[NY Times] & [POLL] Countries Want to Ban ‘Weaponized’ Social Media. What Would That Look Like?

Well i think they need to choose, they're either platforms and not liable for what's put there, and the censorship of non illegal content should end, or they're made publishers, and then they become liable for everything.

The EU law is turning them into publishers much to their chagrin, but a platform with the content control of a publisher is a textbook case of a government created monopoly, they should never allow businesses or people to simply hand pick which parts of two different types of legal structures they can use, it'd be like giving a sole trader llc protections on just the parts he wants.

 

the left is obsessed with regulating/censoring speech they don't like, either by the state or by the publisher

 

They should just ban social media. World was a better place before it.

 

And the right is obsessed with lying. Do you have any shame left?

 

Most Americans with any sense would be against social media being "weaponized" by hostile foreign powers, like Russia and China, something that happened here during the 2016 election, when Russia effectively influenced our presidential election, and is happening today by the same hostile power in European countries who are our friends and allies, as well as our own. "Left" or "Right" should have nothing to do with it. Extremists from either side who promote racial or religious hatred or who are a conduit for the promotion of actual "fake news" shouldn't expect to be allowed free access to major social media outlets, in my opinion, where the typical user has no idea that they are being lied to.

 

It's obvious what has to happen, but it doesn't suit billionaires.

Allow everything and make it 18+. Yes many would get through, but it would be heavily limited.

 

So the right wants to be able to spread fake videos of things like doctored videos to make Pelosi look drunk, and if they aren't allowed to they are going to throw a temper tantrum.

 

Another story about the assault on our democracy by Russia. This time, from The Nation Interest.

May 28, 2019
How Russia Found a Disinformation Haven in America
There is no good solution to the election-meddling efforts foreign countries are making via social-media platforms. Policymakers should expect that tech sector regulatory proposals will be far from adequate.

by Rawi Abdelal Galit Goldstein



Americans continue to discuss Russia’s information operations efforts in the wrong way. We have wasted time debating whether “Russia” or “Russians”—the government or government-connected individuals—meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The Mueller Report definitively established that the Russians, both through the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) and the Internet Research Agency (IRA), undertook information operations campaigns. This has been reasonably clear for a long time—even when excluding evidence put forward by government sources, for the benefit of the paranoid. Some on America’s Left and in the Center have been unable to drop the idea that President Donald Trump could not have won without foreign help. Likewise, the American Right has been unable to drop the idea that there is a “deep state” Leftist media conspiracy bent on undermining a democratically elected president. And for now, we will leave aside critiquing the collective shock that foreign “meddling” could influence elections in the United States, a nation that has worked to promote its interests, in small or large ways, in many elections around the world—including every election conducted in post–Soviet Russia.

Framing the disinformation issue through this debate misses the point. The goal of the information operations campaigns was not simply to elect Donald Trump president. Nor was it only to polarize American politics further. The point was, rather, to continue undermining America’s ability to agree on the true and not-true.

Russia’s strategy hinged on the fact that it is nearly impossible for people stuck in alternate realities with competing, incompatible truth claims to undertake civil discourse. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her colleagues did not, in fact, organize a pedophilic, Satanic, human trafficking operation in the basement of a DC pizza parlor. Trump did not, in fact, conspire with the Kremlin to deliver an unexpected electoral result because he had been compromised by the video capture of salacious activities in Moscow hotel rooms. Things were much simpler than that. And yet, one can find people on either end of the political spectrum who are still convinced that these false stories are true. It is difficult for these Americans to engage in rational conversation together.

(the rest at the link below)

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-russia-found-disinformation-haven-america-59892

 

US intelligence partners wary of Barr's Russia review
By Alex Marquardt and Zachary Cohen, CNN

Washington (CNN)Key allies who share intelligence with the United States could soon be dragged into the middle of Attorney General Bill Barr's politically-charged Justice Department review of how the Russia investigation began.

President Donald Trump has said he wants Barr to look into the role key intelligence partners, including the United Kingdom and Australia, played in the origins of Russia probe. He has said he could raise the issue with the British Prime Minister Theresa May during his state visit next week and suggested he may ask her about his accusation that Britain spied on his 2016 presidential campaign.
In describing the scope of Barr's mission to declassify and study the pre-election Obama-era intelligence, among several other topics, Trump told reporters, "I hope he looks at the UK and I hope he looks at Australia and I hope he looks at Ukraine."

