• Despite YouTube Policy Update, Anti-Semitic, White Supremacist Channels Remain

    For years, YouTube has officially prohibited content which promoted or condoned violence or incited hatred against individuals or groups based on core characteristics such as ethnicity, gender and sexual identity, and religion. In June 2019 it updated that policy with specific prohibitions against ideologies like white supremacy, which asserted the superiority of one group in order to justify discriminating against or persecuting other groups. An analysis by ADL’s Center on Extremism found that a significant number of channels on YouTube’s platform continue to disseminate anti-Semitic and white supremacist content despite the company’s June 2019 crackdown on hate speech.

  • Concerns Growing that China's Influence Operations Getting Bolder

    The U.S. intelligence community has warned that the battle for information dominance has been joined. Until now, much of the focus on been on Russia for its use of social media to meddle in a number of Western elections, including the 2016 U.S. presidential elections and, more recently, the 2018 congressional elections. But top U.S. intelligence officials have repeatedly warned Russia is not alone, and that other U.S adversaries would be using lessons from Moscow’s successes for their own purposes.

  • Russia’s and China’s Political Warfare Campaigns: How the West Can Prevail

    The United States and its allies are facing an unprecedented challenge: Russia and China, two authoritarian states possessing substantial human, economic, technological, and other resources; armed with conventional and nuclear forces which, in many respects, rival those held by the Western allies; and working actively to undermine the core interests of the West. Their operations are designed to subvert the cohesion of the Western allies and their partners; erode their economic, political, and social resilience; and undermine the West’s strategic positions in key regions. The Russian and Chinese regimes have made substantial progress towards these goals during the last two decades without conducting conventional military operations. Rather, Moscow and Beijing have employed sophisticated political warfare strategies and a wide range of mostly non-military instruments.

  • Ransomware Attacks Are Testing Resolve of Cities Across America

    Ransomware is hardly new, but it is in fashion. Two years ago such attacks were still relatively rare. But now they are far more targeted, and as companies and towns have shown an increased willingness to pay ransoms, criminals have turned to new and more powerful forms of encryption and more ingenious ways of injecting the code into computer networks. Only this summer did the United States begin to see multiple simultaneous attacks, often directed at government websites that are ill-defended.

  • Corporate Defenses Against Information Warfare

    When asked about Russian election interference during his congressional testimony last month, Robert Mueller said: “They’re doing it as we sit here.” To defend the nation against information warfare, the U.S. government has adopted a policy—by default, not by design—of relying on the private sector to police itself, with limited behind-the-scenes government assistance. Facebook’s website says: “Our detection technology helps us block millions of attempts to create fake accounts every day and detect millions more often within minutes after creation.” These numbers sound impressive, but they do not tell the whole story. To assess the effectiveness of company defenses, we must distinguish among three types of fake accounts: bots, fictitious user accounts, and impostor accounts. Russian agents have created and operated all three types of accounts.

     

  • Netflix’s Algorithms Seem to Be a New Entry Point for Conspiracy Theories. Be Aware!

    When the spread of disinformation became a major topic of debate in late 2016, it was discussed mainly in reference to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. In the following months, serious problems related to the diffusion of pseudoscientific beliefs, conspiracy theories and disinformation emerged on YouTube and WhatsApp.  Until now, the popular video streaming service Netflix had managed to stay out of the picture. Not anymore.

  • Jeffrey Epstein Conspiracy Theorists Peddling Sci-Fi Novel Written by AG William Barr’s Late Dad

    A little-known science fiction book penned by the late father of U.S. Attorney General William Barr is being sold online at astronomical prices by sellers eager to attract Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theorists. Space Relations: A Slightly Gothic Interplanetary Tale by Donald Barr has been thrust into the spotlight in the wake of the convicted pedophile’s apparent suicide, and eBay sellers — quick to link the two men — are now hawking it for as much as $4,999.

  • A Cyberattack Could Wreak Destruction Comparable to a Nuclear Weapon

    People around the world may be worried about nuclear tensions rising, but I think they’re missing the fact that a major cyberattack could be just as damaging – and hackers are already laying the groundwork. The threat of a new nuclear arms race is serious – but the threat of a cyberattack could be as serious, and is less visible to the public. So far, most of the well-known hacking incidents, even those with foreign government backing, have done little more than steal data. Unfortunately, there are signs that hackers have placed malicious software inside U.S. power and water systems, where it’s lying in wait, ready to be triggered.

