Global Cyber War Still Goes Unnoticed By Many

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

I know it is hard, but very few of us grasp just how destructive the Russian cyber-war is in this country and throughout the world. Its main goal is to polarize and disunite citizens living in democratic countries. It is working. Russian cyber-farms run by Russian military are spreading extreme fake news on both sides of every controversial domestic issue to widen divisions and radicalize extremists on both sides of every issue. Russia and our own domestic oligarchs are pushing authoritarian alternatives to our democratic institutions. Fascism is gaining traction here and abroad.

We are all certain that our opinions and feelings are our own - and in a sense they are. But everyone’s opinions arise from broad networks of facts and myths within a collective social fabric. It is the social fabric in which we live that is being deceptively altered on social media platforms and through traditional mass communications media. False narratives and carefully curated webs of lies are being amplified and endlessly echoed within our social spaces. No one wants to admit that they are being manipulated by bad actors with the means and motives to do so. Moreover, the influence that the fabric of our social space has on our thinking can be imperceptible. As an analogy, would an astronaut traveling in space detect that her straight line of travel had been bent by the influence of a massive object in the distance?  Probably not! 

In the same way, the topography of our social environment subtly influences our thinking in ways that are not self evident. Rather than admit that our world view has been maliciously altered, we dig in when challenged and we  harden our positions. Discussion between people on opposite sides of a disinformation divide become nearly impossible.

Disinformation on social media comes from many sources. It is big business for some folks, much like tabloid magazines that figured out people will pay to read outrageous things. The political divisions created by disinformation campaigns cause governing paralysis, serving the interests of many billionaire elites who don't want governments telling them what they can't do. There are also homegrown nuts that pick up and run with fringe ideas to garner attention. But then there are big, well-funded, and coordinated rogue nations that can't compete fairly in a global economy dominated by Western democracies. These countries are attacking world democracies, and Putin's Russia is chief among them. He has created an entirely new military branch, thousands of soldiers, to wage cyber warfare on western democracies. So far, he is meeting with little resistance.

 

Here is a good article about the situation: https://www.csis.org/blogs/post-soviet-post/countering-russian-disinformation