We’re Winning, Say Russia’s Fake News Manufacturers; Center for European Policy Analysis, October 16, 2024

Olga Lautman, Center for European Policy Analysis; We’re Winning, Say Russia’s Fake News Manufacturers

"Did you see the German woman complaining on social media that her country’s industry is suffering and needs cheaper energy? Or the American woman of the same age arguing that Israel and Ukraine are wasting US taxpayer’s money?

Both were crafted in Russia, according to a huge trove of documents leaked to Western media in September, and published by the VSquare investigative site among others. They were just two of 33.9 million social media comments fabricated by the Social Design Agency (SDA), a Kremlin disinformation subcontractor, in the first third of 2024 alone.

If anyone thought wartime Russia might lose focus in its truth-twisting campaigns against Ukraine and the liberal democratic states, think again. Putin and his aides still see disinformation as a key element of the colonial endeavor against Ukraine and the embitterment and fractiousness of Western voters.

Faced with international sanctions, military setbacks, significant losses, and growing isolation, Russia has increasingly ramped up its disinformation operations, political subversion, and the manipulation of public opinion in the West — echoing the KGB’s tactics of psychological warfare and subversion."

New Tactic in China’s Information War: Harassing a Critic’s Child in the U.S.; The New York Times, June 27, 2024

Steven Lee Myers and Tiffany Hsu , The New York Times; New Tactic in China’s Information War: Harassing a Critic’s Child in the U.S.

"A covert propaganda network linked to the country’s security services has barraged not just Mr. Deng but also his teenage daughter with sexually suggestive and threatening posts on popular social media platforms, according to researchers at both Clemson University and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram...

The harassment fits a pattern of online intimidation that has raised alarms in Washington, as well as Canada and other countries where China’s attacks have become increasingly brazen. The campaign has included thousands of posts the researchers have linked to a network of social media accounts known as Spamouflage or Dragonbridge, an arm of the country’s vast propaganda apparatus.

China has long sought to discredit Chinese critics, but targeting a teenager in the United States is an escalation, said Darren Linvill, a founder of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson, whose researchers documented the campaign against Mr. Deng. Federal law prohibits severe online harassment or threats, but that appears to be no deterrent to China’s efforts."

How to start winning the information war; The Washington Post, April 2, 2024

 

Joseph I. Lieberman

 and 

Gordon J. Humphrey

, The Washington Post; How to start winning the information war

"Joseph I. Lieberman was a U.S. senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013 and the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000. Gordon J. Humphrey is a former U.S. senator from New Hampshire. Lieberman drafted this piece with Humphrey in the months before Lieberman died on March 27...

Formerly, we thought about national security in terms of battles on land, at sea and in the air. The newest battlefield is the human mind. Our adversaries are fully deployed on that field of battle. We are all but absent. Thus, we are losing the information war by default to malefactor regimes in Russia, China and Iran.

What explains this alarming state of affairs? Lack of leadership and lack of means. No one is in charge of telling America’s still-inspiring story to the world. For three years, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, part of the State Department, has urged the White House and Congress to designate a lead official in the information war. The recommendations appear to have been ignored. This reflects inattention at the very top.

As for lack of means, since 1999, when Congress unwisely abolished the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the United States has lacked the capability to fight back using counternarrative. We have the invaluable Voice of America, of course, but VOA’s product is news. News is not counternarrative. It is not the marshaling of truth and fact to tell our story. Putin’s high standing in domestic polls and in some nonaligned countries is proof we need more than news to achieve victory on the battlefield of the human mind. We need counternarrative as well.

Joe Biden was one of 49 senators who voted against abolishing the USIA. It should be an easy walk for the president to take the steps necessary to get us on the offensive."

Inside the Israel-Hamas information war, from insider attacks to fleeing leaders; The New York Times, October 14, 2023

Elizabeth Dwoskin, The New York Times; Inside the Israel-Hamas information war, from insider attacks to fleeing leaders

"While social media has been a critical tool for disseminating wartime information in recent days, a barrage of images, memes and testimonials is making it difficult to assess what is real...

“Right now,” said Hultquist, “it’s very difficult for a lay person to get to ground truth.”"