For now, those allies are trying to stay out of the fray, arguing it's a domestic issue. But the President has granted Barr -- not the intelligence community -- sweeping powers to decide what intelligence can be declassified.
That means Barr could potentially reveal intelligence shared with the US by other countries related to Russian election meddling and, in the process, risk damaging those critical relationships with foreign partners.
The United Kingdom and Australia are members of the critical so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, rounded out by the United States, New Zealand and Canada.
Both have so far publicly stayed quiet, emphasizing their friendships with the US but national security officials in those countries are watching and waiting, following closely while refraining from criticizing a process that could call into question their intelligence gathering and reveal their methods and sources.
"If the review were to declassify sensitive intelligence -- especially if doing so compromised the safety of sources -- that would cause very grave concern," a former senior British ambassador told CNN. "It could even affect the readiness of close allies like Britain to continue sharing the most sensitive material with the US."
"This is a matter for the US authorities," a senior British official in London added, while the embassy in Washington declined to comment.
One official from a Five Eyes partner said that a balance needs to be struck between the review of intelligence and national security matters with the need to protect classified information.
Australian officials declined to comment but Foreign Minister Marise Payne told a radio interviewer on Monday they don't want to "engage in a public commentary that might entirely risk that we seem to prejudice the ongoing examination of these matters in the US."
There is increased wariness because of the President's signature unpredictability but Barr is seen as a steady hand and intelligence partners are comforted by their lengthy friendships with their American counterparts.
In Britain's case, the drama surrounding Brexit also means they are keen not to rock the boat.
"For Brexit and other reasons, the British government is keen to stay closely aligned with the Trump administration, despite significant differences on climate, trade, and foreign policy," the former British ambassador said. "The UK will probably not want to say much in public about the Barr review of inter-agency links."

Trump might bring up Five Eyes spying with May
Until now, the Barr review hasn't gotten much public attention in the UK, with recent headlines dominated by the dramas surrounding Brexit, May's resignation and European Parliament elections. But the British press' attention will soon turn back to the Trump and the tension in the "special relationship" with the President's state visit to the UK next week.
Asked whether he would raise the possibility of Five Eyes countries spying on his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump told reporters on Friday he could do so with outgoing Prime Minister May.
"There's word and rumor that the FBI and others were involved, CIA were involved, with the UK, having to do with the Russian hoax," Trump told reporters on Friday. "And I may very well talk to her about that, yes."
Despite the public disagreement between Trump and the US intelligence community over whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election, the top US intelligence chief said the Barr will get "all the appropriate information" for the review of intelligence into Russia's election attacks.

But Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned Barr against being too public with what he declassifies.
"I am confident that the Attorney General will work with the IC in accordance with the long-established standards to protect highly-sensitive classified information that, if publicly released, would put our national security at risk," Coats said in a statement.
When asked if the Department of Justice has provided any assurances regarding the protection of intelligence provided by foreign partners, an ODNI spokesperson referred CNN to Coats' statement from last week.
The Justice Department declined to comment.

Foreign intelligence and the 2016 election
It was the Australians who tipped off the FBI that Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos knew about the Russians having damaging emails that could influence the election, months before that information became public.
The Australians knew because Papadopoulos bragged about it to the Australian ambassador to the UK in May 2016, and they brought the tip to the FBI's attention in July 2016, after WikiLeaks started releasing hacked Democratic emails.
According to the Mueller report, which never identified Australia by name, "the FBI opened its investigation of potential coordination between Russia and the Trump Campaign a few days later based on the information."
This came soon after British and European intelligence agencies told their US counterpartsabout communications they intercepted between Trump associates, Russian officials and other Russian individuals during the campaign.
Since Trump won the election, British and American intelligence officials have insisted they continue to work together as closely as ever, despite the tumult at tops of their leadership. But Trump's disregard for the intelligence community has strained ties with some of its strongest partners.
Yet at the same time, Trump has repeatedly perpetuated baseless accusations of spying against critical allies. Specifically, Trump has repeatedly alleged -- without any evidence -- that the Obama administration wiretapped him during the 2016 presidential campaign with the help of a British spy agency.
A former senior US official pointed to the President sharing highly classified intelligence about ISIS obtained from Israel with Russia's foreign minister and US ambassador during an Oval Office meeting in May 2017 as an example of Trump's casual attitude when it comes to protecting sensitive information.
"Going all the way back to that point we've seen strains in the intelligence sharing relationship we have within the Five Eyes community," the former official said. "I have not seen these types of strains in our relationship since the immediate aftermath of the [2013] Edward Snowden revelations."
That added pressure is particularly problematic when the intelligence concerns Russia, as it does in the Barr review, the former official added. "Intelligence related to Russian activities and influence around the world is through not only our own collection but comparing what we gather with what our other Five Eyes partners are gathering."
On Capitol Hill, Democrats have blasted the President's decision to declassify the pre-election intelligence.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff accused Trump of "conspiring to weaponize" classified information while Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Mark Warner told CNN that the move "has the potential to jeopardize" key relationships with foreign partners.
"Trust and confidentiality are essential aspects of our partnerships with foreign intelligence services -- and the President's bizarre decision to allow the Attorney General to selectively and unilaterally declassify information certainly has the potential to jeopardize those relationships," Warner said.
CNN's Marshall Cohen and Laura Jarrett contributed reporting

