Speaker 1: Ah beat Force. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to Software Radio Special Operations, Military
Speaker 1: news and straight talk with the guys and the community
Speaker 1: softwarep Radio on Time on Target. Very excited to have
Speaker 1: Peter Singer or PW. Singer on with us. I don't
Speaker 1: know which. I should refer to you as tubs under PW,
Speaker 1: so let's do that that works, PW. Singer, because I
Speaker 1: know on Twitter you're Peter W. Singer, so I'm not,
Speaker 1: you know, giving anything away here. But the book is
Speaker 1: like war the weaponization of social media. UH. P W.
Speaker 1: Singer is also a senior fellow at New America, which
Speaker 1: I'm actually interested to get into and hear about what
Speaker 1: New America is exactly. But we're excited to talk about
Speaker 1: the book. And this is pretty cool that you co authored.
Speaker 1: This book came out very recently and was sent to us.
Speaker 1: Jack read it cover to cover and I'm excited to
Speaker 1: dig into it. Well. Thanks for having me, absolutely yeah,
Speaker 1: really a pleasure of Peter and UH. I also have
Speaker 1: your your previous book, ghost Fleet on my bookshelf and
Speaker 1: I have yet to read it. I'll fess up to that,
Speaker 1: but I want to uh. I was gonna thank you
Speaker 1: until well I did read this book. You know, we
Speaker 1: take a certain amount of pride and actually reading the
Speaker 1: books of the authors that we have on the show,
Speaker 1: and we try to make it through as many of
Speaker 1: them as we can. UM, and I found this book
Speaker 1: to be very interesting. It's a it really encompasses like
Speaker 1: the history of UM, the communications mediums, you know, and
Speaker 1: you you went back to the printing press and whire cables, UM,
Speaker 1: the first Transatlantic cables, and then talk about the weaponization
Speaker 1: of social media and how it can be used to propagandize,
Speaker 1: how states can use it to propagandize other states, or
Speaker 1: how states can use it for internal suppression in their
Speaker 1: own countries. Uh So it's a very interesting kind of
Speaker 1: top to bottom history of a really an emerging subject
Speaker 1: that we're really just trying to come to grips with,
Speaker 1: I think here in the United States. UM. So, the
Speaker 1: I guess the first question I wanted to start off
Speaker 1: with it, although this isn't covered in your book because
Speaker 1: it's it's happening in real time, is UM, we're going
Speaker 1: into midterm elections, We're seeing the headlines that there could
Speaker 1: be meddling in these elections like there was in I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you could talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: how things have changed since, or any new trends you're seeing,
Speaker 1: any new actions that are being taken um, perhaps by
Speaker 1: foreign governments or by our own government, to protect the
Speaker 1: sovereignty and the validity I suppose that the legitimacy of
Speaker 1: our internal elections. Sure. So, first, thanks again for having
Speaker 1: me on. Really appreciate it. Uh So. The book, the
Speaker 1: title of it is like war and like war. If
Speaker 1: you think of cyber war as the hacking of networks,
Speaker 1: Like war is about the hacking of the people on
Speaker 1: the networks through of likes and lies, driving ideas viral
Speaker 1: and and uh. It covers everything from the use of
Speaker 1: this by organizations like ISIS to Russian disinformation operations, to
Speaker 1: how it was the secret sauce for the Trump campaign,
Speaker 1: to how we're seeing it used by celebrities like Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift and the like. Um In many ways, it's uh,
Speaker 1: we're finding that social media it's not just the nervous
Speaker 1: system of the modern world, and we use for everything
Speaker 1: from dating to business marketing to you and I having
Speaker 1: this conversation then posting it up on YouTube and the like.
Speaker 1: It's also become a battlefield. Uh. And what's fascinating about
Speaker 1: that battlefield is you have these wildly diverse actors who
Speaker 1: end up using almost the same exact tactics. So you
Speaker 1: have Taylor Swift and Janet Hussein, who was ISIS top recruiter,
Speaker 1: operating in much the same way because online their goal
Speaker 1: is the same, even though they have very different real
Speaker 1: world goals. And um, as you know we talked about
Speaker 1: in the book, it's not just about winning the web.
Speaker 1: It allows you to win your battles off the web.
Speaker 1: And you know, the examples range from how you can
Speaker 1: use it to win an election to how ISIS uses
Speaker 1: it to win the First Battle of Moss and the like. UM.
Speaker 1: So to your question about you know what played out
Speaker 1: in Steen and then what's playing out right now, is
Speaker 1: that obviously we saw a pretty massive campaign that was
Speaker 1: conducted by Russia. UM. We were not the first target
Speaker 1: of this. Again, they were using very similar tactics against
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians UM and bregsit and you know, very much
Speaker 1: a sort of bit of American arrogance will no that
Speaker 1: couldn't be done to us. And it was the campaign.
Speaker 1: The details of it have you know, kind of dribbled
Speaker 1: out over time. Um, the data now shows that it
Speaker 1: was much much bigger than I think most people appreciate.
Speaker 1: So as an example, the Russian uh false information that
Speaker 1: was pumped out on Facebook, over a hundred forty six
Speaker 1: million Americans saw it in their Facebook feeds. That's half
Speaker 1: the population. Um. And that's just Facebook, if you're looking
Speaker 1: at content on Twitter, on Instagram, etcetera. And again, much
Speaker 1: like isis much like a good marketer for a new movie,
Speaker 1: they moved across the platforms where they would um, use
Speaker 1: Reddit to push out ideas, but then move the images
Speaker 1: over to another space. And Um, it was incredibly cheap.
Speaker 1: At least the latest information it's that the annual budget
Speaker 1: for it among the Russian operation was about twelve million
Speaker 1: dollars um. As you all know, the Pentagon, you know
Speaker 1: sneezes out twelve million dollars um on on on a
Speaker 1: on a slow day. Um. But effective. Um. And we
Speaker 1: can have a debate about, you know, did it swing
Speaker 1: the election? That that's for the historians. Um. What we
Speaker 1: do know is that the attackers think it worked, because
Speaker 1: they're back at it. They never stopped addicted to Then
Speaker 1: we've seen some examples UM popping up into UH and
Speaker 1: this is again one of the key tactics is that
Speaker 1: they're jumping into other conversations trying to leverage them to
Speaker 1: their own ends. So we've seen the Russian disinformation campaigns
Speaker 1: UM try and wedgend everything from the protests in Charlottesville
Speaker 1: to the controversy over um UH protests during the NFL
Speaker 1: anthem UH to UM Nike boycott to UH election antivan
Speaker 1: and uh SO. It's continuing. But what's important about it
Speaker 1: is other actors are out there watching and learning and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: that work for them, we can do it too. And
Speaker 1: so we've seen it pop up into everything from the
Speaker 1: Brazilian election campaign that's going on right now to the
Speaker 1: Mexican election too. We've seen domestic actors learned from these
Speaker 1: tactics and apply them over uh SO. The Kavanaugh hearing
Speaker 1: as an example of the Supreme Court Justice hearing, we
Speaker 1: saw both sides of that debate using the very same
Speaker 1: what we call like war tactics to try and win
Speaker 1: their real world battle. And the reason again is because
Speaker 1: people think it works. And frankly, you know I'm biased,
Speaker 1: but I would say it does. The data shows that
Speaker 1: it does work. Um. Now, okay, what do we do
Speaker 1: about it? What's government doing about it? Um? You know,
Speaker 1: I can give kind of a longer answer, but basically
Speaker 1: the challenge right now is that the United States may
Speaker 1: have been the nation that invented the Internet, but where
Speaker 1: the nation that the government's particularly militaries around the world
Speaker 1: look at and say, don't let what has happened to
Speaker 1: America happen to us, where that we're the example of
Speaker 1: what not to do. UM. So if you look at
Speaker 1: you know, measures at the Baltics have put into place, etcetera,
Speaker 1: they'll site, look at what happened to the Americans. This
Speaker 1: is why we're doing X, Y and Z. So there
Speaker 1: is a greater awareness of these campaigns. Um. We're even
Speaker 1: weaving them into our own operations, so, you know, particularly
Speaker 1: to the special operations community. There's a really interesting back
Speaker 1: and forth that we play within the book of how
Speaker 1: Isis was using certain tactics in taking over Mocil that
Speaker 1: surprise us, and it's part of the story of of
Speaker 1: how they defeat a much larger force. But when it
Speaker 1: comes time a couple of years later for US to
Speaker 1: take back Moscil, we're using many of the same tactics
Speaker 1: we've been watching and learning them, even using some of
Speaker 1: the tactics the Russians were using against our election. So
Speaker 1: there's this kind of learning process that's going on. But overall,
Speaker 1: when it comes to overall strategy and policy, uh, particularly
Speaker 1: beyond the military, we're not yet dealing well with it.