Journalist Maria Ressa explains 'How to Stand Up to a Dictator'; NPR/Fresh Air, November 30, 2022

NPR/Fresh Air ; Journalist Maria Ressa explains 'How to Stand Up to a Dictator'

"DAVE DAVIES, HOST: 

This is FRESH AIR. I am Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Our guest today, Maria Ressa, is an international journalist who's widely celebrated around the world. She was Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2018 and last year won the Nobel Peace Prize along with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov. But in her home country, the Philippines, Ressa faces multiple criminal charges and regulatory actions, which could shut down Rappler, the online news organization she heads, and land her in jail for decades. Rappler drew the anger of President Rodrigo Duterte, known for his violent campaign against alleged drug users, because the news site did stories about corruption and cronyism and exposed a web of online disinformation networks with ties to Duterte.

Before co-founding Rappler in 2011, Ressa spent many years covering Southeast Asia for CNN, breaking important stories about Islamic terrorist networks. Ressa's story isn't just that of a crusading journalist exposing corruption, though it is that; she's also focused on the role of social media networks, who, she says, are weakening democracy by enabling the rise of online disinformation and hate mobs in the service of authoritarian rulers around the world. Her new memoir is "How To Stand Up To A Dictator: The Fight For Our Future."...

DAVIES: To kind of summarize here, it sounds like what you're proposing is that news organizations need to overcome some of their competitive instincts and work together when there is important fact-checking to be done, connect them to other organizations in a way that puts energy and emotion into it and get that out there.

RESSA: Think about it like this. Like, if you don't have integrity of facts, you cannot have integrity of elections. And ultimately, what that means is that these elections will be swayed by information warfare. I mean, you know, it's funny. Americans actually look at the midterms. And they say, well, it wasn't as bad as it could be. Death by a thousand cuts - it's still bad. And if we follow, you know, what - the trend that we're seeing, if nothing significant changes in our information ecosystem, in the way we deliver the news, we will elect more illiberal leaders democratically in 2023, in 2024.

And what they do is they crumble institutions of democracy in their own countries, like you've seen in mine. But they do more than that. They ally together globally. And what they do is, at a certain point, the geopolitical power shift globally will change. Democracy will die. That point is 2024. We must figure out what civic engagement, what we do as citizens today, to reclaim, to make sure democracy survives."

Ukraine’s information war is winning hearts and minds in the West; The Conversation, May 12, 2022

 Michael Butler,Associate Professor of Political Science, Clark University, The Conversation; ; Ukraine’s information war is winning hearts and minds in the West

"Weaponizing information

Russia’s use of propaganda and symbols during the conflict, most recently in the “Victory Day” celebrations attempting to draw its own distorted parallels to World War II, has gotten a lot of attention. In the process, Ukraine’s skillful use of information warfare should not be overlooked. 

Information warfare entails one party denying, exploiting or corrupting the delivery and function of an enemy’s information. It is used both to protect oneself against the enemy’s information and to create a favorable environment for one’s own information.

With the charismatic President Volodymyr Zelenskyy leading the way, Ukraine’s savvy use of traditional and social media as well as direct appeals to the U.S. Congress, European Parliament and the court of world opinion have provided a clear and compelling framing of the war. 

That frame is structured around five affecting themes: the inherently just cause of Ukrainian self-defense; the tenacity of Ukrainian resistance; the barbarity of Russian conduct; Russia’s flawed military strategy and general ineptitude; and Ukraine’s desperate need for more, and more sophisticated, military hardware. 

Ukraine’s successful strategy in the battle over information demonstrates the connection between armed conflict and information warfare. Ukraine has forged a stalemate with Russia by stressing these themes of a just war for national liberation using not only traditional tools of warfare – bullets, missiles, tanks – but also by shaping the Western public’s perceptions of the war."

The Information War in Ukraine Is Far From Over; The New York Times, May 5, 2022

 SERGE SCHMEMANN, The New York Times; The Information War in Ukraine Is Far From Over

"As a former K.G.B. agent, Mr. Putin sees the world as a battleground of conspiratorial maneuvers. In his speeches, the color revolutions in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics and the Arab Spring and other global upheavals are machinations to bolster American domination. As an heir to the Soviet worldview, he believes more than many Western leaders do in the importance of information warfare, both to give his regime a veneer of legitimacy and to challenge liberal democracy. On this battlefield, lies are ammunition in Mr. Putin’s long and increasingly personal struggle to stay in power.

