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#influenceoperations

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3/10 📌 FIMI, Cognitive Warfare & Hybrid Threats—how do they differ?

🛰️ FIMI: Tactical manipulation of the information space—often used by foreign actors (e.g., Russia, China) to mislead, polarize, or destabilize.

🧠 Cognitive Warfare: Long-term strategy targeting how people think, process info & form beliefs.

⚔️ Hybrid Threats: Disinfo is one tool in a broader toolkit—including cyber, military, economic coercion.

I think there's a general need for education regarding influence operations (and my focus is on those by Russia) here on the fediverse.

1) No, Russia isn't just pushing right-wing agendas/topics. The _stated_ purpose, from 1997 IIRC, is to sow division in the west. That means that there's roughly an equal chance that a raging leftwing lunatic is on Russia's payroll as your average Tate-Musk-Trump-Orban-Fico fanatic.

2) "Doomism" is a goal. The more we are complaining on how bad things are - the more successful they are. A great way to counter these influence operations is to talk about how _good_ things are. Because there's plenty of awesomeness in our society (I'm not from the US - that's a global perspective) to share.

3) These operations are _long term_. The troll factories aren't just newly created accounts spamming out the same message everywhere. That online magazine that has published for 10 years could be a sleeper influence operation. A person _living in Germany_ spending time online just as anybody else could too.

4) You're getting influenced. Basic psychology says you cannot avoid it (the anchoring effect). The only thing you can do is to be aware of it, and actively working against the very goals of the influence operations.

Remember what those were now again?

It's important to remember—or learn and teach—our history and ongoing practice of creating terrible conditions that result in people fleeing north to the US in the name of wealth and global domination. Unfortunately, history and reality are as likely to be banned as taught. Global domination comes at a price.

First reader reviews coming in: Routledge Handbook of the Influence Industry get's ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐️ praising its insights into the business behind #influenceoperations, global reach of the case studies & our new concept. The reader said it's "clearly a book that belongs on any university-level course that touches on the nature of online influence" but "You don't have to be at a university to enjoy it" 😃 - read more: amzn.eu/d/apJZLBK #propaganda #socialmedis #disinformation @potemkinvillage

www.amazon.co.ukCheck out this Amazon review of Routledge Handbook of the Influence IndustryThe who, what, when, where, how and why of the Influence Industry

Very good paper from the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence showcasing the use of AI models for targeted persuasion campaigns on social media. The paper is split in interconnected 2 parts:

1)
Research focusing on real use cases of AI-Generated persuasion campaigns in the German and Russian languages (AI-generated text in less common languages has been more difficult to detect by current AI detection tools).

The use cases include politically oriented content in German, pro-Kremlin messages, conspiracy theories aiming to cause unrest, and disinformation.

2) (most interesting!)
A red team experiment that looks into an adversary’s potential decision making when it comes to crafting, coordinating and launching a precision persuasion campaign.
The researchers used AI models to:

🔹 Define the "right" target profiles based on topics of interest.
🔹 Identify their demonstrated sentiment & behavioral tendencies (based on a clustered analysis of their posts) on those topics of interest.
🔹 Perform psychometric, behavioral, and opinion-based analysis in order to segment those social media accounts into different groups.
The goal of this segmentation was to dig deeper into discovering certain traits about users that would be used in tailoring the targeting content in accordance with those psychometric characteristics.
🔹 Frame and phrase the message (the content) based on the user profile and the analysis performed in the previous steps, with the help of generative AI.

The results of the output - the "tailored" messages - are very interesting.

Keep in mind that this is the reality that we will be called to face in the near future. A higher scale of well-tailored information & influence campaigns that will not only come accross our own social media profiles, but also the ones of everyday people that may NOT possess the level of awareness that you potentially do, but still have a vote to cast on important topics.

In any case, this is a highly recommended read.
The annex includes some of the prompts along with other interesting details. Enjoy!

Link:

stratcomcoe.org/publications/a

Excited to see my new #book coedited with Vian Bakir out on Google Books already! Check it out here if you are interested in how #disinformation #propaganda #influenceoperations #PR #DarkPR #influence #socialmedia #data and #AI are transforming our world: books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q2 @potemkinvillage

Google BooksRoutledge Handbook of the Influence IndustryThis Handbook provides the first comprehensive examination of the influence industry and how it operates worldwide across different domains.The rapid evolution of emerging technologies and data-driven persuasive practices has been linked to the spread of misleading content in domestic and foreign influence campaigns. This has prompted worldwide public and policy discussions about disinformation and how to curb its spread. However, less attention has been paid to the increasingly data-driven commercial industry taking advantage of the opportunities these new technologies afford. The handbook uses the term ‘influence’ here to include not only messaging and public relations (PR), which fell within the traditional focus of propaganda studies, but to consider the infrastructure and actors behind an advanced array of capabilities that can be used in a coordinated way to affect an audience’s emotions, ideas and behaviors in order to advance a state or non-state actor’s objectives – increasingly based on data-driven profiling. The volume fills a gap in scholarship exploring the recent technical, political and economic development of this industry, surveying the extent of different technologies and services offered to clients worldwide across multiple domains (commercial, political, national security and government). The chapters are divided into three thematic sections and evaluate Influence Industry practices, aims and effectiveness across audiences; business practices and economics; and democratic structures and human rights. They also offer advice for researchers and consider key ethical issues and new regulatory approaches.This volume will be of much interest to students of political science, propaganda studies, sociology, communication studies and journalism.
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#AlexStamos founded the #Internet Observatory after publicizing that #Russia has attempted to #influence the #2016election by sowing division on #Facebook, causing a clash w/the company’s top execs. Special counsel Robert S. #Mueller III later cited the Facebook operation in indicting a Kremlin contractor. At #Stanford, Stamos & his team deepened his study of #InfluenceOperations from around the world, including 1 it traced to the #Pentagon.
#law #disinformation #NationalSecurity #CyberSecurity

Microsoft: Nation-states engage in U.S.-focused influence operations ahead of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. Russian election influence actors started ramping up activity in the last 45 days using a mix of themes from 2020 with a renewed focus on undermining U.S. support for Ukraine. Microsoft also talks about Iran and China in this 8 page PDF. All three leveraged some form of generative AI to create content since last summer. They anticipate that election influence campaigns will include "fakes" (analyst comment: most likely meant to write deepfake) 🔗 (PDF) blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content

Washington Post: A secret Russian Foreign Ministry foreign policy document urges action to weaken the United States. Russia's Foreign Ministry calls for an "offensive information campaign" and other measures spanning "the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres" against a "coalition of unfriendly countries" led by the United States. 🔗 washingtonpost.com/world/2024/

The Washington Post · Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S.Par Catherine Belton

Resecurity has a super long article about misinfornation and hacktivist campaigns against the Philippines amid tensions with China in the South China Sea. Resecurity has observed a significant spike in malicious cyber activity targeting the Philippines in Q1 2024, increasing nearly 325% compared to the same period last year. They warn that state-sponsored APTs like Mustang Panda could be leveraging hactivist-related monikers to avoid attribution while creating the perception of homegrown social conflict online. No IOC. 🔗 resecurity.com/blog/article/mi

www.resecurity.comResecurity | Misinformation and Hacktivist Campaigns Target the Philippines Amidst Rising Tensions with China