Speaker 1: The same um uh process is played out at the
Speaker 1: company's UM. I liken it to the companies have gone
Speaker 1: through the stages of grief. Um. They were initially in
Speaker 1: denial what was playing out on their networks, that their
Speaker 1: networks had become these kind of war zones. Now and
Speaker 1: you know, you can see this like Zuckerberg immediately after
Speaker 1: saying out it's a quote pretty crazy idea that um,
Speaker 1: we could have had this these problems of fake news, disinformation,
Speaker 1: and even more that it could have influenced people's votes.
Speaker 1: And what's ironic is, um he's saying that at the
Speaker 1: exact same moment that Facebook is advertising to political campaigns,
Speaker 1: that Facebook is the best place to influence someone's vote,
Speaker 1: and they've got all the data to back it up. UM.
Speaker 1: So he goes from saying, you know, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: crazy idea two years ago to now Facebook has created
Speaker 1: a quote war room to try and manage this problem.
Speaker 1: Um Zuckerberg describes himself as being in a quote arms
Speaker 1: race against Russian disinformation campaigns. But it kind of points
Speaker 1: to again one of these see changes we talked about
Speaker 1: in the book of some of the most important actors
Speaker 1: in war in politics right now are a handful of
Speaker 1: tech inventors who basically the policy changes that they decide
Speaker 1: on Facebook on Twitter tilt the battlefield one way or
Speaker 1: the other. And oviously, they were kind of tilted to
Speaker 1: advantage uh, disinformation warriors terrorist groups. Now we're trying to
Speaker 1: get them to tilt it back, but you also get
Speaker 1: these really fascinating challenges of should they have that power
Speaker 1: or not. So I'll end on a great illustration of
Speaker 1: the change um. For several years, Facebook basically ignored how
Speaker 1: it was being used as a space not just a
Speaker 1: call for mass killings and MIMAR, but to coordinate around it.
Speaker 1: And you know, this played out. But then a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago Facebook said, you know what, Um, the
Speaker 1: generals who are the leaders of MR You're kicked off Facebook.
Speaker 1: And and this is notable because in MIMER, Facebook pretty
Speaker 1: much is the Internet it's everyone. It's it's not how
Speaker 1: you're using multiple different it's it's all funneled through that.
Speaker 1: And so basically, a private company just decided to make
Speaker 1: it more difficult for a nation's leaders to speak to
Speaker 1: their citizens. But I would argue for very good reasons,
Speaker 1: because the leaders were calling from mass killings. But it
Speaker 1: just shows kind of the crazy changes that have played
Speaker 1: out in a very short period of time. When you
Speaker 1: circle back, you know, Zuckerberg and men's Facebook basically as
Speaker 1: a means originally for students to write who was hot
Speaker 1: or not, and now they've got this power and warm politics.
Speaker 1: There's this great meme to a vet where it says
Speaker 1: like when you created a you know, system for to
Speaker 1: find out, you know, who was like a hotter girl,
Speaker 1: but you've influenced to election and you know or or
Speaker 1: you know, I don't remember what it exactly. Really it's
Speaker 1: where where zucker Burn's got like his hand in his face.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh my god, what have I done? Um No,
Speaker 1: I think there's a fascinating subject, and I'm glad that
Speaker 1: you kind of um put it together in in a
Speaker 1: in a readable format rather than you know, trying to
Speaker 1: I think people trying to scoot around the Internet and
Speaker 1: read you know, previous work that you or others have done,
Speaker 1: trying to piece it all together on their own. Um.
Speaker 1: One thing that I think that you put your finger
Speaker 1: on in the book which is interesting is that some
Speaker 1: of these uh, you know, foreign state actors exploit the
Speaker 1: freedom that we have in the Western world, things like
Speaker 1: freedom of speech, um, freedom of expression, to use these
Speaker 1: as vehicles to propagandize the American public. And it seems
Speaker 1: that it's something that as Americans were very naive about
Speaker 1: that we we have this um impression that people out
Speaker 1: in the world are genuinely good actors overall. Um, we
Speaker 1: we don't have our our skeptics had on when we
Speaker 1: view some of this information as one if um, you
Speaker 1: had any conclusions about why why and if you think,
Speaker 1: I'm Americans are particularly susceptible to this type of propaganda
Speaker 1: or is it this just human nature across the board.
Speaker 1: So first, you know, I wanted to thank you for
Speaker 1: kind of pointing out that that idea of the approach
Speaker 1: of the book. One of the things that we tried
Speaker 1: to do is, um not just tell the story. So
Speaker 1: you know, every chapter begins with a fascinating story, an
Speaker 1: interesting character the light because that's actually one of the
Speaker 1: lessons of what works in this spaces is the power
Speaker 1: of narrative. And it's UM in turn. UH frankly, why
Speaker 1: a lot of our own UM campaigns haven't done well
Speaker 1: compared to say what isis or Russia has been putting together.
Speaker 1: We've forgotten the power of narratives. So we tried to
Speaker 1: have that in the book, and it also just reflected
Speaker 1: the way we researched it, where UM we went around
Speaker 1: interviewing all the key players and from them you get
Speaker 1: these really fascinating stories. UM. You know, what is the
Speaker 1: creator of the Internet? Think, what's happened to his baby? Um?
Speaker 1: What is someone you know, everything from an uh A
Speaker 1: line officer in the military, all the way up to
Speaker 1: generals to extremist group recruiters to UM reality stars. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know what do they all think about what's played
Speaker 1: out in this UM? And we tried to be careful too,
Speaker 1: And this goes to the core of your question. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of pessimism surrounding both kind of social media
Speaker 1: in general right now, but in particular how America is
Speaker 1: doing at it UM, And we tried to every time
Speaker 1: we talked about a phenomena, talk about both the good
Speaker 1: and the bad side of it. Talk about a good
Speaker 1: guy using it to win their wars, but also here's
Speaker 1: how a bad guy is using it. UM. A good
Speaker 1: example is uh, this idea of UM. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the changes that social media is brought. In particular too,
Speaker 1: I think the operating space for your audience is UM.
Speaker 1: When you have this combination of all these sensors out
Speaker 1: there UM and everyone able to share on social media,
Speaker 1: it's essentially ended UM secrets. Uh. You know. A great
Speaker 1: example would be the bin Laden rate. It was supposed
Speaker 1: to be highly classified, and yet you had a Pakistani
Speaker 1: cafe owner who was up late at night and a
Speaker 1: bata bad He hears the helicopters coming in, and what
Speaker 1: does he do? The new natural thing. He goes on
Speaker 1: to social media and complaints. But his complaints about one helicopter,
Speaker 1: second helicopter, first explosion, second explosion, they double as these
Speaker 1: like live battlefield reports. UM. And you know, I've been
Speaker 1: involved more personally in examples of this where we had
Speaker 1: to go to you know, tell people in so calm, hey,
Speaker 1: this operation that you think is super secretive in Syria
Speaker 1: or in Libya. You know, here's where people are talking
Speaker 1: about it online. Can I tell you the craziest thing
Speaker 1: in terms of bi laon rate. I swear to you,
Speaker 1: and I'm I know I'm not the only person who
Speaker 1: had this experience. I learned about the bin Laden raid
Speaker 1: when when it happened on Twitter from Tom Green, the
Speaker 1: comedian Tom Green, and he was tweeting about it before
Speaker 1: Fox News, before CNN, for MSNBC. I don't know how
Speaker 1: he was privy to it. I'm sure someone tweeted about
Speaker 1: it that he was following, but like that just shows
Speaker 1: the absurdity of social media that you know, that's who
Speaker 1: you were learning this from some guy who was like
Speaker 1: a popular comedian in the late nineties early two thousands,
Speaker 1: before any news network. So there, you know, there was
Speaker 1: some kind of chain connection between UM, the original owner,
Speaker 1: the guy who was on the scene, and just basically
Speaker 1: enough people retweeted and then it spends out. UM. So
Speaker 1: you have this sort of example of an end of secrecy.
Speaker 1: And on one hand you can say, wow, this, you know,
Speaker 1: unveils operations UM, and you know people will say, well,
Speaker 1: I don't like that. On the other hand, we tell
Speaker 1: the story of UM, a group of volunteer UH kind
Speaker 1: of work from home Sherlock Holmes, their online detect is
Speaker 1: who use social media to track down war crimes that
Speaker 1: wouldn't otherwise be detected. There. For example, the team that
Speaker 1: proved that Russia was part of UM, the Russia shot
Speaker 1: down the airline or over Ukraine a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: killing two or ninety eight civilians. UM. So you get
Speaker 1: this like wonderful back and forth that comes out of
Speaker 1: this UM. Now the you know, your question though, is
Speaker 1: like why has it been so bad for the US?
