The Threat of Fake Academic Research
Interesting analysis of the possibility, feasibility, and efficacy of deliberately fake scientific research, something I had previously speculated about.
View ArticleArtificial Personas and Public Discourse
Presidential campaign season is officially, officially, upon us now, which means it’s time to confront the weird and insidious ways in which technology is warping politics. One of the biggest threats...
View ArticleStory of Gus Weiss
This is a long and fascinating article about Gus Weiss, who masterminded a long campaign to feed technical disinformation to the Soviet Union, which may or may not have caused a massive pipeline...
View ArticleChinese COVID-19 Disinformation Campaign
The New York Times is reporting on state-sponsored disinformation campaigns coming out of China: Since that wave of panic, United States intelligence agencies have assessed that Chinese operatives...
View ArticleFake Stories in Real News Sites
Fireeye is reporting that a hacking group called Ghostwriter broke into the content management systems of Eastern European news sites to plant fake stories. From a Wired story: The propagandists have...
View ArticleUsing Disinformation to Cause a Blackout
Interesting paper: “How weaponizing disinformation can bring down a city’s power grid“: Abstract: Social media has made it possible to manipulate the masses via disinformation and fake news at an...
View Article2020 Was a Secure Election
Over at Lawfare: “2020 Is An Election Security Success Story (So Far).” What’s more, the voting itself was remarkably smooth. It was only a few months ago that professionals and analysts who monitor...
View ArticleUndermining Democracy
Last Thursday, Rudy Giuliani, a Trump campaign lawyer, alleged a widespread voting conspiracy involving Venezuela, Cuba, and China. Another lawyer, Sidney Powell, argued that Mr. Trump won in a...
View ArticleInformation Flows and Democracy
Henry Farrell and I published a paper on fixing American democracy: “Rechanneling Beliefs: How Information Flows Hinder or Help Democracy.” It’s much easier for democratic stability to break down than...
View ArticlePolitical Disinformation and AI
Elections around the world are facing an evolving threat from foreign actors, one that involves artificial intelligence. Countries trying to influence each other’s elections entered a new era in 2016,...
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