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More and more, nation-states are leveraging sophisticated cyber influence campaigns and digital propaganda to sway public opinion. Their goal? To decrease trust, increase polarization, and undermine democracies around the world.
In particular, synthetic media is becoming more commonplace thanks to an increase in tools that easily create and disseminate realistic artificial images, videos, and audio. This technology is advancing so quickly that soon anyone will be able to create a synthetic video of anyone saying or doing anything the creator wants. According to Sentinel, there was a 900% year-over-year increase in the proliferation of deepfakes in 2020.
It's up to organizations to protect against these cyber influence operations. But strategies are available for organizations to detect, disrupt, deter, and defend against online propaganda. Read on to learn more.
[...] As technology advances, tools that have traditionally been used in cyberattacks are now being applied to cyber influence operations. Nation-states have also begun collaborating to amplify each other's fake content.
These trends point to a need for greater consumer education on how to accurately identify foreign influence operations and avoid engaging with them. We believe the best way to promote this education is to increase collaboration between the federal government, the private sector, and end users in business and personal contexts.
There are four key ways to ensure the effectiveness of such training and education. First, we must be able to detect foreign cyber influence operations. No individual organization will be able to do this on its own. Instead, we will need the support of academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, and other entities to better analyze and report on cyber influence operations.
Next, defenses must be strengthened to account for the challenges and opportunities that technology has created for the world's democracies — especially when it comes to the disruption of independent journalism, local news, and information accuracy.
Another element in combating this widespread deception is radical transparency. We recommend increasing both the volume and dissemination of geopolitical analysis, reporting, and threat intelligence to better inform effective responses and protection.
Finally, there have to be consequences when nation-states violate international rules. While it often falls on state, local, and federal governments to enforce these penalties, multistakeholder action can be leveraged to strengthen and extend international norms. For example, Microsoft recently signed onto the European Commission's Code of Practice on Disinformation along with more than 30 online businesses to collectively tackle this growing challenge. Governments can build on these norms and laws to advance accountability.
Ultimately, threat actors are only going to continue getting better at evading detection and influencing public opinion. The latest nation-state threats and emerging trends show that threat actors will keep evolving their tactics. However, there are things organizations can do to improve their defenses. We just need to create holistic policies that public and private entities alike can use to combat digital propaganda and protect our collective operations against false narratives.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2023, @10:32AM (10 children)
Nonsense. Debate and argumentation can benefit a liar farm more than it benefits someone trying to tell the truth. First of all, you cannot obtain truth by resorting to a debate. Can you determine how long is, say, the length of the nose of the Emperor of China by arguing about it? No. You have to actually measure the length of his nose somehow to find out the truth of the matter, and that takes time and effort. If you open such objective facts to debate, then all you are going to do is give a space for someone who wants to lie time and energy, and give the illusion of them having a valid point. And no, liars definitely do not require suppressive restrictions on free information channels or censorship, although it can doubtless help their cause if they have it. Even without that kind of power, they can simply open the floodgates and spam everyone with lies to the point that any nuggets of truth are drowned out and no one knows what to believe any more. It is very easy to invent lies that the unwary can mistake for truth, but not so easy to determine what is actually true, since that will require the hard work of actually seeking truth out. This is why "free speech fundamentalism" is such a hopelessly naïve idea. What people trying to speak the truth really need is some kind of quality control mechanism that will let things that have some semblance of truth have a better chance of being seen than outright lies. The scientific peer review system is one example of such a a system, which, while far from perfect, is still effective enough that outright nonsense gets filtered out and there is enough good that experts can make use of it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday March 20 2023, @02:03PM (9 children)
OTOH, it's quite the tell when someone expends considerable effort dodging said debate and argumentation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2023, @03:15PM (8 children)
All that debating and argumentation can prove is who is better at debating. It cannot get you any closer to the truth. Furthermore, a lot of the time those people who scream: "debate me bro!" aren't doing so in good faith, and will use deceptive tactics like Gish Galloping to give the appearance of substance where there is none. It is very difficult to refute outright lies in a debate. Engaging with such is just a waste of time.
It boils down to whether you are more interested in actually learning the truth, or convincing people that you have the truth whether or not you really do. Debating can really only accomplish the latter.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2023, @06:11PM
I think Francis Bacon (1561-1626) said it best:
Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of new work, since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 21 2023, @02:55AM (6 children)
Only if you ignore what is debated. Debate and argumentation aren't just words. It also includes support for claims made. That's where you catch the lies.
How do you know that gish galloping is a thing? Perhaps you recognize when someone does it? My take is that if someone is gish galloping in a discussion, then that's a huge warning sign that they're lying about the whole thing and well, that's that. They aren't "better at debating" at that point.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2023, @06:59AM (5 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 21 2023, @01:55PM (4 children)
If you let people walk all over you with ridiculous fallacies, then you're doing it wrong.
Except, of course, when the other side acknowledges them - even implicitly. Standard adversarial debate tactics.
Facts aren't important in themselves. They only matter in this situation in how they can support or detract from an argument. That's why I emphasize evidence not facts.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2023, @02:48PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2023, @07:16PM (1 child)
Summarized the entire career of right wing spewbots. Just restart the same conversations over and over disregarding any previous conversations. Points disproven? Who cares! Remake the same points with a new audience - if nobody can disprove you, you win! Nothing learned, no intent to learn anything, bad faith argument.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 21 2023, @09:04PM
Excellent example of the practice in action. I wouldn't call this hypocrisy because it's a valuable lesson to anyone who pays attention.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 21 2023, @09:02PM
Sorry, that doesn't sound like a point much less a main one. Why ask that question at all? You've already hinted at some ability to distinguish between a sincere argument and a gish galloping one. Use that ability here.
Like assume you're right and not listen to anyone perhaps? Set up a network of disinformation?
The problem with this is that at some point, if you're talking about anything beyond your personal reach and interests, that requires any sort of cooperation from people with very different beliefs and interests - possibly even direct conflict, you need to resort to debate and argumentation. You need to convince people not whine about the lack of truth seeking mechanisms.