Speaker 1: And UM. I think usually there's not just a particularly
Speaker 1: American phenomena, but maybe we're a little more prone to it.
Speaker 1: Is when things go bad with technologies and policy, it's
Speaker 1: usually a combination of two things, arrogance and ignorance. Arrogance, UM,
Speaker 1: it might be arrogance, this couldn't happen to us the
Speaker 1: way we talked about. You know, this may be something
Speaker 1: that we see hitting other nations but it couldn't happen
Speaker 1: to us. Or this may be being used to fight
Speaker 1: against other nations militaries but we don't have to pay
Speaker 1: attention to it. And again, all the phenomenon we We
Speaker 1: talked about this in the book. Um, you know it
Speaker 1: had a history to it. Um, you know things were
Speaker 1: playing out against us in were happening earlier, things that
Speaker 1: Isis was doing in etcetera. We were seeing Hamas do
Speaker 1: that to the Israelis back in earlier periods. So there's
Speaker 1: first kind of an arrogance of Um, this couldn't happen
Speaker 1: to us. There's also a little bit of arrogance among
Speaker 1: the technology creators. Of course, the thing I create is
Speaker 1: going to be used for good, not going okay? How
Speaker 1: might bad actors misuse it? And then you have really
Speaker 1: what the book is trying to um, pop is the
Speaker 1: side of ignorance. If these technologies have created a set
Speaker 1: of new rules of the game, new rules for how
Speaker 1: you operate, new rules for the nature of secrecy, new
Speaker 1: rules for how you win battles, etcetera, then we better
Speaker 1: learn those new rules. And the book tells the tale
Speaker 1: of how the people that understand the rules, whether they
Speaker 1: are Isis or Taylor Swift, they're using that to win
Speaker 1: their wars, and in turn, the ones who don't understand
Speaker 1: the rules, they're the ones getting their clocks cleaned. And
Speaker 1: that is again something that we've I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to catch up. And you can see that
Speaker 1: and everything from uh US Senate hearings where senators are
Speaker 1: flailing and you know, I mean you may seem the
Speaker 1: hearing where they were interacting with Mark Zuckerberg and just
Speaker 1: you know, showing off how poorly they understood. We're just embarrassing.
Speaker 1: But also to you know, examples that have really flummux
Speaker 1: the special operations community. UM. So, like from conversations with
Speaker 1: people UM in this field, they'll talk about, UM, there's
Speaker 1: a very different way that they've approached messaging that essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, will spend days and days creating power points
Speaker 1: to find that one perfect message that's targeted at the
Speaker 1: wrong person, both of which are not how you went
Speaker 1: in this space. You kee, You've got to do it quickly.
Speaker 1: There's not one perfect message. You have to proliferate it
Speaker 1: out widely, and you're not trying to go after that
Speaker 1: one individual. It's about operating on scale. But so I
Speaker 1: have these kind of conversations with people in the community
Speaker 1: and they say, we go in believing that we will
Speaker 1: lose the battle of the narrative, and the battle of
Speaker 1: the narrative, particularly when you're talking about counter terrorism, counterinsurgency,
Speaker 1: that's the battle that might matter most. That's the battle
Speaker 1: where um it really will decide not just the adversaries
Speaker 1: of recruiting, but the interactions with the local populace and
Speaker 1: the like. And we're going into these situations this again,
Speaker 1: this is a complaint from folks that I've met with.
Speaker 1: Their complaint is that they believe they're going in on
Speaker 1: the losing side, and so we've got to understand the
Speaker 1: new rules to remedy that, well, aren't There also a
Speaker 1: lot of legal and policy restrictions as far as how
Speaker 1: the US military goes about this sort of you know,
Speaker 1: we can use a term strategic messaging or propaganda. I
Speaker 1: guess it all depends on your point of view. But
Speaker 1: there's things like the Schmidt Mund Act I believe is
Speaker 1: one of the main ones that is Uh, it actually
Speaker 1: applies to the State Department, I believe, but the but
Speaker 1: D o D accepts it as a norm. Uh that
Speaker 1: if we attempt to do some sort of strategic messaging
Speaker 1: on the Internet, that there's no guarantee that American citizens
Speaker 1: want in turn see that quote unquote propaganda and be
Speaker 1: influenced by it. So there are definite UM challenges in
Speaker 1: terms of kind of laws that were set up for
Speaker 1: a different era, policies that haven't caught up to this
Speaker 1: new kind of technology. UM. You mentioned one on the
Speaker 1: external messaging side. UM. One that's made us a particularly
Speaker 1: vulnerable on the internal messaging side is how how we
Speaker 1: handle uh political commercials. Um. It's not perfectly, but it's
Speaker 1: regulated in radio and TV. On social media, political ads
Speaker 1: are regulated in the same way that skywriting is that
Speaker 1: is with like the smoke that comes out of the plane,
Speaker 1: they're actually regulated under the very same law. And of
Speaker 1: course social media does not like disappear and that's it,
Speaker 1: and it's only seen by that one person there. It proliferates,
Speaker 1: it's more wide, and it's more influential than um uh
Speaker 1: you know um TV or radio ads right now. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of policy and legal kind of catching
Speaker 1: up that needs to go on. UM. But I will
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna push back at you in some way.
Speaker 1: There's often complaints, particularly within the military, at you know,
Speaker 1: we can't do X, we can't do why. The reality
Speaker 1: is often the things that prevent us from doing X
Speaker 1: and Y are not law. It's internal culture. Um, it's
Speaker 1: an internal bureaucracy. It's sticking to an old doctrine, failure
Speaker 1: of imagination. Yeah, exactly. And then there's another thing where, UM,
Speaker 1: let's just admit, there are some things that we do
Speaker 1: in secret squirrel land that are different than um, what
Speaker 1: we complain about. So uh, you know the example of
Speaker 1: UM we I I can say it, maybe you can't,
Speaker 1: but you know, there are examples of UM contracts put
Speaker 1: out by the US military to allow one person to
Speaker 1: control multiple social media accounts simultaneously under false personas. That's
Speaker 1: basically the Russian disinformation model. We've just learned how to
Speaker 1: copycat them. Um Uh. We do it bureaucratically, put out
Speaker 1: a contract for it. We were just using it. Um.
Speaker 1: These are among many of the lessons learned kind of
Speaker 1: more recently. This was for the sitcom A O R.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's some things we do in secret
Speaker 1: Squirreland that wouldn't um uh that that are not you
Speaker 1: know kind of there's nothing that we can do in
Speaker 1: this space. Things. Things may have evolved, but I believe
Speaker 1: actually the FBI has done the best job with a
Speaker 1: persona building, UM, probably better than the military has. UM.
Speaker 1: This is another question. Well, I mean the real thing
Speaker 1: in terms of this is you know the best who
Speaker 1: has done the persona building. UM. You know, look beyond government,
Speaker 1: look at corporate models, look at nonstate actor models. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's a good illustration. In the book, we
Speaker 1: have this back and forth UM in one section of
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton versus Wendy's. UM. Hillary Clinton is a real person,
Speaker 1: but she did not come across as real online and
Speaker 1: that was because she had a highly echo to U. S. Military,
Speaker 1: highly bureaucratic UH messaging campaign. UM. As many as eleven
Speaker 1: different people would way in on a single tweet from her. UM.
Speaker 1: By contrast, Wendy's, which is not a it's a hamburger change.
Speaker 1: You know. May Wendy's may have once been a little girl,
Speaker 1: but it's not right now. Wendy's is known as one
Speaker 1: of the most effective kind of corporate actors online because
Speaker 1: it's it's viewed as real. And again, this is this
Speaker 1: me saying real. It's not just oh that's nice. It's
Speaker 1: one of the five attributes that we explore in the
Speaker 1: book of every time something goes viral, every time something wins,
Speaker 1: it has one of these attributes, and one is this
Speaker 1: idea of authenticity and again you can have that kind
Speaker 1: of back and forth between learning from what a Wendy's
Speaker 1: does versus the Hillary Clinton campaign model. To you know,
Speaker 1: that's been one of the challenges of our messaging against
Speaker 1: saying isis is isis UM had you know, it was
Speaker 1: viewed as more real. UM it had a model that
Speaker 1: really leveraged that first in its efforts against its rivals
Speaker 1: like al Qaeda, and then it's in its efforts against
Speaker 1: the coalition. Can I also just add every time Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton during the campaign tried to sound culturally relevant or authentic,
Speaker 1: it really fell on its face. And the the the
Speaker 1: example I could think of in my head first was
Speaker 1: do you remember when she was on the campaign trail
Speaker 1: and she she said, uh, I don't know who invented
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go, but I hope that you all pokemon go
Speaker 1: to the polls. That that one viral, but not because
Speaker 1: of its authenticity. It was just like, this woman does
Speaker 1: not know how to come off as a real person.
