culture of fact-checking and critical thinking, risks becoming vulnerable to the manufactured public opinion and social divisions created by these invisible digital armies.
Author: President, Bangladesh Mobile Phone Consumers' Association
Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Digital Bangla Media. In keeping with the principles of a pluralistic press, the article has been published without editorial modification. Any offence taken or emotional reaction arising from its contents remains entirely the responsibility of the reader.
