Quote:
Originally Posted by Badger52
Thanks Volunteer for sharing that link; it was illuminating but, to me, perhaps not for what some others may take from it.
The participants had a pretty limited focus & that "us versus them" bent (perhaps in the DNA of lofty-thinkers in the intel community) was pretty evident throughout. I wonder what a similar conference/study would look like from the other side of the lens & how would it view things as information operations conducted by Soros-backed organizations, info opns conducted by the US prior to the regime change in the Ukraine, or such North American stalwarts of reliability as the Southern Poverty Law Center. Objectively, given their admonition to not counter disinfo one event at a time tit-for-tat, the paper seems to be a counter-disinformation disinformation piece.
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Hello Badger52.
Like you, I found the information interesting, but I hadn't considered the non-state actors such as Soros, Deripaska or a zillion others.
I did some additional reading after considering what you pointed out and in light of that, its now more clear to me that regardless of the goals an adversarial organization may have, to be most effective they focus in determining deniable ways in which viewpoints across the spectrum can be hardened or misdirected by poseurs under false flags.
Whether a state actor or a wealthy individual with a vested interest in an outcome resulting in additional advantage such as tax breaks or other financial support or assistance, I now see an adversary has been successful when they foster deeper divides among the targeted populations which then in turn weaken national institutions and resolve that would otherwise occur to deflect that interference. If the interference results in reduced voting, or increases protesting or other civil disorder then the attacker has scored a victory.
Its also more clear to me that a wide array of 'dog whistles' are being used across our political landscape to keep us spun up to the point of resetting normalcy thresholds so that even more absurdity can be unleashed.
I have no idea how we can defend against this threat because it falls outside any training I've had.
I'm always hunting for information I can use for network defense, and that's how I stumbled across the PDF I shared. I saw parallels; in my line of work its not uncommon for a network attacker to first initiate a very noisy attack that distracts from the below-the-radar attack on the actual target. The Canadian document offered me insight into recognizable TTP that I might be able to leverage in defense of my employer's resources.
In my technical world there's been a great deal of discussion on how disproportionate weight has been applied successfully to information dissemination algorithms use by all forms of social media with the heaviest weight focusing on Facebook and Twitter as shown here:
https://www.recode.net/2017/11/5/166...e-papers-apple
https://www.icij.org/investigations/...estments-icij/
Some ICIJ reporting resulted in the murder of a reporter via carbomb, so I can see how extreme influence operations can become when the attacker(s) want to send a message.
V/R Volunteer
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