Cold War 2.0
Another school shooting last week. Our country remains divided over real issues. Big issues. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the March for our Lives students, they are forcing a necessary debate in our country. A real civil debate is required, and Congress has yet to show the aptitude to engage.
Making matters more worrisome, we have a devious spectator watching from the shadows, ready to exploit our divisions for their gain. Putin’s Russia. While this is a conspiracy, it’s not conspiracy theory — this is real. In a zero-sum game for power our division is their gain and they have a long history of manipulating the divides in a democratic society to their benefit.
This story is not about Trump, although he clearly plays a role. This is a story about world power, a new Cold War (aka “hybrid war”), and a war that the U.S. seems currently disadvantaged to defend against.
Social media is the battleground in Cold War 2.0. As the Mark Zuckerberg testimony highlighted, our information is being sold. It’s bad enough that the powerful in our own country are able to buy and manipulate information to influence and divide the masses. Worse, the Russians are also buying. What exactly is it about social media that makes it such a fertile ground for a stealth invasion?
Algorithms. This is what Artificial Intelligence looks like. It’s not the Jetsons with robot maids and self-driving cars, although that’s coming. Social media algorithms are the incredibly complex calculations of our motivations that these platforms use to influence our behavior. The sociologist Zeynep Tufecki gave an example in a TED talk of a Facebook experiment during the 2010 elections. They targeted 61 million people. Some were shown a simple “Today is Election Day” post, and others the same post, but with the thumbnails of friends that said, “I voted”. That little tweak turned out an additional 340,000 voters. How would 340,000 voters have changed the 2016 election?
If you don’t think social media affects us, let that sink in…
Social media not only affects us, the algorithms that drive it can also drive us to move to the extreme fringes. When you watch a YouTube video, it automatically queues the next video. Do you know how that next video is chosen? Your own personal algorithm. Tufecki gave another example of watching Trump rallies on YouTube for research. YouTube started recommending more extreme white-supremacist videos. By sending you down these rabbit-holes, the system keeps you on site longer, which allows more opportunity to gather data and show you adverts, but also feeds increasingly extremist views. This makes them a lot of money. It is why social media companies design addictive products.
Russia loves this game.
According to Scott Stewart, the Vice President of Tactical Analysis at Stratfor, this has been their game for a long time. They are masters of disinformation and during the Cold War era, their strategy was to place journalists all over the world to feed disinformation. Further, in the 1950s and 1960s they supported black separatist groups alongside nazi organizations in the United States to create discord. With social media they can and are creating the same havoc in front of a computer screen in their underwear. Easy.
It has been documented that the Russians have created “fake” Black Lives Matters groups as well as pro-police groups. In 2015, Russian bots had a lot of people convinced that the military exercise in Texas, called Jade Helm, was an Obama plot to impose martial law. The strategy was so effective that the Texas Governor had to call up the State Guard to observe the exercises to calm public fears. And, we haven’t even touched on their meddling during the 2016 election.
Let’s assume the Mueller investigation finds no collusion between Trump and Russia, Russia is still an actor in our political environment. Further, even if there is proof, one way or another, we are psychologically wired to believe the first story we were told. Take for example, the story of the crucified Russo-Ukrainian boy, a fake story that the Kremlin pushed to stoke tensions. There was no boy, but proving this was a challenge. Even though it was claimed as fake news, a term we see so often in the United States, there were those who still believed. After all, the person or organization claiming news is fake most often has their own agenda. So, who do we believe?
It takes so much effort to run down every piece of fake news, it hardly seems worth the effort. In the instance of the Ukrainian crucifixion, BBC investigators were able to convince the authors of the story to admit, on-camera that it was a lie, but not before enthusiastic Russian soldiers taking part in the invasion established and reported the belief that they were acting “to save the children”. I’m guessing the Mueller investigation will not have the same fortune to uncover, undeniably and on-camera, proof of collusion, even if such proof exists.
Additionally, during the 2016 campaign, you may have seen or heard news stories such as Hillary would start World War III or that Putin was a strong admirable leader. These lines all originated from Russian state propaganda, but it is often difficult to trace their origins. Facebook shut down 5.8 million fake accounts just before the November 2016 election. 470 Russian Facebook sites appearing to be American political groups or movements were linked to just one St Petersburg company renowned for its previous work on European and Ukrainian misinformation campaigns. This same company, the Internet Research Agency, established an “American Section” soon after Trump announced his candidacy. Of these 470 U.S.-focused sites, 6 of them had achieved 340 million shares each before they were shut down. This is just a fraction of their activity on one social media platform — activities on Twitter were even more sophisticated.
The Russians are operating in this fraught environment, and collusion or no, they must be thrilled. For them, what does it matter? Their objective of sowing discontent has been met, and by some measures the U.S. has already lost the first battle in this hybrid war. And, it’s not only the United States.
The Kremlin now has overt links with Marine Le Pen’s far right party in France and the Alternative For Germany (Afd) party in Germany. Russian propaganda has been actively involved in Britain’s Scottish Independence Referendum, the Brexit Referendum, the British, French, Italian and German national elections, and the Spanish Catalonia independence movement. The aim is to spread division and weakness — within the countries involved, between them, within the EU, and within the trans-Atlantic alliances.
So, what is their end-game?