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/30/politics/barr-intelligence-review-allies-reaction/index.html

 

This story has been abbreviated due to what I consider an absurd 10,000 character limit per post. I could have split it between two posts and will, next time. I suggest clicking on the link at the bottom and reading the entire thing.

From the BBC:
By Simon Oxenham
29 May 2019

If you ignored the content, the typical day of a “fake news” writer would seem like any office job. Every morning, Tamara would open her laptop to a fresh email with a link to a spreadsheet. This document contained eight stories based on the other side of the world from her, in the US. The spreadsheet would also contain eight deadlines, each set just a few hours later. Her job was to rewrite each story before her deadline.

The difference? Tamara was rewriting fabricated or misleading articles for two major copycat websites based in North Macedonia targeting US readers. Her job was to churn out semi-plagiarized copies of articles originally published on US extreme right-wing publications, so that her boss could serve them back to unsuspecting Americans thousands of miles away.

I spoke with Tamara in late 2018 in a café in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. Over the course of three days, she told me in detail about a job she had done for nine months. While her perspective can only ever be that of a single employee, her story reveals the reality of what it was like to work inside these sites. Tamara wishes to remain anonymous, so to protect her identity, her name and those of the individuals she worked with have been changed.

“That thing happened, the people were there, the place was there. So it was never fake stories” in the sense of fabricating every detail. “It was propaganda and brainwashing in the way of telling the story,” says Tamara.

Tamara’s job was to rewrite the original US articles so that they couldn’t be detected as plagiarised text, as well as making them more compact and even more likely to be shared on social media, generating Google ad revenue for Marco’s site. A similar fake news site based out of Veles with around a million Facebook likes has been claimed by its owner to be able to make upwards of $2,000 per day in an interview with CNN. Marco ran two sites, which Tamara told me had more than two million Facebook followers combined.

Asked if constantly viewing such a vast amount of this content affected her, Tamara describes mixed feelings. “The whole time I was typing and writing these stories, I was always thinking ‘Oh my God, who would believe this kind of garbage? How uneducated, how low intelligence do you have to be just to read them’. It’s hard to read these articles. They are long, maybe 1,000 words and the whole article maybe contains two sentences of news and after that everything is just insults. It’s hard to read. It’s not pleasant,” Tamara says.

Was she influenced by the content? After all, some studies have suggested that simply repeating false statements leads people to believe in them. “I was aware that I was writing a lot of stories about Muslims, and how they want to spread their own propaganda and want everyone to live by their rules and things like this, and one time I found myself when I was out thinking something of this kind of nature. So I was like, ‘Wow’. Subconsciously it influenced me somehow, this propaganda, because no one is immune to this stuff if you are constantly exposed to it. It was a good thing that I caught it because it’s not my opinion.” She didn’t change her opinions, she says. But something else happened. “I didn’t change my views, I didn’t change my beliefs but I found myself feeling the fear that they were trying to insert into the people in America. While writing the stories, the fear that was in these stories was in me as well. When I became aware of this, it all stopped.”

How did Tamara cope with writing hateful content every day? “I try to split myself and my own beliefs from the stuff I was writing. So I tried to stay as out of it as I can. I just saw it as writing words. I tried not to think about writing propaganda. My take was that if people are stupid enough to believe these stories, maybe they deserve this. If they think this is the truth, then maybe they deserve this as a way of punishment.”

