Learning more about social cybersecurity was my original goal when pursuing a cybersecurity degree. Utilizing the things we know about society merely through observation, and weaponizing it to achieve specific goals.

Although the authors of “Social Cybersecurity An Emerging National Security Requirement”, Beskow and Carley, primarily focus on Russia’s use of the information domain, the use of information and network manipulation to disrupt a political entity’s objectives has been exercised for centuries at this point, and by countries around the world. Is this just a form of “opinion leader co-opting” leveraging the instructor of this course to spread a negative narrative of Russia into this course? I don’t think so, but it is relevant to another statement made by Carley and Beskow, “Fact checking is now conducted at the user level rather than the journalist level.” Owed to the decentralization of information, users must control the information that they store in their own minds and base opinions upon. If they don’t, the effect is two-fold. Not only are their opinions and actions based on untruths, but they are likely also spreading the information to their networks!

Bringing the propaganda machine full circle, back when proximity of presence was required for influence and orders to a battlefield hundreds of miles away took weeks to affect, a bit of misinformation in Washington could lead to devastating effects. So all it took was a rumor to a reputable source, and your “mistruth” became the truth.