The Emerging Risk of Virtual Societal Warfare

The Emerging Risk of Virtual Societal Warfare
Author: Michael J. Mazarr
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Artificial intelligence
ISBN: 9781977402721

The evolution of advanced information environments is rapidly creating a new category of possible cyberaggression, which RAND researchers are calling virtual societal warfare in an analysis of the characteristics and future of this growing threat.

Digital Influence Warfare in the Age of Social Media

Digital Influence Warfare in the Age of Social Media
Author: James J. F. Forest
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2021-09-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1440870101

This timely book spotlights how various entities are using the Internet to shape people's perceptions and decision-making. It also describes detailed case studies as well as the tools and methods used to identify automated, fake accounts. This book brings together three important dimensions of our everyday lives. First is digital-the online ecosystem of information providers and tools, from websites, blogs, discussion forums, and targeted email campaigns to social media, video streaming, and virtual reality. Second, influence-the most effective ways people can be persuaded, in order to shape their beliefs in ways that lead them to embrace one set of beliefs and reject others. And finally, warfare-wars won by the information and disinformation providers who are able to influence behavior in ways they find beneficial to their political, social, and other goals. The book provides a wide range of specific examples that illustrate the ways people are being targeted by digital influencers. There is much more to digital influence warfare than terrorist propaganda, "fake news," or Russian efforts to manipulate elections: chapters examine post-truth narratives, fabricated "alternate facts," and brainwashing and disinformation within the context of various political, scientific, security, and societal debates. The final chapters examine how new technical tools, critical thinking, and resilience can help thwart digital influence warfare efforts.

War Virtually

War Virtually
Author: Roberto J. González
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2024-04-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520402170

A critical look at how the US military is weaponizing technology and data for new kinds of warfare—and why we must resist. War Virtually is the story of how scientists, programmers, and engineers are racing to develop data-driven technologies for fighting virtual wars, both at home and abroad. In this landmark book, Roberto J. González gives us a lucid and gripping account of what lies behind the autonomous weapons, robotic systems, predictive modeling software, advanced surveillance programs, and psyops techniques that are transforming the nature of military conflict. González, a cultural anthropologist, takes a critical approach to the techno-utopian view of these advancements and their dubious promise of a less deadly and more efficient warfare. With clear, accessible prose, this book exposes the high-tech underpinnings of contemporary military operations—and the cultural assumptions they're built on. Chapters cover automated battlefield robotics; social scientists' involvement in experimental defense research; the blurred line between political consulting and propaganda in the internet era; and the military's use of big data to craft new counterinsurgency methods based on predicting conflict. González also lays bare the processes by which the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies have quietly joined forces with Big Tech, raising an alarming prospect: that someday Google, Amazon, and other Silicon Valley firms might merge with some of the world's biggest defense contractors. War Virtually takes an unflinching look at an algorithmic future—where new military technologies threaten democratic governance and human survival.

Global Trends 2040

Global Trends 2040
Author: National Intelligence Council
Publisher: Cosimo Reports
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2021-03
Genre:
ISBN: 9781646794973

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

Digital Influence Mercenaries

Digital Influence Mercenaries
Author: James (J.F.) Forest
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2022-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1682477525

In today's online attention economy, supply and demand have created a rapidly growing market for firms and entrepreneurs using the tactics, tools, and strategies of digital influence warfare to gain profit and power. This book focuses on the more malicious types of online activity such as deception, provocation, and a host of other dirty tricks conducted by these "digital influence mercenaries." They can be located anywhere with an Internet connection--Brazil, China, Iran, Macedonia, Russia, Zimbabwe--and the targets of their influence efforts can be whomever and wherever they are paid to attack. They can do this for state governments willing to pay and provide their targeting instructions (usually in support of foreign policy objectives) and may have specific metrics by which they will assess the mercenaries' performance. Non-state actors (including corporations and political parties) can pay for these kinds of digital influence services as well. And in addition to being paid for services rendered, digital influence mercenaries can also profit simply by manipulating the targeted advertising algorithms used by social media platforms. James J. F. Forest describes in detail the various tools and tactics these mercenaries use to exploit the uncertainties, fears, and biases of their targets including bots, deep-fake images, fake news, provocation, deception and trolling. He also shows how they weaponize conspiracy theories and disinformation to manipulate people's beliefs and perceptions. Forest also highlights how government agencies and social media platforms are trying to defend against these foreign influence campaigns through such tactics as shutting down offending websites, Facebook pages, and YouTube channels; tagging disinformation with warning labels; identifying and blocking coordinated inauthentic behavior; and suspending social media accounts, often permanently. European and North American governments have launched numerous investigations against these mercenaries, and in some cases have brought criminal charges. Forest concludes with suggestions for how each of us can learn to identify disinformation and other malicious efforts and defend ourselves in the future.

Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid Warfare
Author: Ralph Thiele
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021-11-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3658351098

Hybrid warfare is becoming a long-term strategic challenge for NATO and the EU. This book examines its conceptual foundations, actors and technologies from a holistic, systemic perspective. In particular, new, disruptive technologies have a catalytic effect on hybrid methods and tools. 19 Technologies prove to be particularly relevant. They improve the initial conditions for hybrid action, expand the arsenal of hybrid actors and improve the scope and prospects for success of their activities.

Memetic War

Memetic War
Author: Tine Munk
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2023-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 100097071X

Memetic War analyses memetic warfare included in cyber war and aims to develop a framework for understanding the parameters included in utilising this concept in Ukraine as a part of civic resistance. In the Ukrainian war, an informal defence tactic has developed to uphold the information flow about the war and to debunk Russia’s communications. The war has enhanced the visibility of governmental and civic activation by using the advantages of social media architecture, networks, and communication forms. The book investigates Ukraine’s public and private abilities to develop cyber capabilities to counter propaganda and dis-and-misinformation online as a defence mechanism. This book uses military ROC doctrine to understand government authorities, the armed forces, and civic engagement in the Ukrainian resistance. Memetic War will have relevance for scholars, researchers, and academics in the cybersecurity field, practitioners, governmental actors, and military and strategic personnel.

Beyond Ukraine

Beyond Ukraine
Author: Tim Sweijs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2024-05-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197791549

War in the 21st century will remain a chameleon that takes on different forms and guises. This book offers the first comprehensive update and revision of ideas about the future of war since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It argues that the war has fundamentally shifted our perspective on the nature and character of future war, but also cautions against marginalizing many other parallel trends, types of war, and ways of waging them. World-renowned international experts from the War Studies field consider the impact of the war in Ukraine on the broader social phenomenon of war: they analyze visions of future war; examine the impact of technological innovation on its conduct; assess our ability to anticipate its future; and consider lessons learned for leaders, soldiers, strategists, scholars and concerned citizens. Beyond Ukraine features contributions from Azar Gat, Beatrice Heuser, Antulio Echevarria, Audrey Cronin, T.X. Hammes, Kenneth Payne, Frank Hoffman, David Betz, Jan Willem Honig, and many other pre-eminent thinkers on the past, present and future of war--including an afterword by the late Christopher Coker.

Influence and Escalation

Influence and Escalation
Author: Rebecca Hersman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 71
Release: 2022-01-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1538140462

Technology-enabled influence operations, including disinformation, will likely figure prominently in adversary efforts to impede U.S. crisis response and alliance management in high-risk, high-impact scenarios under a nuclear shadow. Both Russia and China recognize their conventional military disadvantage vis-à-vis conflict with the United States. As a result, both nations use sub-conventional tactics and operations to support their preferred strategies for achieving favorable outcomes while attempting to limit escalation risks. Such strategies include an array of activities loosely identified as influence operations, focused on using and manipulating information in covert, deniable, or obscure ways to shape the strategic environment. This report presents eight scenarios—four focused on Russia and four focused on China—that invite potential escalation risks and demonstrate how the tools and tactics of influence operations could be employed to challenge detection, response, and crisis management. It explores a range of potential escalatory pathways and destabilizing consequences if adversary influence operations engage strategic interests and targets in high-risk scenarios and identifies key takeaways and recommendations for policymakers to better identify and defend against adversary influence operations.