Speaker 1: And this again now we pulled back and UM, it
Speaker 1: connects to I mean kind of wonky with you a
Speaker 1: larger discussion. So the book is I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about examples from Taylor Swift to Wendy's. But
Speaker 1: it also blends in. You know, the history of the
Speaker 1: blitz creeg and isis military operations. But one of the
Speaker 1: changes that's played out is um going back to the
Speaker 1: very first democracies. Um, you have writing from Aristotle about
Speaker 1: you know, one of the twists of a democracy in
Speaker 1: ancient Greece is that it's a government of the people.
Speaker 1: But then you need a new class of a particular
Speaker 1: kind of person. In Aristotle comes up with the concept
Speaker 1: of a politician. So it is someone who is of
Speaker 1: the people. They're not a king, they're not a priest.
Speaker 1: There of the people, but they have decided that they
Speaker 1: are better than the people and that they should be
Speaker 1: the leader of the people. And so that's created this
Speaker 1: kind of long um. It's both a feature and a
Speaker 1: contradiction UM, and the politicians have long had to kind
Speaker 1: of do this balancing act of I'm of you, but
Speaker 1: you know I'm better than you. Well, then that really
Speaker 1: brings us leaves into technology. So like with the early newspapers,
Speaker 1: you get the stories and a America of well he
Speaker 1: was born in a log cabin, and then with TV
Speaker 1: you get this basically industry of diners in Iowa and
Speaker 1: New Hampshire that are based supported by politicians visiting them
Speaker 1: to try and show that they're real. What social media
Speaker 1: brought in is now the individual politician. It's them directly.
Speaker 1: It's not through the media, it's not through the middle.
Speaker 1: And you know, that was um. If you're looking at Trump,
Speaker 1: even among um people who this this was from polling
Speaker 1: for example, during the Republican nomination, so other Republicans who
Speaker 1: liked his his rivals, um, you know, whether it's Rubio
Speaker 1: or Bush or whatever. In the polling, even when they
Speaker 1: said they didn't like his policy, the one attribute that
Speaker 1: they would say about him as well, it's it's he's real, um,
Speaker 1: and his his authenticity. And so that has created a
Speaker 1: model that again, whether it was Trump, whether it was
Speaker 1: to shift over to Jane who's saying, isis top recruiter, um, whatever,
Speaker 1: that attribute of being viewed as real, of being viewed
Speaker 1: as authentic is something that wins on the web and
Speaker 1: in turn those who are viewed as inauthentic um lose.
Speaker 1: But again, what's fascinating about it is and this comes
Speaker 1: from the interviews with you know, again, whether it's tech
Speaker 1: recruiters to generals to the reality stars. No one is
Speaker 1: real on the guy. It's all performative, right, It's it's
Speaker 1: a conscious authenticity. So when when when Jane Hussain or
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift are engaging with a fan, whether it's an
Speaker 1: Isis fan or a music fan, they're doing it in
Speaker 1: knowledge that the world is watching. When Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: saying things the way he does, he's doing it consciously
Speaker 1: knowing that he's doing it for a purpose. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the things again that if you look at
Speaker 1: kind of the military side of it, Um, we've we've
Speaker 1: faced a challenge and that kind of approach. Well, I
Speaker 1: think there's that debate with filmmakers, isn't there that you
Speaker 1: know whether or not anything on camera can be authentic
Speaker 1: and real because the moment you have a camera on you,
Speaker 1: you know, you're aware of it, you know you're being watched,
Speaker 1: and you behave differently. And now we get to the
Speaker 1: next part of this battle space, Um, what maybe even
Speaker 1: sort of you acting real and quotation marks online. We're
Speaker 1: moving into a space where that imagery can be manipulated changed.
Speaker 1: So we have the challenge of not only do we
Speaker 1: fall within our little own echo chambers. Where again, whether
Speaker 1: it's UM U s military operations in a rock to
Speaker 1: UM what you think of Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice,
Speaker 1: we're in these little echo chambers of each of us
Speaker 1: have our own truths, our own reality. But now we
Speaker 1: have the potential of weaving new technology like artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: and like in it where you can literally manipulate that
Speaker 1: imagery and take things that truly are not real and
Speaker 1: make them look as if they are real. UM. This
Speaker 1: is called deep fakes uh. And this is the idea
Speaker 1: of creating um uh what look like truths uh, you know,
Speaker 1: an image of video. The examples range from speeches that
Speaker 1: politicians never gave to UM people appearing in movies that
Speaker 1: they never start. In UM two, we will see that weaponized.
Speaker 1: Also so UM images of US soldiers committing an atrocity
Speaker 1: that they never did. And so that's where it's kind
Speaker 1: of the next stage of these battles that looms and
Speaker 1: again points to the need for us to to get
Speaker 1: a handle of these new rules of the game, because
Speaker 1: we're if if if this is a new realm and
Speaker 1: new domain of war. UM, we're in the biplane stage
Speaker 1: of it. You know, the weapons the tactics. They're still
Speaker 1: early stage, you know, but isis was the first user.
Speaker 1: The groups that follow are going to get better at it,
Speaker 1: do more UM. In turn, you know, another change that
Speaker 1: looms for the operating environment I think for this audience
Speaker 1: in particular, is think of all the changes that have
Speaker 1: happened with social media so far, whether it's news, politics,
Speaker 1: and war, and only half the world is online right now.
Speaker 1: The other half is still to come. So you know,
Speaker 1: the the to circle back that example of the big
Speaker 1: loadon rate UM that happened in a country where at
Speaker 1: the time it plays out, if I remember the data correctly, UM,
Speaker 1: less than ten percent of the nation at that point
Speaker 1: was on social media. That's not the case now in
Speaker 1: it's certainly not going to be the case moving forward.
Speaker 1: In so you have UM, all these phenomena are only
Speaker 1: going to grow, which again means we need to learn
Speaker 1: about them. I know we're probably running short on time,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to get this question in for sure
Speaker 1: before UM we come to a close. Is this is
Speaker 1: more of a psychological question than a technological question, but
Speaker 1: it's touched upon in your book. Is the notion of
Speaker 1: when people are confronted with the fact that they are
Speaker 1: propagating false information. I think there's something very interesting that
Speaker 1: happens in people's minds. And I think we've all had
Speaker 1: this experience where someone posts something that's completely ridiculous. I
Speaker 1: remember someone posting this meme and it was of the
Speaker 1: woman Dr Ford who had accused Kavanaugh of a sexual assault,
Speaker 1: and it was a picture of her looking like a
Speaker 1: a promiscuous woman in a bikini with like a bottle
Speaker 1: of champagne in her hand, and implying that she is
Speaker 1: a promiscuous woman in this and that, And I said,
Speaker 1: I pointed out as like, look, that's not her in
Speaker 1: the photo. That quote you've thrown on the meme is
Speaker 1: not real. This isn't real. And I find over and
Speaker 1: over again when you confront people with that, what they
Speaker 1: come back with, when they're presented with clear evidence, is Okay,
Speaker 1: this particular meme may not be factual, but the point
Speaker 1: is true. What is happening in people's minds? And why
Speaker 1: is it so hard for people? Why do they cling
Speaker 1: so desperately to false information and we just cannot despite
Speaker 1: whatever evidence you give them, you just can't talk them
Speaker 1: out of it. Is like this deep seated emotional, ideological
Speaker 1: need to believe in something. Yeah, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: the space. We could treat it as if it's a
Speaker 1: technology space, but UM, it goes back to politics and war.
