"World War III will
be a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian
participation." - Marshall McLahun
I noticed it during the
2016 election. My Twitter and Facebook accounts were awash in anti-Hillary
comments. Many comments seemed to piggy-back on my own reservations about her.
Other comments were wildly inaccurate and mean-spirited.
I was a Bernie supporter and not happy with the way the DNC
and Democratic leadership conducted the primaries. Still, Hillary Clinton seemed the better choice in my view.
When anti-Hillary tweets and messages mirrored my concerns I sometimes
"liked" the comments or added my own to support of my views. But then there were many outrageously
false anti-Hillary claims. I mostly ignored these, but sometimes took
issue. This often lead to debate with some implacable troll on
social media. I engaged them not to change their minds (impossible), but to
make sure others would be exposed to a reasonable set of
facts.
During these internet encounters I noticed a lot of respondents chiming in with "likes" or retweets supporting the opposition side. The
longer the debate, the greater the number of these silent opposition
supporters. sometimes as many as 20 or 30 different accounts, Some mute retweeters even continued to piled on days after the conversation ended, and they latched on to randomly stupid or statements made by the original Hillary hater.
That's when I realized something unusual was happening. I assumed these respondents were part of a coordinated system of trolls. I didn't know I was experiencing a technically advanced propaganda attack. I managed to resist the feeling that the consensus was against me, but did start to wonder if I was talking to myself.
After the election, all these feverish Twitter and
Facebook respondents suddenly disappeared. Did anyone else notice that?
Only now am I beginning to learn the full horror of this new cyber based propaganda.
Many of us think of propaganda we think of what spies call "active measures" like dropping fliers from airplanes, broadcasting news
on Radio Free Europe, writing op-ed pieces under pseudonyms or stealing and releasing classified documents to publically embarrass adversaries. The Russian connection to the DNC email hacks and subsequent
Wikileaks publication appears to be of this sort. It seems a little high tech because the theft was by hacking, but at its root it old
style propaganda. And media attention to it only
serves to distraction us to the whole new world of electronic propaganda unleashed during the election. New, covertly developed, military grade propaganda techniques were used by private corporations, and perhaps foreign actors, to tip our election results on a scale never seen before. The internet was weaponized against us.
COGNITIVE WARFARE:
Cognitive warfare is a toolbox of cyber
propaganda techniques that both models mass populations and profiles
individuals to change their beliefs or attitudes. It has many aspects and
methods that utilize super-computers, massive databases and sophisticated
computer algorithms to weaponize information gathered from our digital
footprints to use against us. Some
techniques model and manipulate whole societies to bring about social change
while other techniques profile and manipulate individuals or groups to alter a person's
attitudes and behavior. These methods go
by names such as Bio-psycho-social
profiling, Recoding (of mass consciousness), Strategic drowning (of mainstream
media content, for example), micro-targeted propaganda, etc. These propaganda techniques
can be highly effective and operate on an emotional level without our specific awareness.
So where to begin? The amount of information needed to fully
explain the new propaganda is way beyond the scope of this blog post. It is honestly
beyond the scope of my own understanding at this point as well. This article can
only serve as an introduction to the topic. At the conclusion I will point you
to several lengthy articles that go into more detail.
ALGORITHMS: To
understand the basics of cognitive warfare methods we must start with computer algorithms.
These are sets of computer code instructions that allow a computer to analyze
huge amounts of data and automatically make complex decisions for further
action based on their continuous analysis. Algorithms can be simple or
mind-bendingly complex, as their use in modern day financial trading
illustrates. In the area of financial investments algorithms monitor the
markets and social media sites (like Twitter, to see what's trending) and then make
split-second decisions on buying and selling stocks. It is estimated that over
70% of all stock trades are computer generated transactions.
