Sleep Walking into a War
The Great Cyber War: Part 1
We are 10 years into a war. A war most people don’t realise is happening, and which our governments are only just beginning to see. This is the Great Cyber War.
If this was a conventional war, by now your street would have been bombed, friends would have been killed at the Front, and food would be running short. But this is a new war, a hybrid war, an information war. So instead, you are confused. Whenever you think you are sure of something, someone else will either counter it with an alternative truth, or will disagree with you so strongly that you wonder if your take on reality is correct. Our houses are still standing but our perception lies in ruins.
The Great Cyber War started in 2007, and developed into two fronts. The Eastern Front began when Russia cyber-attacked Estonia, and the Western Front when Robert Mercer and Cambridge Analytica used social media to manipulate the Brexit Referendum, and then, alongside Russia, the Trump election. Along the way a smaller South Eastern Front opened up when kids in Macedonia realized they could cash in on the chaos. Other countries and dictators are also carving out their bits of the action, but the main war is Russia in the East, and Mercer in the West. Through highly targeted uses of Facebook and Twitter to disseminate fake stories, these forces have been…