Speaker 1: They're about humans, They're about us. UM. And this face
Speaker 1: itself was designed to push those UM mental you know,
Speaker 1: be its psychological or emotional buttons. UM. The very design
Speaker 1: of it. Uh you know. So for example, there is
Speaker 1: a reason why uh when there a message pops up
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Uh, it's in red. Um, It's in red
Speaker 1: because that fires the part of your brain that really
Speaker 1: wants to make red go away. It's not just that
Speaker 1: you notice it. You want to make away the fires
Speaker 1: that sort of anticipation. Notice that they don't tell you,
Speaker 1: um the importance of the message. Uh. You know. It
Speaker 1: could be the most important thing in the world, or
Speaker 1: it could be an annoying UM person that you barely
Speaker 1: remember from high school reaching out. But you've got to
Speaker 1: go there to get it. So, you know, the design
Speaker 1: of the space UM does that. And it's the same
Speaker 1: in terms of how we UM interact with conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: and falsehoods. UM. The more that we are exposed to them,
Speaker 1: the more we fall prey to them UM. And that
Speaker 1: is both you as an individual UM. And you know,
Speaker 1: all the data shows that if you've posted kind of
Speaker 1: one falsehood, your sort of defenses are broken down to
Speaker 1: doing it more and more. UM. Also scarily, the more
Speaker 1: you post conspiracy theories UM, the more likely the more
Speaker 1: prone you are to extremism, more likely to to voice UM, hate, violence,
Speaker 1: you name it. There's there is a connection. Even when
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theory is not about politics. It might be UM,
Speaker 1: you know, the anti vax or the anti vaccine movement
Speaker 1: or the flat earth movement. It's kind of like if
Speaker 1: you think of it as like a gateway drug. But
Speaker 1: it's also you make everyone else in your network more
Speaker 1: prone to it, so you're aching down the defenses of
Speaker 1: your friends and family UM. And uh So there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's all of these kind of psychological issues, but it
Speaker 1: actually I want to end on UM you know, kind
Speaker 1: of a more positive note. Uh. This points to the
Speaker 1: need for not just national level response. You know, we
Speaker 1: talked about how we've got to adjust our military training
Speaker 1: doctrine to UM. There's models of how the Estonias of
Speaker 1: the world have developed better defenses UM for their nation
Speaker 1: without losing their democracy. Without compromising their rights. Um, there's
Speaker 1: things that the companies can do, but they're also points
Speaker 1: to what you and I need to do as individuals.
Speaker 1: And I really like the parallel of public health here,
Speaker 1: where in public health each of us there's a role
Speaker 1: for government, there's a role for industry, but it also
Speaker 1: comes down to what you and I do, and part
Speaker 1: of that is having an ethic to um not just
Speaker 1: protect ourselves, but protect everyone around us. So, for example,
Speaker 1: I teach my kids um to cover their mouth when
Speaker 1: they cough. Now, first I don't say well, because I
Speaker 1: teach my kids hygiene. There's no role for government in
Speaker 1: public health, or there's no role for a private industry.
Speaker 1: There's no role for hospitals, but they in turn rely
Speaker 1: on me teaching my kids that. But go back to
Speaker 1: that idea of cover your mouth when you cough. In
Speaker 1: no way, shape or form does that defend only you.
Speaker 1: It's about you taking responsibility for defending everyone else in
Speaker 1: your network. And it's the same phenomena when it comes
Speaker 1: to these issues of disinformation, fake news, falsehoods. We are
Speaker 1: not just targets of it trying to break down our
Speaker 1: own defenses. We are also the combatants. We decide whether
Speaker 1: it goes viral or not. So you know, to that person,
Speaker 1: it's not just hey, this is false it's hey, you
Speaker 1: are responsible for the spreading of that falsehood, and you're
Speaker 1: part of the attack against all of your friends and family.
Speaker 1: And so that's where again we need to you know,
Speaker 1: kind of message this as it's not just about defending you,
Speaker 1: it's not just about defending the nation. It's about defending
Speaker 1: your friends and family. And you know that's hopefully some
Speaker 1: of the sort of the positive side lessons that comes
Speaker 1: out of this project is to better equip all of
Speaker 1: us in that kind of battles that are playing out
Speaker 1: in the very same space that we post you know,
Speaker 1: all the good fun things of social media, be it
Speaker 1: our birthday party images to uh great interviews with people online.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's a role for UM, let's say,
Speaker 1: bringing Civics classes back to high schools and updating them
Speaker 1: to teach children like, Look, this is part of your
Speaker 1: responsibility as a citizen. You know, you vote, you go
Speaker 1: to jury duty, maybe you will elect to serve in
Speaker 1: the military, and also stop spreading fake news. Please, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know what you're getting at is um gital literacy
Speaker 1: and when we look at the other nations that that
Speaker 1: handle this space really well, they have digital literacy campaigns
Speaker 1: they teach in their schools, and not just like an
Speaker 1: elementary school level, but um, it's also woven into for example,
Speaker 1: media campaigns and the like. Because of course, as we
Speaker 1: all know, UM, it's not the twelve year olds that
Speaker 1: are spreading most of the conspiracy online. Uh, it's um. Frankly,
Speaker 1: you're in my elders I joke that baby boomers. Facebook
Speaker 1: is like the tide pods for baby boomers. Um. But so,
Speaker 1: but that's what you know. The nations be they like
Speaker 1: in Estonia, Sweden, who have gotten really good at this
Speaker 1: unsurprising because they were the first to be targeted by
Speaker 1: the rushes of the world. That's what they have. But
Speaker 1: there's a real strange example of um, what's playing out
Speaker 1: in this The United States government has helped pay for
Speaker 1: a digital literacy program in Ukraine tell Ukrainian students better
Speaker 1: recognize disinformation online, but we don't have that for our
Speaker 1: own kids. And it again points back to some of
Speaker 1: the the sort of the strangeness of this space that UM,
Speaker 1: we parts of our government recognized the problem and are
Speaker 1: trying to help better defend other nations, but because of
Speaker 1: a kind of a dysfunctionality and a part of the
Speaker 1: ship at home, we're more open to being taken advantage of, exploited, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But again it points to how we shouldn't throw our
Speaker 1: hands up and say, you know, there's nothing that we
Speaker 1: can do. Actually, there are things that we can do.
Speaker 1: They're proven to work. It's just are we going to
Speaker 1: implement them at the national level, at the business level,
Speaker 1: at our own personal levels. I have a couple of
Speaker 1: questions before we actually got question. Definitely, if you have
Speaker 1: to go, if you have to go where we can
Speaker 1: wrap it up, it's not a problem. Let's let's I'll
Speaker 1: hit Okay, So just a really quick one. I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: you know, from everything that we've discussed in this past
Speaker 1: forty five minutesters so you know, I think it's easy
Speaker 1: to infer you're not a fan of a guy like
Speaker 1: Alex Jones, but from the libertarian perspective of myself and
Speaker 1: I think Jack on some level, I actually just want
Speaker 1: to know what you think of like the shadow banning
Speaker 1: of a guy like Alex Jones, where it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's being banned from all this social media, and is
Speaker 1: a good precedent I guess yes, any even being banned
Speaker 1: from PayPal, which really stops him from being able to,
Speaker 1: you know, just get financial compensation for what he's doing,
Speaker 1: whether it's fake or not. And I do think it
Speaker 1: sets a pretty crazy precedent of you know, who's going
Speaker 1: to be banned next from there. So let's let's set
Speaker 1: the first thing. UM use the term shadow banning. Shadow banning,
Speaker 1: so there is the conspiracy theory of my messages are
Speaker 1: not getting out, UM somehow they're secretly doing something behind
Speaker 1: the scene. That's shadow banning. And then there is d platforming,
Speaker 1: which is you are kicked off. So shadow banning is
Speaker 1: actually a really good example of the I'm going to
Speaker 1: use a kind word shenanigans that UH people like Jones
Speaker 1: and others were pulling off by claiming that there were
Speaker 1: things being done by secret powers to them, whether it
Speaker 1: was I'm being shadow banned. Two more UM dangerous to society,
Speaker 1: UH claiming that UM mass killings were falsehoods, that there
Speaker 1: were little kid actors, UM spreading disinformation about terror campaigns, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So but let's even be just I you know I'm
Speaker 1: gonna push what I'm pushing back as and maybe you
Speaker 1: didn't even intend it, but that the very idea of shadows. No,
Speaker 1: I know, to be fair, we've been shadow banned on
Speaker 1: some level, you know, with Crate Club, with with guys
Speaker 1: who have weapons, and then we get flagged for gun sales,
Speaker 1: and you know that I would put that ob there's
Speaker 1: there's the conspiracy theory of shadow banning versus what you
Speaker 1: were really getting at is d platforming. You're kicked off
Speaker 1: the network. You don't have access to the network. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, here's my own take on this. Um, you
Speaker 1: have a right to free speech. You do not have
Speaker 1: an inherent right to be part of a privately owned
Speaker 1: network and do not have a right to spread falsehood
Speaker 1: that is dangerous to society on that network. So you know,
Speaker 1: and again even by the fact that Alex Jones cannot
Speaker 1: even say, well, I have a contract with Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: I paid them x No, literally, you didn't pay them anything.
Speaker 1: You are on their network and they get to decide
Speaker 1: the rules of that network. You still have the right
Speaker 1: to say what you want. They don't have to let
Speaker 1: you on their network. Now what they have chosen to
Speaker 1: do through out history, going all the way back to
Speaker 1: the my Spaces, the six degrees is for the most part,
Speaker 1: the networks have been ambivalent about what's playing out on them.
Speaker 1: They have not wanted to do what's known as content moderation.