  • Assault on Democracy: The New Conspiracism

    Conspiracy theory has always been part of political life. Sometimes far-fetched, sometimes accurate, and sometimes a confusing mix of the two, traditional conspiracy theory tries to peel away deceptive masks to show how the world really works. It demands a cause proportionate to the dire effect. In a recently published book, two scholars argue that in today’s conspiracies, conspiracy and theory have been decoupled. We therefore face a distinctively malignant new phenomenon of conspiracy without the theory. Like all conspiracism, it rests on the certainty that things are not as they seem, but conspiracy without the theory dispenses with the burden of explanation. We see no insistent demand for proof, no exhaustive amassing of evidence, no dots revealed to form a pattern, no close examination of the operators plotting in the shadows. Conspiracy without the theory exists less to explain than to affirm. The result  is toxic for a stable society and democratic politics.

  • How Data Privacy Laws Can Fight Fake News

    Governments from Russia to Iran have exploited social media’s connectivity, openness, and polarization to influence elections, sow discord, and drown out dissent. While responses have also begun to proliferate, more still are needed to reduce the inherent vulnerability of democracies to such tactics. Recent data privacy laws may offer one such answer in limiting how social media uses personal information to micro-target content: Fake news becomes a lot less scary if it can’t choose its readers.

  • Jeffrey Epstein’s Death and Our Age of Conspiracy Theories

    In response to the news of Epstein’s death, conspiracy theories exploded across social media on Saturday. The hashtags “TrumpBodyCount” and “ClintonBodyCount” trended nationally, the former in no small part because President Trump himself retweeted the Clinton body count hashtag. In the U.S., conspiracy theories have historically thrived among groups that feel locked out, whether it’s Jim Crow–era African Americans or 19th-century white farmers during the Know-Nothing era who believed the “Pope in Rome” was plotting against them. What makes this moment so different — and dangerous — is that elites who presumably know better, or should know better, have become increasingly paranoid as well.

  • New Vulnerability Found in Internet-Connected Building Automation Devices

    Critical internet-connected smart building devices used in countless commercial and industrial properties, have been found to be vulnerable to a new malicious attack. The vulnerability exploits the properties in the building automation protocol (Bacnet) which enables technicians and engineers performing monitoring, setup changes and remote control of a wide range of key smart systems that impact temperature control, and other monitoring systems.

  • How Does Online Racism Spawn Mass Shooters?

    More and more experts classify mass shootings inspired by white nationalist ideology as terrorism — part of a global white nationalist movement that recruits or inspires potential shooters. The mechanisms of recruiting white nationalist terrorists work much as with other terrorist groups such as the Islamic State; they take lonely young men and give them a sense of purpose and identity. But instead of the alternative society offered by Islamic State membership, violent and racist online platforms build toward single murderous events. The language used on the forums to encourage potential shooters combines nihilism and toxic masculinity, goading them with anti-gay slurs and challenging them as “wannabes” if they fail.

  • U.S. Elections Are Still Not Safe from Attack

    Russia’s attack on American elections in 2016, described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s recent report as “sweeping and systematic,” came as a shock to many. It shouldn’t have. Experts had been warning of the danger of foreign meddling in U.S. elections for years. Already by 2016, the wholesale adoption of computerized voting had weakened safeguards against interference and left the United States vulnerable to an attack. So, too, the shift to digital media and communications had opened new gaps in security and the law that could be used for manipulation and blackmail.

  • Who Leads the U.S. “War” on Disinformation?

    When former U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified before the House Intelligence Committee last week about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, some saw his comments about Moscow’s ongoing meddling attempts as the most important statement of the day. “It wasn’t a single attempt,” he said when asked about the spread of disinformation and whether Moscow would replicate the efforts again. “They’re doing it as we sit here and they expect to do it during the next campaign.” It’s not clear, however, who can or will lead the charge in this “war on disinformation.” Even as experts say the problem is worsening, it is unlikely that the current divided government could produce anything close to a solution.