Tamara says that her own political views are actually the complete opposite of the views espoused by the site. I ask her if there was any chance that the people who originally wrote the stories believed what they were writing. On this, she is adamant. “No, no, no, no. To even make up an article like this, you have to be very aware of what you are writing. This can’t come out of stupidity… I don’t think they believe in the stories they are writing, they know it is fake news, they know they are producing a lie. How delusional do you have to be to think that this is real?”

Marco’s website is far from alone. In 2016, just a week before the US presidential election, Buzzfeed revealed that more than 140 “fake news” US politics websites were run out of Veles, the home of Marco’s site. Veles is a small, decaying town, littered with dormant factories and run-down amenities such as an abandoned swimming pool – yet the teens who run these sites claimed to earn thousands of US dollars per month or even several thousand dollars per day on a good day. Tamara, however, didn’t make such a princely sum. She was paid 3 euros per post, amounting to a mere 24 euros per day. That’s not much to some, but triple what she might have earned doing a job locally. There is evidence that these pages had a real impact. In the final three months of the 2016 US Presidential race, fake or “hyperpartisan” news sites overtook mainstream news producers in their share of the top 20 election stories being shared on Facebook, according to a Buzzfeed News analysis.

In December 2017, Facebook banned several fake news pages from its website, including Marco’s. “I was working that day. When the Facebook pages got shut down I tried to write to him on [Facebook] Messenger. His [personal] page was also shut down, so I called him and he was pretty shook up [sic]”. After that they had no more communication, until last summer, when Tamara received a phone call from Marco asking if she wanted to write for another website. She declined. Who are the real instigators behind these websites? Until recently it has been widely believed that the fake news websites operated out of North Macedonia emerged spontaneously from local teenagers capitalising on the digital gold rush that emerged out of the carnival of the 2016 US Presidential race.

Newer evidence, however, suggests that this may not be the case. According to Buzzfeed News, “patient zero” was allegedly Macedonian media lawyer Trajche Arsov, who worked with a pair of high-profile US partners, including Paris Wade, a Republican candidate who recently ran for the Nevada State Assembly. The Buzzfeed story found that Arsov registered the domain of the first US politics site in Veles, USAPoliticsToday.com, on 23 September 2015. This may have set off the chain reaction in Veles that led to hundreds of sites, including Marco’s. This report contradicts the dominant narrative that the rash of fake news and propaganda sites operating out of the town was solely the work of teenagers seeking to cash in on Trump hysteria. While this may have become true by the end, the phenomenon in Veles didn’t begin this way. Tamara’s story doesn’t shed much light on the question of outside backing; however, it does challenge the narrative that all the young people working for these prolific websites were doing so for a huge pay cheque. If her case is anything to go on, the young people writing the content for these sites were doing so for only a small fraction of the profits.

As I said goodbye to Tamara and drove into the night on the long road home through North Macedonia’s neighbouring Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia, I was struck by a bitter irony. Here is a region, the Balkans, that in living memory has been shaped and scarred by divisions between its people. The sad truth is that now it has also become a home for websites that fuel disharmony and polarisation elsewhere – this time, thousands of miles away in the US.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190528-i-was-a-macedonian-fake-news-writer

 

I want to add that members like @Os Trigonum, and others like him, are very likely posting lies, unknowingly, that are produced by "Fake News Factories" like the one described in this article. It is an article that comes from a respected news source, the BBC. @Os Trigonum should actually read it. I would welcome comments from the OP, if he ever shows any interest in his own thread, and comments from others, as well. The story of weaponized "Fake News" is not going away.

 

Do you have an opinion of your own? Do you deny that our democracy, and others, including France, are being assaulted by entities churning out huge amounts of "fake news" funded by the Russian FSB?

 

These articles make a lot of false statements. For example, it says that Kassam was banned and FB relented after he went public. Of course it fails to mention that it was only a 7 day ban.

Look, I understand these groups are upset they can't spread their white nationalist propaganda on social media like they want to. But these platforms have a right to draw the rules of what content is appropriate or not. They are private businesses and aren't beholden to their users and they are free to find their own sites. They can go to 4chan for instance.

Clutch bans posters on here all the time - why don't you rally against that censorship?

 

Does this interest you at all, @Os Trigonum? No Hot Air!

