PerspectiveOnline Disinformation and Emerging Tech: Are Democracies at Risk?
Online disinformation campaigns supported by fundamental changes in military and geopolitical strategies of major players such as Russia and China harden tribal factions and undermine the security of infrastructure systems in targets such as the United States, as state and non-state actors mount increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks on democratic institutions, Brad Allenby writes. Whether the United States and other democracies are up to this challenge remains to be seen, he says.
Domestic political polarization and institutional failure in previously vibrant pluralistic countries serve as a reminder that Western democratic societies are not historically foreordained, but may in fact be fragile in the face of fundamental technological and social change.
Brad Allenby writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that
Online disinformation campaigns supported by fundamental changes in military and geopolitical strategies of major players such as Russia and China harden tribal factions and undermine the security of infrastructure systems in targets such as the United States, as state and non-state actors mount increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks on democratic institutions. The accelerating velocity, volume, and variety of information are creating a dramatic increase in the complexity of the information ecosystem, which in turn causes people to retreat into fundamentalism and encourages further institutional breakdown.
Unfortunately, Allenby writes, virtually no one is focusing on the fundamental threats emerging technologies are posing to democratic institutions that we all take for granted. For example,
The cycle time of political processes in pluralistic societies, especially as tribalism is inflamed and solidified by disinformation campaigns, is becoming slower and more polarized just as technological change is accelerating, increasingly decoupling regulation and policy from technological reality. The rise of civilizational conflict strategies, adopted by both the Russians and Chinese, shifts conflict from traditional conventional warfare, where the United States is globally dominant, to more subtle conflict across all elements of a society. So-called whole-of-society approaches to conflict favor soft authoritarian governments that are able to coordinate offensive and defensive strategies across their entire society, including private firms, civic groups, and even criminal organizations, in contrast to countries such as the United States, where the constitutional and cultural divides between the military and civilian spheres, and between private and governmental institutions, increasingly put the country at a disadvantage.
Whether the United States and other democracies are up to this challenge remains to be seen, Allenby says.
