CYBER WARFARE EXPLAINED - How We Are Being Manipulated

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

CYBER WARFARE EXPLAINED: Using various traditional and high tech methods, political and social divisions are being created and amplified in the US and other Western nations by the enemies of democracy and civilian rule. The divide created in this DISINFORMATION war is an INFORMATION divide. If you can divide a large group of people on what they believe to be true, they are beyond reach in a rational policy argument. Here is an overly simplified overview of the Cyber Warfare strategy:

- First, saturate the media environment of a disaffected subgroup of the population with an internally coherent set of altered facts that are attractive to them. Drown out the mainstream, traditional media information sources.

-Create suspicion and distrust of traditional news and journalistic institutions and of government and democratic institutions. Increase the target groups reliance on alternative media sources.

- Then go about influencing and developing the opinions of those who accept these altered facts by creating false narratives and seeding the alternative media with coordinated messaging.

- Next, manipulate and agitate the emotional states of the target population with manufactured scandals and elaborate conspiracy theories directed against those on the other side of the information divide.

- Reward this targeted group when their social media responses affirm the false narratives the alternate messaging on social media.

- Foster and a sense of loyalty among believers in the targeted group (creating in effect a tribalistic peer group of like-minded "patriot").

- Now the divide becomes difficult to breach, tumultuous in its social discourse, aggressive in its behavior towards others outside their social group and self-sustaining (due to our natural human social dynamics).

- Create enough of these social and political divides within a nation's population and the country becomes ungovernable as a civil democracy. The country becomes vulnerable to the rise of authoritarian dictatorship.



Regretfully, I am just beginning to understand how we are being attacked. How we fight back and win is not yet clear to me.



Further Reading:

Micro-targeting: How Personal Data Stolen From Facebook Helped Elect Donald Trump

Russia InfoWar Attacks via US Social Media: https://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2018/12/russia-info-warfare-attacks-via-us.html

Mueller's Russia Indictment - A Condensed Summary: 
https://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2018/02/muellers-russia-indictment-condensed.html

Propaganda in the Digital Age - Mind Control on a Massive Scale:

https://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2017/03/propaganda-in-digital-age-mind-control.html