In an interconnected world where almost all knowledge is available at the click of a mouse, or the tap of a finger, when does it become scary? Lieutenant Colonel David Bestows article; Social Cybersecurity, An Emerging National Security Requirement breaks down the history of Russia’s information warfare program. Once the history is broken down, he goes into how strategies are changing around the world when it comes to information warfare. The last thing he covers is how bots can be used to further one’s agenda. This is where it becomes scary in my opinion. Not only does the general population of a country have to worry about deep fakes but not they have to worry about social manipulation.
Traditionally Russia has always aimed its propaganda at its own citizens, to essentially make it look like the West is bad and Russia is good. Russia got it’s start demonizing the West as far back as Vladimir Lenin, but this article brings in more modern leaders such as General Valery Gerasimov. The General wrote an article called “The Value of Science is in the Foresight”. This article stated that in his view United States led coalitions in multiple war torn countries relied not only on conventional warfare but also information operations. The General studied these operations and is quoted as saying “Information warfare opens wide asymmetric possibilities for decreasing the fighting potential of the enemy.” The article then goes on to describe what is known as the traditional Russian propaganda machine and how it aligns with their mission now. Their main goal was to drive a wedge into the West to weaken the United States.
The article then goes on to state how warfare is shifting from physical fighting to that of the human domain. Honestly this one scared me but then I thought of how today’s social media has slowly allowed active-duty members to divulge information without getting in trouble. In example Habitiual_line_crosser on Tik Tok likes to voice overs of countries as things happen overseas, but always portrays the US as the superpower. He does use information that is openly available on the internet, but does that make it right? This brings back in the article describing how the Arab Spring was used to mobilize the masses. These changes are made possible by the way humans are getting their information. This is what has allowed cyberthreats to become so dangerous. In History to fight a war a person had to be physically in the area. Now everything has become decentralized because slowly but surely the news organizations are disappearing. People would rather read or watch what aligns with their views or beliefs. This is where the problems start, everyone is allowed to believe in what they want, but they are trying to figure a way to censor social media so deep fakes become obsolete.
Now that it has been established that information can be used as warfare, countries are using state actors to create botnets to further push their agenda out to the world. Botnets were initially used as simple programs that would allow users to flood emails with spam email. Weaponize this and you can push your agenda in the world. Connect it to AI and machine learning and you have a system that can not only create fake accounts on social media, but also push the creator’s agenda. This goes to show that cybersecurity also includes the socials aspects of life and can be weaponized against us if we are not careful.
In conclusion, I would like to state that the reason I get scared when reading articles like this is because we live in the information age and almost any knowledge is available at the tap of a screen. It is clear that information has become a weapon of warfare, which requires a collective effort to secure our digital and social spaces. The potential for social manipulation, deep fakes, and the utilization of botnets calls for vigilance and the development of effective countermeasures to protect our societies from the threats posed by this emerging form of warfare.