From the United States Army War College:

Facing a Future with Organized Weaponization of Social Media

“Propagandists now exercise increasing sophistication in their communications“

In February 2019, in (Indian-administered) Southern Kashmir, a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist cell attacked an Indian paramilitary convoy with an improvised explosive device (IED). Two weeks later, when India launched airstrikes against a suspected JeM camp in Pakistan, it escalated the incident to a military crisis. Pakistan quickly weaponized its social media space, spreading disinformation or “fake news,” using old photographs and videos of downed jets and destroyed equipment, implying their wreckage resulted from the recent aerial duel between its airforce the Indian fighter jets. In doing so, the Pakistani security establishment successfully used social media and television to spread disinformation and chaos through multimedia content, and turned the Indian public against its own political leadership, in what seems to have been — until now — a rare example of organized state-sponsored weaponization of social media — during an active military crisis.

The capabilities and capacities of actors to push content into the information environment depends on the timely and calibrated use of available communication tools. The objective is to manage the perception of the targeted audiences — electorates, civil societies, or the public sector — to influence policy-makers. Propagandists now exercise increasing sophistication in their communications, effectively weaponizing social media to further their aims, as in the foregoing example. The implications of a weaponized social media space demand recommendations about what the strategic community should anticipate in future instances of such activities.

Social media has been used before to stir trouble, but the extent to which social media was weaponized throughout a crisis response is potentially revolutionary. Pakistan combined its social media capabilities with a calibrated disinformation campaign to offset India’s superior conventional military capability. The Pakistani security establishment unleashed chaos with concerted and coordinated action, led by its Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations (DG-ISPR), with the active support of the Pakistani intelligentsia — plus a few Indian opportunists.

This continues a trend whereby actors are becoming more sophisticated in weaponizing social media by setting clearer objectives and sowing more than mere disruption into the target societies. Russia is certainly an example. Since 2004, Russia recognized the importance of information operations in future conflicts, using it to great success in Georgia in 2008 and subsequently in its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Russian trolls (disguised as American users) apparently tried to influence American voters by leading political discussions and debates on social media — despite normal relations between those countries. American intelligence agencies woke up to their own unprecedented information operation across the social information space. A massive psychological operation led by Russian firms had been active since 2014 but was not discovered until much later. By then, the slow damage to Americans’ cognitive space had already been done.

Another example is how ISIS cyberwarriors, trolls, and sympathizers innovated their exploitation of social media platforms to spread disinformation and propaganda globally, to attract adherents into their imaginary caliphate. Both adversarial campaigns succeeded to a degree, yes. But the objectives were less clear and the effects were less apparent. The early February 2019 military crisis between India and Pakistan took media weaponization to a new level. ISIS’ social media operation had disruptive effects, characterized by its dissemination of a strategic message (objective) using strategic communication methods.

It demonstrated the extent to which a non-state actor could go to mobilize public opinion, using every conceivable social media application to spread its propaganda — and its legitimacy – with a strategic exploitation of the social information space. The campaign’s disruptive effect was marked by specially crafted content in the form of videos, texts, and memes it channelled across the social information space, shared extensively via bots and phony profiles. As a result, it drew tens of thousands of foreign nationals into the conflict zone to join the Islamic State caliphate. Here, a non-state actor, with a rudimentary war-fighting capability, engaged in active war with sovereign countries using superior narratives built in social media spaces.

 

Continued:

Swift Action and Coordinated Response
What the India-Pakistan military crisis of 2019 demonstrated was how speed and coordinated action to weaponize social media early can have extraordinary impact on an unfolding crisis. Speed is key whether a battle is fought on the ground or in cyberspace. The first side to make a move sets the tone and direction of the fight. Besides swift action, the coordination of activities from multiple points has an important influence on the outcome. Deploying calibrated propaganda helps spread chaos and confusion in the targeted citizenry’s minds. Phony social media accounts push masses of information into various forums to turn fiction into “fact” before the truth has a chance to prove itself.

After a February 14th suicide attack by JeM, there was a mixture of both disruptive and interference effects. First, JeM used social media to claim responsibility for the attack. After that crisis, triggered by a non-state actor originating from Pakistan, India retaliated with a counter-terror operation in Balakot, Pakistan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). During the first 60 hours after that operation, the sovereign state of Pakistan achieved effects by weaponizing the social media space. It harnessed social media forums and channels that its security establishment had developed over time. All of a sudden, social media was filled with a running narrative, pushed by a mix of verified and suspiciously obscure profiles, all accusing the Indian prime minister of using the Pulwama IED attack as a pretext for war — to boost his party’s chances in upcoming elections. The narrative was gradually built up following a counter-response by Pakistan’s air force on February 27, in which India and Pakistan each apparently lost a fighter jet and Pakistan captured an Indian pilot. During Pakistan’s custody of the pilot, another round of social media propaganda — shared by suspicious profiles — ran through authentic social media forums, sometimes including conciliatory hashtags such as “#SayNoToWar.”