Speaker 1: They have not wanted to police what people say. But
Speaker 1: then every um couple of years they get pressure from
Speaker 1: two directions. They get pressure from the other users to
Speaker 1: other customers of that network saying this is something that
Speaker 1: that if you keep allowing this, we're going to leave.
Speaker 1: And then the second is the threat of government intervention.
Speaker 1: So the very first time there was content moderation, it
Speaker 1: was over something like, uh, child pornography. Basically, the the
Speaker 1: users of the early networks say, you know what, we
Speaker 1: don't like that this is in this space. If you
Speaker 1: don't clean it up, we might leave, and government is saying,
Speaker 1: guess what, We're going to intervene. So there's this is
Speaker 1: what's played out. And initially it was um that everyone
Speaker 1: could agree on, seemingly like child pornography. Then after nine
Speaker 1: eleven it moved into things like, for example, UM terrorists videos,
Speaker 1: and initially it was terrorist videos of UM beheading, idea attacks,
Speaker 1: soldiers dying and so the companies go after that. Then
Speaker 1: it is well, not just violent imagery, it's inspiration of
Speaker 1: mass killing, inspiration of extremism. And that wasn't easy enough
Speaker 1: seemingly issue when it was something like al Qaeda. Then
Speaker 1: it grows a little bit thornier when it's, for example,
Speaker 1: incidents like Charlottesville. Um. And so there's basically been this
Speaker 1: kind of continual back and forth, and we're seeing, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of what I'm getting out is the company's um.
Speaker 1: They've more and more taken on a political role that
Speaker 1: reflects the idea that they're running what are again these
Speaker 1: battlefields of political debate, but also with real effect on
Speaker 1: real battle fields. So my own personal take on this
Speaker 1: is again, UM, this is uh. There are actors online
Speaker 1: who you have a right to free speech, You have
Speaker 1: a right even to lie. The platform doesn't have to
Speaker 1: allow you to be a danger to the broader society,
Speaker 1: and because you don't have a contractual relationship with them,
Speaker 1: they have the right to boot you. So um, in
Speaker 1: the case of Jones, then a policy, he violated the policy.
Speaker 1: But I want to hit something else because it circles
Speaker 1: back to something that's really crucial to the broader discussion.
Speaker 1: What was fascinating and we now we have the data
Speaker 1: on it is in the Russian campaigns, they did not
Speaker 1: just inject disinformation into our own body politic, the fake
Speaker 1: ads and things like that. They also using both our
Speaker 1: body accounts and sock puppet accounts, um would retreat, they
Speaker 1: would try and elevate the discussion of certain actors within
Speaker 1: our own discourse. And now you can literally lay out
Speaker 1: the data and see who was it that Russia wanted
Speaker 1: their voices magnified as a way of harming the United States.
Speaker 1: And you have this very small number of what are
Speaker 1: known as super spreaders. They're basically sort of toxic voices
Speaker 1: that have a larger effect than the than the rest
Speaker 1: of kind of the general populace, and by several orders
Speaker 1: of magnitude. It was figures like Alex Jones, the people
Speaker 1: behind pizza Gate. Again circling back to one of the
Speaker 1: prior questions, it was remarkable that the Russians identified the
Speaker 1: worst conspiracy theorists as the best way to harm America.
Speaker 1: So I don't feel bad about those folks being platform
Speaker 1: They can still do what when you can still run
Speaker 1: out in the street and yell at people, But I
Speaker 1: don't feel bad that, um, you know, the companies decided
Speaker 1: they gave them a set of rules and said you
Speaker 1: violated the rules, you're off. Well that uh, I actually
Speaker 1: have that written down on my piece of paper here too,
Speaker 1: that I was going to ask you about the murky
Speaker 1: and interesting relationship between bright bart Info Wars, and RT.
Speaker 1: But I think people will have to go and read
Speaker 1: your book and start through some of that on their
Speaker 1: own and draw their own conclusions. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: whole other can of worms. Uh. Maybe we can do
Speaker 1: another interview sometime in the future and again into some
Speaker 1: of these subjects. And the last really quick thing I said.
Speaker 1: One last thing was because I mentioned this at the beginning,
Speaker 1: just if you can give us a quick brief of
Speaker 1: what New America is since you're a senior fellow there.
Speaker 1: So New America is a think tank where a non
Speaker 1: governmental um uh, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. We basically wrestle with
Speaker 1: the questions that happened when policy and technology come crashing together.
Speaker 1: So you have people writing books, reports, um and articles,
Speaker 1: and they're on everything from you know, what's the future
Speaker 1: of the internet too. We have a team that's working
Speaker 1: on the future of war. So, for example, the Future
Speaker 1: of War Team has everything from UH historians a recently
Speaker 1: retired Army officers actually writing the Army's UM official history
Speaker 1: of doctrinal change since UM UH nine eleven two. UM.
Speaker 1: We have scientists too, we have lawyers. Do we have
Speaker 1: former Air Force acquisition officers? Do we have former members
Speaker 1: of the community that's in this audience a former member
Speaker 1: of Navy Seal Team six, for example, And so everyone's
Speaker 1: essentially wrestling with these questions of and the Future War
Speaker 1: Team what will happen next in this space? Overall, the
Speaker 1: mission of the organization is UM to basically help us
Speaker 1: understand change and us defined as government, media and the
Speaker 1: wider public. Awesome, Well, thanks for coming on once again.
Speaker 1: The book is like War the weaponization of social Media.
Speaker 1: He's the co author of the book. UH. You could
Speaker 1: follow Peter on Twitter or PW on Twitter at Peter W.
Speaker 1: Singer and the website is PW Singer dot com. Thanks
Speaker 1: again so much for coming on. We appreciate it. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. I really appreciate your time today. Thanks Peter.
Speaker 1: All right, and this will be up tomorrow and I'll
Speaker 1: be in touch when it is all right, thank you,
Speaker 1: all right, have a good afternoon. Interesting stuff there. Uh.
Speaker 1: I will be the first to say, and people might
Speaker 1: be like, why didn't you push back on them a
Speaker 1: little bit more? Uh, you know, because I don't feel
Speaker 1: like what we do is like a split screen debate show.
Speaker 1: We like to give people a platform to get their
Speaker 1: work out there. I did not agree with him on
Speaker 1: on everything. To be completely honest, Um, whenever we talk
Speaker 1: about the d platforming of people, I totally separate the
Speaker 1: constitutional issue of it with just my personal feelings towards it.
Speaker 1: What they're doing to people like Alex Jones is completely constitutional,
Speaker 1: completely legal. I've never said anything um different that that
Speaker 1: it's violating is free speech, not violating his free speech.
Speaker 1: The government is not putting men jail or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But I actually do think it sets a scary precedent.
Speaker 1: On the other end of I don't like anyone dictating
Speaker 1: what is the dangerous narrative, what is fake news. I'd
Speaker 1: like people to you know, self educate on on cross
Speaker 1: checking sources and that type of thing and knowing what
Speaker 1: is real what is fake. But even when you talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, educating kids on this type of thing, we
Speaker 1: all have our own personal bias, and a left wing
Speaker 1: teacher is gonna have a very different view of what
Speaker 1: is fake news, what is okay. But then, speaking of bias,
Speaker 1: look at the assumption you just made. You just jump
Speaker 1: to the conclusion that the teacher teaching the classes left
Speaker 1: wing and that they're going to teach the kids with
Speaker 1: a left wing agenda in a civics class. Well, here's
Speaker 1: the thing, and so I have education at all, it's
Speaker 1: get rid of it because it's all going to be
Speaker 1: politically biased. I don't have to change the restructure the
Speaker 1: whole thing. But that's the whole different subject. But I
Speaker 1: spoke about this with you prior to us recording. Um,
Speaker 1: the people who run you know, the main voices behind Twitter,
Speaker 1: Facebook are all pretty openly left wing. We know what
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg is not banning liberals on the platform. I
Speaker 1: gave you the example before recorded of you know, Kathy
Speaker 1: Griffin putting up the Trump head. She wasn't banned from
Speaker 1: anywhere after that. I mean, I didn't don't performed her anywhere.
Speaker 1: I don't have the whole history of who's been banned
Speaker 1: and who hasn't. Um there are I mean, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you on Twitter. There are some pretty prominent neo Nazis
Speaker 1: who have not been banned and like nothing has happened
Speaker 1: to them. It seems to me that it's a question
Speaker 1: of when they reach a certain level of notoriety. Like
Speaker 1: Alex Jones. Alex Jones would have coasted by fine, but
Speaker 1: he just deliberately courted so much controversy and he got
Speaker 1: what he wanted. He pushed up into the national debate.