But algorithms are ubiquitous in social media as well. From
Google's search engine to Twitter's suggestions as to who to follow, algorithms
have become our window on the world. As such they have an enormous impact on
our outlook. Each of us who searches a term on Google may receive different information
in a different order, depending on our digital footprint on the internet. This
impacts our thinking. Robert Epstein, of the American Institute for Behavioral
Research and Technology says,".. these personalized results impact our opinions and
behavioral patterns without our awareness." Of Google he writes, "We
are talking about the most powerful mind-control machine ever invented in the
history of the human race. And people don't even notice it."
There is much more we need to know about these algorithms
running in the background of the cyber world, but for our purposes here it is sufficient
to know that a knowledge of them and how to manipulate and exploit them is the
basis on which cognitive warfare operates.
BIO-PSYCHO-SOCIAL
PROFILING: When I type "Daily
Record" into my iPhone search, my local newspaper site come up. Years ago
this wasn't the case. I would get a newspaper with that name in Scotland. We
don't think much about the convenience built into our media systems that allows
computers to make assumptions about us. These assumptions are based on our
digital profile, where we live, where we are presently located, what we have
looked up in the past and other such personal information kept in a database
about us somewhere. This is the friendly face of social profiling.
Advances in data storage and retrieval systems, sophisticated
algorithms, and methods to analyze and manage massive amounts of data allow
media platforms to develop comprehensive profiles on us. This allows them to
deliver the content we most want to see. Formerly, the level of detail was
based on some grouping we fit into, but increasingly it is based on who we are
as individuals. This has been a boon to commercial
marketing but it has a very powerful dark side as well.
In the case of Facebook profiles, for example, scientists
found that profiles can be correlated across millions of people to produce
remarkably accurate individual profiles. When results are combined with data
generated by the "like" button people click on approve certain
content, the individual profile gets ever more perfect. With just 150
"likes" our profile can
predict personality better than our own spouses can, and with 300 likes it
knows a person better they know themselves.
Of this profiling data, Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a Swiss
mathematician, said, "People just don't understand the power of this data
and how it can be used against them." This level of understand our
personality allows those in control of our profiles to send micro-targeted
messages to us that subtlety manipulate our feelings and the association with
which our emotions are evoked. For example, if a person is on the fence over how to vote in an election, the people behind the propaganda machines know this about you and can custom tailor messages to that will influence you to
vote one way or the other. This technique is called micro-targeted propaganda. There
is evidence that this type of propaganda was used in the 2016 election to help
elect Donald Trump.
STRATEGIC DROWNING: This is another tool in the Cognitive
Warfare arsenal used to influence public discourse and alter our mass
consciousness. While bio-psycho-social profiling targets individuals, this
technique targets certain segments of the population or even the whole
population at once. The idea behind this technique it to flood the cyber-media
network with specific alternative messages that drown out conventional news and
information. It exploits the algorithms used by media platforms that bring desired
content to us. So, for example, if you type "Jews are" into Google search,
it will return answers like, "Why do people hate Jews" I just did the
experiment as I write this and the picture below shows the top results.
[EDITORS NOTE 7/15/2017: Following the election the example below no longer holds true if you try it today. The alternative medial narrative emphasis has shifted to other areas of focus, such as Islamic jihadists and sharia law as an alternative to Russia's election tampering and Trump Administration investigations. For a more contemporary example google: "Sarsour is" and then "Linda Sarsour" to see how strategic drowning has altered the search results.]
[EDITORS NOTE 7/15/2017: Following the election the example below no longer holds true if you try it today. The alternative medial narrative emphasis has shifted to other areas of focus, such as Islamic jihadists and sharia law as an alternative to Russia's election tampering and Trump Administration investigations. For a more contemporary example google: "Sarsour is" and then "Linda Sarsour" to see how strategic drowning has altered the search results.]
Clearly these are unexpected results for most people who
might enter the search terms. (Try it yourself, and don't be surprised if your
results differ from mine based on your profile.) The result over-represent hate
groups and the proliferation of these results are the work of nefarious
operators who flood the "media ecosystem."
