Beware The Ghost Stories Of Cyber Space

Uploaded on 2024-07-24 in NEWS-Cybersecurity News, GOVERNMENT-National, FREE TO VIEW

Former Director of NSA and CIA, Michael Hayden, has a wonderful description of Cyber Space. He divided in to “Pipes” and “Water.” The former constituted the hardware and software of cyber space. What made it run. The latter was the information in it and that which flowed through it.

The on-going 2024 American Presidential campaign is - to say the least - a highly charged one. And already Russia, China, and Iran have used their AI powered software “bots” to “pollute the water” with false and distorted information magnified from what appear to be multiple sources. And doing it with unprecedented speed and volume.

The era of the hopeful Bill Gates’ cyber space as the “global public square” is long gone now squalid and littered with lies and half-truths taken over by bot gangs of varying ideology and purpose.

For the young people of today - my graduate students, for instance - it is a frightening new experience. Justifiably concerned, their fears are exacerbated by this polluted water turning tainted information into “ghost stories” told around the Cyber information camp fire.

While most of my young student are not familiar with Latin or Roman law, I try to tell them the watch word of an Old Spy for any social media “ghost stories” - Caveat Emptor – buyer beware.

A Spy Smells Roses

I am an old spy and DC hand. Consequently, I have spent four decades sorting through stories, opinions, lies, and a combination of some and all. I smell roses, I look for the funeral. When I hear or see information from any source - I trust nothing.

While that somewhat cynical approach reflects my life experience as an information consumer, I suggest strongly to my students they too need to filter information from so-called social media and “news sources.” Carefully. Very carefully.

In doing so I take my lessons and I ask them to think about Three Questions as an informed information consumer: Who is saying it? Why is it being said? Why is it being said now?

Who is saying it?:

It is on this first point that we are particularly vulnerable as social media consumers. Social media in America is unregulated in any true form beside some self-inflicted efforts among the larger players and occasional government forays into election interference. And the ability to mask who says something has been the hallmark of the internet since Day One.

Now, add to it, powerful software bots powered by Artificial intelligence with an ability to repeat the lie ad-nauseum, any time, any place. A “truth” repeated is truth that becomes believed.

From my day, a Russian Cold War propogandists dream. Now the capability is on steroids. Moscow’s intelligence services are currently in the lead in this practice. Little wonder. But, other groups – on all sides of the political spectrum in cyber space also now have this capability and are clearly using it.

Bottom line: who is passing out this information? What is the source? Do you recognize it? Who are they tied to?

Why Is It Being Said?

It is equally important to ask why something is being said. How does someone want the information to be presented to effect the situation at hand. One effective methodology is to make the information deliberately provocative and shocking. Part click bait, part/whole propaganda. Got your attention, though, and thus it enters the information “atmosphere.”

I tell my students they need to apply their skepticism as they would to on-line commercial advertising and social influencers hawking product. These sources clearly wish to bend the interpretation of “facts” toward their bias and have you buy the “product” in a fast moving market space.

Bottom Line: Why is it being said?

Why Is it Being Said Now?

Ninety percent of life is showing up. In order words, being there is crucial. Getting there first gives you an edge on the story. You can bend and twist it to your will.

But, the first statement out there may not be the best insight and thus can easily be distorted or biased. How many times have stories been corrected due to additional facts coming after the initial action– thus being ignored or downplayed by the sheer force of “getting there first.”

Famous Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee used to talk about newspapers as the “first draft of history.”

Bottom line: He never talked about how the first draft almost always had to be cleaned up.

Caveat Emptor

So, as we travel through this year’s campaigns plied and piled with the “polluted waters” of social media and so-called “news,” I remind my students to keep their mental guard up at all times.

Written on the entrance to a building I used to work in was another useful piece of advice – “and ye shall know the truth,” it reads, “and the truth shall make you free.”

Bottom Line: Who is saying it? Why is it being said? And why is it being said now?

Image: Ideogram

Ronald A. Marks is a former CIA and Capitol Hill staffer and IT Executive. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Visiting Professor at George Mason University, the Schar School of Policy and Government where he teaches about cyber space and emerging technologies.

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