As the war enters a new phase, as the images and horrors become familiar and the costs rise, it will become ever more difficult for the Biden administration and for Mr. Zelensky to sustain their early lead in the information war. That makes it all the more imperative for the West to press the message that this is not a war Ukraine chose and that the cost of allowing Mr. Putin to have his way in Ukraine would be far higher than the sacrifices required to block him."

This was the week America lost the war on misinformation; The Washington Post, July 30, 2020

Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post

; This was the week America lost the war on misinformation

"Some new research, out just this morning from Pew, tells us in painstaking numerical form exactly what’s going on, and it’s not pretty: Americans who rely on social media as their pathway to news are more ignorant and more misinformed than those who come to news through print, a news app on their phones or network TV.

And that group is growing...

They’re absorbing fake news, but they don’t see it as a problem. In a society that depends on an informed citizenry to make reasonably intelligent decisions about self-governance, this is the worst kind of trouble.

And the president — who knows exactly what he is doing — is making it far, far worse. His war on the nation’s traditional press is a part of the same scheme: information warfare, meant to mess with reality and sow as much confusion as possible."

Putin’s Long War Against American Science; The New York Times, April 13, 2020

William J. Broad, The New York Times; Putin’s Long War Against American Science

A decade of health disinformation promoted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has sown wide confusion, hurt major institutions and encouraged the spread of deadly illnesses.

"As the pandemic has swept the globe, it has been accompanied by a dangerous surge of false information — an “infodemic,” according to the World Health Organization. Analysts say that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has played a principal role in the spread of false information as part of his wider effort to discredit the West and destroy his enemies from within.

The House, the Senate and the nation’s intelligence agencies have typically focused on election meddling in their examinations of Mr. Putin’s long campaign. But the repercussions are wider. An investigation by The New York Times — involving scores of interviews as well as a review of scholarly papers, news reports, and Russian documents, tweets and TV shows — found that Mr. Putin has spread misinformation on issues of personal health for more than a decade.

His agents have repeatedly planted and spread the idea that viral epidemics — including flu outbreaks, Ebola and now the coronavirus — were sown by American scientists. The disinformers have also sought to undermine faith in the safety of vaccines, a triumph of public health that Mr. Putin himself promotes at home.

Moscow’s aim, experts say, is to portray American officials as downplaying the health alarms and thus posing serious threats to public safety.

“It’s all about seeding lack of trust in government institutions,” Peter Pomerantsev, author of “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible,” a 2014 book on Kremlin disinformation, said in an interview.

The Russian president has waged his long campaign by means of open media, secretive trolls and shadowy blogs that regularly cast American health officials as patronizing frauds. Of late, new stealth and sophistication have made his handiwork harder to see, track and fight."

Digital Threats On 2020 Elections; Texas Public Radio, January 11, 2020

Michel Martin, Texas Public Radio; Digital Threats On 2020 Elections

"Siva Vaidhyanathan has been writing about these concerns. He is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. We spoke earlier about why he thinks digital democracy will face its greatest test in 2020."

"MARTIN: Do you have a sense of, you know, based on your research and that of others, whether there is some throughline to these groups that are engaging in these disinformation campaigns around the world? Like, what's their end goal? Do we - is there, say, a single source or a few sources - is there anything - you know, what do we know?

VAIDHYANATHAN: There doesn't seem to be a single source, but there seems to be thematic coherence. In other words, if there is an extreme authoritarian political force in the Philippines - and there is - and there's an extreme authoritarian political force in Ukraine - let's say trying to be imposed from across the border in Russia - those forces are going to learn from each other. It's very easy to mimic the strategy of another one. So what it means is if you're of that ilk, if you want to disrupt democracy and undermine any form of governance that might support the rule of law and limit corruption, et cetera, you are going to try to flood the political sphere with nonsense, with stuff that will divide society, stuff that will turn people against each other, especially against minorities or against immigrants."

