Information Whack-A-Mole

My digital rabbit hole runs deep and has lots of branches.

Over the last few days, I have found myself browsing interesting articles on the idea of hybrid warfare and Information Operations. One of which resonated strongly: John Little’s podcast, “Propaganda, Influence, and Disruption.”

There is some sort of perverse fascination in what the predictions for the 2018 elections and social media currently are. I say “perverse” for the fact that I would compare it to trying to anticipate how much more wet one would be in the forecasted rain on Tuesday in comparison to Thursday – wet is wet, and manipulation is manipulation. No real news there.

What is both astonishing and disturbing is how much we have the ability to research the level of the efforts to sway a political opinion, yet how apathetic we are in appreciating how much effort goes into the “swaying” process and what it all means.

We can look at the $1.8 billion (“With a ‘b’…”) raised by the candidates themselves according to one website, we can look at $6.8 billion from another, or even cite the $9.8 billion from a third page produced by a quick search, but it does not change the fact that significant financial support and capital is expended on the route to political – and financial – power.

“Where does the money go?” is a reasonable question to ponder, but it strays down a tangent far from my original point: information (and electronic) whack-a-mole.

From Little’s podcast, we hear Andrew Trabulsi’s frustration in managing this issue:

I don’t see that (the demise of political advertising) changing. The other is it would just require those who seek to influence and manipulate it would just push them to a new layer of creativity where they can be rather crude now but influence operations are not going away.

Information operations are far from new. Current military information-support operations (MISO) are rooted in the control of information which has dominated human history in one form or another – deception, propaganda, and media control. From the cyclic use of inflatable military vehicles (their love of maskirovka has led the Russians to pull a page from our own history recently), to the domination of fallacious Facebook posts/advertisements, to the selective reporting/use of algorithms which shape our perceptions of the geopolitical world, our participation in politics is measured, nudged, and prodded as the methods of sharing information evolves. Even as I research supporting points for this post, I find myself sorting through tabs upon tabs, noting the lack of readily available empirical studies and research available on two of the last three links.

Again, Trabulsi’s words stand out:

It’s insidious and it’s potentially… very very damaging when it’s done at scale… particularly when it’s done just with the objective of creating division right and chaos absolutely and pitting different parts of society against each other it is incredibly damaging. We’re gonna have to find a solution for that because it’s hard to envision as we as we go further and further down this road and as more of our lives become just you know data points and in millions of data bases that can be leveraged by other people.

…There’s gonna have to be some kind of I don’t know – whether it’s public education or whether there’s a different way to service maybe force some transparency in the points that are being targeted or the audience’s that are being targeted – I don’t know, but we’ve got to do something.

What can we do?

A lot of stock and faith is put into the media and political leaders, while at the same time we grow more and more doubtful of their integrity and intent. We focus on the national level, but forget about the local issues that confound and perplex us. We attempt to assign or deflect blame based on political affiliation, religion, or other ancillary concerns…

…And we forget that it is “we” who are responsible for our interactions and choices. I was recently wandering around a local museum and came across snippets from the 2005 movie Warm Springs. I was about to move onto the next exhibit when I heard Elanor Roosevelt (played by Cynthia Nixon) firmly state: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Imagine that.

No one can manipulate us if we allow it. Sure, the process for finding the truth takes more time and is beset with traps, wonderfully camouflaged ideas, and studies which confirm whatever bias best suits our mood… and I fully realize that certain levels of truth and information may never be fully realized – for good reasons and bad. Perhaps your idea of truth differs from mine. It happens, and again – we have the responsibility for the destructive and constructive interactions which will result.

The responsibility lies within us.