Speaker 1: He was on television all the time, people are talking
Speaker 1: about him, and now only the spotlight is on this guy,
Speaker 1: and there are enough people piste off about the stuff
Speaker 1: he was saying that you know that that Sandy hook
Speaker 1: never happened, that the parents of dead children or crisis actors,
Speaker 1: people just got fed up with it, and that that's
Speaker 1: kind of the consumer or customer pushback against these companies
Speaker 1: that are like, you gotta do something about this. You
Speaker 1: can't let this idiot run rampant like this. But every
Speaker 1: i'd say half the country, as in the people voted
Speaker 1: for Trump or always half the people who voted were
Speaker 1: equally as shocked and offended by Kathy Griffin holding up
Speaker 1: the Trump head. Saw it as a violent threat to
Speaker 1: towards our president and nothing was done, you know to her.
Speaker 1: I mean, in my personal opinion, yes, that was that
Speaker 1: pictures inappropriate and it's not something I would ever do
Speaker 1: or advocate. But there's a difference between that one dumb
Speaker 1: picture and Alex Jones is NonStop ranting about how nine
Speaker 1: eleven is an inside job, about how the CIA is
Speaker 1: out to kill all of us, and about how they're
Speaker 1: putting chemicals in the water that make the frogs gay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's completely fucking different. That's like apples and oranges. My
Speaker 1: question though, is always you know who dictates what can
Speaker 1: be the platforms what can and I know it's the
Speaker 1: owners of these companies who do happen to mostly be
Speaker 1: left wing if you look at the prominent people. Um
Speaker 1: and then, like I mentioned to him, I didn't really
Speaker 1: go into it in detail, but with our own company, uh,
Speaker 1: great club has really been screwed over by these people
Speaker 1: who you know you know this. It went from you
Speaker 1: can't have pictures in the you can have a video
Speaker 1: in the head of a guy holding a gun, all right,
Speaker 1: we won't have it. You can have a video on
Speaker 1: the head of a guy holding a knife, all right.
Speaker 1: The way this guy is holding a flashlight towards the camera,
Speaker 1: very intimidating. You know, that was I mean, I am
Speaker 1: concerned on on I say, I'm very concerned honestly because
Speaker 1: what what these social media platforms are doing politics aside,
Speaker 1: just remove partisan politics for a moment, is that it
Speaker 1: is a global wide social engineering project, and let's just
Speaker 1: call it what it is. And I think Peter was
Speaker 1: acknowledging that as well, that these companies are these are
Speaker 1: mega corporations, they're transnational in nature. Um, they I mean
Speaker 1: they have a profound influence on our cognitive process. Uh,
Speaker 1: they have a profound impact on elections, on how we
Speaker 1: view political issues, how we view policy issues, and all
Speaker 1: of these things. So, yeah, you have to call it
Speaker 1: what it is. At a certain point, these companies are
Speaker 1: involved in social engineering, and um, they respond to what
Speaker 1: customers want. They respond to request from our government because
Speaker 1: none of these companies want to get slapped with anti
Speaker 1: trust suits. So the government tells them to do something,
Speaker 1: they're probably going to comply. Um, And that that is concerning.
Speaker 1: I mean there there is the whole you know George
Speaker 1: orwell not D eighty four complex happening. Um, it just
Speaker 1: removed the partisan politics from the conversation for a moment.
Speaker 1: And I mean, these companies have a strong hand and
Speaker 1: engineering how we think. And that's a concern regardless, and
Speaker 1: it's something that we have to think. And um, I
Speaker 1: think that is why, Yeah, parents have to educate their children,
Speaker 1: um about social media. And I think there is a
Speaker 1: role for you know, the public school system to teach
Speaker 1: kids about you know, when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: mean I remember they would talk to us about read
Speaker 1: in the newspaper and how to analyze the news and
Speaker 1: how how to think about claims and are very different, um.
Speaker 1: And and kids need to be taught to think the
Speaker 1: same way about what they see on the internet, what
Speaker 1: they see on social media. UM. You know, Peter was
Speaker 1: talking about how we're going into an era now where
Speaker 1: uh clips, new video clips are going to be outright faked,
Speaker 1: um as in their completely false from top to bottom.
Speaker 1: But what we've seen, what we're already seeing is the
Speaker 1: you'll see clips that are video that is shot in
Speaker 1: one place, but then it's presented online is something else.
Speaker 1: So I can think of that's going to be crazy.
Speaker 1: I can think of a few a few examples off
Speaker 1: the top of my head. There was one clip it
Speaker 1: was UM. There was a it was an economic um depression,
Speaker 1: an economic crisis in France UM in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: and there were people riding in the streets about it.
Speaker 1: And that clip was put on Facebook and it was
Speaker 1: portrayed as these are Muslims riding in the streets of
Speaker 1: Paris and flipping over cars and burning them, and that's
Speaker 1: just completely not what was happening there. So we're already
Speaker 1: seeing those kinds of things or UM in South Africa.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of clips making the rounds UM and
Speaker 1: I see them on on social media as well, showing
Speaker 1: atrocities that didn't even happen in South Africa. It's what
Speaker 1: Evan Barlow was talking about when we had him on UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a mess, and kids need to be
Speaker 1: taught in adults too, I mean baby boomers or they
Speaker 1: kill me. They're like fake they're like fake news machines,
Speaker 1: but they're kind of the left end right, they're kind
Speaker 1: of they're kind of a lost cause. I don't know
Speaker 1: what we can do about them, but but you know, UM,
Speaker 1: our kids just need to be taught better about how
Speaker 1: to discern fact from fiction. I wish I could find.
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to find this clip and I don't
Speaker 1: know if I will. But Jenkweager from Young Turks debated
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson about a lot of this stuff at politic
Speaker 1: On And I'm not like a viewer of Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 1: I don't really watch any televised news. But he made
Speaker 1: some really interesting points about you know, what is hate speech?
Speaker 1: And you know there was there's never been this precedent
Speaker 1: set that. I mean, I think anybody who's read the
Speaker 1: Constitution studies that the freedom of speech was meant to
Speaker 1: protect unpopular speech. Also we wouldn't need it, and he
Speaker 1: spoke about like do we really have free speech now?
Speaker 1: He's like, this is really setting a precedent where you
Speaker 1: say something online that people don't like, you can't really
Speaker 1: work a regular job. You'll be you'll be fine, that's true.
Speaker 1: But the United States government doesn't protect you from being
Speaker 1: socially ostracized. No, But it's it's setting a different We're
Speaker 1: in a very different world basically, I think, than we
Speaker 1: were twenty years ago, ten years ago. I wish you
Speaker 1: could find the quip. I'm probably gonna find it once
Speaker 1: we've stopped we've talked about We've talked about UM people
Speaker 1: trying to UM engage in d platforming in the past
Speaker 1: on this podcast, and you know how people will there.
Speaker 1: They are like these little cliques, they're like cults, especially
Speaker 1: on Twitter, where they will they'll twitter mob you if
Speaker 1: they don't like, you know, your opinion about something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and but that but that's not a First Amendment issue,
Speaker 1: No it's not. But people can go and do stupid
Speaker 1: things if they want. I agree, And you can still
Speaker 1: engage in your free speech and be off of all
Speaker 1: these social networks. Um. But yeah, one of the interesting things,
Speaker 1: you know, when we're talking last show with Benny about
Speaker 1: the transgender issue, it's becoming um. You know, if you
Speaker 1: have a certain opinion on that issue, you're in the
Speaker 1: hate speech category and stuff like that does does bother me.
Speaker 1: I certainly don't have a problem with any grown adult
Speaker 1: doing what they want to do, but we should be
Speaker 1: allowed to have a debate on it with that. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But we also need to stop being snowflakes collectively. And
Speaker 1: like somebody says, you know, I think you're a bad
Speaker 1: person because you said that, and it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I think I'm a bad person, Like I'm not going
Speaker 1: to whine about how you're trying to shut down my speech.
Speaker 1: Like I'm a grown man. I'm gonna say what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say, and I accept the repercussions of that. But
Speaker 1: I am worried about the d platforming of people because
Speaker 1: they have a different view on this. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not all people. It goes from people who think
Speaker 1: the kids in Sandy Hook were child actors or you
Speaker 1: know whatever. What what's the next step? What does it
Speaker 1: Does it go against like say, all gun owners and
Speaker 1: we start to ostracize that about Yeah? Is that something
Speaker 1: that's going to happen? And I think it'll be interesting
Speaker 1: to see how this plays out over the next decade.