Adversaries weaponize social media not just to counter, but also to overwhelm, their enemies with content

Developing capabilities in a social media space is a prolonged process. While one can certainly create phony profiles quickly to get into various discussion forums and sow counternarratives against a target nation, it requires resources and time to achieve sustained effects. In that sense, the Pakistani military establishment was well ahead of its Indian counterparts in exploiting the benefits of social media to influence public opinion and shape the responseemerging from the Indian electorate. Different sets of information were channelled through official and phony social media accounts across the social information space. While the DG-ISPR busied itself with making press statements and posting information on its official Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube sites, other (obscure) social media profiles posted information about the Indian air force’s movements and developments regarding its captured pilot. The entire system worked like a well-oiled machine. Overall, it was an active information war between two sovereign states, triggered by a non-state actor operating with Pakistan’s strategic support.

Chaos and Confusion: War Lost in the Mind
The social information space matches the physical battlefield in many aspects, except that losses at the cognitive level influence decision-makers in the government and soldiers on the ground alike. The intensity and quantity of content’s spread across the information space adds to the complexity and uncertainty facing senior leaders. Adversaries weaponize social media not just to counter, but also to overwhelm, their enemies with content. In the absence of an equally potent response, the claims made by an adversary’s propaganda machinery may appear valid, thereby disrupting the friendly force’s narrative. The past few years have seen this approach to social media mature, from Russia’s bombardment of the United States with messages meant to aggravate pressing issues within American society to the more sophisticated efforts by JeM.

The dangers of ignoring the weaponization of social media are significant. In the case described above, Indian agencies were caught off guard by an advanced Pakistani perception management machinery that dominated the social information space. While the Indian government used traditional methods such as press releases and public statements, the Pakistani military used social media as part of its strategic communication toolkit, to push its version of the ongoing crisis. Indian journalists struggling to get information got bombarded with fabricated content instead, including from phony social media accounts shared by unwitting Indians. Utter chaos and confusion reigned in the cognitive space, with some Indian intelligentsia also sharing questionable information and fabricating content — to support their own political agendas against the ruling political party.

These efforts’ successes suggest weaponized social media is here to stay. In the age of social media, polities, policymakers, and populaces are highly interconnected. Decisions and their implementations are subject to a feedback cycle of scrutiny and comment from the citizenry. By manipulating this response, an adversary can apply pressure to the opposing government during a security crisis. Such pressure from the Indian citizenry informed both the cross-border strike by the Indian Army in 2018 and the later counter-terrorism operation in Balakot.

Broad Implications for the U.S. Strategic Community
Whether related to an ongoing trade war with China, or to the meddling of Russian trolls in U.S. elections, or to hampering U.S. operations in Afghanistan, both state and non-state actors can trigger, or intervene in, crises between the United States and an adversary. So what should be done?

For starters, nations need to better prepare for this new threat. In this context, Martin.C. Libicki’s “CNNization” of war remains relevant. A crisis triggered by a non-state actor backed by a sovereign state has the potential to disrupt the relationship between the United States and its allies. The effect may not be direct but it will have a subtle and cascading influence. The U.S. strategic community must understand and address the evolving nature of warfare as it plays out in the fifth domain — cyberspace. The goals should be better recognition of adversaries’ uses of social media and the development of campaigns to counter their effects before crises occur. It is not desirable (perhaps not even possible) to effectively react once the adversary has flooded the information space. Involvement in the social media space must be oriented on promoting the nation’s narrative in ways that blunt the adversary’s messages before they are even posted. A weaponized social media is useless to an adversary whose messages are like shooting blanks.

For the United States, necessary institutional changes such as transforming Cyber Command into a full combatant command are welcome. However, instead of operating in silos, institutions related to information warfare should further integrate into joint organizations which consolidate cyber, electronic, and information warfare operations under unified leadership. Any institutional gap is risky, providing avenues of exploitation for adversaries in this new, highly dynamic, and competitive information space.



Debasis Dash a strategic and defence studies scholar focused on the intersection of technology and military strategy. The views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer Frost & Sullivan, the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.

https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/organized-weaponization-of-social-media/

 

Are you suggesting social platforms deny Russia her right to free speech??? You're a fascist!