Cyber media would normally
be dominated by conventional information sources such as The New York Times, Fox
News, MSNBC etc., but these sources are swamped with hundreds of thousands of
links from much smaller alternative information sites. These links to
alternative information are intended to exploit the structure of Google secret algorithms
to bring these articles to the top of the search results. This has a
psychological impact on us personally and gives a false impression about public
consensus in America. It blurs the question as to what is really true.
The operational structure for strategic drowning includes a
coordinated network of alternative information websites, referred to as
micro-propaganda machines, or MPM's. Each MPM controls a vast warehouse of
"bots" which are bogus Facebook and Twitter accounts, etc. These fake
accounts exist by the hundreds of thousands. Some are always active to drive
public dialogue while some are "sleeper bots." These are held in
reserve and triggered en mass by propagandists to overwhelm news cycles or
cover up information unfavorable to their goals. It is also used to create
trends and alter public discourse, or change public attitudes.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Jonathan Albright is an
assistant professor of communications at Elon University in North Carolina. He analyzed
the activity of these MPM's during the 2016 election and was able to create
"spatial map" of that activity. The picture created shows the
relative dominance of traditional information sources in the media ecosystem,
as he calls it, and the impact on that system by MPM's during the election. The red nodes are alternative information
(propaganda) websites and the red lines radiating from them are links or
activity of these sites.
In effect, what you see here is the cognitive warfare battlefield during the last election. This new propaganda arms race is between pro-democracy advocates and their adversaries. It is a war still
being waged here and in other Western democracies. It is being waged by both
foreign attackers and billionaire Western oligarchs who share converging
interests. It is being waged by Russia, who just announced the creation of a
new branch of their military calling them "information warfare
troops".
"... Russians
have moved into an offensive posture that threatens the very international
order." said Ben Rhodes of the Obama Administration last year.
The propaganda war is also being waged by billionaire controlled
corporations specializing in this field, companies like Cambridge Analytica. This
is essentially a propaganda company featuring Steve Bannon on its board of
directors.
This outline of Cognitive Warfare attacks we were subjected
to, and are still experiencing as an attack on our journalism institutions, helps
make sense of my social media experiences during the election. I see now how I
was being stroked, on one hand (micro-targeted), to fan my discontent with Hillary while being
made to feel my views were in the minority (strategic drowning) on the other hand. I know now that
many of the trolls I encountered were really computer generated cyberbots. All this has caused be to completely rethink my
own on-line presence.
I have presented a great deal of information here and a number of
quotes and facts without specific attribution. That is because virtually all of
the quotes and many of the fact are from the remarkable work of Carole
Cadwalladr, published by The Guardian in London. I have vetted her information
by going to her original source and found them to be accurate. If you have
stayed with me to this point, I urge you to read Ms. Cadwalladr's two article
for even more background information. She also outlines the connections between
the companies providing propaganda services for the wealthy ideologues funding
them and the Trump administration.
Bibliography
Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on
mainstream
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage
Carole Cadwalladr, 26 February, 2017
Google, democracy and the truth about internet search
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-democracy-truth-internet-search-facebook
Carole Cadwalladr, 4 December, 2016
The #Election2016 Micro-Propaganda Machine
https://medium.com/@d1gi/the-election2016-micro-propaganda-machine-383449cc1fba#.gl16j8e9c
Jonathan Albright, 18 November, 2016
And for further reading from my blog on algorithms,
Algorithms Hidden Impact on How We Think
Brian T.
Lynch, 9 February, 2016UPDATE: For the sake of fairness, I returned to Jonathan Albright's website and found an updated analysis of the propaganda machine analysis including left-leaning websites as well, and the full picture of the activity is seen in the following picture. Obviously, there were left-leaning websites competing for a share of the media attention as well. I don't know the nature of the information from these left-leaning sites, or if they were part of a propaganda campaign. I'll share more when I know more.