Speaker 1: Is it gonna be like you saw this um bifurcation
Speaker 1: in televised news? Um? You know, CNN was kind of
Speaker 1: the middle of the road. They weaned left, but they
Speaker 1: were more center then. What we saw was MSNBC and
Speaker 1: Fox News. And now you have your left wing news
Speaker 1: and you have your right wing news, and CNN has
Speaker 1: gotten pretty left. Yeah, they have. Um, are we going
Speaker 1: to see this with social media at some point? Are
Speaker 1: you gonna see um? You know, some right wing billionaire
Speaker 1: fund their own social media. That's a safe space for
Speaker 1: conservatives or you know whatever. We're going to call them
Speaker 1: right wingers. It's it's hard to say because at this
Speaker 1: point I want to say that Facebook is a monopoly
Speaker 1: and Google and all these monopolies. However, being objective about this,
Speaker 1: I do remember in middle school in the early two
Speaker 1: thousand's having a history teacher talk about how Microsoft had
Speaker 1: a monopoly and the Internet Explorer. You know, there was
Speaker 1: no competition. I remember Bill Gates was pulled in front
Speaker 1: of Congress if I remember correctly. Yeah, this was the
Speaker 1: time where there were some repercussions. They had to they
Speaker 1: had to stop doing some things. Are split up part
Speaker 1: of the company, didn't they. I don't. I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly A long time ago. That's the
Speaker 1: great thing about doing a podcast, just spur the moment ideas.
Speaker 1: And this isn't well researched or anything. But this was
Speaker 1: at the time where the most popular mac was remember
Speaker 1: those like those billboards of you can get this in
Speaker 1: pink and orange and all these crazy yards and no
Speaker 1: one was buying it. So this was long before the iPod,
Speaker 1: long before you know, the uh it had something. It
Speaker 1: had something to do with how they were bundling Windows
Speaker 1: with um with Internet Explorers. They're saying, like, if you
Speaker 1: buy this operating system, then it's implied that you have
Speaker 1: to use the browser. Um yeah, I mean, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I don't have my like Wikipedia facts at the top
Speaker 1: of my head, but this is something that, yeah, some
Speaker 1: past incident that'd be interesting to delve into a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So part of me wants to say that these social
Speaker 1: networks have a monopoly, that there's never gonna be any competition.
Speaker 1: But then the other part of me wants to say,
Speaker 1: you know, people believe that about Windows, about you know,
Speaker 1: other things. Yeah, yeah, it'll it'll reach a point, and um,
Speaker 1: some of these social media platforms are destined to die. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think Twitter is going to be
Speaker 1: around in ten years. No, I don't think it's gonna
Speaker 1: be around the way it is today. Um, Facebook will
Speaker 1: be around, I think, Um, Instagram, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean some of them, some of them are very popular,
Speaker 1: but I don't know what their longevity is gonna be.
Speaker 1: You know, some of them I think will turn into
Speaker 1: like my Space. Well, yeah, we'll see. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: there's two news articles I just want to bring up
Speaker 1: real quick. But before I do, be sure to check
Speaker 1: out Create Club, which I've been talking about a little bit,
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Speaker 1: and is in the next premium crate. We have different
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Speaker 1: that's Create Club dot us. Everything is currently shipping. Jack
Speaker 1: and I actually got a look over at the warehouse
Speaker 1: like live feed, which is pretty cool, uh for your
Speaker 1: dog owners. Actually, I got my crate yesterday and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if it's the the category of it is
Speaker 1: that the prokrate. It's a smaller one, but it had
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff in it. It had sunglasses case, um,
Speaker 1: what did it have? Some bottle openers had there's a
Speaker 1: there's a spear fishing spear in there. That I haven't
Speaker 1: put together. What else There's a whole bunch of stuff
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Speaker 1: is now, So we're on Android. Weren't I iPhone? All that?
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna take one last sip of this as
Speaker 1: this is running out. But when you know, it's funny,
Speaker 1: I got my coffee. I killed my coffee. So someone
Speaker 1: is gonna say, because it always happens on Twitter to
Speaker 1: be why the hell are you drinking Starbucks and you
Speaker 1: should be drinking black rifle coffee only I whipped hard.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny? Um? So Starbucks always gets blasted?
Speaker 1: Is this um like super left wing corporation? They're definitely
Speaker 1: left wing, but they're not anti veteran. Remember them in
Speaker 1: Black Rifle for having like a whole thing. They actually
Speaker 1: hire a lot of veterans, but they also were hiring
Speaker 1: Syrian you know, refugees, and somehow this got painted as
Speaker 1: why can't you give those jobs to vets? And it's
Speaker 1: not a one or the other. They do both. And
Speaker 1: I do know this because I worked for Senator Bill
Speaker 1: Bradley's like high up on the board at Starbucks. And
Speaker 1: when I say they're left waning, yeah, they're pretty open
Speaker 1: about that. But they they're also very veteran friendly. And
Speaker 1: I guess it's because of those T shirts that came out.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was grunt style or something
Speaker 1: where it was like, you know, vets before refugees and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And these are two very separate issues,
Speaker 1: and I do hate how that's gets put into one category.
Speaker 1: So that's that's really some mouth breathing type ship. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've gone on my whole rant before
Speaker 1: about how like, I'm not concerned with the company's politics.
Speaker 1: I don't drink Starbucks coffee unless I have to, but
Speaker 1: not not because of politics. I just don't like the
Speaker 1: taste of their coffee. It's not very good. It's the
Speaker 1: only coffee that like. Any time I have any other coffee,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't do it for me. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: strictly Starbucks. Well, I mean we're kind of spoiled here.
Speaker 1: I mean in New York City. You know, there's people,
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of little coffee shops making their
Speaker 1: own coffee. So they're just never getting to me. I
Speaker 1: don't know why Star Starbucks coffee just tastes like burned
Speaker 1: to me. And I've heard other people say that too,
Speaker 1: man Um. The last things I want to mention, I
Speaker 1: saw the cover of the New York Times today, the
Speaker 1: report of China. You know, they're they're saying that they
Speaker 1: are tapping the president's iPhone and he's being urged to
Speaker 1: switch over to something other than an iPhone, but he
Speaker 1: continues to use it. So that's definitely a concern that
Speaker 1: they're hearing his private conversations. During the Obama administration, there's
Speaker 1: a story about how Yankee White had been compromised, which
Speaker 1: is the classified communication system that the White House uses,
Speaker 1: UM that had been compromised by the Russians, And that
Speaker 1: story disappeared really quick. Don't hear much about that. And
Speaker 1: there's an article up on the News Rep by Joe
Speaker 1: la Fabe, who we've had on about China and Palestine
Speaker 1: signing a new trade agreement and strengthening the political ties,
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting, um, because that definitely shows
Speaker 1: China getting more in bed with countries that were costle towards.
Speaker 1: I also do wonder you know, Palestine isn't exactly like
Speaker 1: an industrious country, like you know, what are they even trading?
Speaker 1: A good question. I don't know anything about this trade agreement,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to have to go and do some
Speaker 1: research myself. But articles up though at the News rep
Speaker 1: dot com China is spreading its wings and its tentacles everywhere. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: well that's it for us, ben Uh. We'll be back
Speaker 1: actually Wednesday with episode four fucking hundred. I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: It's insane, that's wild. Yeah, I'm excited for it. I
Speaker 1: won't give away we're having on, but I think it'll
Speaker 1: be pretty cool. Um. I think we'll get some great
Speaker 1: stories out of it, and please do what Like Like
Speaker 1: I said, we used this show as a platform for anybody,
Speaker 1: um that that we think has something interesting out that
Speaker 1: the audience will love. So please do pick up Like
Speaker 1: War the Weaponization of Social Media by P. W. Singer,
Speaker 1: and then you should look at the coverage Donemer who's
Speaker 1: the other co author? Um it is Emerson T. Brooking. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're originally gonna have both of them on UM, but
Speaker 1: I think Emerson was tied up. But it was a
Speaker 1: great interview. I read the book. I mean it is
Speaker 1: a good, um, concise history of this emerging topic that,
Speaker 1: like I said, we haven't fully come to graps grips
Speaker 1: with UM. So if you want to learn about the
Speaker 1: weaponization of social media and read a more sort of UM.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily want to say it's purely academic. It's
Speaker 1: not like reading a white paper. But they do have
Speaker 1: all their source citations, because if you're writing about fake news,
Speaker 1: you want to do your homework right UM. So it
Speaker 1: does give a good history about the transfer the transmission
Speaker 1: of information throughout history and how it can be weaponized
Speaker 1: UM with the focus on today. So I definitely give
Speaker 1: it a read. If you're interested in that topic, absolutely
Speaker 1: check it out. We're out. We'll be back next episode,
Speaker 1: episode four hundred. Yeah, yea, you've been listening to self
Speaker 1: rep Radio. New episodes up every Wednesday and Friday. Follow
Speaker 1: the show on Instagram and Twitter at self rep Radio