According to Lauren Goodrich, a Russia expert, the Kremlin is not looking to create a specific outcome, such as Trump’s victory, but to harvest discord and distract global players, like the United States, away from Russia. Goodrich says the Kremlin is facing a financial crisis, limited military capability and growing internal divisions among the population and elites. If the United States, or other Western nations, worked to create wedges in the Russian society, the current regime would find it difficult to maintain their hold on power.
It’s hard for the United States to focus on Russia when we’re trying to impeach Trump. The Russians clearly wanted Trump to win, but not necessarily due to any affinity or collusion with him personally, but perhaps instead knowing that his presidency would promote their “chaos campaign”. Collusion or not, they win. I imagine them laughing in the Kremlin.
The United States was very effective in pulling the Soviet Union apart during the Cold War. Our strategy, while it included disinformation, was to work through various organizations to foment the color revolutions. It worked…for a while. We had the bandwidth to focus on the Soviet Union. As a nation, we were united in our efforts to block the Soviet Union from expanding its influence. But now we live in a different era with social media and more social division, and with all of our internal divisions, we are well-placed for our own color revolution.
Cold War 2.0 is operating in a new landscape. What can we do?
As an individual who leans libertarian (with foreign policy), I have a hard time supporting more regulations on the Internet. More regulation usually entails less freedoms. How do we curb the Internet without becoming authoritarian? Russia, Iran, and China, and a host of other countries have found ways to curb the Internet. They censor political content and focus on entertainment. It has been shown that those whose primary use of the internet is for entertainment purposes are less likely to find autocratic regimes problematic. While I know that we are living in a world of division, I still believe that most Americans would shudder at the idea of our government censoring the Internet. However, maybe our lack of critical engagement with such an aphrodisiac medium has given both the government and corporations enormous power without us consciously allowing it.
Social media is profit-driven. Perhaps we choose to self-ban social media for a month? I type this as part of my brain is already working on my social media strategy to publicize this post. Social media is not only a platform for personal interaction and activism, but it is also crucial for business operations. Heck, how would we even organize such an action if not for social media? I might as well suggest we go back to using rotary phones — the horror! It will take individuals to build social media platforms that aren’t profit motivated — and our support to use them. Can we do this without the government mandating we do so?
With regards to Russia, there is much we can do, if we have the collective wherewithal. Bill Browder introduced the Magnitsky measures, and now he is a Russian target. The Magnitsky Act prohibited those connected with the death of Sergei Magnitsky from entering the United States or using our banking system. This was effective, hence Browder’s death threats, and numerous Russian attempts to end the sanctions regime.
Comprehensive sanctions on Russia’s oligarchs, with whom President Vladimir Putin is truly in collusion, would do much to hurt an economy already struggling. Further, the oligarchs who are Putin’s power base, would put considerable personal political pressure on Putin affecting his ability to rule. The problem is, this would also negatively affect some western businesses connected with Russia and with strong lobbyist ties in both the U.S. and EU governments. This is where I put aside my libertarian sentiments of limiting government regulations to promote government intervention in creating foreign policy. Sometimes the government must step in to create policy counter to big business interests in the name of national security. But, it would be wrong to presume government officials are always working in the interest of the people and/or the nation rather than their own narrow self-interests, which are often funded by large corporate lobbyists. Nevertheless, there are those in Congress like John McCain who are already keen on Russian sanctions.
We do have a voice and we have a choice on how we engage social media. I went dark on social media for years after working for an organization that did deep dives into global dislocations. What I saw and experienced was at times scary. I was numb.
Watching my son navigate these tensions awakened me, but every day I question my choice to jump back in. I think most of us want a semi-quiet life to focus on family and self-improvement. But here’s the rub, if we are lulled into this complacency, what we get may be completely opposite of what we want. Social media is entertaining, but the way we use it matters. The way Russia uses it matters.
Civil discussion matters. We need to work out how to disagree as citizens and not fall into suspicion, distrust and hate. If we don’t, it leaves us open to algorithms, Russian (and foreign) attempts to manipulate us and our system, and the ability of our own domestic players to do the same.
We may not agree, but we do this democracy-thing together.
-Jennifer & Paul Harding
Social Media and its Effect on Society
Social media is an amazing thing, it can allow you to connect to people you haven’t seen in years, meet people with a similar worldview, and show you what your ex is having for dinner. But it can also do bad things. For example, depression and suicide have been attributed to social media. Why would someone kill themselves over something like social media? Well you see, our kid brains aren’t fully formed yet and that can lead us to believe that what we see on social media is reality. People never put the bad parts of their life on social media, so it’s very easy for someone to see all the “fun” someone else is having and feel like there’s something wrong with them because they don’t live like that. This leads to depression.
In addition to these passive downsides, social media also actively creates conflict. Say you run across a post that your wife’s Republican friend posted. You’re a Democrat. Her post says, “Obama was the worst president of all time”. You, feeling that this is incorrect, comment with a rebuttal. While you might think it will go down smoothly, there is about a 5% chance this is going to go down without a comment war. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t express your opinion but try not to do it on social media. Not only will you cause a comment war, but also you will achieve nothing. It is almost impossible to change someone’s mind on the Internet. But, for me and my friends Facebook and Twitter are antiques. Despite what people think of my Internet generation, we still believe in face-to-face discussions, even though our reality is virtual.
-Finn