How You Can Help Fight the Information Wars: Silicon Valley won’t save us. We’re on our own.; The New York Times, December 18, 2018

Kara Swisher, The New York Times;

How You Can Help Fight the Information Wars:

Silicon Valley won’t save us. We’re on our own.

[Kip Currier: A rallying cry to all persons passionate about and/or working on issues related to information literacy and evaluating information...]

"For now, it’s not clear what we can do, except take control of our own individual news consumption. Back in July, in fact, Ms. DiResta advised consumer restraint as the first line of defense, especially when encountering information that any passably intelligent person could guess might have been placed by a group seeking to manufacture discord.

“They’re preying on your confirmation bias,” she said. “When content is being pushed to you, that’s something that you want to see. So, take the extra second to do the fact-check, even if it confirms your worst impulses about something you absolutely hate — before you hit the retweet button, before you hit the share button, just take the extra second.”

If we really are on our own in this age of information warfare, as the Senate reports suggest, there’s only one rule that can help us win it: See something, say nothing."

The Chinese threat that an aircraft carrier can’t stop; The Washington Post, August 7, 2018

David Ignatius, The Washington Post; The Chinese threat that an aircraft carrier can’t stop

"America’s vulnerability to information warfare was a special topic of concern. One participant recalled a conversation several years ago with a Russian general who taunted him: “You have a cybercommand but no information operations. Don’t you know that information operations are how you take countries down?”"

Stop calling it ‘meddling.’ It’s actually information warfare.; The Washington Post, July 17, 2018

Brian Klaas, The Washington Post; Stop calling it ‘meddling.’ It’s actually information warfare.

"“And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!” That’s the catchphrase that comes at the end of “Scooby-Doo” cartoons, always right at the moment when some monster turns out to just be a creepy old man in a mask. The zany adventures are over — until the next episode.

That’s the appropriate use of the word “meddling.” It is not, however, an appropriate word to use when referring to the ongoing Russian attacks on American democracy that gained prominence in the 2016 presidential election and will accelerate as we head into the November midterms. This isn’t “Scooby-Doo.” The stakes couldn’t be higher, and the monsters we face are real...

But that phrase is woefully inadequate. These continuing attacks are neither meddling nor “interference,” another euphemism. They’re a part of gibridnaya voyna — Russian for “hybrid warfare.” The best term for what we’re talking about would be “information warfare.

One of the jarring realizations of the 21st century is that democratic governments are only as good as the quality of information that their voters receive. Influence the information flow voters receive, and you’ll eventually influence the government."

The disinformation factory threatening national security; Washington Post, February 16, 2018

David Von Drehle, Washington Post; The disinformation factory threatening national security

"“Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it,” wrote Jonathan Swift more than 300 years ago. What would he have said in the age of Twitter?

A sobering paper published in the winter edition of Strategic Studies Quarterly — the strategy journal of the U.S. Air Force — explains how propagandists manipulate social media in their cyberwars against the United States. Hostile forces, employing automated bots, leverage the blind spots and biases of unwitting Americans to help them send falsehoods flying to spread division and demoralization.

Figuring out how to fight back, in a free society of open communication, is the most urgent national security challenge we face. Friday’s indictments by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of a Russian trolling operation is a welcome sign that we are joining the battle. But so far, we are losing. And should we fail, the future will belong to authoritarian states that protect their virtual borders by controlling Internet access."

Russia Heats Up Its Infowar With the West; Daily Beast, March 3, 2017

Ilan Berman, Daily Beast; Russia Heats Up Its Infowar With the West

"[Russia's information operations] objective is clear and unequivocal: to obscure objective facts through a veritable “firehose of falsehood,” thereby creating doubt in Western governments, undermining trust in democratic institutions, and garnering greater sympathy for the Russian government (or, at least, greater freedom of action) for its actions abroad.

Last month, in a presentation before the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu formally unveiled the establishment of a new military unit designed to conduct “information operations” against the country’s adversaries. The goal of the new initiative, according to Vladimir Shamanov, head of the Duma’s defense committee, is to “protect the national defense interests and engage in information warfare.”"